If I fashioned myself as a container of blood, I would be clear glass and everyone could see the pulsing heart of me. But since I am made of skin I do my best to show everyone what it looks like in there, behind the steel frame of my ribcage. Here and here and here, I say, pulling strands from the center of me and holding out a fist. I am bleeding all over your carpet, and I'm sorry for that, but it won't stop me. Look at all the pieces, I say. The pretty bits and the ugly bits, the shards of bone and the vivid essence of red.
What I am not saying is, Here, look at me. Appreciate and validate and fix me. It's manically avoiding dealing with the inside bits and instead simply putting them on display. What I say is: Look, I have made another mistake. Look at that. Just look at it. Can you believe the mistake I have made? And then I file it away on a shelf, dust it off, step back, and take it in. Yup. That's a mistake alright.
What I am not saying is: Look how unhappy I am.
It's a nice, tidy form of apathy, a really good, self-perpetuating one. Because you feel like you are confronting something when you take it out and talk about it until the words stop making any sense. Done and done, I think when I step back to take a look at those things I end up filing away on the shelf. I did all the work. I did what I was supposed to do. And then I walk away.
This is not just apathy, though, it's survival skills, too. If I stop talking about the muck inside and around me it's like poison. If I took the time to dive in and start sorting everything out, I'd get bogged down so quickly, sinking and drowning before I even got through the first thing.
This is not easy, finding yourself waist-deep in the muck when you didn't even know you were in it.
Posted on: Monday, October 29, 2012
Posted on: Monday, September 17, 2012
Posted on: Monday, August 27, 2012
The sun is up, the sun will stay.
I feel like I should write some words about the girls starting school today, but I hardly know how I feel about it. I listen to this song and think it's somewhere in there, in the sweet pull of the violin and the "I haven't felt this alive in a long time/all the streets are warm today" lyric, but it doesn't make sense to me, not yet. Because this is a happy sentiment, yes? And yet I do not feel that exactly.
It's just that the girls have stepped out and opened up our world a bit -- or a lot, I guess -- and it is both happy and completely terrifying. What face is Madeleine making now? What have the other girls said to her? Is she speaking back? Does Violet like her teacher? What does it feel like to fold her little body into those chairs, to sit next to new people? I check the school website, examine the kindergarten and first grade schedules for answers. I try to pack meaning into "social studies group" and 15 minute recesses. Like now, right now, Violet is working on math and Mad is in science. Are they engaged? Are new words and concepts furrowing into the folds of their brains? Are they getting excited about learning? When I pick them up, will they smile or frown? Cry? Shut down?
Honestly, I don't know what to do with myself. I will leave here at 3 and pick them up, and my heart will be in my throat the whole time, hoping they'll come out of the school looking thrilled and steeling myself for the alternative. The great, stupid, wonderful unknown. I hit replay on the song, again and again, and try to live in the surge of strings for a little while. All for the new day, he sings. Everything is too big and all is as it should be.
It's just that the girls have stepped out and opened up our world a bit -- or a lot, I guess -- and it is both happy and completely terrifying. What face is Madeleine making now? What have the other girls said to her? Is she speaking back? Does Violet like her teacher? What does it feel like to fold her little body into those chairs, to sit next to new people? I check the school website, examine the kindergarten and first grade schedules for answers. I try to pack meaning into "social studies group" and 15 minute recesses. Like now, right now, Violet is working on math and Mad is in science. Are they engaged? Are new words and concepts furrowing into the folds of their brains? Are they getting excited about learning? When I pick them up, will they smile or frown? Cry? Shut down?
Honestly, I don't know what to do with myself. I will leave here at 3 and pick them up, and my heart will be in my throat the whole time, hoping they'll come out of the school looking thrilled and steeling myself for the alternative. The great, stupid, wonderful unknown. I hit replay on the song, again and again, and try to live in the surge of strings for a little while. All for the new day, he sings. Everything is too big and all is as it should be.
Posted on: Thursday, August 16, 2012
A collection of lovely things.
The sky drapes like a gray canopy and billows in the wind. The rain doesn't fall. (It's not going to.)
This is a lovely thing. That smell wafting from the ground is called petrichor. I call it earth and minerals, a vital essence. I tell the girls to inhale it deeply. We talk about thunder, how it can be nice and comforting when it's quiet. They see that, I think. Madeleine wants to know if lightning can be comforting. It depends on you, I told her. Do you like it? I think, she nods. As long as I'm not outside. That's good.
::
-- Hank Green
::
"
This is a lovely thing. That smell wafting from the ground is called petrichor. I call it earth and minerals, a vital essence. I tell the girls to inhale it deeply. We talk about thunder, how it can be nice and comforting when it's quiet. They see that, I think. Madeleine wants to know if lightning can be comforting. It depends on you, I told her. Do you like it? I think, she nods. As long as I'm not outside. That's good.
::
So when people say “I’m not doing anything with my life,”
what I hear is “I’m not doing anything of value with my life….when I think of
the value that I appreciate and that I create…what matters to me most is how
much I love people, and how much the people that I love love me.
::
"
Posted on: Friday, August 10, 2012
Adventures in fiction.
(Inspired by the weird lady I saw at Whole Foods a while back.)
Erin is mostly floating through her days now. Her therapist says this is not progress, but Erin can't see how it isn't. Today she smiled, staring up at the blue sky and clouds piled high and it was okay. It was alright. Someone smiled at her in the parking lot on the way into the grocery store and she did not grit her teeth or clench her fists. She didn't wrinkle her nose or untuck her shirt. Sometimes she would do that, untuck her shirt, when confronted with unwelcome hellos. People never knew what that meant, or what to do, and Erin got great comfort from the reality of it, the quiet confrontation, the subtle aggression. It sent a message: leave me alone. She was sure of that. Because people usually did leave her alone.
She was there to pick up a cake from the bakery, and see? This was progress. Because it was a cake for her sister's baby shower, and even though their mother had said she would take care of the cake, Erin had decided otherwise. "I can do this!" she'd insisted. In her pockets her hands made the symbol for OK. She pinched her pointer finger and thumb together in a firm circle for emphasis. "I want to," she swore.
To her therapist later that day she'd sobbed. She had honestly thought it was okay. Maybe the circle of her fingers had tricked her into thinking it was fine, but it turned out she had unresolved feelings. "I don't even know what flavor to get!" She'd wailed. "I don't know how big it should be! I don't even remember what she's naming the baby!"
The therapist had offered gentle guidance. "You can ask these questions of your mother," he'd said. "These questions are simple enough." Erin thought of all the other questions she was working on asking her mother and swallowed back bile.
Of course she hadn't asked her mother anything. Instead, she'd googled "baby shower cake my younger sister is pregnant before me chocolate frosting" and come up with (eventually) some ideas. And it occurred to her, oh miracle of miracles, that the baby was going to be named Reed. She was almost 80 percent sure. Maybe 78 percent. And she knew how to get a victory out of this. She'd order the cake from her mother's favorite grocery store, the organic one with overpriced food stocking the shelves.
In her mind she envisioned the reveal of the cake. "Welcome To The World, Baby Reed," it would say in elegant lettering. The cake would be moist chocolate with chocolate buttercream, because, if she remembered correctly, chocolate and buttercream were her sister's favorite.
Erin is getting better, they would think, taking bites of the delicious cake. Her mother would nod in surprised approval. The thought of it sent a shiver down Erin's spine.
This idea had been sustaining her for awhile now, and it was enough to keep her floating through her days, smiling at blue skies and fluffy clouds. She couldn't smile at strangers, not yet, but she wasn't untucking her shirt at them. Progress.
Pushing open the doors to the grocery store, Erin was met with a blast of cold air and her own reflection in the glass. She felt a frisson of pleasure, because she knew how she looked to people. Small, petite, with white-blonde hair that fell down to the middle of her back. Bright blue eyes. Perfectly adorable skirt and silver jewelry. Inside the store she felt an inadvertent wave of superiority wash over her. I'm better than you people, she thought, clutching her handbag to her middle and running a finger over the weave, counting the squares. Somehow her fingers found the OK shape again and she dropped the bag to her side abruptly, physically shaking her fingers apart.
This was going to work, she decided, plunging ahead through to the bakery, studiously avoiding eye contact with the other grocery store patrons. I may even talk to the clerk directly. Look her in the eye. I just might.
At the counter a large woman in a white apron was smiling at her expectantly. "Hi!" the woman chirped and Erin plowed ahead confidently. She hoped.
"Hello," Erin returned, meeting the woman's eyes, determined not to even blink. I'm doing it! She thought. I'm really doing it! "My name is Erin. I'm here for the Baby Reed cake. Chocolate. Chocolate Buttercream."
The woman's smile slipped just a little, but Erin decided to let it go. "Just a second," she said, and crouched down to the bottom level of the bakery case. Moments later she was holding out a white box.
"Here you go!" the woman said. "Take a look."
As the woman lifted the lid on the box, Erin felt the whole world around her come to a halt. Even her brain stilled, just a little. Sure, it was just a cake. But this was more than a cake. This was some kind of salvation. This was a victory. She'd been needing one for so long.
Her heart fluttering, she smiled widely at the clerk and looked down into the box.
Welcome To The World, Baby Reid.
Baby Reid.
Baby Reid.
Erin thought her heart had stopped.
She looked up at the clerk, alarm coloring her blue eyes a darker shade. Everything came to life at once, and she was suddenly aware of how quickly her blood was singing through her veins. She felt panicked, and a hand fluttered up around her throat. She dropped her handbag onto the counter, and without thinking, she found the other hand inching toward her waistband to untuck her shirt.
Somehow, somehow, she stopped herself. "It's spelled wrong," she gasped out.
The woman stared at her blankly. "What do you mean?" She finally asked. "It says right here." The woman pulled the order off the side of the box and waved the paper in Erin's face. "See? R-E-I-D."
Erin wanted to be annoyed with the woman, but she realized, heart plummeting, that the woman was right. Erin had spelled it wrong when she wrote it out for the clerk. "No," she whispered, going white, and the woman took a step back. "Well, look, we can fix it. I will just smooth out the I and replace it with an E. It'll just take a sec. No worries!"
Somehow Erin felt a burble of laughter well up in her throat and it escaped, unbidden, like a sudden bursting hiccup. "I did that. I spelled it wrong." She felt tears sting her eyes, thought desperately of her mascara, and pulled it together. She forced another laugh, this one louder and longer. It danced over the heads of everyone in the store, and she imagined they turned to look at her. They would admire her musical laugh and the way her blonde hair shone under the lights.
"No, no. That. Is. Hilarious," she enunciated carefully. "My own nephew's name! I spelled it wrong! Ha!"
The woman allowed a smile to creep up her face, wanting to be in on the joke. "So I'll just fix it real quick. Hold on just a sec."
She turned to go, but Erin stopped her. "No! No. Don't worry about it. It will be hilarious at the baby shower. No. Symbolic. Like: Nothing in the world is perfect! Nobody is perfect! Welcome to this big, imperfect, delicious world, Baby R-E-E-D. That's what I'll tell them."
"Uh...okay?" The woman said, handing the box out to her hesitantly. "If you're sure....?"
"Sure! Sure, I'm sure. I love it. The world really works out for the best sometimes, doesn't it?" Erin took the box and set it down on the counter carefully. "How much do I owe you?" The woman told her, and as Erin reached out for her handbag, she quickly pulled her blue silk blouse from the waistband of her skirt.
The woman was now looking at her strangely. Erin rifled through her wallet, pulled out a VISA, and smiled brilliantly at the woman. She felt the reassuring untucked, loose feeling of her shirt hanging over the front of her skirt.
Easy. This is easy, she thought as she paid the woman. She kept smiling while the woman handed her a receipt. She kept smiling as she left the grocery store, carefully bracing the cake box against her front. She kept smiling.
Inside her car, the air conditioning blasting against her face, Erin shot a look at the cake box sitting so blandly in the seat next to her. Slowly, she reached over to open the box.
Welcome To The World, Baby Reid.
Reid.
Erin's right hand clenched into a fist, and before she knew it, she had rammed her fist straight through the misspelling. Chocolate cake and frosting oozed around her balled fingers. She smashed the cake again and again and again, then looked up at the guileless blue sky and piles of white clouds. The big, delicious, imperfect world, she thought. She thought about progress and licked the chocolate from her fingers and drove to her sister's house slowly. She would tuck her shirt in when she got there. It would be okay.
Erin is mostly floating through her days now. Her therapist says this is not progress, but Erin can't see how it isn't. Today she smiled, staring up at the blue sky and clouds piled high and it was okay. It was alright. Someone smiled at her in the parking lot on the way into the grocery store and she did not grit her teeth or clench her fists. She didn't wrinkle her nose or untuck her shirt. Sometimes she would do that, untuck her shirt, when confronted with unwelcome hellos. People never knew what that meant, or what to do, and Erin got great comfort from the reality of it, the quiet confrontation, the subtle aggression. It sent a message: leave me alone. She was sure of that. Because people usually did leave her alone.
She was there to pick up a cake from the bakery, and see? This was progress. Because it was a cake for her sister's baby shower, and even though their mother had said she would take care of the cake, Erin had decided otherwise. "I can do this!" she'd insisted. In her pockets her hands made the symbol for OK. She pinched her pointer finger and thumb together in a firm circle for emphasis. "I want to," she swore.
To her therapist later that day she'd sobbed. She had honestly thought it was okay. Maybe the circle of her fingers had tricked her into thinking it was fine, but it turned out she had unresolved feelings. "I don't even know what flavor to get!" She'd wailed. "I don't know how big it should be! I don't even remember what she's naming the baby!"
The therapist had offered gentle guidance. "You can ask these questions of your mother," he'd said. "These questions are simple enough." Erin thought of all the other questions she was working on asking her mother and swallowed back bile.
Of course she hadn't asked her mother anything. Instead, she'd googled "baby shower cake my younger sister is pregnant before me chocolate frosting" and come up with (eventually) some ideas. And it occurred to her, oh miracle of miracles, that the baby was going to be named Reed. She was almost 80 percent sure. Maybe 78 percent. And she knew how to get a victory out of this. She'd order the cake from her mother's favorite grocery store, the organic one with overpriced food stocking the shelves.
