Category Archives: Living

anxiety, Identity, Living

Eat the Frog

I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

Suffering through those things I don’t want to do in order to get to the ones I want.

Problem is, by the time I eat said frogs, I’m usually too damn tired to do the things I want, which never really were obligatory anyway.  Or, I take so long staring down the frog or pretending I don’t hear him croaking that I have just enough time to gulp him down hurriedly before the sun goes down; it’s time for dinner; time to pick up the girls from the bus stop.

Procrastination and perfectionism are not mutually exclusive.

When, pre-move, I described how I was failing to meet my goal of packing five boxes per day, an acquaintance pointed out how I couldn’t possibly be an overachiever and a procrastinator.  Luckily, another such duality came to my defense.  She concurred, that, oh yes, it is possible to be so worried about doing something perfectly that it stops you from attempting it at all.

In college, I grabbed a pamphlet from the career center on procrastination.  I’ve since thrown it out – though it took me quite some time ; ) – but it laid out similar terms.  I didn’t necessarily agree with it.  I am not one obsessed with the pursuit of perfection.  At least not overtly.  I understand the human condition and all its frailty.  I like to think I empathize and can forgive our various faults.

But do I refuse to start projects until I have sufficient time to complete the entire task?  Yes.  Will I stay at that task far into the night or despite my husband’s repeated attempts to beckon me to the dinner table until it is finished?  Yes.  Will I avoid beginning a task until I know exactly how to execute it?  Yes.  Do I fail to commit to a task until I know I can fulfill all the obligations that go along with it?  Yes.  And regardless of all reasons not to start, do I place an unrelenting sense of guilt heavy upon my breastbone until I do start?  Yes.

Hmmm . . . maybe I threw out that pamphlet because I was not ready to see myself in its words.

What is it with these freakin’ frogs?  And why do they all float on lily pads obscuring what murky depths really cause all this angst: ANXIETY.

Because that’s what it really is, isn’t it?  I worry about getting things right because I’m anxious.  I put things off because they make me nervous.  Or I’m worried about getting it all done.  Or I’m worried I’ll run out of time.  Or it’s an unpleasant task.  Or it’s out of my comfort zone.  Whatever hue or size these amphibian friends and foes come in, they’re all from the same frog mother.  And what a mother-f*&%$#@ she is.

The more I learn about myself, my reactions, feelings, and disposition, the more I realize how much of my life has been colored by anxiety.  I don’t know if I’ve ever known what it is to live without it.  There was a time when I didn’t know I was living with it, but looking back, now I can name it unequivocally.

A very talented writer friend of mine just shared a story wherein a character and her mother try to pinpoint the exact origin of the mother’s obsessive-compulsive disorder.  They realize that not only is it impossible, but it is a form of obsession in and of itself.  What does it matter where it began?  One must learn coping mechanisms to take forward with her.  I find myself doing this repeatedly with my anxiety.  But why?  When did it start?  How?  What purpose does that serve beyond making me more anxious?  Why roll back the reels over those years over and done – and with a pretty good measure of success?  Why create suffering where there may have been none?  Or where there was some, but where I had the wherewithal to function despite it?

Maybe it’s the perfectionist in me, but I feel that the fact that I’ve reached a point in my life where I can’t hack it when I previously could makes me a failure on some level.  I know this is my masochistic overachiever unrealistic hair shirt-wearing self, but it is still part of me and I can’t turn it off no matter how hard I try to push with my rational self.  And all that croaking just reminds me of it.  Why do I get a mental block when I assess my to-do list?  Why can I not complete tasks that I know will reap rewards?

Guess the only way around it is to choke the frogs down before they choke me.

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Living, Technology

Incommunicado

Being unavailable, unreachable, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tomorrow afternoon marks a week we’ll have been in our new home.  Only three people know our new phone number.  Only two bill collectors have found us.  I’ve been on Facebook once and haven’t logged onto WordPress at all – let alone post!

Today as I walked home from retrieving the girls at their new bus stop, I felt that my necessary reentry to the world was coming.  Inevitable.  I can only use the boxes around me as an excuse for so long.  Though I still do not have anything hanging in my closet because I don’t feel I’ve sufficiently de-furballed it (their special cat friend left me many presents).  I still do not have things packed into the bathroom cabinets because I haven’t disinfected them yet.  I still don’t have routines and patterns and familiar places to put things.

