After Words

Solidarity

"Can you believe that?" the cashier said as she grabbed my arm and pointed through the large window in the front of the store and into the parking lot. 

I looked quickly in the direction in which she had gestured but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, turned my attention back to The Girl who was trying to sneak candy bars onto the conveyor.

"Someone should call the cops," the cashier muttered and now, as a devoted follower of the police blotter, I was intrigued, but with another glance into the parking lot, still nothing caught my eye as police-worthy or even slightly out of place.

"I missed it. What happened?" I asked.

"You see that woman?" And finally I did see the person the cashier had in mind. She was a mom with two kids, one young enough to be riding in the shopping cart, and another slightly older walking beside her. I had "met" the mom a few minutes before when all our children had stopped in front of an endcap display of Valentine's Day pink cupcakes and had a collective nervous breakdown when the mean moms declared that no, cupcakes weren't on the list for today. We rolled our eyes at one another, pried our children away from the display, and moved on.  

"I see her."

"One of her kids isn't wearing a coat!" The cashier hissed.

And I laughed. I laughed because, not 20 minutes earlier, The Girl and I had argued over the things that needed to happen before we could leave the house (top three items: brush hair, put on shoes, put on coat). I won the coat battle by ceding the hair battle, figuring that the hood on the coat would cover a multitude of hair brushing sins. I laughed because it was an unseasonably warm 45 degrees out and a coat wasn't going to make or break anyone on the 2 minute walk from the store to the car in the parking lot. I laughed because really? Call the cops?

I thought of the times strangers could have sat in judgment of my parenting this week alone: when I carried my shoeless, kicking and screaming daughter out of gymnastics class; when I sent The Girl to school even though she said she wasn't feeling well only to have her come home a few hours later with a raging ear infection; when I forgot to check The Boy's folder after school and made him "hurry, hurry, hurry" to finish his homework before the bus came the next morning; or when I made the roasted cauliflower for dinner even though I knew that pretty much guaranteed that the kids would eat nothing but bread and butter.

These are the mommy wars. It's not the SAHMs versus the WOHMs or the breast feeders versus the bottle feeders or the cry it outers versus the co-sleepers. It's the total strangers who think they have the right--nay, the responsibility--to point to the myriad ways that you are doing it wrong. 

I paid the cashier for our groceries and stood at the end of the aisle arranging my bags trying to think of something to say, but words failed. Instead, I took off my coat, grabbed The Girl's hand, and walked into the parking lot to appreciate the warm breeze that almost felt like spring.

Soft Trails

A few weeks ago I did something crazy: I applied for a job.

I've been doing freelance copy editing off and on (mostly off) since The Girl was born, and I had always planned to return to work in a more full-time capacity when she starts kindergarten (nine months and counting). But I just happened to see a posting for a job at a local company I admire, and before I could really stop to be nervous about the fact that I hadn't been on a job interview in more than five years, and I wasn't sure what to wear or who would watch the kids or anything else, I sent a resume into the ether. It was the most ridiculous thing I've done in months.

More insane still? I had an interview (two of them!), and the job seems great and the company seems great and I'm not sure how I seem because I haven't heard anything, but so be it. I got back in touch with the people who are my references, and it looks like some freelance work will come out of that so as I sit poised on the edge of the new year, I feel like there are changes ahead. Good ones.

And so, dear friends, I wish you a new year full of possibility. What crazy things do you hope to do?

 

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches--
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead --
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging --

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted --

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

~Mary Oliver

Crumbs

Seven years ago, we transferred these:

 

A few hours ago, I tucked this boy into bed:

What an amazing fact this is.

*****

Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune--without the words, 
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 
And sore must be the storm 
That could abash the little bird 
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land, 
And on the strangest sea; 
Yet, never, in extremity, 
It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickinson

 

 

The Tallest Sandwich

I wish I were a more grateful person. I am unspeakably fortunate in so many ways, but this time of year I always find myself bogged down in the things that are not right--that I wish were different but am (or feel) powerless to change.

I am thankful for my husband and my children for putting up with me when I am like this. I am thankful for the gracious life I live where all I have to complain about is this "unsettled feeling in the blood," as Stephen Dobyns describes below.

And I am thankful to know that it will pass.