In her mind she envisioned the reveal of the cake. "Welcome To The World, Baby Reed," it would say in elegant lettering. The cake would be moist chocolate with chocolate buttercream, because, if she remembered correctly, chocolate and buttercream were her sister's favorite.
Erin is getting better, they would think, taking bites of the delicious cake. Her mother would nod in surprised approval. The thought of it sent a shiver down Erin's spine.
This idea had been sustaining her for awhile now, and it was enough to keep her floating through her days, smiling at blue skies and fluffy clouds. She couldn't smile at strangers, not yet, but she wasn't untucking her shirt at them. Progress.
Pushing open the doors to the grocery store, Erin was met with a blast of cold air and her own reflection in the glass. She felt a frisson of pleasure, because she knew how she looked to people. Small, petite, with white-blonde hair that fell down to the middle of her back. Bright blue eyes. Perfectly adorable skirt and silver jewelry. Inside the store she felt an inadvertent wave of superiority wash over her. I'm better than you people, she thought, clutching her handbag to her middle and running a finger over the weave, counting the squares. Somehow her fingers found the OK shape again and she dropped the bag to her side abruptly, physically shaking her fingers apart.
This was going to work, she decided, plunging ahead through to the bakery, studiously avoiding eye contact with the other grocery store patrons. I may even talk to the clerk directly. Look her in the eye. I just might.
At the counter a large woman in a white apron was smiling at her expectantly. "Hi!" the woman chirped and Erin plowed ahead confidently. She hoped.
"Hello," Erin returned, meeting the woman's eyes, determined not to even blink. I'm doing it! She thought. I'm really doing it! "My name is Erin. I'm here for the Baby Reed cake. Chocolate. Chocolate Buttercream."
The woman's smile slipped just a little, but Erin decided to let it go. "Just a second," she said, and crouched down to the bottom level of the bakery case. Moments later she was holding out a white box.
"Here you go!" the woman said. "Take a look."
As the woman lifted the lid on the box, Erin felt the whole world around her come to a halt. Even her brain stilled, just a little. Sure, it was just a cake. But this was more than a cake. This was some kind of salvation. This was a victory. She'd been needing one for so long.
Her heart fluttering, she smiled widely at the clerk and looked down into the box.
Welcome To The World, Baby Reid.
Baby Reid.
Baby Reid.
Erin thought her heart had stopped.
She looked up at the clerk, alarm coloring her blue eyes a darker shade. Everything came to life at once, and she was suddenly aware of how quickly her blood was singing through her veins. She felt panicked, and a hand fluttered up around her throat. She dropped her handbag onto the counter, and without thinking, she found the other hand inching toward her waistband to untuck her shirt.
Somehow, somehow, she stopped herself. "It's spelled wrong," she gasped out.
The woman stared at her blankly. "What do you mean?" She finally asked. "It says right here." The woman pulled the order off the side of the box and waved the paper in Erin's face. "See? R-E-I-D."
Erin wanted to be annoyed with the woman, but she realized, heart plummeting, that the woman was right. Erin had spelled it wrong when she wrote it out for the clerk. "No," she whispered, going white, and the woman took a step back. "Well, look, we can fix it. I will just smooth out the I and replace it with an E. It'll just take a sec. No worries!"
Somehow Erin felt a burble of laughter well up in her throat and it escaped, unbidden, like a sudden bursting hiccup. "I did that. I spelled it wrong." She felt tears sting her eyes, thought desperately of her mascara, and pulled it together. She forced another laugh, this one louder and longer. It danced over the heads of everyone in the store, and she imagined they turned to look at her. They would admire her musical laugh and the way her blonde hair shone under the lights.
"No, no. That. Is. Hilarious," she enunciated carefully. "My own nephew's name! I spelled it wrong! Ha!"
The woman allowed a smile to creep up her face, wanting to be in on the joke. "So I'll just fix it real quick. Hold on just a sec."
She turned to go, but Erin stopped her. "No! No. Don't worry about it. It will be hilarious at the baby shower. No. Symbolic. Like: Nothing in the world is perfect! Nobody is perfect! Welcome to this big, imperfect, delicious world, Baby R-E-E-D. That's what I'll tell them."
"Uh...okay?" The woman said, handing the box out to her hesitantly. "If you're sure....?"
"Sure! Sure, I'm sure. I love it. The world really works out for the best sometimes, doesn't it?" Erin took the box and set it down on the counter carefully. "How much do I owe you?" The woman told her, and as Erin reached out for her handbag, she quickly pulled her blue silk blouse from the waistband of her skirt.
The woman was now looking at her strangely. Erin rifled through her wallet, pulled out a VISA, and smiled brilliantly at the woman. She felt the reassuring untucked, loose feeling of her shirt hanging over the front of her skirt.
Easy. This is easy, she thought as she paid the woman. She kept smiling while the woman handed her a receipt. She kept smiling as she left the grocery store, carefully bracing the cake box against her front. She kept smiling.
Inside her car, the air conditioning blasting against her face, Erin shot a look at the cake box sitting so blandly in the seat next to her. Slowly, she reached over to open the box.
Welcome To The World, Baby Reid.
Reid.
Erin's right hand clenched into a fist, and before she knew it, she had rammed her fist straight through the misspelling. Chocolate cake and frosting oozed around her balled fingers. She smashed the cake again and again and again, then looked up at the guileless blue sky and piles of white clouds. The big, delicious, imperfect world, she thought. She thought about progress and licked the chocolate from her fingers and drove to her sister's house slowly. She would tuck her shirt in when she got there. It would be okay.
Posted on: Thursday, August 9, 2012
Honestly.
I believe it was noted philosopher Frou Frou who once said, "There is beauty in the breakdown." I sure hope that's true. Yesterday I had a breakdown in grand fashion, spending most of the day sniveling behind a closed office door, sternly telling myself to pull it together and writing myself overly hopeful To Do lists in an effort to bounce back quickly.
It didn't happen. I didn't really pull it together until I got home, and that's only because I had to be a mom and not a mess. In the meantime, I'm stuck here at the bottom probably for a while. And that's okay. I think if you hit the bottom of the barrel, it's good to just mill around down there a bit, scraping up the rust, checking things out, examining the dregs.
Here is the one thing that I learned from yesterday, and I think it's pretty valuable. If you look back at the posts on this here blog since, oh, June? Before that? You'll see I've been laughably depressed. It's like now, how I look back on my pregnancy with Madeleine and say, "Oh. Oh, you poor thing." Because that was a good nine-month span of depression right there, and I honestly had no idea.
So that's the thing. Lately I've been laughing about my lack of a highlight reel at work, proclaiming that what I have is a lowlight reel. "I'm here to make your highlight reel look even better," I say to anyone who will listen. Now let's all laugh. Something terrible happens? Let me turn it into a funny story and tell all the people. We're all laughing! See? Life isn't that bad. Because we're still laughing.
Yesterday, staring at my computer screen and wishing desperately I could go home to a quiet, empty house, take a cold shower and sob uncontrollably for seven hours or so, standing right there at the motherfucking bottom of the barrel, I realized there was nothing remotely humorous about my situation. Not a yuk to be had. And I felt relief. And I just could not stop crying.
Because suddenly I was actually feeling every single bit of sadness I'd been harboring since way back forever ago (it feels like). My hiccuping, sobbing, swollen, puffy-eyed mess of a realization was that in my interpersonal life I have been tamping down all the bad feelings, using humor to get through the day. That's all well and good, but not if I'm letting it numb the other feelings. Not if I'm not acknowledging that there's real work to be done here.
I feel better today. I mean, I'm exhausted and my eyes are gummy, and I'm not going to put any money on the idea that I won't find myself crying about something at some point in the day. But so far, the view from the bottom of the barrel isn't so bad. You can only look up, right?
It didn't happen. I didn't really pull it together until I got home, and that's only because I had to be a mom and not a mess. In the meantime, I'm stuck here at the bottom probably for a while. And that's okay. I think if you hit the bottom of the barrel, it's good to just mill around down there a bit, scraping up the rust, checking things out, examining the dregs.
Here is the one thing that I learned from yesterday, and I think it's pretty valuable. If you look back at the posts on this here blog since, oh, June? Before that? You'll see I've been laughably depressed. It's like now, how I look back on my pregnancy with Madeleine and say, "Oh. Oh, you poor thing." Because that was a good nine-month span of depression right there, and I honestly had no idea.
So that's the thing. Lately I've been laughing about my lack of a highlight reel at work, proclaiming that what I have is a lowlight reel. "I'm here to make your highlight reel look even better," I say to anyone who will listen. Now let's all laugh. Something terrible happens? Let me turn it into a funny story and tell all the people. We're all laughing! See? Life isn't that bad. Because we're still laughing.
Yesterday, staring at my computer screen and wishing desperately I could go home to a quiet, empty house, take a cold shower and sob uncontrollably for seven hours or so, standing right there at the motherfucking bottom of the barrel, I realized there was nothing remotely humorous about my situation. Not a yuk to be had. And I felt relief. And I just could not stop crying.
Because suddenly I was actually feeling every single bit of sadness I'd been harboring since way back forever ago (it feels like). My hiccuping, sobbing, swollen, puffy-eyed mess of a realization was that in my interpersonal life I have been tamping down all the bad feelings, using humor to get through the day. That's all well and good, but not if I'm letting it numb the other feelings. Not if I'm not acknowledging that there's real work to be done here.
I feel better today. I mean, I'm exhausted and my eyes are gummy, and I'm not going to put any money on the idea that I won't find myself crying about something at some point in the day. But so far, the view from the bottom of the barrel isn't so bad. You can only look up, right?
Posted on: Monday, July 30, 2012
The rules are not absolute.
The rules are not absolute; they never are. It is true that gravity pins us to earth until it doesn't, high above our atmosphere. It is true that fluids will stay in their containers, perfectly content to slosh where poured, until you cool a liquid like liquid helium enough so that its atoms calm and move together in some strange, silent unity. Properly tamed and docile, the fluid will creep up the sides of its container, unbidden, seeking to level itself. Taming the atoms untames the liquid and it behaves in ways that don't make sense, at least to those who haven't made a living out of science. And sometimes not to those people.
Then you have those atoms, which are typical until they aren't. Usually they're properly constructed shells with even distributions of electrons until you wander across the periodic table into transition metals. Those shells take strange shapes and those metals take their extra electrons and secret them away. They don't react with other elements unless you can find a way to access the extra electrons.
These things are what we're made of, on an atomic level and on the grander scale, the one where human observation of atoms creates rules for atoms to follow -- where we seek to understand the trade of electrons that creates carbon-based matter -- how it all adds up to us, flesh and bone, speaking, bleeding, crying, laughing, sleeping, living things.
In the grocery store line yesterday I thought to teach my daughters the word "intangible." It means something you can't touch, I told them. Like feelings or the soul. What's a soul, Madeleine wanted to know. In the grocery store line with my ice cream and roasted chicken and mango lemonade I thought of reactive elements and hidden electrons and electrons so cold they change the rules of liquid.
It's what makes you who you are, I decided to say. It's what makes you happy and sad and calm and joyful and everything else you can feel. But this isn't exactly right, I think. A soul is not feelings. Or not just that, but Madeleine seems fine with the explanation for now. And I think instead that the answer is closer to something more basic. It's what makes her roar when she's angry, what makes her push when she's frustrated. It's what makes her sit up and wait for me to extend my arm at night, without saying a word, until I notice and stretch out and she snuggles into my shoulder. It's an indefinable space, a tiny space that stretches wide. Just like my arm, just like the silence before she roars, just like two electrons migrating to another atom to create something else.
These are truths, and we find comfort in them without realizing it. If I wait, my mom will always offer her arm, she is not thinking. She just does it, and the unspoken thought is made right by action.
And so I can extend this idea to what it means to stand in your kitchen at midnight, making cupcakes because you promised your children you would and they don't understand a concept like, "It got too late." As you mix the frosting you don't think, "Next I will put this frosting on these cupcakes," because of course you will. It's the whole point.
Imagine, then, sensing a movement just to your right. And turning. And seeing a perfect stranger standing in your kitchen, staring at you expectantly. This is more than just an interruption in the cooking process. The frosting is not, in fact, going on those cupcakes because so many other rules you don't think about are being violated. A stranger does not walk into your house until he does. Your heart has never known the plummeting sensation of fear until it does, there in the dimly lit kitchen at midnight. Police officers do not show up at your house with flashlights and small notepads until they do, you standing there in your pajamas feeling foolish as you let them into your messy home. "I was making cupcakes," you explain lamely. Until you weren't.
This is a cellular level change, see, a sudden understanding of how essential the rules are. Underneath we are swirling, pinging masses of electrons. It all adds up into a soul, somehow. Until it doesn't. I gave something up that evening, much like an atom would give up its electrons. Everything should be different now -- cold helium creeping up walls and bodies floating in space -- and they are, I guess. A new awareness, locked doors, lights on, a cold creep of fear when I'm standing at the kitchen counter, a kitchen knife near the bed.
Then you have those atoms, which are typical until they aren't. Usually they're properly constructed shells with even distributions of electrons until you wander across the periodic table into transition metals. Those shells take strange shapes and those metals take their extra electrons and secret them away. They don't react with other elements unless you can find a way to access the extra electrons.
These things are what we're made of, on an atomic level and on the grander scale, the one where human observation of atoms creates rules for atoms to follow -- where we seek to understand the trade of electrons that creates carbon-based matter -- how it all adds up to us, flesh and bone, speaking, bleeding, crying, laughing, sleeping, living things.
In the grocery store line yesterday I thought to teach my daughters the word "intangible." It means something you can't touch, I told them. Like feelings or the soul. What's a soul, Madeleine wanted to know. In the grocery store line with my ice cream and roasted chicken and mango lemonade I thought of reactive elements and hidden electrons and electrons so cold they change the rules of liquid.
It's what makes you who you are, I decided to say. It's what makes you happy and sad and calm and joyful and everything else you can feel. But this isn't exactly right, I think. A soul is not feelings. Or not just that, but Madeleine seems fine with the explanation for now. And I think instead that the answer is closer to something more basic. It's what makes her roar when she's angry, what makes her push when she's frustrated. It's what makes her sit up and wait for me to extend my arm at night, without saying a word, until I notice and stretch out and she snuggles into my shoulder. It's an indefinable space, a tiny space that stretches wide. Just like my arm, just like the silence before she roars, just like two electrons migrating to another atom to create something else.
