The days are chock full
but I’m not doing anything.
The pages of the calendar fly by
and yet I’m still waiting.
I’m floating, dragging
running, sleepwalking
There is gratitude
peace
joy
I’ve only to reach out my hand and touch it
But I’m paralyzed.
Last night for dinner, we had ‘Impossibly Easy Cheeseburger Pie’ – which would have been impossibly easy to prepare had I not flipped the dish upside down into the oven.
Just as the oven timer beeped, my husband’s gastrointestinal juices gearing up, I gripped the glass pie plate on either side with my ove-gloved hands and proceeded to do a spastic ground beef ballet. Time slowed down as it only can during inevitable and unavoidable catastrophe. I watched helplessly as the plate tilted at an ever-alarmingly steep angle and poured the eggy, cheesy, beefy crumbles down into the multifaceted cavity between the open oven door and hot oven floor.
My husband, on the phone with his parents, ran into the room to see what was the matter, alerted by my cries. I still can’t recall if what I said was appropriate for his parents, hanging in midair on the phone in his hand, to overhear. When he’d hung up and reentered the room, he asked how it happened – to which I do remember answering quite snippily that if I knew how it happened, I wouldn’t have let it happen. I said that I meant to do it, to spite him, to ruin the family dinner, that it was my intent all along. Yes, it was my grandest moment.
Impossibly Easy, my ass
You see, it never really was about the impossibly irritating cheeseburger pie. I knew when I gripped it, my hold was tenuous at best. I was already floating off on some negative tangent as we’d traipsed the troop into the school gymnasium to vote. The kids flitting about on the periphery, drawing the dirty looks of the board of canvassers representative, didn’t help. My rotors, failing brakes, something squeaking all day as I drove down the road didn’t help. Money troubles and a possible looming lay-off didn’t help. The greasy mess congealed to the bottom of my stove was just the icing on an already slimy cake.
After I winged a plastic spatula just to the right of him, he thumped a couple of walls, I lied down on the bathroom floor for a good cry (all while the kids played doorbell ditch on their own home) – I set to cleaning the stove. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to prepare or eat this dish again. I discovered places in my stove I never knew existed – just wide enough to allow a chunk of mangled food in and just small enough to prevent my fingers to take it out.
The good thing about this all-around disgusting evolution is that my oven is now clean! It is ready for the onslaught of Thanksgiving like it never would have been had I not spilled food all over its-hotter-than-a-spilled-pie-plate-of-ooze insides. And that’s about the only good thing. I’m not proud of my behavior. None of the issues precipitating the great pie-plate debate of ’14 were resolved. I still feel pretty mushy about the whole thing.
If only it was as impossibly easy to wipe away the grime of our lives.
The past few weeks have been a little trying. Our family seems to be on the cusp of something big. I can only say that now after these last few weeks. In the midst of running, running, running, it was all I could do to put one foot in the front of the other – or shuffle them along. I knew things were crazy, and was reacting accordingly, but I didn’t know why.
Now I wonder if my elevated stress levels and difficulty in calming them were not a direct result: my subconscious reaction to what my conscious self wasn’t ready to admit was a huge deal.
My five year-old, in her last year of preschool, more and more frequently laments the fact that she cannot ride the bus to big-kid school like the others. She wants to stay at preschool and eat lunch with her friends. She’s ‘reading’ books to me and asking how to spell different words.
My seven year-old is coming into her own, blossoming with independent applications of math reasoning she’s learned at school. She reads books aloud with an expression well beyond her years and worthy of an audio recording. She’s requesting and engaging in social interactions and activities – on her own.
My nine year-old has joined two after school activities, doubling her previous involvement. She is in her last year of elementary school; her last year of recess; her last year of riding the bus with her sisters. She is looking longer and leaner every day.
And me? I am nearing the destination of days full of adult time. All three of them will be in school full-day next year. I will be free to . . . earn the money we’ve sorely been missing since I’ve been at home? Write my way into posterity? Query until they can no longer say no?
I haven’t been gazing longingly at this point in time as the end all and be all. But it hovered like some kind of talisman – a time when, my life would go back to normal? When adult life (ie working, I guess) would resume? When I’d be able to exhale that breath I’ve been holding since the first labor pain of the first child?
And though my mind has set up the first day of the next academic year as the first day of this new life, I’ve finally realized that we’re all in the transition to it now. My five year-old is prepping to be the big girl – already a little too cool for preschool. My seven year-old is branching out in social groups – excited and a little less apprehensive to do so on her own. My nine year-old is claiming activities and beliefs as her own – independent from her parents and sisters.
Friends, acquaintances, and other parents always asked what activities my kids were in. I always thought I saw some semblance of shock when I answered, “None.” We didn’t do adorable dance classes at three years-old. We didn’t do t-ball, and soccer, and gymnastics, oh my. They never expressed an dire interest in any of these things and my husband and I never pushed it. There was plenty of time for that – and they would determine the time.
The time is now.
We may have avoided the cost and inconvenient schedules of such activities up to this point, but now it’s on. I’ve started the taxi-driver lifestyle I’ve avoided thus far.