 

How to Like It

These are the first days of fall. The wind at evening smells of roads still to be traveled, while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns is like an unsettled feeling in the blood, the desire to get in a car and just keep driving. A man and a dog descend their front steps. The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk. Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find. This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change. But in his sense of the season, the man is struck by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories  which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid  until it seems he can see remembered faces caught up among the dark places in the trees. The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere. Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie, he says to himself, a movie about a person  leaving on a journey. He looks down the street to the hills outside of town and finds the cut where the road heads north. He thinks of driving on that road and the dusty smell of the car heater, which hasn't been used since last winter. The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers. In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark. Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,  where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights, shine like small cautions against the night. Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake. The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down by the fire and put our tails over our noses. But the man wants to drive all night, crossing one state line after another, and never stop until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror. Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill and there, filling a valley, will be the lights of a city entirely new to him. But the dog says, Let's just go back inside. Let's not do anything tonight. So they walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps. How is it possible to want so many things and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep and wants to hit his head again and again against a wall. Why is it all so difficult? But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich. Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen. And that's what they do and that's where the man's  wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator as if into the place where the answers are kept— the ones telling why you get up in the morning and how it is possible to sleep at night, answers to what comes next and how to like it.

~Stephen Dobyns

RESOLVED**You Be The Parent: When The Going Gets Tough

I didn't make him take the class. It was a dance class, actually a breakdancing class, taught by a man and composed of mostly male students (something The Boy had been asking for since he was the only boy in his ballet class 2 years ago). I was, I will admit, a little overly proud of myself for having found the class (finally) and though it was wildly inconvenient in terms of time and location, I really liked the parents I chatted with during the trial. Which is rare for me.

Alas.

We are currently making The Boy take soccer--something he said he wanted to do when we signed him up last spring--and I didn't feel I had it in me to enforce 2 activities. But I'm hoping to revisit the issue when soccer ends in a few weeks.

Because also? He really likes to dance.

I'm impressed by those of you who don't have a hard time getting their kids to be physically active. The Boy is home from school (where he has gym twice a week) around 3:15, and by the time we have snack and do homework, it's at least 4-4:30. Ideally, that's when I'd be starting dinner prep (we try to eat around 6). If we don't have an activity planned, it's far to easy for everyone--including me--to just hang about inside. Yes, sometimes we go to the playground, and sometimes we ride bikes, but a scheduled activity is a nice crutch to have a few times a week.

*****

The Girl, by the way, does not have Lyme disease. She had no symptoms except a series of bulls-eye type rashes this summer. We never found a tick on her, but there are tick-infested deer all over the place. She was treated prophylactically with amoxicillin and we dutifully reported to have her blood drawn a few weeks later.

The Girl does, however, have low iron stores (a serum ferritin level of 13 ng/mL), which is sometimes tied to the kind of sleep issues she's been having. We've been supplementing her iron for about 3 weeks, and we haven't seen a change. Fingers crossed. Mama's so very tired.

You Be The Parent: When The Going Gets Tough

I have written 2 long and detailed posts explaining where I've been and what I've been up to, but they were both summarily eaten by the computer, which I think this the universe's way of implying that they weren't that interesting.

Siding with the universe, I will abandon the recapping (Cliff's Notes version: summer was nice but hot; The Boy turned 6 and started first grade; The Girl is still a crappy sleeper, may have contracted Lyme disease, and is as moody as a teenager) and instead return to a favorite feature here once upon a time: YOU BE THE PARENT.  Woo hoo! Let's begin....

Your six year old, who used to want to do every extra-curricular activity he could name has recently been a little more reserved about such activities, especially physical ones. You are underwhelmed by the culture of athleticism that pervades your town, but you also think part of the reason you've never been particularly physically active is because it was never really emphasized in your own childhood.

So. You sign your son up for a trial of a non-competitive physical activity that he's been asking to do for awhile, and though he seems to enjoy the class at the time, after words he declares that it's "too hard" and doesn't want to do it again. You have not paid for the class (yet) and to be frank, it doesn't fit with the rest of your schedule particularly well, but the idea of not doing something because it's hard doesn't sit well with you.

Do you make him take the class?

As always, I look forward to your responses.