These are truths, and we find comfort in them without realizing it. If I wait, my mom will always offer her arm, she is not thinking. She just does it, and the unspoken thought is made right by action.
And so I can extend this idea to what it means to stand in your kitchen at midnight, making cupcakes because you promised your children you would and they don't understand a concept like, "It got too late." As you mix the frosting you don't think, "Next I will put this frosting on these cupcakes," because of course you will. It's the whole point.
Imagine, then, sensing a movement just to your right. And turning. And seeing a perfect stranger standing in your kitchen, staring at you expectantly. This is more than just an interruption in the cooking process. The frosting is not, in fact, going on those cupcakes because so many other rules you don't think about are being violated. A stranger does not walk into your house until he does. Your heart has never known the plummeting sensation of fear until it does, there in the dimly lit kitchen at midnight. Police officers do not show up at your house with flashlights and small notepads until they do, you standing there in your pajamas feeling foolish as you let them into your messy home. "I was making cupcakes," you explain lamely. Until you weren't.
This is a cellular level change, see, a sudden understanding of how essential the rules are. Underneath we are swirling, pinging masses of electrons. It all adds up into a soul, somehow. Until it doesn't. I gave something up that evening, much like an atom would give up its electrons. Everything should be different now -- cold helium creeping up walls and bodies floating in space -- and they are, I guess. A new awareness, locked doors, lights on, a cold creep of fear when I'm standing at the kitchen counter, a kitchen knife near the bed.
Posted on: Tuesday, July 17, 2012
A Whitman thing.
"I celebrate myself." I say it out loud, but don't mean it exactly. It just feels right in the moment, swooshing down the sidewalk on my bike as the sun sets in front of me. The cicadas and crickets and frogs join together to roar at me down this stretch of pavement. Approval, it sounds like. Applause.
I smile. Well, how about that.
"Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." I think I might be butchering the line, but it's good. It's the gist. The bugs and amphibians agree.
Well, how about that.
I can feel something stretch out from my heart, a finally, a this is it, a here it is, a thank you.
If I could, I would throw my arms out and hug the air. Instead, I keep peddling, because that's what you're supposed to do. The bugs buzz out their applause. Because that's what they're supposed to do. A wasp nest hangs heavy from a branch and sways in the wind, but the wasps don't mind. They build their nest and tend to their eggs. Because that's what they're supposed to do.
The sun sets in brilliant fashion, and I just keep plowing ahead. Eyes up.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air...
Well, how about that.
I smile. Well, how about that.
"Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." I think I might be butchering the line, but it's good. It's the gist. The bugs and amphibians agree.
Well, how about that.
I can feel something stretch out from my heart, a finally, a this is it, a here it is, a thank you.
If I could, I would throw my arms out and hug the air. Instead, I keep peddling, because that's what you're supposed to do. The bugs buzz out their applause. Because that's what they're supposed to do. A wasp nest hangs heavy from a branch and sways in the wind, but the wasps don't mind. They build their nest and tend to their eggs. Because that's what they're supposed to do.
The sun sets in brilliant fashion, and I just keep plowing ahead. Eyes up.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air...
Well, how about that.
Posted on: Thursday, July 12, 2012
Old travels.
The arduous climb from shoulder to jaw --
slopes aren't meant to be ascended -- only
descended -- only rushed by the very shape of it --
a way to get from A to B, and quickly.
A nape-kiss snags on invisible obstacles;
the sigh that's found a home there, the orb of pulse,
the indefinable, the ungraspable,
the very essence of you.
Here is a place to live: the curve of neck, a place
to sleep. We trade from lip to skin to lip
to skin the kernel of what passes for love between us,
and stop --
the climb to jaw seems so long --
from here, the ridge still seems welcoming.
slopes aren't meant to be ascended -- only
descended -- only rushed by the very shape of it --
a way to get from A to B, and quickly.
A nape-kiss snags on invisible obstacles;
the sigh that's found a home there, the orb of pulse,
the indefinable, the ungraspable,
the very essence of you.
Here is a place to live: the curve of neck, a place
to sleep. We trade from lip to skin to lip
to skin the kernel of what passes for love between us,
and stop --
the climb to jaw seems so long --
from here, the ridge still seems welcoming.
Posted on: Wednesday, July 11, 2012
The inevitable settle of you.
Yes, this darkness tastes delicious,
the macerated cherry stinging through the chocolate,
the cloying sweetness clinging to the insides of your mouth.
Sweetness sours in the inevitable settle of you, deep and core-bound.
Say it and I'll bend like a heavy stem,
fall into sweetness, perfectly willing, and
you'll find me a happy cavity,
a start and a stop in the dark, something thick to swim in.
the macerated cherry stinging through the chocolate,
the cloying sweetness clinging to the insides of your mouth.
Sweetness sours in the inevitable settle of you, deep and core-bound.
Say it and I'll bend like a heavy stem,
fall into sweetness, perfectly willing, and
you'll find me a happy cavity,
a start and a stop in the dark, something thick to swim in.
Posted on: Friday, June 29, 2012
Wow! signal
First of all, that needs to be a band name: Wow! signal.
Second, I was reading about the Wow! signal today and the wikipedia entry linked several interesting and lovely words and phrases. And also, now I'm an astronomy expert. It's true.
hydrogen line: electromagnetic radiation spectral line created by a change in the energy state of neutral hydrogen atoms.
interstellar scintillation: generic term for rapid variations in apparent brightness or color of a distant luminous object viewed through a medium, most commonly the atmosphere.
atmospheric twinkling: (same as scintillation)
Very Large Array: super-imaginative name for a radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico.
Second, I was reading about the Wow! signal today and the wikipedia entry linked several interesting and lovely words and phrases. And also, now I'm an astronomy expert. It's true.
hydrogen line: electromagnetic radiation spectral line created by a change in the energy state of neutral hydrogen atoms.
interstellar scintillation: generic term for rapid variations in apparent brightness or color of a distant luminous object viewed through a medium, most commonly the atmosphere.
atmospheric twinkling: (same as scintillation)
Very Large Array: super-imaginative name for a radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico.
Posted on: Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Stars stuck to my fingers.
I wonder if I believe in the idea of an all-encompassing universe anymore. Last night my husband said, "Am I not talking here?" in a sharp way and I hung up the phone. I hung up the phone and put it on the counter in front of me. I stared at it and picked up a dish and ran it under the hot water. I placed it in the dishwasher. I stared at the phone and thought about crying and thought about picking up the phone and apologizing. I felt that apology choke in my throat, and I thought about crying some more.
Instead of crying I walked outside and stood in the driveway. Now what. I looked up at the blue-black sky and counted the points of light far above me. I wondered which ones were stars and which ones were airplanes. Something is wrong here, I thought, when I can't tell if there are even stars in the sky. I picked the one that seemed most likely to be a star -- it was further away, not twinkling, fixed in place. I thought, now what. I thought I should make a wish or a prayer or send some good thought up into that blue-black sky, but there was a feeling in my chest, like something contracting. So I broke my gaze away from the stars or not-stars and walked to the edge of the driveway and stared down to the end of the cul-de-sac.
I could run, I thought, even though I can't. I toyed with the idea -- just picking up my bare feet and bolting down the street, down the pavement, off into the blue-black night, to a place where I could see, really see, the stars in the sky. But the tether of my sleeping children cinched around my waist and pulled me slowly back up the driveway.
I walked circles in the driveway, feet stepping heavy over water from the sprinklers snaking across the cement. My head down, I pulled my arms across my chest, pulled my whole self inward and I thought, now what. Now what. I wondered if I believed in the idea of an encompassing universe and reached inside a minute, feeling the ever-yawning hole somewhere near my heart where I imagine stars are peeping through. Peeping through in the blue-black. This is where my belief in the infinite has gone, and it's going to swallow me whole. It's an odd wound to disturb, to probe the gaping hole and come through with stars stuck to my fingers. To bleed infinity from the inside out.
You have to do something, I thought, and the most I could think to do was keep walking. Think of happy things, I thought. So I thought: happy. And then I thought, you can do better. So I kept walking in those wide circles, feet stepping heavy over the tiny river of water, and I thought: Happy, energetic, inspired. Happy, energetic, inspired. A great exhaustion pressed heavy into my shoulders and those words had never seemed more meaningless, but I kept thinking them: happy, energetic, inspired.
Against my back I felt the phantom thud of my daughter kicking the bathroom door that I was pressed against to prevent her from bursting out and hurting me. "Fine," my daughter shouted. "I hate you. I really do hate you." And so many more ugly things. My ears were filled with the ugly things she said, full to spilling; her ugly words and her vicious kicks were just pouring out of me. My fingertips tingled with the touch of the keyboard, from the effort of foisting off words of thanks to well-meaning friends and family offering their advice. There in the driveway walking my wide circles I wilted under the weight of concerned stares and words that I always carry with me to unpack later. Last night my husband said, "What's the solution, do you want to quit your job? Should we both quit our jobs?" And he didn't know, of course he didn't, how my heart would break with the weight of those words. How I floundered for a response that wasn't a shrieking, red-faced wail. How I searched for some way to defend myself -- against what, even?
I stepped heavy over the sprinkler-river in the driveway. I thought: happy, energetic, inspired. I thought again about apologizing.
I turned to face the dark house with its yellow light shining dimly from the kitchen, where the light touched down on dirty dishes and counters and floors and the phone waiting patiently on the counter. An apology is a gift you give to someone you love because you don't want them to feel hurt, especially if it's something you did. I told Madeleine this once. I pulled that stuck apology from my throat and walked back into the house. And that is what alone feels like: a wound near the heart, a starless sky, a stone-faced universe, and willfully walking back into a situation that is slowly crushing you to death.
I thought: happy, energetic, inspired, right before bed. I tacked on kindness and fell abruptly, like a heavy rock plummeting into dark water, into a dreamless, blue-black sleep.
Instead of crying I walked outside and stood in the driveway. Now what. I looked up at the blue-black sky and counted the points of light far above me. I wondered which ones were stars and which ones were airplanes. Something is wrong here, I thought, when I can't tell if there are even stars in the sky. I picked the one that seemed most likely to be a star -- it was further away, not twinkling, fixed in place. I thought, now what. I thought I should make a wish or a prayer or send some good thought up into that blue-black sky, but there was a feeling in my chest, like something contracting. So I broke my gaze away from the stars or not-stars and walked to the edge of the driveway and stared down to the end of the cul-de-sac.
I could run, I thought, even though I can't. I toyed with the idea -- just picking up my bare feet and bolting down the street, down the pavement, off into the blue-black night, to a place where I could see, really see, the stars in the sky. But the tether of my sleeping children cinched around my waist and pulled me slowly back up the driveway.
I walked circles in the driveway, feet stepping heavy over water from the sprinklers snaking across the cement. My head down, I pulled my arms across my chest, pulled my whole self inward and I thought, now what. Now what. I wondered if I believed in the idea of an encompassing universe and reached inside a minute, feeling the ever-yawning hole somewhere near my heart where I imagine stars are peeping through. Peeping through in the blue-black. This is where my belief in the infinite has gone, and it's going to swallow me whole. It's an odd wound to disturb, to probe the gaping hole and come through with stars stuck to my fingers. To bleed infinity from the inside out.
You have to do something, I thought, and the most I could think to do was keep walking. Think of happy things, I thought. So I thought: happy. And then I thought, you can do better. So I kept walking in those wide circles, feet stepping heavy over the tiny river of water, and I thought: Happy, energetic, inspired. Happy, energetic, inspired. A great exhaustion pressed heavy into my shoulders and those words had never seemed more meaningless, but I kept thinking them: happy, energetic, inspired.
Against my back I felt the phantom thud of my daughter kicking the bathroom door that I was pressed against to prevent her from bursting out and hurting me. "Fine," my daughter shouted. "I hate you. I really do hate you." And so many more ugly things. My ears were filled with the ugly things she said, full to spilling; her ugly words and her vicious kicks were just pouring out of me. My fingertips tingled with the touch of the keyboard, from the effort of foisting off words of thanks to well-meaning friends and family offering their advice. There in the driveway walking my wide circles I wilted under the weight of concerned stares and words that I always carry with me to unpack later. Last night my husband said, "What's the solution, do you want to quit your job? Should we both quit our jobs?" And he didn't know, of course he didn't, how my heart would break with the weight of those words. How I floundered for a response that wasn't a shrieking, red-faced wail. How I searched for some way to defend myself -- against what, even?
I stepped heavy over the sprinkler-river in the driveway. I thought: happy, energetic, inspired. I thought again about apologizing.
I turned to face the dark house with its yellow light shining dimly from the kitchen, where the light touched down on dirty dishes and counters and floors and the phone waiting patiently on the counter. An apology is a gift you give to someone you love because you don't want them to feel hurt, especially if it's something you did. I told Madeleine this once. I pulled that stuck apology from my throat and walked back into the house. And that is what alone feels like: a wound near the heart, a starless sky, a stone-faced universe, and willfully walking back into a situation that is slowly crushing you to death.
I thought: happy, energetic, inspired, right before bed. I tacked on kindness and fell abruptly, like a heavy rock plummeting into dark water, into a dreamless, blue-black sleep.
Posted on: Thursday, June 21, 2012
Everything's a possibility.
I had to wait to write this until just now, because if I had tried to write it any sooner, I would have been a sobbing, hysterical mess. I would have just dissolved all over my keyboard and grand, ugly fashion. I mean, I was already on the verge of that, so it was best to avoid the topic all together.
Here's the thing. Last night Madeleine had a bad episode, the worst I've seen in a long time. Things were terrible. I don't want to get into the details, but I want to write this here, as a reminder to myself: be stronger next time.
I am writing that without self-judgment. I am human, I cry, and when my daughter, the little girl who made me a mother, spends a good half hour physically attacking me and snarling incoherently and tearing around the house like a crazy person, it's going to upset me. But I don't have to fall apart in front of her like I did.
You did what you could, my mother said. It's only natural, my husband said. They are right. But here is what I truly believe: as her mother, it's my job to be strong in front of her, no matter what. Whatever happens in her brain when she gets like that -- it makes her weak and scared, even if it doesn't look that way. And mama falling apart doesn't help. It's my job to be stronger than she is, to take her in when she is on a rampage and say, Here. Here is a safe place to land. To be steady, to remind her that she does have a foundation, to remind her that the world isn't actually rocking underneath her feet, even if it feels that way to her.