It hit me like a ton of bricks last week when I rushed to finish an on-line Girl Scout leader training, compile fund raising monies, feed the kids dinner before we rushed to a Girl Scout meeting, dress them in Halloween costumes for a Girl Scout Halloween party, babysit one of their classmates, see my husband, help (nag) the kids to finish their homework, steal Halloween candy they’d acquired before even Trick-or-Treating, talk to my husband, smear their faces and hair with foul chemicals to turn them into unrecognizable ghouls for Halloween and rush late to another party after peeling countless tangelos to make festive pumpkin snacks – all while suffering from a compound case of sleep deprivation and PMS.
Unbelievably, it took me awhile to realize why last week was so hard for me to handle. Any week has the potential to be miserable. But when the everyday congeals into one big blob of ‘life is about to get a whole lot more complicated’, sometimes the blob is so frickin’ big it takes awhile to digest.
My girls are growing up! As wistful as I was watching them walk away from me for the first time, leaving them in the classroom alone for the first time, hearing ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mama’ for the first time, those were mere speed bumps compared to this swift elevation. I have entered the ‘Mom, could you drop me off at so-and-so’s’ part of motherhood; the ‘Mom, pick me up after school’ part; the ‘We’ll be done at 4:15, Ma’ part; the ‘But I want to eat lunch with my friends, Mom’ part.
In addition to my ambivalent mom underbelly, I also have my own personal fears to fight. I’ve been home exclusively since 2008. The thought of returning to my previous job, even if I could even secure it, makes me want to vomit. Launching the totally exciting, yet daunting new idea I have for employment makes me want to seize. Not only am I being forced out of my old ‘job’ with all these developments, but forced into a totally new one.
All of our times, they are a-changin’. No wonder the woman, mom, worker in me is revolting.
from Blue-Cat00
It all started innocently enough.
Moved by an evocative poem by Dennis Ference, I shared it here.
A friend liked it. She had just lamented on FaceBook that her son participated in his last grandparent day at school since he’ll be entering middle school in the fall.
My aunt emailed a link to a video she’d watched meditating on the fact that it is the everyday moments that make up life with our children – just minutes before reading my reblog.
That afternoon I watched my children ride their bikes to the neighbors’ house – only four doors down – but far enough that they pedaled out of sight. I fought hard against the pressure building in my chest. I fought against the desire to reel them back in on an invisible thread to my heart.
I watched the birds alight from treetops across the street and glide across the sky.
We will all honor every moment.
I will read this whenever I wish these moments away. So much better than ‘Enjoy them while they’re young. It goes by so fast.’ Thank you, Dennis Ference.
What does one make of this time?
A time filled to the very edge
with emotions almost unbearable.
At first taste, sadness.
But then again joy,
and pride and fulfillment.
Yes, it is our son
who is leaving this time –
the youngest,
the last to go,
farther away than the first.
But in the symbol of the leaving
is also the daughter, the first.
For something deeply significant happens
this time around
for mother and father –
the close of a chapter
never to be repeated.
And we stand in awe
of what, or rather, who
has come to be.
For we, husband and wife, have loved
out of a oneness
that we have been destined to live.
And out of that oneness
has blossomed life
that in this strange mystery
that we are all part of,
has shared deeply in our union
and yet has always been meant
View original post 197 more words
The universe has sent me a thing of beauty just when I needed it.
Searching for an image to accompany my previous post, I came across this logo:
Given my explanation of dust as a metaphor for all that piles up in one’s mind, I found it an apt illustration – but I was curious as to its creator’s views on the subject. Clicking on the link, I found this amazing website. A project of Tom E. Lewis, Dust Echoes offers animated shorts from then emerging Australian animators, depicting touchstone stories of Aboriginal culture. The homepage itself is a story, drawing viewers right into the landscape. Aimed at engaging young people in the rich traditions and history of the Aboriginal people, it is a visual and auditory treat for people of any age.
So, in answer to my question, the creators of this graphic had totally different views on the idea of dust echoing. They helped me see that there is great value in hearing echoes of the past and transmitting them to future generations.
Do you remember when you were a child and your mother seemed so neat and tidy, so put together? She would whip the house into shape in no time. Flit about the house each morning, making beds, washing breakfast dishes, hanging clean laundry to dry in the sun.
You knew she did it, but it never occurred to you how. You never weighed the drudgery of the tasks, the tedious amounts of effort that went into the seemingly effortless job she did.
Did the tasks weigh on her the way they do you? Another item added to the to-do list adding one more stone upon your chest. The never-ending monotony of it threatening to suffocate you like a toppled tower of laundry. The disarray around you making you feel like a failure.
The hairy crumb on the floor taking on a life of its own, sucking the life out of yours spiraling out of control.
Keeping house probably didn’t send your mother into the existential angst of a panic attack. Not because she emulated June Cleaver, but because she was not (is not) ruled by anxiety. She would not take on more than she could chew. And if she did pack her calendar, she’d know how to prioritize to make it all work. She did not suffer from the irrational desire for physical orderliness as a means of reining in her mental and emotional chaos.