When RHONY Isn't Funny

I admit it: The Real Housewives of New York is a guilty pleasure. Though I dabbled in the other franchises for a time, I quickly lost patience for them all, but New York kept dragging me back in. I liked that it was set in a city that I knew--my city--even though my daily experience of that city was so different. And I liked talking about the show the next day with my friends, actual real housewives of New York, when we laughed about just how bonkers these ladies were.

So, even though I haven't tuned in as regularly lately, of course, I had to check in on the finale, despite the fact that I was sure the storyline regarding Ramona's supposed pregnancy had to be some kind of misunderstanding.

Now, it's one thing to pretend that LuAnn can sing or that Sonja is financial solvent or that it's normal for Kelly to exercise by running in the middle of traffic, but to pretend that it's anything other than miraculous for a a 54-year old woman to have an oops pregnancy is just insulting.

God knows there's enough shame wrapped up in fertility struggles (see, for example, Holly Finn's excellent article in the WSJ here), but to heap on the pressure by presuming that pregnancy is reasonable at Ramona's age is appalling. And yes, of course I do know that it is possible, but likely? No. And for an intelligent woman to behave by doing anything other than march straight to her GYN's office--even if it's just manufactured drama for the sake of TV ratings--is insane.

Only Candor

 

I thank you for your emails and comments to my last post. I am out of the habit of that sort of soul spilling so your responses mean a lot. I do not know quite how we will move forward from here, but move forward we shall. Stay tuned.

 

Do Not Be Ashamed

 

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

 

~Wendell Berry

Hungry

She wants a second cupcake. If The Boy was there and asked for seconds you might have said yes, but he probably wouldn't have eaten even the first one--they are frosted an unusual shade of green and decorated with gummies that would have made him suspicious--but The Girl has no such reservations.

It's late, almost 1:30, and she has been playing hard all day--running around at camp, swimming in the pool at the birthday party. There's lunch but she doesn't want it--ham sandwiches with mayo on funky bread and crudite and watermelon. Ordinarily she can be counted on to eat some carrots and watermelon and because it's a party you would pronounce that lunch, but her eyes are on those cupcakes.

You should have stuck to your guns and insisted she at least nibble a carrot before having the cupcake, but she was hungry and you didn't want to make a scene so you said yes, figuring you would have a proper lunch at home later. She inhales the cupcake and demands a second. There are plenty left, but you're feeling badly about having given in in the first place so you say no. She argues. You feel the eyes of the other mothers on you.

The Girl is only four, but she is overweight. You have just come from her annual visit to the pediatrician again where you got The Talk. You say what you always say: she doesn't drink a lot of juice, rarely eats out (and almost never fast food: she had McDonalds for the first time last week!), and only occasionally has dessert at home. You feed The Boy the same way, and he is tall and lean. The Girl is hungry all the time and you don't believe in restricting her food outright. Your own food was restricted as an adolescent and look where that got you.

You have been trying to follow Ellyn Satter's division of responsibility in feeding for the last year, but you're not sure it's working. You believe that BMI is bullshit and that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, but she has recently been called fat for the first time by another child. You don't think she heard it, but you did. 

You are overweight too, and in a town that is populated by the blonde, the beautiful, and the botoxed, you feel it acutely, but nevermore so than now when you, the overweight mother, have an overweight daughter screaming for another cupcake.

Four

My baby girl turns four today. It is a milestone she has been talking about since her last birthday (as she was already looking forward to her fifth birthday this morning, even though we haven't yet celebrated her fourth), and yet it is almost unimaginable that this child:

has become this:

 

Both Square and Round

 

You moments I court--

 

Back of the head settled

in arm's crook,

rump in my palm,

the whole half a body

just the length of my forearm,

small face twitching toward

repose. From the window

lamplight or moonlight slides

onto the creamy forehead,

the new-bulb smoothness

at the temples both squared

and rounding, the flickering play

of shapes suggesting, mysteriously,

intelligence within.

And the triangular

center peak, V-bottom

of a heart where pure skin

shades nto the gold dusting

of first hair, nearly

fur, like halo's fuzz,

more light than matter--

 

What was it, just

then, I swore to myself

I'd keep?

 

As though I could hold

a magnifying glass

to time

 

and slow its shaping

us.

 

~Deborah Garrison