To remember what feels like an impossibility: I am doing the best I can, and I can always do better. This is really about what happens in the space between those two phrases, what lives in the space after that comma -- it's the growth that bridges what I am doing now to what I can accomplish.
Yesterday I didn't feel ready for the battle, but today I remember how much I love that little girl. I remember that I am stronger than she is. That I am doing just fine and I can do much better.
Here's the thing. Last night Madeleine had a bad episode, the worst I've seen in a long time. Things were terrible. I don't want to get into the details, but I want to write this here, as a reminder to myself: be stronger next time.
I am writing that without self-judgment. I am human, I cry, and when my daughter, the little girl who made me a mother, spends a good half hour physically attacking me and snarling incoherently and tearing around the house like a crazy person, it's going to upset me. But I don't have to fall apart in front of her like I did.
You did what you could, my mother said. It's only natural, my husband said. They are right. But here is what I truly believe: as her mother, it's my job to be strong in front of her, no matter what. Whatever happens in her brain when she gets like that -- it makes her weak and scared, even if it doesn't look that way. And mama falling apart doesn't help. It's my job to be stronger than she is, to take her in when she is on a rampage and say, Here. Here is a safe place to land. To be steady, to remind her that she does have a foundation, to remind her that the world isn't actually rocking underneath her feet, even if it feels that way to her.
To remember what feels like an impossibility: I am doing the best I can, and I can always do better. This is really about what happens in the space between those two phrases, what lives in the space after that comma -- it's the growth that bridges what I am doing now to what I can accomplish.
Yesterday I didn't feel ready for the battle, but today I remember how much I love that little girl. I remember that I am stronger than she is. That I am doing just fine and I can do much better.
Posted on: Tuesday, June 19, 2012
They were working so hard.
The social wasp queen is responsible for building a whole world, for constructing a society. She starts by finding what seems to be a safe, sturdy place and begins by constructing a canopy made of wood fibers gathered from weathered wood and mixed with saliva. This paper-like substance will be the foundation of her new wasp civilization, and she uses it carefully, building a strong canopy from the inside out, until the canopy touches the outer edge of the cavity she has selected. In the center, beneath the canopy, she constructs the backbone and builds several cells. The first eggs will be laid here. The queen works at her task until layers of cells are constructed. Eventually enough female workers will be born and mature enough to take over the construction of the nest, leaving the queen to focus on reproduction.
Outside of this world is Madeleine, standing several feet away from where four or five wasps are tending to their new dusky brown world built sturdily into the outside corner of our garage. If we get too close, a wasp will buzz out, just a little. "If you leave them alone, they won't sting you," we tell the girls over and over again, but it doesn't stop that little frisson of fear we feel when a wasp decides to offer a warning of sorts. We step back, just a foot or so, and I wonder how we define "leave them alone," how we will know at which point we are in fact bothering these industrious workers. An anole darts up the side of the garage and Madeleine wants to catch it, but fear freezes her feet where she stands. "Just be very brave," she urges me. "Just be very brave and go and catch it."
This is the foolishness of motherhood; I grab Net, the name she has given the pink net she uses to snag all sorts of wild creatures and inch toward the garage where the wasps buzz about their nest and the anole eyes me warily. The wasps stay put and I halfheartedly reach out with Net, trying not to hurt the lizard. It darts down the side of the house and into the ivy, long gone.
"I'm sorry," I tell Madeleine as another wasp buzzes outward and we move on to another side of the yard. "I almost had it."
::
When we talk about bees and wasps, it seems they're often interchangeable; our brains make the tenuous connections: flying thing with stinger, nest, hives, pollen, etc. In terms of stings, the two are quite different. The acidic venom of bees, apitoxin, causes pain in those they sting. Wasp venom is chemically different; it seeks to paralyze prey so it can be stored alive in the food chambers of their young. When a person is stung by a wasp, they can expect swelling, itching, and pain at the site of the sting. Home care includes washing the site of the sting thoroughly with soap and water, applying ice for 10 minutes, and giving the person stung an antihistamine to relieve symptoms. And then you wait for your body to take care of the problem the rest of the way. A lot of wasp sting management is to endure; it hurts, eventually it will hurt less. One of the most painful places to be stung is the face; the skin there is delicate and the nerve endings are just right there.
I don't know these things per se when I hear Madeleine screaming in the front yard. It's the kind of cry-scream that terrifies a mother. "NOOO," Madeleine is wailing as I bolt for the front door, my heart in my throat. "A bee," she is sobbing, red-faced and hysterical. She barely chokes the words out. "It stung me!" I can't see the sting, so I ask desperately, "WHERE?" and she screams out, tears soaking her face, "My eye! My eye! Right here!" She points to the inner corner of her right eyebrow.
All I know is that I need her to calm down and it's not happening. The intensity of her reaction surprises me because she's been stung by bees and wasps on a few other occasions and it's never been like this. I sit her on the kitchen counter and tilt her teary, red face up so I can get a look. I see two tiny dots where she indicated she was stung. "Did it sting you twice?" I ask and she shakes her head frantically. "Yes," she sobs, drawing the word out to three or four syllables.
I get some ice, wrap it in a cloth, and apply it to the sting. I pull her in close and stroke her hair back from her sweaty, overheated forehead. She is still sobbing, but more quietly now, and at last I can understand what she's telling me. "I didn't mean to hit it with my face," she says sadly. I can tell she's thinking about what she learned of bee stings; that the bee dies when it stings because the stinger is ripped from its body. "I didn't want it to die! It didn't have to do that! I wish I didn't find death in those bushes!"
And this is the thing she gets stuck on for a good while after the sting: whether the bee died after it stung her. "Was it a wasp or a bee?" I ask her, and she's not sure. "All I saw was the face right by my eye," she tells me, trembling. The tears start fresh. "I hope it didn't die! I hope it can still take care of its babies!" I grasp for something reassuring to say and land on this: "There was no stinger in your skin, Mad, so whatever stung you didn't die. It was probably one of those wasps that lives at the corner of our garage."
This is a stretch for her, to think in absences this way. Without a stinger, then the bee must be attached to this stinger that doesn't in fact exist in her skin. And so it must be alive. Either way. So she keeps asking, all the way up until she falls asleep that night. "Did it die?" And I keep telling her the same thing: "Without a stinger in your skin, it's probably still alive."
:::
Now Madeleine won't go outside by herself any more and tries to employ company every single time she wants to go look for lizards and snakes. Whoever comes with her is the appointed lookout. "Just say 'wasp' or 'bee,'" she tells us, "and I will run as fast as I can."
More often than not, though, the self-proclaimed nature girl has turned indoors; she spends time constructing her own kind of nest in the industrious way a wasp would. She pulls the play kitchen out from the wall out an angle, creating her own little crevice. This is a single-celled nest constructed of cotton fibers woven into full blankets and pillows. She lines each cell with some of her favorite stuffed animals. I come home from work one day and she buzzes out, thrilled to show me her work. "I made a nest," she says proudly, pulling me into the playroom. "We can never get rid of it." I agree. "No way," I tell her. "This is your special place."
When I try to entice her to go outside later, she says no, focusing her attention on stickers and the lizard apartment she's built into a tall dollhouse.
:::
Sometimes defense looks like offense, and that's what plays out most nights these days. Madeleine is triggered by something -- it could be anything -- and she spends the night defending her nest, as it is, wielding whatever tool she can. She morphs into an animal, growling and snarling, and she fastidiously ignores my attempts to calm her down. In fact, the more I try to get her to see reason, the more erratic she becomes. Laughing and giggling she bolts down the hall, away from my attempts to get her to settle. She stomps forcefully in her sister's direction until her sister is sobbing and she seems to delight in it, a wild gleam in her eyes as she circles the house, waiting for me to give chase, again and again. She runs toward the cat and wails in protest when I pull her back, she kicks her feet as I try to get her to sit, she proclaims, "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS!" when I try to get her to talk. Again and again I am overcome by her fierceness, that pointed defiance that looks suspiciously like fear when she gets going. "We are not talking about this anymore," she says, drawing a line.
Eventually though, when the damage is done and I have lost my temper and Violet is left alone in her room and the cats are cowering under the bed somewhere, Madeleine has finally released all the venom and she curls into the time out chair, sobbing. "If you would just cuddle me," she says, and I do, of course I do. Finally she can talk, just a little. "This is just who I am," she says, a hurt swarming deep in her eyes. "This is how I react. I'm a bad kid."
I scrape the stinger and apply the ice and I tell her no, no you are not a bad kid. You are not. And we ride this one out together. We endure. It hurts; eventually it will hurt less. Or so I keep telling myself.
:::
Days later, after the kids have gone to bed and the house is tidied, I pour through the pages of a book on dealing with kids on the autism spectrum who have intensely explosive behavior. This book offers coping strategies and it is all very hopeful, but reading it is hard because it feels like a confirmation of something I previously have been able to deny. Asperger's or maybe Asperger's-lite, if such a thing were to exit. Your kid is different from other kids, is what I take away from it. Your kid is not "normal."
But yesterday we went outside and I noticed the wasp nest was gone, which I pointed out to Madeleine. "I guess your dad took care of it," I told her. And Madeleine stood there, appraising the now-empty corner that the wasps had called home. "That's too bad," she said sadly, Net braced over her shoulder. "I was really proud of those guys. They were working so hard."
She ran off to find lizards and I notched it in my head as something valuable to remember. To find beauty and grace in something that seems so invasive and destructive, to take pride in the hard work that goes into building a Whole Thing. In the wasps' case, a nest; in our case, a little girl learning how to be okay in the world.
Outside of this world is Madeleine, standing several feet away from where four or five wasps are tending to their new dusky brown world built sturdily into the outside corner of our garage. If we get too close, a wasp will buzz out, just a little. "If you leave them alone, they won't sting you," we tell the girls over and over again, but it doesn't stop that little frisson of fear we feel when a wasp decides to offer a warning of sorts. We step back, just a foot or so, and I wonder how we define "leave them alone," how we will know at which point we are in fact bothering these industrious workers. An anole darts up the side of the garage and Madeleine wants to catch it, but fear freezes her feet where she stands. "Just be very brave," she urges me. "Just be very brave and go and catch it."
This is the foolishness of motherhood; I grab Net, the name she has given the pink net she uses to snag all sorts of wild creatures and inch toward the garage where the wasps buzz about their nest and the anole eyes me warily. The wasps stay put and I halfheartedly reach out with Net, trying not to hurt the lizard. It darts down the side of the house and into the ivy, long gone.
"I'm sorry," I tell Madeleine as another wasp buzzes outward and we move on to another side of the yard. "I almost had it."
::
When we talk about bees and wasps, it seems they're often interchangeable; our brains make the tenuous connections: flying thing with stinger, nest, hives, pollen, etc. In terms of stings, the two are quite different. The acidic venom of bees, apitoxin, causes pain in those they sting. Wasp venom is chemically different; it seeks to paralyze prey so it can be stored alive in the food chambers of their young. When a person is stung by a wasp, they can expect swelling, itching, and pain at the site of the sting. Home care includes washing the site of the sting thoroughly with soap and water, applying ice for 10 minutes, and giving the person stung an antihistamine to relieve symptoms. And then you wait for your body to take care of the problem the rest of the way. A lot of wasp sting management is to endure; it hurts, eventually it will hurt less. One of the most painful places to be stung is the face; the skin there is delicate and the nerve endings are just right there.
I don't know these things per se when I hear Madeleine screaming in the front yard. It's the kind of cry-scream that terrifies a mother. "NOOO," Madeleine is wailing as I bolt for the front door, my heart in my throat. "A bee," she is sobbing, red-faced and hysterical. She barely chokes the words out. "It stung me!" I can't see the sting, so I ask desperately, "WHERE?" and she screams out, tears soaking her face, "My eye! My eye! Right here!" She points to the inner corner of her right eyebrow.
All I know is that I need her to calm down and it's not happening. The intensity of her reaction surprises me because she's been stung by bees and wasps on a few other occasions and it's never been like this. I sit her on the kitchen counter and tilt her teary, red face up so I can get a look. I see two tiny dots where she indicated she was stung. "Did it sting you twice?" I ask and she shakes her head frantically. "Yes," she sobs, drawing the word out to three or four syllables.
I get some ice, wrap it in a cloth, and apply it to the sting. I pull her in close and stroke her hair back from her sweaty, overheated forehead. She is still sobbing, but more quietly now, and at last I can understand what she's telling me. "I didn't mean to hit it with my face," she says sadly. I can tell she's thinking about what she learned of bee stings; that the bee dies when it stings because the stinger is ripped from its body. "I didn't want it to die! It didn't have to do that! I wish I didn't find death in those bushes!"
And this is the thing she gets stuck on for a good while after the sting: whether the bee died after it stung her. "Was it a wasp or a bee?" I ask her, and she's not sure. "All I saw was the face right by my eye," she tells me, trembling. The tears start fresh. "I hope it didn't die! I hope it can still take care of its babies!" I grasp for something reassuring to say and land on this: "There was no stinger in your skin, Mad, so whatever stung you didn't die. It was probably one of those wasps that lives at the corner of our garage."
This is a stretch for her, to think in absences this way. Without a stinger, then the bee must be attached to this stinger that doesn't in fact exist in her skin. And so it must be alive. Either way. So she keeps asking, all the way up until she falls asleep that night. "Did it die?" And I keep telling her the same thing: "Without a stinger in your skin, it's probably still alive."
:::
Now Madeleine won't go outside by herself any more and tries to employ company every single time she wants to go look for lizards and snakes. Whoever comes with her is the appointed lookout. "Just say 'wasp' or 'bee,'" she tells us, "and I will run as fast as I can."
More often than not, though, the self-proclaimed nature girl has turned indoors; she spends time constructing her own kind of nest in the industrious way a wasp would. She pulls the play kitchen out from the wall out an angle, creating her own little crevice. This is a single-celled nest constructed of cotton fibers woven into full blankets and pillows. She lines each cell with some of her favorite stuffed animals. I come home from work one day and she buzzes out, thrilled to show me her work. "I made a nest," she says proudly, pulling me into the playroom. "We can never get rid of it." I agree. "No way," I tell her. "This is your special place."