But the world does not care.  The world will not let me milk this life-change for all it is worth like the sleepy, hazy period that is life with a newborn.  Eventually I’ll have to answer the phone.  Eventually the beep of a text message will wake me from my reverie.  Eventually I will while away an entire evening checking for updates, statuses, and pictures of cute kids.

And while I’m dead-tired and sick of putting the kids to bed and starting another round of housecleaning, I haven’t missed checking multiple e-mail accounts and social media accounts and staying in constant contact.  I got a lovely snail mail correspondence from a dear friend.  Two wonderful friends of mine brought a ‘housewarming’ lunch.  And legions of family and friends trooped in to help us set up our new home.

Funny how we seemed to survive before we were attached to technology.

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anxiety, Living, parenting

Next Stop: Transition Town

Ironically, the section of the book I’m reading right now is all about transitions.

To ease the transition of moving for our children, I gathered a thematic collection of books to borrow from the library:

  • Fred Rogers’ Moving (classic – right down to the 80s fashion in the photos!)
  • Mo Willems’ City Dog, Country Frog (we are going from city to country – though I didn’t expect the heartbreaking twist!)
  • Our House by Emma and Paul Rogers (inspired my daughter to suggest leaving a time capsule; guess it translated my idea of legacy and different chapters in life)
  • Moving by Michael Rosen (the cat giving his family the cold shoulder b/c of the move didn’t quite get across the positive vibe I was going for, but I guess it shows that even ambivalence can be won over with food!)

As I sifted through the on-line card catalog, I extended my search to books for me.  I think originally I was looking for books on the logistics of moving, tips and tricks.  Maybe.  Who knows?  I’m all over the road lately.  But in any event, I found two titles that sounded interesting.  The first, Moving On by Sarah Ban Breathnach, caught my eye because I’ve had Simple Abundance on my shelf for years.  I figured the universe might be giving me a nudge if I was seeking books on moving and here was one by the woman who first introduced the idea of a gratitude journal to me.  Though I know her other title to be more of a self-help, for some reason I expected a memoir on the rigors and epiphanies of moving.  There are personal anecdotes, but it’s also about finding one’s true home regardless of physicality; being comfortable with one’s space in the world regardless of where she calls home.  The idea of home and making the space within those four walls enjoyable is tackled, but it’s really more about letting go of excess baggage to make room for that enjoyment.

Ha, ha, ha.  So funny as my days are filled with purging and packing.  I am totally in limbo.  This home no longer looks like my own as the boxes begin to outnumber the intentional home décor.  My new home is still occupied by someone else.  So I’m hanging out somewhere in the ‘twain’.  I can’t do any of those exercises she suggests for finding what works about your home because I don’t know which one to focus on!  I know the chaos that surrounds me right now certainly isn’t working.

So I get about halfway through this book and reach the section on transitions.  A major thrust of it is that we actually make these difficult times even harder for ourselves by refusing to let go, go with the new flow of things, honor the past and appreciate the future.  Who, me?  I hate change.  There are some people who have wondered if I want to move.  Yes, of course.  And another scared, change-hating part of me, says, this is so freakin’ hard.  I lay in bed one night and realized I’d have to leave the blades of grass I’d stenciled onto the walls of our first nursery (affectionately known as the grassy knoll).  So between the stress of actually making the move a reality and the mental and emotional preparation, I probably do come across as a little ambivalent at times.

But not because I’m not looking forward to settling in our great new house and setting up shop, exploring the community, meeting people.  It’s just because I’m apparently really good at setting up roadblocks on the way to transition town.

And so this is where another highly appropriate quote from Moving On comes into play.  Ban Breathnach shares the words of Mary McCarthy, who says,

“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”

Ha!  If that does not describe me in nearly every aspect of my life, I don’t know what does.  How often have I relearned something I’d already known?  How often have I ignored what needed to be done though the answer was staring me in the face?  Human frailty, I suppose.  That damn weak free will.  We know what’s best and yet take the easier, more convenient, if insanely repetitive and possibly destructive, path.

I know I need to focus on the amazing truths on my doorstep.  A rich life lived in this beautiful little house with many pleasant memories to pack.  A lovely, airy, hope-filled home waiting for us to fill it with sights and sounds and silliness.  I know I can be my authentic self there.  I know this transition will make me stronger and truer.  It’s just a hell of a lot easier to feel it when you’re at the other end of the journey.

 

In a somewhat related vein, the other book I chose to read is a memoir: On Moving: A Writer’s Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again by Louise DeSalvo.  I have yet to read it.  I’ll let you know what epiphanies that unveils ☺

What books have helped you and your children make a successful transition when moving?

