Head vs. heart
Exhaustion vs. anxious energy
Joy vs. misery
Difficult situations rolling like water from a duck’s back; simple acts eliciting freak-outs
Distraction/perseveration
Longing, lacking,
cup overflowing
Confusion, crystalline pain
The grounding grasp of tiny clasp,
The constricting clutch of oh-so-much
Synergy, synthesis, integration – somewhere out in the ether.
I’m dying to meet Her.
Play dates are for moms. Contrary to popular belief, they are not for kids.
It is moms who drive this runaway train off the tracks. While children like to play together, they would not give a crap if they did not organically meet Suzie at the playground. They would not cry if Sven didn’t come to their house for a tea party. They would not be scarred for life if abstract murals were not painted at the museum with the ‘it’ kids in kindergarten.
The moms would lose out.
On the opportunity to:
I’m not looking for a mate – just a partner in crime
And while all this is already over thinking, there’s even more to the psychology of play dates.
Remember, mothers are just grown-up kids.
We worry about making friends just as much as we did in our younger incarnations. What will we talk about with these new moms? Will we get along as swimmingly as our children? What if we hit it off with a mom at drop-off or pick-up and she has a child in another grade or – gasp – of the other sex!? Sometimes a compatible mom friend just doesn’t have the right kid to hide the real intent: that moms want to make friends, too. [Perhaps more than their kids because they need an ally in this crazy road trip called parenting.]
New situations make us nervous, too. What is the play date etiquette? Do I invite myself in? Do I drop-off and ditch? How much do I discipline my kids in front of this other parent? Will they follow the kids-will-be-kids approach or think I’m lax if I don’t? Will they think I’m horrible if I don’t make my kids clean up before they go? Or will they be appalled if I walk up the stairs into their child’s bedroom looking for the toy tub?
Peer pressure, though less crippling than in junior high, still exists. Do we share our deepest, darkest bad mom moments? Will she understand and share her own? Or will she judge? Will we commiserate over this shared, easier-said-than-done existence? Will we build each other up or tear each other down? Will we be able to have a real conversation as two people who happen to be mothers or as two women trying to fit the textbook model?
“Play” dates are really just a lot of work. Our kids would get along just fine if we sent them to school; if we took them to the playground and let them chat up little Sophia on their own. What intrinsic need does it fulfill in us? The need for human [read: adult] companionship? To keep them busy before their idle hands find the devil’s work? To make it easier for ourselves?
When I was a teacher, we used to tell particularly snarky students that we didn’t need them to like us because we had enough friends. As moms, do we? Are we using our kids as an excuse to make connections for ourselves? What is it that we are lacking?
And for what else do we use them as an excuse?
It’s cool to run. 
And, no I don’t mean that as an allusion to Disney’s lighthearted take on the Jamaican bobsled team, though I can see Doug E. Doug’s goofy grin right now.
There is a movement in motherhood right now to run. It seems to be the mode of fitness that’s all the rage. And not only do they run, but they write about it. Blogs on mothering and running are popping up all over the place.
Always one to eschew trend (or at least be snarky enough about it to try), it irritated me at first. Let’s all run and share our times and trials and how we balance that with motherhood. Woo hoo. Jump on the bandwagon.
What’s with all these fit people!? And what the hell does it have to do with mothering?
Then, I met a mother, who for all intents and purposes, was single for the next six months. Her husband was deployed, leaving the task of moving cross-country to her and their three children. I wanted to collapse just thinking about it. She did have some family support and a great sense of humor, but it still was a trying task to say the least.
She told me how one day she asked their eldest to watch the other two so she could go for a run. ‘I just had to get out,’ she said.
Suddenly, I got it.
I’ve mentioned before how my favorite scene in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is Ashley Judd escaping to a motel room. Maybe running – even if only around the block – provides enough of a catharsis to make coming back around the bend possible. Enough of the venom sweats out the pores and steams out the ears to return to stasis. The legs know they can propel us forward if needed, the pistons fire. We can move of our own volition.
Muscles atrophied from marathons of criss-cross applesauce; pelvises pushed out of whack from babies on hips; Lungs exhausted with wasted breath. When it runs, the body remembers another purpose. It remembers its former master and serves her for at least a little while.
I am not a runner.
I am the girl who, upon reaching junior high and meeting the kids from the other feeder elementary schools, was remembered by my performance in the sixth grade Olympics – as in “aren’t you the girl who puked after the 800?” Pacing? What’s that?
I am the woman who hates being reminded of that fact that her butt is not what is used to be by the jiggling that follows her down the hill when she does run.