When I try to entice her to go outside later, she says no, focusing her attention on stickers and the lizard apartment she's built into a tall dollhouse.
:::
Sometimes defense looks like offense, and that's what plays out most nights these days. Madeleine is triggered by something -- it could be anything -- and she spends the night defending her nest, as it is, wielding whatever tool she can. She morphs into an animal, growling and snarling, and she fastidiously ignores my attempts to calm her down. In fact, the more I try to get her to see reason, the more erratic she becomes. Laughing and giggling she bolts down the hall, away from my attempts to get her to settle. She stomps forcefully in her sister's direction until her sister is sobbing and she seems to delight in it, a wild gleam in her eyes as she circles the house, waiting for me to give chase, again and again. She runs toward the cat and wails in protest when I pull her back, she kicks her feet as I try to get her to sit, she proclaims, "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS!" when I try to get her to talk. Again and again I am overcome by her fierceness, that pointed defiance that looks suspiciously like fear when she gets going. "We are not talking about this anymore," she says, drawing a line.
Eventually though, when the damage is done and I have lost my temper and Violet is left alone in her room and the cats are cowering under the bed somewhere, Madeleine has finally released all the venom and she curls into the time out chair, sobbing. "If you would just cuddle me," she says, and I do, of course I do. Finally she can talk, just a little. "This is just who I am," she says, a hurt swarming deep in her eyes. "This is how I react. I'm a bad kid."
I scrape the stinger and apply the ice and I tell her no, no you are not a bad kid. You are not. And we ride this one out together. We endure. It hurts; eventually it will hurt less. Or so I keep telling myself.
:::
Days later, after the kids have gone to bed and the house is tidied, I pour through the pages of a book on dealing with kids on the autism spectrum who have intensely explosive behavior. This book offers coping strategies and it is all very hopeful, but reading it is hard because it feels like a confirmation of something I previously have been able to deny. Asperger's or maybe Asperger's-lite, if such a thing were to exit. Your kid is different from other kids, is what I take away from it. Your kid is not "normal."
But yesterday we went outside and I noticed the wasp nest was gone, which I pointed out to Madeleine. "I guess your dad took care of it," I told her. And Madeleine stood there, appraising the now-empty corner that the wasps had called home. "That's too bad," she said sadly, Net braced over her shoulder. "I was really proud of those guys. They were working so hard."
She ran off to find lizards and I notched it in my head as something valuable to remember. To find beauty and grace in something that seems so invasive and destructive, to take pride in the hard work that goes into building a Whole Thing. In the wasps' case, a nest; in our case, a little girl learning how to be okay in the world.
Posted on: Thursday, June 14, 2012
At night the ivy.
At night the ivy cinches around the trees, encourages them to pull up roots and leave.
At night the trees go walking down the streets at the tug of ivy,
down the streets and up the streets, they leave, leaves swaying at the tug of the moon.
The nests and bugs and all the living things, the twittering things,
they sleep, they sleep in the sway of the branches, in the silver small tug of the moon.
At night while you're sleeping, breaths whispering in dark rooms,
the trees are dancing now, together, a waltz in the black night, sleep now, sleep now,
in the silver small tug of the moon.
At night the trees go walking down the streets at the tug of ivy,
down the streets and up the streets, they leave, leaves swaying at the tug of the moon.
The nests and bugs and all the living things, the twittering things,
they sleep, they sleep in the sway of the branches, in the silver small tug of the moon.
At night while you're sleeping, breaths whispering in dark rooms,
the trees are dancing now, together, a waltz in the black night, sleep now, sleep now,
in the silver small tug of the moon.
Posted on: Wednesday, June 6, 2012
The vital organ.
There is a heat that wriggles into your heart, tugs the arteries, boils the blood, sends it in sizzling shock waves through your entire body. It blackens the vital organ and turns it to ash until that steady whomp of blood fizzles and pools down into your feet. This inaction will kill you, is what I'm saying. Life is circling wraith-like around and around and around your chest and you are dying. You're dying! Every single day! You with your jaw set and your eyes firm, you march on toward that steady death. And even when you get there, when the hole opens up and swallows you completely, nothing will stop that wide O of surprise in your eyes, shaping your mouth. Nothing will stop that sharp, sudden regret when you go.
Posted on: Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Shining a light.
“What really matters when you go to your death bed? It’s not about the fuck-you songs to the government. I don’t think
that’s what it should be about. It’s about
shining a light and being a light and not cursing the darkness. We are
all born into a world that is at war. Brothers and sisters don’t
recognize each other and we all are living in this illusion of duality.” -- Jade Castrinos, of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
This video/song actually somehow brought tears to my eyes. Something about what drives us to move like this, to dance and to dance together. It makes me happy. He sings "come dance with me," but he might as well be singing, "come stand with me," "come sing with me," "come pray with me." It's lovely.
This video/song actually somehow brought tears to my eyes. Something about what drives us to move like this, to dance and to dance together. It makes me happy. He sings "come dance with me," but he might as well be singing, "come stand with me," "come sing with me," "come pray with me." It's lovely.
The story about the hydrangeas.
Once the first blossom died, I was only a little worried about the plant. The leaves looked healthy and the other blossoms were full, bright, and fragrant. But this one blossom -- its delicate purple folds drooped toward the ground and slowly browned. I made a note to cut the blossom so the plant would stop spending its energy on nourishing a lost cause. But time kept sliding away and I kept bumping it down the To Do list. A simple fix; grab the scissors, walk into the front yard, snip the dead blossom. But I never got around to it.
Another day I noticed a second and third clutch of pink and purple blossoms were starting to look tired. Still I didn't act. I would walk out to the flower bed and water the plant but I never brought the scissors with me. I watched those two blossoms go the way of the first, which was now dark brown and hanging limply from a drooping green stem. Still the blossom at the front of the plant was a vivid pink, full and round, and the leaves still looked healthy. So I kept it up. Watering the plant, leaving the scissors in the house. Here in our front yard was a plant with mostly dead flowers still held aloft by green stems and strong leaves, and I just kept bringing it water. I could do that.
On the last day I noticed that the last blossom was starting to have that faded look that plagued the others before everything went south. I crouched down in the dirt and saw that at the base of the plant the stems were brown, like sticks, instead of the supple green they once were. Here in our front yard was a plant with mostly dead flowers, supple green stems near the top, dying stems near the bottom. The leaves still looked strong, at least.
So on that day I decided to take the few steps back into the house, find the scissors, bring them back outside, and cut the blossoms, even the one that hadn't died yet. I could clutch the damp, faded pink and completely brown blossoms in one hand now, and it took all of 30 seconds to take care of it. Once I trimmed the old blossoms out I noticed that a satellite stem had grown near the back of the plant, and a small bud was sprouting from it. Still the leaves looked strong.
Such a simple step in this process of tending a plant with lovely bursts of blooms -- a step I had identified weeks ago -- and it took the death of nearly every single blossom before I found it in me to take action. I think about all those wasted days that the plant spent sending energy down green stems to feed blossoms that were never going to make it, that were long past helping anyway.
Now in my front yard is a plant that stands for more than just the Mother's Day gift it was. It's a reminder to cut what's not blooming, to stop tending to lost causes, to remember to send your energy where it's best spent, to check for blooms in unexpected places. And there's hope there, yet. This morning the leaves still stand strong. I can still see glimpses of bright green reaching out toward the sun.
Another day I noticed a second and third clutch of pink and purple blossoms were starting to look tired. Still I didn't act. I would walk out to the flower bed and water the plant but I never brought the scissors with me. I watched those two blossoms go the way of the first, which was now dark brown and hanging limply from a drooping green stem. Still the blossom at the front of the plant was a vivid pink, full and round, and the leaves still looked healthy. So I kept it up. Watering the plant, leaving the scissors in the house. Here in our front yard was a plant with mostly dead flowers still held aloft by green stems and strong leaves, and I just kept bringing it water. I could do that.
On the last day I noticed that the last blossom was starting to have that faded look that plagued the others before everything went south. I crouched down in the dirt and saw that at the base of the plant the stems were brown, like sticks, instead of the supple green they once were. Here in our front yard was a plant with mostly dead flowers, supple green stems near the top, dying stems near the bottom. The leaves still looked strong, at least.
So on that day I decided to take the few steps back into the house, find the scissors, bring them back outside, and cut the blossoms, even the one that hadn't died yet. I could clutch the damp, faded pink and completely brown blossoms in one hand now, and it took all of 30 seconds to take care of it. Once I trimmed the old blossoms out I noticed that a satellite stem had grown near the back of the plant, and a small bud was sprouting from it. Still the leaves looked strong.
Such a simple step in this process of tending a plant with lovely bursts of blooms -- a step I had identified weeks ago -- and it took the death of nearly every single blossom before I found it in me to take action. I think about all those wasted days that the plant spent sending energy down green stems to feed blossoms that were never going to make it, that were long past helping anyway.
Now in my front yard is a plant that stands for more than just the Mother's Day gift it was. It's a reminder to cut what's not blooming, to stop tending to lost causes, to remember to send your energy where it's best spent, to check for blooms in unexpected places. And there's hope there, yet. This morning the leaves still stand strong. I can still see glimpses of bright green reaching out toward the sun.
Posted on: Monday, June 4, 2012
A few darker days.
Something changes in her eyes first. Then comes the action. Yesterday she threw a paintbrush. The day before she tried to kick me. In my better moments I can see her for what she is then, a mass of jangled nerves, a tremor of anxiety. Her brain pulsing toward something that will give her control. Act, her brain says. Throw this paintbrush. Lash out. Do something.
In my darker moments I don't see the nerves, the anxious reaching, the desperate action. In my darker moments I see that flash in her eyes, hear her giddy laughter when she turns this discipline into a game, and think shut it down. And every single time my "shut it down" makes things worse. "You'd think I would have learned by now," I sob to my husband on the phone. It's just been so long since we've been here.
Yesterday she threw a paintbrush and my husband jumped in to help while I stared at her, mute, trying to understand what was happening, why this was happening again. "I hate you," she yelled at him. I took Violet outside, just so I could get a breath. I find out later he told her he didn't think he could feel better about it until she said "I love you" to him over and over. And she did. "I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you," she said with no hesitation. "I love you I love you I love you." And on and on.
We smoothed over the bump in the day the best we could, but the damage was done. We tiptoed gingerly, hoping that things would stay calm. I worry about her, what all this tense frustration does to her. What it's doing to us. This is what we are lately. It's what we're made of. Ropes pulled tight, crumbs in the throat, explosive coughing, shallow breaths.
At bedtime she curled into my body the way she does, head on my arm. She had one arm locked around a Stitch doll and the other clutched her blanket tightly. "Goodnight, sweetheart," I whispered. I understand, I wanted her to know. Even when I don't, even when I feel lost, I understand you. I don't know how to say this in a way she'll understand, so I kissed her forehead and simply held her. This has to be enough. For now, it is what sustains us.
In my darker moments I don't see the nerves, the anxious reaching, the desperate action. In my darker moments I see that flash in her eyes, hear her giddy laughter when she turns this discipline into a game, and think shut it down. And every single time my "shut it down" makes things worse. "You'd think I would have learned by now," I sob to my husband on the phone. It's just been so long since we've been here.
Yesterday she threw a paintbrush and my husband jumped in to help while I stared at her, mute, trying to understand what was happening, why this was happening again. "I hate you," she yelled at him. I took Violet outside, just so I could get a breath. I find out later he told her he didn't think he could feel better about it until she said "I love you" to him over and over. And she did. "I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you," she said with no hesitation. "I love you I love you I love you." And on and on.
We smoothed over the bump in the day the best we could, but the damage was done. We tiptoed gingerly, hoping that things would stay calm. I worry about her, what all this tense frustration does to her. What it's doing to us. This is what we are lately. It's what we're made of. Ropes pulled tight, crumbs in the throat, explosive coughing, shallow breaths.
At bedtime she curled into my body the way she does, head on my arm. She had one arm locked around a Stitch doll and the other clutched her blanket tightly. "Goodnight, sweetheart," I whispered. I understand, I wanted her to know. Even when I don't, even when I feel lost, I understand you. I don't know how to say this in a way she'll understand, so I kissed her forehead and simply held her. This has to be enough. For now, it is what sustains us.
Posted on: Thursday, May 31, 2012
Ionine.
There are plenty of scents that we become accustomed to over time. We smell a perfume that gets spritzed on us intensely for the first five minutes or so, less so over the next hour, and finally we tune it out like we would any constant stimulus — the feel of our clothes against our bodies, the exact shade of artificial lighting at work. Violets are something else. They can't be entirely tuned out.
It goes on to explain how violets get their scent from ionine, which stimulates, then binds to our scent receptors and temporarily shuts them off completely. After a few breaths, you'll be able to catch the scent again, rather than becoming immune to it, as it is.
That's Violet, she of such sweetness that lingers. She goes quiet, retreats into herself for a time, but before long you'll hear her flitting through the house, or see that smile that lights her eyes, or catch the light bouncing from one of her many bracelets. And there she is again, all sweetness, tugging at your sleeve, crinkling her eyes, announcing, "I wuvs you, Mama," before pattering off again.
Posted on: Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Invisible but for its wake.
Sometimes the world just seems so disgusting, so deep and dark. I think if I see anymore Florida zombie headlines or even a glance of that surveillance video screen shot, with the naked limbs peeking out from under the overpass, I will curl up into myself and weep.
To that end, I am grateful today for the loveliness of the book I'm reading. This quote seemed apt:
Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of the house.
And the author includes the following quote from Rainer Maria Rilke:
Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
To that end, I am grateful today for the loveliness of the book I'm reading. This quote seemed apt:
Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of the house.
And the author includes the following quote from Rainer Maria Rilke:
Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Posted on: Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Nightmare
The monsters unfold in more sinister versions. They have specific shape and face and name, and they come at me directly instead of lurking in shadows. Unspeakable Things happen; the innocent are contorted and broken and I am tasked with stopping it. But to stop it, I must observe and then do Unspeakable Things to the monsters in order to vanquish them and the darkness presses and the tears threaten and my eyes don't want to see but they see they see they keep seeing.
Until with a start my eyes are open in the darkness of my room because Madeleine has pushed the door open to crawl into bed, snug between me and her dad. She sits and waits without saying a word for me to lay my arm out so she can lay on top of it, and I can pull her in close and we snuggle. She's my sweetheart, my light, she's keeping the monsters at bay just now, thankfully.