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anxiety, Living, medication, motherhood, postpartum depression

You Can Call Me Peri?

So I crack open this month’s issue of Family Circle, the latest installment from the gift subscription my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, and see an article on menopause.  Ok, think it’s safe to skip that one.  But oddly compelled to read all printed matter that comes across my radar regardless of whether it pertains to or interests me, I scan the first page.  In speech bubbles strewn about the page are various questions, worries, and anecdotes from peri- and post-menopausal women.  More than half the bubbles could have been direct quotes from me!  And I am not very peri at all!

The article invites me to “read on to find out how to outwit, outplay and outlast the next chapter in your life.”  Thus begins a decade-by-decade breakdown on how to outwit this personified beast that threatens to overtake all women all over the world.  “In [my] 30s,” I can expect my fertility to decline.  Yes, knew that and no, that does not bother me in the least.  I should become my healthiest self as “what [I] do now impacts how early menopause starts, how intense the symptoms are and how they affect my body.”  Right about now, my dander is starting to get up – and it’s not just the lack of the third comma in the lists of three things that is doing it.  I need to “bust stress” as “mini-meltdowns will be happening.”  I should try tai chi or yoga or a “peaceful play list on [my] iPod” to “help alleviate menopausal related anxiety.”

It’s about now that I realize I’m fucked (and, no, I don’t mean the uncomfortable sex that I can look forward to in my 50s).

Either I’ve been perimenopausal since my prenatal visits for my third bambino or it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.  How does one who seems to be suffering from post-partum post-trauma prepare for a whole lot more of the same?

There is a sidebar by my decade entitled, “Get the #1 Test You Need Now.”  Apparently a baseline hormone panel (“an easy blood, saliva or urine test that determines [my] optimal hormone levels”) will assist my doctor in prescribing hormones “specific to [my] ideal range instead of the range of an average woman” when the time comes.  I actually laughed out loud when I read this, eliciting strange looks from my daughters.  My oldest asked what I was laughing at; how would I even begin to explain?  That, when it comes to Mommy, there is no such thing as ‘optimal hormone levels’?  That if the doctor prescribed me hormones based on the ‘range of an average woman’, the cocktail would be akin to a stiff drink of water?

While discussing “the (formerly) ‘silent passage’ is no longer taboo,” many women are still petrified by the thought of it.  Except maybe for my friend – who has such irregular periods, she was almost wishing for it.  But when I mentioned this to my mother-in-law, joking about it, she responded very seriously, “No, she doesn’t want it.”

So where does that leave me?  No, I don’t have hot flashes.  I haven’t gained mysterious pounds regardless of what I do or eat.  But mood swings, irritability, anxiety – all de rigueur already – and I’m only in my first decade, according to this handy little guide.

I’m starting to view women’s susceptibility to hormones as this insidious little secret that was only hinted at as my mother described my body’s cycles to me as I sat on the bathroom floor over two decades ago.  By no means was my mother light on the details; I understood my body’s workings in what, to a twelve year-old, was a revoltingly clear manner.  But I didn’t know how pervasive those pesky little hormones were.

Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of PMS.  Yes, I knew I’d be overly emotional during pregnancy.  Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of baby blues.  Then I noticed extra irritability that seemed to coincide with ovulation.  Then those damn hormones ganged up on me with crazy, heart-wrenching situations in my life to send me into a swirling storm of anxiety and depression.  Thankfully, my head broke water a while ago, but only with medication and therapy.  And I still struggle.

I’d like to say that an awareness helps me prepare for and deal with the effect hormones have on my life – just as the article touts the “18 Things Every Woman Should Know About Menopause.”  To a certain point, it does.  But when you know the beast is coming no matter what – and you can’t run and hide because life won’t allow it – what do you do?  Grin and bear it?  Pray to the gods that in your next life you come back with a penis?  I love yoga, but unless I take my strap and choke the hell out of the beast, it’s not gonna make it go away.  Maybe I can drown it out with the soothing sounds of my peaceful play list while I try to achieve optimal hormone levels.  Maybe instead of ‘silent passage’, it should be ‘silent scream’.

UPDATE May 2014: I spoke too soon on the hot flashes!  My past three menstrual cycles have been ushered in by a week of night sweats.  Good, clammy times!