But I have noticed the feeling of exhilaration when I stretch my legs and pump my arms and fill my lungs. Even if it’s only chasing my toddler down the street to the bus stop, I feel the strength and feel as if it can carry me even further. And not away – but to push my limits, see how much I’m capable of, feel some sort of strength when in all other ways I’m beat down. To shift the pain from my head and heart to the burning in my thighs, the constriction in my lungs, the stitch in my side.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to start sharing my best times and workout routines. It would just depress us all anyway. But let me just say to all the mother-runners out there, I get you. Even if I can’t be you – I get you.
For straightening out our stupid mistakes.
For risking their lives to save ours.
For their counsel while tending to car trouble.
For being a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal day.
Irony.
When I titled yesterday’s blog entry, I had a song from the early career of Bob Marley and the Wailers in my head. I searched in vain for a recording or video of it, finding only a much slower version. The version I remembered had more of a rock-steady beat than rolling reggae one. A few comments online reminded me that it was Peter Tosh singing that version (with the Wailers) anyway.
I gave up the hunt, but got the ironic twist that, though the universe was handing me a slower beat, I still wanted the frenetic one.
And I remembered that a character I’d written – if whom bares any resemblance to her author is purely coincidental – blasted that song in her car as she tried to outrun her problems.
After muddling her way through study hall and forcing concentration in the rest of her classes, Kathryn finally flopped into the front seat of her car. She stared out the front window. She put the keys in the ignition, but did not turn them. She just sat. She sat and thought about nothing and everything all at once. She took vague notice of the cars moving and leaving around her, but only when they moved directly across her line of sight did her eyes actually focus. When she finally noticed that there had been no movement around her for quite some time, she looked around to see hers was the only car left in the parking lot. She reached her feet towards the clutch and brake pedal and her hand towards the keys. Peter Tosh’s voice suddenly flooded the insides of the car and ran down her eardrums and into her brain. She was awake now. Maybe the rock-steady would steady her nerves and take her out of this funk. She moved the gearshift into first and grasped the steering wheel.
Kathryn left the parking lot without having any idea of where she was going. It was as if her car was on autopilot and eventually she found herself on the highway. All the while, she bounced in time to the music and occasionally would break into song, but all of this was secondary. It was as if her body and car were simply performing a routine; her consciousness really wasn’t along for the ride. As she moved on, off, and around the major arteries surrounding the city, moving in one big loop, she had no destination. She let the CD loop continuously as the steering wheel slid loosely between her fingers.
The sun finally dipped so low it angled itself right into her windshield and her eyes. She realized it was probably time to go home. She put on her left blinker to signal her way into the passing lane. Just as she edged her way around the car in front of her, she saw the two stripes of black rubber on the road. They started right where her front tires were now and arced away from her in a gentle curve until they ended at the Jersey barrier and a broad metallic smudge and gouges began. She almost wanted the car to follow them the way her eyes had – but why? Because it was a natural progression? Because she felt she was already set up on that path? Because it was easier to continue on an established path than to start a new one not even forged yet?
Suddenly the deep bass line of another Peter Tosh song resounded through the car speakers and she jerked the car back into line with the others. She shook her head and took a deep breath. She gripped the steering wheel, her fingers resting in the grooves meant to keep her hands in place, in control, and began to sing along:
“Stop the train, I’m leavin’, stop the train, I’m leavin’ believe me when I say, stop the train, I’m leavin’, said it won’t be too long whether I’m right or wrong, won’t be too long whether I’m right or wrong.”
Personal resemblance to our characters – especially when they do things we don’t like – is a whole ‘nother discussion. But there it was. Stop the train, I’m leavin’. Maybe I can shut my mind off long enough to disembark and get back to center.
In the meantime, I can at least listen to some kick ass music.
Editorial note: Thank you for respecting my intellectual property and not sharing my work with others without my permission – unless of course you know an editor who needs new talent ; )
How do I shut off the interior noise?
How do I ignore the gritty, tacky texture of frosting on my fingertips and ringing the ring on my finger?
How do I remember that the ashes on my forehead are an outward sign that everything I do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?
How do I stay focused with the distraction, the inability to focus, gravity pulling me elsewhere, my eyes to the side when they need to be focused front and center?
My brain feels fuzzy. It has that detached feeling that comes with being unhinged. “Unable to prioritize” as the postpartum/anxiety literature says. That’s a nice neat term for what I’m feeling. A gross oversimplification of the split between my rational and emotional selves. I can prioritize. My mind can still order things, ranking them in order of importance. But my [free will, stubborn mule, FU factor, overwhelmed stressball of anxiety – pick one or all of the above] ignores that list, places it behind a film so the suggestion of it is there, but I can’t quite grasp it.