Until with a start my eyes are open in the darkness of my room because Madeleine has pushed the door open to crawl into bed, snug between me and her dad. She sits and waits without saying a word for me to lay my arm out so she can lay on top of it, and I can pull her in close and we snuggle. She's my sweetheart, my light, she's keeping the monsters at bay just now, thankfully.
Posted on: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
What the bearded dragon knew.
The glass is smudged and my vision is somewhat questionable, but I still watch her with interest, because maybe she will see and bring me crickets. Tonight she dances to some strange music, limbs flailing while she intermittently picks up the mess the small ones have left behind. She mouths the words and she looks insane. Last night she watched a baseball game and drank wine. She seemed despondent as her team lost. She was mostly quiet. It's like this sometimes. And sometimes she marches through the house with a look of grim determination as she picks up messes and more messes and more messes. In and out of the room. Until her shoulders slump with weariness. And sometimes she stands in the kitchen for the longest periods of time, washing dishes and watching me absently. I watch her and sometimes she brings me food. What a strange life this is. What is she doing. What is she even doing. I want some freaking crickets. Not a salad. Not this. I don't even like cherries.
Posted on: Friday, May 18, 2012
Dance party fuel!
We've all had a rough day, and it's nearly bedtime, but the girls are done with their baths and they want to dance. And so we dance.
Posted on: Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Little lion tamer.
Astride the mighty lion, Violet is brave enough to withstand the heated game of tickle tearing through the house at high speeds. Normally these games send her hiding in her room or lolling about on the couch with her blanket, shrieking "No! Don't tickle!" while she flails her feet out in an effort to keep any transgressors away from her.
But today I am chasing Madeleine through the house, and she is shrieking with laughter, running but waiting for me to catch her so I can send her into fits of breathless giggles, and Violet is on the rocking lion, pressing its ears so it roars when we get too close. Her eyes are bright with joy and from the way she's watching us I know she wants to be involved, and I know not to push her too much.
So on the next pass through the room where Violet rides the lion, I break from the chase and veer toward her. She shrieks with laughter too and frantically presses the lion's ear so it ROARS ROARS ROARS. I can tell this is supposed to be a deterrent so I shout in mock fear and scurry away from her. She laughs and laughs. Mad skitters into the room and shouts, "Mom, aren't you going to chase me?" So I take off after her with a start. And the chase resumes.
This time Violet jumps in and joins the chase, running from me, and goes straight to her lion when we pass through the room where it rests, waiting for her. Another press of the lion's ear sends me screaming away in terror, and the chase is back on. And on and on, until the tired little warrior and the exhausted little lion tamer are ready for bed.
Posted on: Monday, May 14, 2012
The lie in it.
It's not a good day when I observe the color of paint in the play therapist's bathroom, notice the muted gray-blue of it, set so nicely against the creamy white-brown walls, and think of the lie in it. I am washing my hands, watching the walls; one minute thinking it's so nice and calm in here, the next realizing that someone wanted me to feel that, here in the therapist's bathroom. Someone came in and painted so carefully those calm colors. What a strange kind of manipulation. It's a bathroom.
So then I take a minute and notice the other things about this bathroom: the tall trashcan is nearly overflowing with paper towels; the Bath & Body Works lotion is the energizing citrus scent. I wonder about this choice. A rejected Christmas gift? The clearance bin? I just would have expected some soothing scent, ocean breeze or lavender. I wonder if it was a strategic choice -- some secret the play therapists know -- that the smell of fresh orange helps awaken the mind before a session, maybe.
And maybe not, maybe there's no rhyme or reason for any of it. I leave the bathroom and the play therapist is ready for me; I follow her down a short hallway and pass the bowl of tootsie rolls that has probably been there since last year. It's been six weeks since our last parent consultation.
"How old is she now?" the therapist asks as I sink into the plush, dark gray couch. "Four? Almost five?" She's six, I say. Thinking: this is something you should know. She talks about the regular power struggles we've had with Mad as I pull off my glasses and try to wipe the smudges. There seems to be a spot of coffee on the rim, somehow, and it won't come off.
I should have shaved my legs, I think, pulling my dress down over my stubbly knees. My thumb traces a bruise on the opposite hand. I try to clean my lenses one last time.
The small fountain on her dresser burbles along, filling in the silences.
What a careful display all of this is, I consider. I notice the ruffle sleeves of her cardigan, one small nod to whimsy in an otherwise simple, sedate outfit. She shaved her legs. I wonder if she has kids. Shouldn't she look more tired?
Everything is mostly good, I tell her, measuring it mentally. But isn't that always the case? Even here in this place that sells me the idea of good through throw pillows and the right shade of blue on the walls. Everything is mostly good. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe we've just gotten really good at tricking ourselves through home accents and smooth skin and energizing citrus. I think this again, stepping out into the mid-day. The sky is a blue that goes on and on, and for a moment I chase it down, over buildings and down highways. What is this place? I wonder, and I'm not really thinking about here; I'm mostly thinking about the whole world sprawled out around me.
Posted on: Friday, May 11, 2012
Love songs.
Love has changed shape and texture, from soft and light and floating into something more stately. From pink cotton candy held aloft by a child's sticky hands, smiles charged with sugar, into a thick oak chest against a scuffed bedroom wall, filled with balls of socks and old underwear. It's the marriage of folded t-shirts resting on top of each other in a crooked drawer.
Now songs like these make me turn my eyes away, almost embarrassed. How naive, how young you sound, singing "you walked into the room just like the sun" against your earnest acoustic guitar. Love isn't "you and me will bloom on the windowsill." Blooms wilt and die. Sunlight fades. You can't live like that forever, now can you?
Still, it's no small mourning, hearing this and thinking of a time when love was a thrum of electricity in the blood. Holding hands on the curb at night. Walking home one summer morning, delirious, drunk with kisses. Hands tangled in hair, words on a page, a voice in your ear, a smile to live in. Love isn't that. You silly, happy fools.
Iceland.
Do you think the air just crackles with magic there? Like, an old kind of magic that hums along on the breaths of goblins and fairies and trolls?
(All of these images are from ovaratli's photostream on Flickr.)
Plump grub in honeysuckle.
Letter to My Future Child
by Megan Amram
The way you don’t exist is remarkable
When I have been hotwired, cobbled from
Spongy tubes specifically to birth. At least to bud
Would be preferable, shedding a child
Like petals drooping from a center.
I apologize profusely to you,
But I am content in my selfishness and
My love of this girl I’ve created.
Today I watched the bees graze,
The perfect mix of threat and song and binge,
And I felt I, too, could bob and maneuver.
I guess they reminded me of you:
Your toddling bumble, your absent suckle,
Your mere addition to the swarm.
You would be a plump grub in honeysuckle
Were you to be anything, but you will not
Be. This is something I’ve decided.
There is only so much life to go around; I’ll take
Two rations. The petal and the pistil.
And, hey, the calyx. The ability to share is mythic,
Like you, and who needs another creature,
Another sea monster? I already have the
Swooping vertebrae of my back, I have my bones
Diving above and below my skin
Filled with just the right amount of people:
One. How could I bring a child into this world
When I want it all to myself?
Life is that right and full of love, flowers, et al.
I’m sorry for me, sure. But most of all, Little Bee,
I am sorry for you.
(poem found here)
("Plump grub in honeysuckle" is going to be one of those phrases from poetry that gets stuck in my head.)
by Megan Amram
The way you don’t exist is remarkable
When I have been hotwired, cobbled from
Spongy tubes specifically to birth. At least to bud
Would be preferable, shedding a child
Like petals drooping from a center.
I apologize profusely to you,
But I am content in my selfishness and
My love of this girl I’ve created.
Today I watched the bees graze,
The perfect mix of threat and song and binge,
And I felt I, too, could bob and maneuver.
I guess they reminded me of you:
Your toddling bumble, your absent suckle,
Your mere addition to the swarm.
You would be a plump grub in honeysuckle
Were you to be anything, but you will not
Be. This is something I’ve decided.
There is only so much life to go around; I’ll take
Two rations. The petal and the pistil.
And, hey, the calyx. The ability to share is mythic,
Like you, and who needs another creature,
Another sea monster? I already have the
Swooping vertebrae of my back, I have my bones
Diving above and below my skin
Filled with just the right amount of people:
One. How could I bring a child into this world
When I want it all to myself?
Life is that right and full of love, flowers, et al.
I’m sorry for me, sure. But most of all, Little Bee,
I am sorry for you.
(poem found here)
("Plump grub in honeysuckle" is going to be one of those phrases from poetry that gets stuck in my head.)
Posted on: Thursday, May 10, 2012
That was winter.
(Disclaimer: It is a sad one! With a tinge of happy at the end -- but still sad.)
Posted on: Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Time.
The girls are eager to mark the time, eyes flush with the heady knowledge of unlocking a secret, the secret of these numbers glowing red on the alarm clock. "It says 7 and 1 and 4," Madeleine says, running to me in the laundry room. I find Violet at the clock a little while later, on her tip toes, eyes level with the numbers staring back at her. "It says...it says...it says 7...and...2...and 3," she announces. She labors over the numbers a minute. "It's seventy two three," she announces. "What do we do at seventy two three?"
I tell them bed, it's time for bed. We're a parade of pajamas, of twirls, of a superhero cat who wears socks for paws and a blanket for a cape, of protestations against sleep. There's a lot left to do, their jumping bodies say. There's a lot of life left in this day.
And me, I'm weary, slumping into Madeleine's bed with her latest reader. She keeps getting stuck on the word "spots" and she jabs at the word with random guesses. "Sss puh aw tuh sss," she sounds out. "Ssspuhawtusss. TAPS! Pats? Pans?" Somehow we soldier through.
Then it's lights out and drinks of water and where's my lizard and flipping through books after I've said to put them away, the loud snick of pages rubbing together with every flip. And as I juggle requests and stern warnings and try to remember not to be mad at them, I can feel the tickng of the clock in my veins, can feel the deepening dark pressing down on me. The night is getting away from me. It's practically gone.
Just then I realize I'm stretched way too thin, and just as the realization dawns, I am already snapping. I can feel the tension just burble up and out in the form of yelling, in go to sleep right now, why can't you guys listen, you know the routine, this is what we do every night!
Oh, oh.
I want to cram the words back in my mouth, but I can't at this point. So I tell them I'll be back in five minutes and I leave. I sit. I breathe. My evening To Do list swirls in my head and I think, To Do tonight is chill out. To Do tonight is to love my children. I go back into the room, my To Do list still grasping at my ankles, dragging itself limply behind me.
The girls are sleepy now. Violet is almost asleep; Mad is on the verge. I kiss Violet, stroke her hair. I sit next to Mad for a minute. I consider what it would mean to slow time down, to slow it to nothing. In a blink eyelashes clasp together and apart again. I listen to the soft shhh of the delicate lashes clinging briefly before being pulled apart again. Pupils close just so against the light. A breath is surrendered from my body; the air unfurls from my lungs and is brought back in again.
The sonorous sound of a heart deep in the walls of my chest. A tender thud that is the opposite of strong, just tissue fashioned into shallow canals, a container of blood, and a seizure of movement. In and out. This is what I, my entire existence, is reduced to: the insistent, barely-there thud of a heart. The in and out. And in. And out.
Across the room Violet sighs and time triples. Oh, enough, this is all we are. I say goodnight and carry my thudding heart out with me. From their room there is the soft buzz of life. Even in their sleep all this living stays with them, lives keeping time with the rhythm of hummingbirds.
I tell them bed, it's time for bed. We're a parade of pajamas, of twirls, of a superhero cat who wears socks for paws and a blanket for a cape, of protestations against sleep. There's a lot left to do, their jumping bodies say. There's a lot of life left in this day.
And me, I'm weary, slumping into Madeleine's bed with her latest reader. She keeps getting stuck on the word "spots" and she jabs at the word with random guesses. "Sss puh aw tuh sss," she sounds out. "Ssspuhawtusss. TAPS! Pats? Pans?" Somehow we soldier through.
Then it's lights out and drinks of water and where's my lizard and flipping through books after I've said to put them away, the loud snick of pages rubbing together with every flip. And as I juggle requests and stern warnings and try to remember not to be mad at them, I can feel the tickng of the clock in my veins, can feel the deepening dark pressing down on me. The night is getting away from me. It's practically gone.
Just then I realize I'm stretched way too thin, and just as the realization dawns, I am already snapping. I can feel the tension just burble up and out in the form of yelling, in go to sleep right now, why can't you guys listen, you know the routine, this is what we do every night!
Oh, oh.
I want to cram the words back in my mouth, but I can't at this point. So I tell them I'll be back in five minutes and I leave. I sit. I breathe. My evening To Do list swirls in my head and I think, To Do tonight is chill out. To Do tonight is to love my children. I go back into the room, my To Do list still grasping at my ankles, dragging itself limply behind me.
The girls are sleepy now. Violet is almost asleep; Mad is on the verge. I kiss Violet, stroke her hair. I sit next to Mad for a minute. I consider what it would mean to slow time down, to slow it to nothing. In a blink eyelashes clasp together and apart again. I listen to the soft shhh of the delicate lashes clinging briefly before being pulled apart again. Pupils close just so against the light. A breath is surrendered from my body; the air unfurls from my lungs and is brought back in again.
The sonorous sound of a heart deep in the walls of my chest. A tender thud that is the opposite of strong, just tissue fashioned into shallow canals, a container of blood, and a seizure of movement. In and out. This is what I, my entire existence, is reduced to: the insistent, barely-there thud of a heart. The in and out. And in. And out.
Across the room Violet sighs and time triples. Oh, enough, this is all we are. I say goodnight and carry my thudding heart out with me. From their room there is the soft buzz of life. Even in their sleep all this living stays with them, lives keeping time with the rhythm of hummingbirds.
Still point of the turning world.
(This is excerpted from A Birth Memory from Shelley Abreu on Design Mom.)
Martin Luther said “If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” I thought of this quote yesterday, and it made me think about my first time giving birth. It was such a brutal and magnificent experience all in one. I pushed for four hours with Julia. I was in agony.