Or maybe you’re seeing your mother through the eyes of a child – a superhero who can do all effortlessly and heroically. Perhaps not unlike your own children see you. Only you’re pretty sure you never saw her sitting on the floor, hands hovering near her heart, tense and twitching, physically trying to push. the. demands. away.
A neighbor came into my house this morning.
Dropping her girls off for their daily trek to the bus stop with mine, she had considerately righted my pot of mums blown over in last night’s storm. The pot had not so considerately slimed her with green goo growing on its side. Ushering her into the bathroom to wash her hands, I thought, oh God – is it clean? Is the hand towel fresh enough? Will she drown in the puddles of water the girls perpetually leave around the sink? Has too much time elapsed since I wiped the scum out of the sink? Lots to think about in the few short minutes it takes for proper hand washing technique.
Then she had to walk back through the dining room to get to the front door. She noticed our retro console radio, one that provided the soundtrack for countless cocktail parties my husband’s great aunt threw in her heyday. Instead of zeroing in the connection she had to it, having had a similar one growing up, I fretted about the piles of paper schmagma she might notice on top it. Or the tiny pebbles of Play-doh scattered about the floor that I made a mental note of last night to sweep up before they came over.
I felt like she’d judge me if I didn’t have a perfectly clean house. I worried the outward appearance of my home would reflect the inner workings of the care of my children, my family, my self. Is the put-together, in-control image a facade? Off-guard, unawares, does this tell the true story?
This feeling, concern, compulsion is not inspired just by this neighbor. It is the panic that ensues whenever someone drops by unannounced. With a constant flow of laundry, dishes, corrected school and artwork, mail and printed matter, any given surface in our house is clean for no longer than an hour. And that’s the clutter. Never mind the dust bunnies, the ring around the toilet, the smears, the crumbs . . .
And then I saw a picture on Facebook. It was of a woman I haven’t spoken to in years reading to her two children in a home I’ve never been to before. The kids nestled in close to her, all three seated on the floor, their backs up against the front part of the couch. The scene, a simple and common occurrence in the life of a family, somehow spoke of the love of a parent and child, of the connection, of the amazing gravity of this stolen moment. The picture was taken at wide range, including the bookcase behind them, the TV stand, the windows – a pile of laundry haphazardly spread across the couch. Yet, all that blends into the background, pulling this trio into sharp focus.
wisegeek.com
Truthfully, I was happy to notice that pile of laundry. Because it meant I wasn’t the only one with messy mounds of stuff we’d failed to put away. But what struck me more was that this mother only saw the story in front of her. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder at jobs left undone, chores to do. She hadn’t ‘unshared’ this photo because her house wasn’t perfectly tidy.
When my youngest was maybe eight months old, another mother of three came over to take photos of my girls. I may have worried about not having a good backdrop for her practice shots to build her portfolio, but she was only concerned with their pudgy little faces, their sparkling eyes. In fact, she told me it was refreshing to visit the home of a woman/mother who didn’t feel like she had to make everything perfect before accepting a visitor. She begged my pardon, assuring me she didn’t mean it as a critique of my homemaking skills. I knew she didn’t. But it still gave me pause. First, was my house that nasty, so obviously not cleaned up? Second, I couldn’t claim the freedom from judgment she charged me with. I’d just run out of time and/or energy to make things better before she arrived.
But none of us have the time and/or energy to have show-ready homes at all times (or anytime). So why do we still beat ourselves up for not achieving it? Why do we make excuses when others enter, apologizing for the mess, fibbing that’s it’s not always like this? Why can’t we own that big dust bunny in the corner? Why can’t we see the life around us and not the litter?
Why are we always so ashamed of what’s inside, when it’s usually what makes us the same? If we only aired our dirty laundry, it would become fresh and clean.
Not so long ago, maybe a generation or two back, all things were black or white. There was no middle ground. Expectations were clear. One either fell on one side of an issue or the other. The thing was – there were people who fell in the middle. People who had no defined spot. They were neither here nor there – so they were nowhere.
No one deserves to be no where.
Nowadays, in our generation, those children desperately coming of age as parents of their own children, everywhere we look there are different shades of gray. Fifty is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many nuanced pitfalls to navigate.
Body image. Nurturing healthy sexuality without encouraging oversexualization. Self-concept. Independence with a modicum of obedience. Utilization of technology while maintaining human interaction. . . .Instead of yes or no, everything is up for discussion. We don’t want our children to do a particular thing, make a particular decision, live a particular lifestyle, but we cannot condemn it – for we run the risk of offending someone. We do not want our children to condemn others or other points of view – so we skirt around topics instead of facing them head-on. We live in a constant haze of gray.
But if everything goes, everything is everywhere – does that not leave all of us nowhere?
Our children will not know where to stand if we place everything in front of them with no guidance, no discussion, no sense of right and wrong. There is a difference between open, informed dialogue and an all-you-can-eat buffet of sociology.
If the pendulum trended toward the restrictive threat of ostracization before, it has now swung toward the promiscuous promise of floating in the wind. There must be somewhere in the middle.
Floating in the wind is nice – until you tire of it and realize you’ve nowhere to land. A place to land – we owe the next generation at least that.
from nuji.com
Chopping Potatoes 