In the sleep-deprived days following the birth of my third, I finally came to understand what my grandmother and other relatives described as a futile searching for a word in conversation. You know what you want to say. The idea is fully formed in your head, but you cannot transmit it out your mouth and to the understanding of those around you. Grasping, pinching, clutching, coveting those words, like a linguistic Scrooge, you can’t pull the one you need down from the clouds in your head. You would share if only you could. Being at a loss for words truly brought home how sleep deprived I was. With the birth of the second, third, et al, child, you don’t have a choice but to continue on with the routine of your family as if nothing happened except a new addition to your family and sleepless nights. It’s easy to ‘forget’ or repress how damn tired you are – until you stammer like a blithering idiot because you truly cannot form a sentence.
That’s the sensation I get now – only not with words, but thoughts. I cannot light on one particular thought before being pulled to another before it’s fully formed, and another and another, ad infinitum, until I write obsessive lists because I’m so desperately afraid that one most important thought will fly out of my head.
With my three year-old chatting next to me and the priest’s microphone shut off for the second half of mass so his words only slightly permeated the walls of the cry room, I actually did get some peace. Before the microphone went off, a handful of most important words permeated the walls of my heart. Everything we do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Comforting and terrifying at the same time. The ashy smudge on my forehead, at least for today, gives me a tangible reminder to hold my tongue, cull my words carefully, not let my obnoxious, self-absorbed anxiety-ridden self rule my role as mother, wife, human being. I want to ooze peace, love, and hair grease (well two of the three anyway). I’m in my own miserable little world lately, but I need to relate to the greater world and try to improve at least my little corner of it.
It’s hard to break out of rotating loop of mindchatter, though. – especially when it comes at you like the feed from a manic channel surfer.
So how to do it? Shut off the TV by going to sleep? Prayer? Beating my head against the wall? Go on vacation?
Any suggestions?
I saw a man gathering kindling in his arms. A backhoe sat idling nearby. Was he collecting that much wood or was he planning on ramming trees to the ground for firewood? And the logs that he had gathered, had they sat long enough on the forest floor to kindle a fire tomorrow when the snow comes?
I moved to the country just as the cold season started. ‘Seasoning wood’ was a term somewhere on the horizon of my consciousness. It was not something I needed to understand or attend to. Luckily the people we bought our house from left some logs stashed in the back of the garage, seasoned from last year’s growing season.
The image of that man hugging a bundle of logs close to his chest made me wonder. Will those logs in the garage be enough if we lose power this weekend? And what about the stack of logs in our backyard, sawed and split after Hurricane Sandy? Will they watch in moldy moisture as we freeze when our seasoned wood runs out?
And then I wondered . . . what did people do before meteorology? Did we actually have to pay attention to our surroundings and changing seasons and be prepared? Were we ants to today’s grasshoppers?
I hear the calls for bread and milk. For full gas tanks and new snow blowers. I see the last-minute hustle of wood gathering.
I do not see the storm clouds yet. I do not feel that raw damp that precedes snowfall.
If it weren’t for advanced radar, we might get caught unawares.
But were any true New Englanders ever caught unawares? As much as their means would allow, the pantries were stocked, the log pile stacked, the hatches battened.
Modern life had made us soft; has made us forget how to pay attention to our surroundings and react accordingly.
We rely on the convenience store down the street for our jug of milk, the mindless flick of a thermostat for heat, the talking head on TV when to tell us to be alarmed.
Good old Yankee ingenuity and self-reliance never hurt anyone. Maybe it should make a comeback.
* As should Game of Thrones, which I no doubt would be watching during this storm – if the power didn’t go out and the next season didn’t start after the season of winter is over!
The country road I drove down this morning looked magical.
A feathered path down its middle where the few cars had passed.
A vortex of flakes pulling me through the windshield.
Boulders, trees, leaves touched by a light dusting.
The magic messed with by industrial orange dump trucks spewing their salt,
but reemerging in a parking lot, of all places.
A perfectly formed star pulled from the sky and placed on the fleece forest of my glove.
Another and another.
In relief against the black rubber strip of my car,
the honey colored curls of my daughter,
the harsh, manipulative world we live in.
A tiny reminder of
the awesome, wondrously made world we sometimes forget we live in.
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school . . .
I have always loved that song by Paul Simon. I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with it, because I did, in fact, learn lots of useful things, but his thrumming on the guitar was so infectious I’d bounce along in time.
Then I became a teacher. I student-taught in high school, but ended up in the seedy underbelly of the ancient junior high building I attended myself as a skittish prepubescent. Many of the veterans I spoke to said junior high was where we all started out, paid our dues, and then transferred to the high school. The general tone was that no one wanted to spend much time with the roiling turmoil that was the junior high population. I can still hear the words of a talented veteran, though, who also happened to be the mother of a good friend I made in that school years earlier. She said stay put until you earn tenure and if still like junior high kids at that end of those three years, this is where you’re meant to be.