When she crowned, the pain felt like fire moving through me. I was not focused on the delivery room. I was outside of myself. Then, with the final push, she arrived. And that surge of energy that moved through me was holy. God was everywhere. There was all this commotion and raw earthy energy, but when she came out all the noise in my head stopped and all the pain in my body vanished and for a second I felt like I glimpsed inside “a single grain of wheat.”
I think this is what T.S. Eliot described as “the still point of the turning world,” the moment when you experience the kingdom of God within yourself. It’s the moment when you see that God is the universe, and the universe goes on forever, and it’s also bundled up inside of each of us.
Martin Luther said “If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” I thought of this quote yesterday, and it made me think about my first time giving birth. It was such a brutal and magnificent experience all in one. I pushed for four hours with Julia. I was in agony.
When she crowned, the pain felt like fire moving through me. I was not focused on the delivery room. I was outside of myself. Then, with the final push, she arrived. And that surge of energy that moved through me was holy. God was everywhere. There was all this commotion and raw earthy energy, but when she came out all the noise in my head stopped and all the pain in my body vanished and for a second I felt like I glimpsed inside “a single grain of wheat.”
I think this is what T.S. Eliot described as “the still point of the turning world,” the moment when you experience the kingdom of God within yourself. It’s the moment when you see that God is the universe, and the universe goes on forever, and it’s also bundled up inside of each of us.
Posted on: Friday, April 13, 2012
The faces of us.
"If you had gone to Arlington Memorial..."
"Yeah, it would have been a mental health issue. That's what they call it."
[something inaudible]
"Yeah, yeah. But that's how these breakdowns start for me."
This was a very matter-of-fact conversation I heard walking across campus yesterday, made all the more surprising by the girl who had the mental health issues. She was thin and pale, with white-blonde hair and a lowered gaze. Everything about her was shrinking, or at least appeared to be, but she was wearing a purple top that billowed in the breeze and sparkled in the sun. The shirt didn't fit her, or what seemed to be the essence of her. I was trying to put it together in my head, all these pieces that didn't seem to make sense together. The quiet demeanor, the loud shirt, the matter-of-fact declarations of mental instability.
It sparked something in me and I spent the rest of the day noticing people. Not just noticing, but making observations, actively trying to figure out if I could understand the person who just walked by me based on what they were presenting to the world alone.
The girl who loped by me in sweats and a t-shirt, hair in a messy bun on her head. The guy with clenched fists in line behind me at the grocery store, tattoos of flames racing up his forearms. The girl in skinny jeans and ballet flats, striped t-shirt and a rope of pearls. The portly man with the work-logo polo shirt buying TV dinners and flowers, waving off the cashier who asked for his reward card. The other guy buying ribs and four large bottles of cheap wine. The older woman who looked unbearably chic and put together in a sleeveless blouse, pencil skirt, and heels. Even sexy. I felt a pang of envy -- she seemed so comfortable in her body.
It's hard not to feel a surge of gratitude when you spend a day really noticing people. All these faces that are so different from yours, all these people with whole worlds contained in them, tiny universes orbiting around each other, edges overlapping for now in this place, standing in line at a grocery store. What a cosmic occurrence this is. In the space between our groceries on the conveyor belt, in the distance between our polite smiles and glancing eye contact, the entire life cycle of a star.
"Yeah, it would have been a mental health issue. That's what they call it."
[something inaudible]
"Yeah, yeah. But that's how these breakdowns start for me."
This was a very matter-of-fact conversation I heard walking across campus yesterday, made all the more surprising by the girl who had the mental health issues. She was thin and pale, with white-blonde hair and a lowered gaze. Everything about her was shrinking, or at least appeared to be, but she was wearing a purple top that billowed in the breeze and sparkled in the sun. The shirt didn't fit her, or what seemed to be the essence of her. I was trying to put it together in my head, all these pieces that didn't seem to make sense together. The quiet demeanor, the loud shirt, the matter-of-fact declarations of mental instability.
It sparked something in me and I spent the rest of the day noticing people. Not just noticing, but making observations, actively trying to figure out if I could understand the person who just walked by me based on what they were presenting to the world alone.
The girl who loped by me in sweats and a t-shirt, hair in a messy bun on her head. The guy with clenched fists in line behind me at the grocery store, tattoos of flames racing up his forearms. The girl in skinny jeans and ballet flats, striped t-shirt and a rope of pearls. The portly man with the work-logo polo shirt buying TV dinners and flowers, waving off the cashier who asked for his reward card. The other guy buying ribs and four large bottles of cheap wine. The older woman who looked unbearably chic and put together in a sleeveless blouse, pencil skirt, and heels. Even sexy. I felt a pang of envy -- she seemed so comfortable in her body.
It's hard not to feel a surge of gratitude when you spend a day really noticing people. All these faces that are so different from yours, all these people with whole worlds contained in them, tiny universes orbiting around each other, edges overlapping for now in this place, standing in line at a grocery store. What a cosmic occurrence this is. In the space between our groceries on the conveyor belt, in the distance between our polite smiles and glancing eye contact, the entire life cycle of a star.
Posted on: Thursday, April 12, 2012
They're menders, too.
Tessa shows up and all the other 5- and 6-year-olds pile around her, boys and girls alike, a scrum of kindergartners. "Tessa!" they shout, circling her in a giant hug. The moms stand around their kids, smiling. Tessa's mom pulls out her phone and starts taking pictures. I marvel at this, how early it starts, how natural the kids are, arms around each other's shoulders now, smiling for the camera. I can't even do that now; getting my picture taken is a supremely awkward experience. I think ahead: Tessa's mom will put this photo up on Facebook for her family and friends to see as proof: Look at my daughter, at how well-liked she is. Popular already. She won't say it, of course, because she won't have to. Her family and friends will like and comment in droves: Aww, how cute. How special. How blessed she is to have good friends already.
At the same time, Madeleine is tugging on my arm, kicking her leg out, burrowing her head into my side. "I want to go home," she mutters, looking at the group of her classmates and then looking back at me. "I changed my mind about this field trip. Let's go home."
I crouch so I can look her in the eye. "We're not going home," I say to her. "You're going to have fun!" I say this but I don't mean it, really, because I'm not sure. It's a kid concert, from a guy whose music they listen to in class regularly, but Mad's been shrinking into herself since we gathered on the lawn outside of the venue, waiting to be let in to find our seats. The trepidation took over the second she saw the masses of kids milling about, hundreds of other kindergartners. We went for a little walk to help ease her nerves, but it didn't work so well.
Inside the venue we sit next to a classmate's grandmother, who leans over Madeleine to tell me that her grandson is upset because the other boys don't want to play with the game system he brought to pass the time, that they like another boy's game system better. I lean over and see her grandson curled into his seat, pouting. Next to him, the three other boys are clustered around some Nintendo thing while one plays. The left-out boy has a leapfrog thing. I measure it: The grandson in question, pale, red hair, freckles, in generic clothes, with his leapfrog game. The other boys in their name-brand shirts and flashy shoes with their cooler game system.
The grandmother puts a hand over her heart. "It's just so hard for a grandmother," she says.
I can relate but I don't want to, not while Madeleine is sitting there soaking it all up. Instead I consider what it is about, really, this ache at seeing your kids on the fringes of the group. Do I want Madeleine to be in the middle of the kindergarten huddle, like Tessa? No. Do I want Madeleine to have the coolest stuff so the kids will want to play with her? No. But it doesn't stop that pang in my chest, that tiny little fracture in the heart, when you see your kid look so...adrift.
I think it comes down to wanting your kid to have a safe place when you can't be there. To wanting them to have someone or something that helps them feel grounded when they can't be with you. It's about comfort. And it just breaks your heart when you see them so clearly uncomfortable, taking their first steps into the big world without you, trying their hardest to figure things out. Wanting desperately to feel like they're doing okay at it.
During the concert most every kid in the auditorium, the ostracized grandson included, jumped out of their seats and danced, sang, and shouted with the performer. Madeleine slumped into her seat most of the time, watching the stage with passive interest. For a while I tried playing along, acting like the kids, to see if Mad would get engaged. It didn't work. I leaned over. "Mad, you're supposed to be having fun," I said, then immediately hated myself for saying those words, for making it seem like there was something wrong with her for not being as comfortable as the other kids, for not displaying fun the way I thought she should.
"I am having fun," she replied in a defiant tone. I gave her a doubtful look.
At one point she asked if she could sit in my lap. I said no. None of the other kids were in their parents' laps.
At another point she asked me, plaintively, if she was "being good." I sighed. Of course you are, I told her. But I wish it looked like you were having fun. I am having fun, she said again.
I had the sense throughout of being disjointed, that I was doing something wrong, handling her wrong, and I couldn't figure out what to do. Though there was no obvious display, I could tell she was feeling lost, out of sorts, out of her element. I think she was having a stirring of something being not okay with how she was behaving, and that in some ways it was my fault. I wished I could gobble up the words I'd already said, wished I could find a reset button on my attitude, figure out a way to not be frustrated with the way she was acting. Glasses that would show me clearly what she was feeling so I could respond appropriately.
But these lessons aren't so hard, really. What does anyone need? So during the last few songs I relented and pulled Madeleine into my lap and she settled there, looking for the first time like she was enjoying herself. I grabbed her arms and made her wave them. I shook them and twisted them, and bounced my legs and sang along with the terrible, awful music, and she was smiling, finally. And laughing, and singing, and following along.
She had been feeling lost. She just needed her place.
I tried to explain this later to a childless coworker who said that we should just let kids be who they are and stop worrying about what others think, to stop worrying about how they'll belong. They'll figure it out as they go, he said. But it's never that easy. Tiny heart fractures are hard to heal and everyday these kids keep chipping away at it. It's a terrible process, sometimes, this parenting thing. Handing these tiny humans your heart. "Here, break it," you say to them. Every moment of every day.
But sometimes they chip away pieces that were already broken. And sometimes they're menders, too. After the concert I told Madeleine that I would have been just like her at a concert like that at her age. This is true - I was a shy, quiet, very reserved kid. Madeleine doesn't respond to this directly, but she leans in and hugs me tightly. "Mama," she says, like it's some kind of revelation.
At the same time, Madeleine is tugging on my arm, kicking her leg out, burrowing her head into my side. "I want to go home," she mutters, looking at the group of her classmates and then looking back at me. "I changed my mind about this field trip. Let's go home."
I crouch so I can look her in the eye. "We're not going home," I say to her. "You're going to have fun!" I say this but I don't mean it, really, because I'm not sure. It's a kid concert, from a guy whose music they listen to in class regularly, but Mad's been shrinking into herself since we gathered on the lawn outside of the venue, waiting to be let in to find our seats. The trepidation took over the second she saw the masses of kids milling about, hundreds of other kindergartners. We went for a little walk to help ease her nerves, but it didn't work so well.
Inside the venue we sit next to a classmate's grandmother, who leans over Madeleine to tell me that her grandson is upset because the other boys don't want to play with the game system he brought to pass the time, that they like another boy's game system better. I lean over and see her grandson curled into his seat, pouting. Next to him, the three other boys are clustered around some Nintendo thing while one plays. The left-out boy has a leapfrog thing. I measure it: The grandson in question, pale, red hair, freckles, in generic clothes, with his leapfrog game. The other boys in their name-brand shirts and flashy shoes with their cooler game system.
The grandmother puts a hand over her heart. "It's just so hard for a grandmother," she says.
I can relate but I don't want to, not while Madeleine is sitting there soaking it all up. Instead I consider what it is about, really, this ache at seeing your kids on the fringes of the group. Do I want Madeleine to be in the middle of the kindergarten huddle, like Tessa? No. Do I want Madeleine to have the coolest stuff so the kids will want to play with her? No. But it doesn't stop that pang in my chest, that tiny little fracture in the heart, when you see your kid look so...adrift.
I think it comes down to wanting your kid to have a safe place when you can't be there. To wanting them to have someone or something that helps them feel grounded when they can't be with you. It's about comfort. And it just breaks your heart when you see them so clearly uncomfortable, taking their first steps into the big world without you, trying their hardest to figure things out. Wanting desperately to feel like they're doing okay at it.
During the concert most every kid in the auditorium, the ostracized grandson included, jumped out of their seats and danced, sang, and shouted with the performer. Madeleine slumped into her seat most of the time, watching the stage with passive interest. For a while I tried playing along, acting like the kids, to see if Mad would get engaged. It didn't work. I leaned over. "Mad, you're supposed to be having fun," I said, then immediately hated myself for saying those words, for making it seem like there was something wrong with her for not being as comfortable as the other kids, for not displaying fun the way I thought she should.
"I am having fun," she replied in a defiant tone. I gave her a doubtful look.
At one point she asked if she could sit in my lap. I said no. None of the other kids were in their parents' laps.
At another point she asked me, plaintively, if she was "being good." I sighed. Of course you are, I told her. But I wish it looked like you were having fun. I am having fun, she said again.
I had the sense throughout of being disjointed, that I was doing something wrong, handling her wrong, and I couldn't figure out what to do. Though there was no obvious display, I could tell she was feeling lost, out of sorts, out of her element. I think she was having a stirring of something being not okay with how she was behaving, and that in some ways it was my fault. I wished I could gobble up the words I'd already said, wished I could find a reset button on my attitude, figure out a way to not be frustrated with the way she was acting. Glasses that would show me clearly what she was feeling so I could respond appropriately.
But these lessons aren't so hard, really. What does anyone need? So during the last few songs I relented and pulled Madeleine into my lap and she settled there, looking for the first time like she was enjoying herself. I grabbed her arms and made her wave them. I shook them and twisted them, and bounced my legs and sang along with the terrible, awful music, and she was smiling, finally. And laughing, and singing, and following along.
She had been feeling lost. She just needed her place.
I tried to explain this later to a childless coworker who said that we should just let kids be who they are and stop worrying about what others think, to stop worrying about how they'll belong. They'll figure it out as they go, he said. But it's never that easy. Tiny heart fractures are hard to heal and everyday these kids keep chipping away at it. It's a terrible process, sometimes, this parenting thing. Handing these tiny humans your heart. "Here, break it," you say to them. Every moment of every day.
But sometimes they chip away pieces that were already broken. And sometimes they're menders, too. After the concert I told Madeleine that I would have been just like her at a concert like that at her age. This is true - I was a shy, quiet, very reserved kid. Madeleine doesn't respond to this directly, but she leans in and hugs me tightly. "Mama," she says, like it's some kind of revelation.