 

 

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Literacy, Living, parenting, Poetry

Lessons Learned from Shel Silverstein

I am a late convert to the school of Shel Silverstein.  While my peers cut their literary teeth on his silly and sentimental poems, I had never read them.  My mother hit all the other required lending from the library – Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Richard Scarry – but I had never cracked the spine of Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Until my first grader came home singing its praises.  Her teacher had read it aloud to her class and she was hooked.  A week or so later when we signed her up for the summer reading program at our local library, she went straight to that book as the first she’d ever check out with her own library card.  Her nose stayed in that book like a bloodhound to a trail – except when she’d call me over to read a particularly silly poem or look at a contorted pen and ink drawing that she found equally funny.  And from there, she guffawed through Runny Babbit, onto A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up.

It blows my mind to be here at the exact moment when my child becomes an obsessive, voracious reader.  I know I’m one, but I can’t even say that I remember exactly when it happened (though it was most likely on my mother’s lap at bedtime).  Where the Sidewalk Ends is her gateway drug.

Harry Potter hit at the outset of my teaching career.  Then and many times since, I’ve heard people disparage its literary quality (which I don’t necessarily agree with), but applaud its ability to get kids hooked on reading.  I am not drawing parallels that bring Mr. Silverstein’s work into question, but having never been privy to the mania surrounding his work myself as a kid, I can’t say I understand it.  But, hey, it has lit that part of my child’s brain that makes her interested in an author, a genre, amassing a body of knowledge – it’s literary gold as far as I’m concerned.

And tonight, I mined for gold even further when I held up two books for she and her sister to choose from for bedtime reading, one of which was The Giving Tree, knowing full well which one they would choose (her sister is also becoming enamored with the idea of Shel Silverstein just by hearing big sis talk about it all the time).  The Giving Tree is actually the only Silverstein book I’m familiar with, having received it as a gift for the girls (no doubt by one of my contemporaries who has fond childhood memories of biting into it) when they were smaller.  I remember reading it in a hormone-induced haze and choking through my words at the end of it.  Man, it got me.

But the simplicity of it got me even more tonight.  And the message that it has for all readers – young and old alike.

I was reading it with a different eye, tuned into the words in light of the poetry my daughter has been reading.  Spread across multiple pages, the beginning is actually an extended stanza.  I could see the line breaks and hear the cadence across the creases.  But then the boy grows older.  And things get more complex.  There is an up-tick in language.  A problem.  Discussion.  Back and forth.  A one-sided decision.  And the tone of the story remains at this elevated level until the boy returns as an old man, weary of the world and its ways, and ready to embrace what he already knew as a young person.

So, tonight, as a thirty-three and seven-eighths year-old woman, I learned a lesson from reading Shel Silverstein; one that I couldn’t possibly have learned had I encountered him for the first time in first grade.  By keeping things simple – our language, our needs, our desires, our interactions with others – life is more enjoyable for everyone.  It is only when we want more, we expect more, we demand more, that things gets muddled and more difficult, especially when we look for those things in inappropriate places.  Being totally appreciative of what we have and honoring those who help us get it is a place to start.  And perhaps we wouldn’t be so very tired at the end of it all if we remembered these things.

Who would’ve thought that I would’ve learned such a profound lesson by reading a bedtime story to my children?  Certainly not I.  So a big shout out to Shel Silverstein tonight, wherever you are – for opening my daughter’s eyes to the wonders of reading and giving me new eyes to see.

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Identity, Living, motherhood

The Alpha and the Omega

There are moments when I catch glimpses of the mother I used to be.  The one I was when I had one baby.  The one I was when I was more frequently in a good mood or less stressed out.  The goofy one who sang silly made-up songs.  The one who danced with a baby on her hip till her legs gave out.  The one who wasn’t so beat down she just tried to get through her day.  The one who could spend time with her children rather than refereeing them.

I see her in the smiles of my children.  The looks of surprise.  The glances at each other and back at me before cracking up.  The silly giggles that roll from their bellies and out through their lips.

I see myself in the mirror and I see a girl child who somehow ended up in charge of three of her own.  A girl who still sees herself as growing and learning.  A girl who still wonders at the dynamics of her own mother/daughter relationship as she builds ones up with her three.

Will they see me for who I am?  A person, who in motherhood and life, often makes it up as she goes along.  Someone who loves them fiercely, but wonders how she loses herself from time to time.  And who opens her eyes from time to time to see the true incarnation of who she’s supposed to be – to them and herself.

Yes, the image will change.  The lines will deepen, the colors fade.  But it should only be a deepening, not a swallowing, a sinking.  The original image is in there somewhere.  A fire in the eye, a shape, a sparkle of laughter.