I spent the next seven years with junior high kids, teaching English/Language Arts.
I might still be there if it weren’t for an extended leave after the birth of my second child that turned into stay-at-home-mom-dom and a third child.
I’m still very much a teacher, though. And not just in the “parents are the first teachers” sort of way. It’s definitely a mindset. I’ve kept all the instructional materials I created, the units of study I formulated, the texts I used to teach. I still read books in such a way that makes me wonder if I’ve taken my analytical reading to another level or if I’m dissecting it in order to reconstruct it with an imaginary class. I listen intently to fellow parents’ descriptions of child behavior and learning experiences as if I have a stake in their success or struggle. I’m sure I make my child’s teachers wonder why I’m nodding as if I know exactly what they’re going to say when they explain how educational standards are once again changing.
These are all positive carry-overs from my teaching career.
There’s also a bane that comes with teaching: the feeling that you never graduate.
I counted down the final days of student teaching until graduation, only to fall headlong into another classroom. The fact that it was in a junior high that I had already spent two years of my life in added to the sensation of demotion. Back to homework – because giving it to students means you yourself have it. And that’s just the correcting. Not the involved planning (though the planning and successful execution of lessons was by far the most enthralling part of teaching). You perpetually feel like a student yourself.
Like I did when I sat down to the computer this morning.
Hmm . . . how to start today’s blog entry. Let’s see. Well, I started with a question last time. Oh, a quote?
That’s when I realized I was walking myself through the eight types of leads I’d taught my students. And that I was as haunted by all that crap I’d learned – and taught – in school as Paul Simon was. The role of perpetual student did not end when I left the classroom – neither sitting in the desk nor in front of it; it still follows me. And while it’s humbling and rather uncomfortable to still be learning the lessons I taught my junior high students, it’s validating to know that at least one lesson was valuable if it’s germane to my current writing. At least that day I wasn’t trying to learn them some crap.
Is there an easy way to cut a mango?
I tried the avocado method. Cut in half, drive knife blade into pit, rotate blade quarter turn, and pull. Not so much. That pit was not having it. Didn’t budge.
I tried digging it out. That just hacked up the fruit flesh around it.
I did not have such warm feelings toward my mango.
I finally sliced the fruit away from the core, apple style.
Except my hands were completely covered in goo from the pulp most of the fruit had become.
Goo + santoku = not the optimal chopping situation
As three small children pulling at your pant-leg while wielding said santoku is not.
Giada’s fish tacos with mango salsa be damned. I was ready to fling that mango out the window or smash it against the wall. I’d have squeezed it in my fist if only it weren’t so damn slippery.
No, you can’t have fishies right now.
Mama’s trying to concentrate.
No, fish tacos aren’t disgusting.
Yes, I’m putting that green stuff in them.
How the hell do you cut a *&^%*(# mango!?
Potatoes, mangoes – whatever I’m chopping, preparing dinner is always a trigger for me.
It used to be because I hadn’t planned a meal. Countless trashed produce and late nights cured me of that. Now I plan an entire week of meals before food shopping. So that’s not the problem (well, that’s a PIA in and of itself, but that’s another topic for another day). I’m toast by the time dinner prep rolls around. I’m getting hungry myself. I’m tired. The sun is going down. Daddy isn’t home yet. That pot of anxiety boils up pretty quickly.
Revisiting the feelings elicited from chopping potatoes, things have changed. Potatoes are dense; mangoes are much softer, pliable. Potatoes are born of dirt; mangoes have a hard core with a soft surrounding (oh, there are so many metaphors for a post-baby body with that one). Potatoes are a cold-weather crop; mangoes thrive in a tropical clime.
I am a warmer, softer person than I was post-partum. I may not have tight abs, but I do have an inner reserve of power from which to draw. Like slicing through the pulpy flesh, a lot of things are easier, but not all (removing the pit).
I still get pissed off at the distraction and whining as I’m wielding a large, sharp knife, but I no longer want to cut off my fingers to earn an escape to the emergency room.
I’d call that progress.
And I’d call mango salsa on fish tacos freakin’ delicious if it weren’t so hard to chop.
* Against my better judgment, I’ve included the recipe for Giada’s fish tacos. Proceed with caution – and use sour cream instead of wasabi and crème freche, unless you like adding more stress to your life.
** I’ve also included a link to the proper way to cut a mango (There is a mango.org – who knew? Video is worth it for the entertainment value alone). I think I’d still proceed with caution.
Chopping Potatoes 