Posted on: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
When she thinks of love, she thinks of a hand on the back of her knee, a fist knotted in her hair, teeth gripping an ear. It's in the code of her breath, in a furious rush of blood, in a gasp that pops against a neck. It's imprinted. She can't help it; she pours herself into his waiting hands and expects him to keep the whole of her intact there, nothing slipping through tightly clasped fingers. But she's pure liquid this way, melted core and insubstantial longing, sloshing from palm to palm.
He won't hold it. He never does. He can't even.
He parts his hands and she's gone in an instant.
This is not love.
It is a reflection in a fingertip,
a mirror image in parted lips.
He won't hold it. He never does. He can't even.
He parts his hands and she's gone in an instant.
This is not love.
It is a reflection in a fingertip,
a mirror image in parted lips.
Posted on: Thursday, March 15, 2012
Posted on: Wednesday, March 14, 2012
White noise.
My entire existence has funneled into my right ear, which is still broken. My entire existence is a constant buzz of white noise, a muffled void. My entire existence is the sound of pressing your ear to a seashell to hear the ocean and it goes on and on and on. My entire existence is the sand behind my eyelids, the dry sound of blinking. My entire existence is the cramp near my right shoulder blade. My entire existence is in my bed, pillows punched and sheets rumpled by an onslaught of dreams and strange images, of a kid who couldn't sleep until she was furrowed into the circle of my arms. My entire existence is 4:30 a.m., blinking into the darkness, wondering if I should just give up on the idea of sleep altogether, two of the three most beloved people in my life snoring peacefully in the bed, taking up the whole space.
::
I listen to this song over and over again, non-stop, and this is no exaggeration. I am struck by the intimacy of these three men shoulder to shoulder, making something together that sounds so lovely. I'm not musically inclined at all -- never played an instrument or sung in a choir -- and I wonder how it feels to bring three voices together in such a way, a seamless blend of sound, a perfect piece of it. That kind of connection has to be amazing, doesn't it? To join together that way? Having no real insight into the process of making music, I can only guess, but it seems like you would be tied together in a different way, a deeper way, to sing together like that. To sing like that would be to share a little bit of your soul with someone else. And to lift each other up to something higher, better. To elevate the ordinary -- a quiet, small room -- into something extraordinary: music, its basic elements. Voice and instrument and people who care enough to put it all together.
I think we all chase that feeling in some way, don't we? And if not, shouldn't we?
::
A few days ago Mad was standing on her step stool, brushing her teeth, and I was leaning in the doorway, keeping her company. She reached out and kicked at me. Her foot made contact with my outstretched leg, but there was no force behind it. For a split second a think it's an act of aggression, but instead of reacting that way, I reach out and push back at her with my foot, gently, and I am rewarded when her whole face lights up. She does it back, immediately, delighted. She's instigated a game. That's all she wanted. A connection. This is a parenting victory, for now, and I relish it.
Later Mad wants to play it again and Violet decides to get in on it. We are sitting on Mad's bad and we are play-kicking each other, and then Violet jumps in. She lifts her foot and before I can react, she slams her foot into my face, knocking my glasses to the floor and leaving a red splotch on my cheek.
This was not an act of aggression, this is Violet not understanding the rules of the game and not really caring one way or the other where her foot lands when she kicks it out. And with my hand over my face I exclaim, "VIOLET. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" and she immediately starts sobbing, tears pouring down her face. She launches herself at me, her face a wall of misery. "I didn't know I didn't know I'm so sorry," she cries over and over, and I am at a loss. She knows not to kick someone in the face. Doesn't she? I don't know.
She cries to avoid confrontation, I think.
I don't know. I collect my glasses and calm myself down and tell her she does know not to kick someone in the face and that it isn't okay and she just sobs and sobs and sobs.
This is a parenting fail, I think, but I don't know what else to do.
::
My entire existence is the darkness at 7:30 this morning, walking down the hall to Violet's room to tell her goodbye. Her perfect little body is stretched out in the bed and she turns her head and blinks. "Goodbye, mama," she says sleepily. My entire existence is Mad smiling softly, pretending to be asleep when I kiss her goodbye. My entire existence is my husband who springs out of bed to get the trash out to the curb on garbage day. The sun is just rising now and off I go.
::
I listen to this song over and over again, non-stop, and this is no exaggeration. I am struck by the intimacy of these three men shoulder to shoulder, making something together that sounds so lovely. I'm not musically inclined at all -- never played an instrument or sung in a choir -- and I wonder how it feels to bring three voices together in such a way, a seamless blend of sound, a perfect piece of it. That kind of connection has to be amazing, doesn't it? To join together that way? Having no real insight into the process of making music, I can only guess, but it seems like you would be tied together in a different way, a deeper way, to sing together like that. To sing like that would be to share a little bit of your soul with someone else. And to lift each other up to something higher, better. To elevate the ordinary -- a quiet, small room -- into something extraordinary: music, its basic elements. Voice and instrument and people who care enough to put it all together.
I think we all chase that feeling in some way, don't we? And if not, shouldn't we?
::
A few days ago Mad was standing on her step stool, brushing her teeth, and I was leaning in the doorway, keeping her company. She reached out and kicked at me. Her foot made contact with my outstretched leg, but there was no force behind it. For a split second a think it's an act of aggression, but instead of reacting that way, I reach out and push back at her with my foot, gently, and I am rewarded when her whole face lights up. She does it back, immediately, delighted. She's instigated a game. That's all she wanted. A connection. This is a parenting victory, for now, and I relish it.
Later Mad wants to play it again and Violet decides to get in on it. We are sitting on Mad's bad and we are play-kicking each other, and then Violet jumps in. She lifts her foot and before I can react, she slams her foot into my face, knocking my glasses to the floor and leaving a red splotch on my cheek.
This was not an act of aggression, this is Violet not understanding the rules of the game and not really caring one way or the other where her foot lands when she kicks it out. And with my hand over my face I exclaim, "VIOLET. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" and she immediately starts sobbing, tears pouring down her face. She launches herself at me, her face a wall of misery. "I didn't know I didn't know I'm so sorry," she cries over and over, and I am at a loss. She knows not to kick someone in the face. Doesn't she? I don't know.
She cries to avoid confrontation, I think.
I don't know. I collect my glasses and calm myself down and tell her she does know not to kick someone in the face and that it isn't okay and she just sobs and sobs and sobs.
This is a parenting fail, I think, but I don't know what else to do.
::
My entire existence is the darkness at 7:30 this morning, walking down the hall to Violet's room to tell her goodbye. Her perfect little body is stretched out in the bed and she turns her head and blinks. "Goodbye, mama," she says sleepily. My entire existence is Mad smiling softly, pretending to be asleep when I kiss her goodbye. My entire existence is my husband who springs out of bed to get the trash out to the curb on garbage day. The sun is just rising now and off I go.
Posted on: Monday, March 12, 2012
Expanses.
There is nothing, there is no perfect. There is no perfect word or image, no perfect feeling or sound. There is only you, here, pulling in a breath. There is the space between notes, where anticipation lives. There is looking into eyes you know as well as you know yourself, the way their eyes shift and look and search for you. There is the steady weight of what makes a life a life, and the weightlessness of it, too, the way you find yourself in their searching gazes, the way the gaping space between seconds comes together and forms eternity. Hello, beautiful, you say to their sweet faces, and you may as well say it to the sky for all it gives you.::
"History Book" -- Dry the River
Posted on: Monday, March 5, 2012
Posted on: Thursday, March 1, 2012
Marathon!
Her bib was orange, signifying that she was running the ultramarathon, and she was laboring toward the finish line, rounding off her 31st mile. "STRONG FINISH!" shouted a well-meaning spectator and the woman grimaced, turning to the man running next to her. "There is no strong finish," she said. "There is only finish." She says it like a mantra, again, like she's reminding herself. "There is only finish." And on she runs.
**
"I could have been a runner," says my mother-in-law. "I could have run marathons. I really liked that kind of thing when I was younger." She stares thoughtfully at the runners huffing past us.
**
Near the finish line the crowd pushes against the gates, cheering wildly as runner after runner come bounding around the corner, end goal in sight. A sudden hush. A tall, thin man with ropey muscles is bent at a 90-degree angle, held up on either side by two men with grim faces. The bent man stares at the ground, pale, sweat pouring from his brow. His feet continue shuffling forward and when a medic comes in to intervene he lunges his body in such a way that pushes the medic away. And he continues shuffling on as the two men keep him upright, just so he can feel his feet cross that finish line. Oh. I still wonder about that man, wonder how much he trained for this, how many marathons he's run, what mechanism broke in his body so that it was only sheer force of will and the help of two others that kept him going. I wonder because it seems like a particular kind of madness to go, go, go. I wonder about that, the goal he had in mind and how tightly he held on, and how he refused to let it go.
**
We've been waiting for about an hour inside the exhibit hall near the starting line. The girls are making signs in support of their dad. "How do you spell love?" asks Madeleine, bent over the big white square of paper, black marker in hand. She writes carefully "L O V E" and underneath, "DAD GO," two words she knows how to spell on her own.
Violet arranges a mini-rainbow of markers next to her and squiggles out two butterflies on her poster board. She decorates them with multi-colored dots. "Dad will love this," she announces while she carefully fills in dot after dot. "Dad loves bugs, so he will love these butterflies!" She admires her work proudly. Later she stands near the finish line, encouraging runner after runner with her butterfly poster.
**
The winner of the ultramarathon bounds down the final stretch of the race, past half-marathoners who look tired and worn. He pumps his arm and fairly flies toward the finish line, encouraging everyone to cheer for him. They do. It's a thrilling sight to see someone so enjoying such exertion, so exulted by what a body can do when it rises to a daunting challenge.
**
Violet walks along the sidewalk near the 26 mile marker. Runners pass, eyes determined, faces forward, breathing labored. Red-faced, tired. She weeps loudly, inconsolably. "My HAIR," she sobs. "I don't want in my face!" She stops and drops her arms to her sides, refusing to move another inch for just a moment. "I'm just. so. TIIIIRED." She cries. People openly laugh, and I don't blame them at all.
**
Here he comes, the one we've been waiting for. Wayland rounds one of the last corners of the race and I shout, "There he is! It's your dad!" And Madeleine takes off running, thrilled, joining him on the course and falling in line next to him like it's the most natural thing in the world. He's smiling, but his normal fast pace has dwindled quite a bit. I call Wayland's dad, who is stationed much closer to the finish line. "He's coming!" I tell him. "Just a few minutes now!" I walk back to the finish line with Violet who is so not going to run anywhere, and I watch as Mad and her dad plod along ahead of us. Mad in her pink clothes, hair flying behind her, arms out from her sides like she expects to take flight. Wayland tall. They turn the final corner and I don't see them anymore. My mind follows, though, so thrilled and proud, gobsmacked by a powerful lesson. Sometimes you really can just DO something you want to do. Sometimes you just decide, and you act, and you find a reason to keep going even when it's hard.
Way to go, hubs. You rock.
**
"I could have been a runner," says my mother-in-law. "I could have run marathons. I really liked that kind of thing when I was younger." She stares thoughtfully at the runners huffing past us.
**
Near the finish line the crowd pushes against the gates, cheering wildly as runner after runner come bounding around the corner, end goal in sight. A sudden hush. A tall, thin man with ropey muscles is bent at a 90-degree angle, held up on either side by two men with grim faces. The bent man stares at the ground, pale, sweat pouring from his brow. His feet continue shuffling forward and when a medic comes in to intervene he lunges his body in such a way that pushes the medic away. And he continues shuffling on as the two men keep him upright, just so he can feel his feet cross that finish line. Oh. I still wonder about that man, wonder how much he trained for this, how many marathons he's run, what mechanism broke in his body so that it was only sheer force of will and the help of two others that kept him going. I wonder because it seems like a particular kind of madness to go, go, go. I wonder about that, the goal he had in mind and how tightly he held on, and how he refused to let it go.
**
We've been waiting for about an hour inside the exhibit hall near the starting line. The girls are making signs in support of their dad. "How do you spell love?" asks Madeleine, bent over the big white square of paper, black marker in hand. She writes carefully "L O V E" and underneath, "DAD GO," two words she knows how to spell on her own.
Violet arranges a mini-rainbow of markers next to her and squiggles out two butterflies on her poster board. She decorates them with multi-colored dots. "Dad will love this," she announces while she carefully fills in dot after dot. "Dad loves bugs, so he will love these butterflies!" She admires her work proudly. Later she stands near the finish line, encouraging runner after runner with her butterfly poster.
**
The winner of the ultramarathon bounds down the final stretch of the race, past half-marathoners who look tired and worn. He pumps his arm and fairly flies toward the finish line, encouraging everyone to cheer for him. They do. It's a thrilling sight to see someone so enjoying such exertion, so exulted by what a body can do when it rises to a daunting challenge.
**
Violet walks along the sidewalk near the 26 mile marker. Runners pass, eyes determined, faces forward, breathing labored. Red-faced, tired. She weeps loudly, inconsolably. "My HAIR," she sobs. "I don't want in my face!" She stops and drops her arms to her sides, refusing to move another inch for just a moment. "I'm just. so. TIIIIRED." She cries. People openly laugh, and I don't blame them at all.
**
Here he comes, the one we've been waiting for. Wayland rounds one of the last corners of the race and I shout, "There he is! It's your dad!" And Madeleine takes off running, thrilled, joining him on the course and falling in line next to him like it's the most natural thing in the world. He's smiling, but his normal fast pace has dwindled quite a bit. I call Wayland's dad, who is stationed much closer to the finish line. "He's coming!" I tell him. "Just a few minutes now!" I walk back to the finish line with Violet who is so not going to run anywhere, and I watch as Mad and her dad plod along ahead of us. Mad in her pink clothes, hair flying behind her, arms out from her sides like she expects to take flight. Wayland tall. They turn the final corner and I don't see them anymore. My mind follows, though, so thrilled and proud, gobsmacked by a powerful lesson. Sometimes you really can just DO something you want to do. Sometimes you just decide, and you act, and you find a reason to keep going even when it's hard.
Way to go, hubs. You rock.
Posted on: Thursday, February 23, 2012
You do not have to walk on your knees.
Wild Geese
Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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