How do I flow gracefully into the deep while allowing the light bubbles of my past to filter through?  How do I get from the beginning to the end and honor both all the way through?  How do I reconcile the woman and mother I’ve always wanted to be with the being I’ve become?

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anxiety, Living, motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression

This House is My Baby

Three years ago, I was in the midst of the maelstrom known as kitchen renovation while designing my own dream space in utero.  In a house too small for three children and no money to move, we decided to do what we could about the logistics of our life.

We messed them up even more.

We ripped out the kitchen, thinking a more streamlined area would ease prepping and feeding three little mouths.  Streamlined is not a word to describe a kitchen reno or raising three children.

Demo started one month and one week before my due date.  Anal retentive to begin with and unknowingly suffering from a fledging case of postpartum depression, my list-making, obsessive planning, and futile attempts at control began.  I created calendars scheduling every detail.  I pushed my father-in-law to speed things up.  I perpetually pissed off our floor installer for constant e-mail updates.

I wanted that kitchen done before the baby came.  I needed running water to clean bottles and babies.  I needed the nasty mastic under the formerly linoleum floor covered up so any residual dust wouldn’t assault my newborn’s fragile airways.  I needed life in some kind of stasis before all hell broke loose.

How a finished kitchen would have prepared me for what happened in the delivery room and beyond is beyond me.  But I felt that some measure of control over my physical world would provide me some sense of control over everything else.  Well, I may not have known that then, but I can certainly see it now – especially since I’m trying to do it again.

Nearly three years to the day after the first pull of a crowbar in our kitchen, we’ve contracted a purchase and sales agreement on a new house.  Gorgeous kitchen aside, we’ve reached the limits of this house.  With one daughter just starting kindergarten and another young enough to make the switch to a new school hopefully not too traumatic, it seems like the perfect time.  Well, sort of.

With interest rates historically low, causing a backlog in bank closings, and a seller who has a cat with special needs (don’t ask), getting into this new house in time for the first day of school is becoming increasingly difficult.  And I can feel the anxiety ratcheting up as a result.  I can feel that nag mechanism gearing up for e-mail assaults on my realtor, unrealistic expectations from our loan officer, and an overall sense of unrest at the universe’s apparent disregard for my wishes.

Every fiber of my being is screaming – make it happen!  It must happen!  You have to get these kids in that house so they can find a home for their lunch boxes and a place to lay our their clothes for the first day of school, make a dry run to the bus stop, and get a feel for that new place as home before they have to figure out a new school, too.  It’s mommy guilt and good planning and type-A personality all rolled into one.  It’s also unrealistic.  Well, sort of.

If I felt any different, I wouldn’t be myself.  I just don’t roll that way.  And it’s coming from a desire to have the best for my children.

It also feels incredibly familiar.

Since 2004, I’ve been pregnant in two and a half year cycles.  When my youngest passed two years and seven months, I realized that was the oldest I’d ever had a child without expecting the next.  And I held my breath for the next three months.  No child number four, but we still embarked on a tumultuous endeavor: this whole house-buying thing.

This house has become my baby.

Apparently I cannot live through a two and half-year cycle without giving myself something to obsess about until it comes to fruition.  But while I see the parallels between my behavior now and then, at least there’s no such thing as post-house-buying depression – not until the first mortgage payment is due anyway.

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anxiety, Living, Poetry

Think about it

We look outside ourselves for distraction, rather than inside for peace.

We look to diversion rather than rest.

We fill our minds to avoid distinct thoughts rather than focusing on one that truly matters.

What would happen if we slowed down . . .

to meditate

to pray

to sleep

to stare

to breathe

to think in slow, meandering paths

to sit

We’d be happier

calmer

friendlier

more patient

more peaceful

better people, more attuned to our purpose here in life

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Living, motherhood, parenting

Phases and Stages

As my three year-old legs trudged after my parents on the last leg of a trail where the promise of the parking lot was just around the next corner, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

In the final push of a crazy semester where all-nighters became a necessity, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

On the last day of the marking period during my first year of teaching, with too many grades to process and not enough daylight hours to do it in, I was the most tired I had ever been in my life.

When I slept twelve hours a night and still needed a nap during my first pregnancy, I had never been more tired in my life.

Then the baby was born.

Then a pregnancy while taking care of a toddler.

Then a pregnancy while taking care of a toddler and a preschooler.

When a few years into a family of three, I thought I could resume my own interests and still maintain the smooth flow of said family, I was never more tired in my life.

Undertaking a six-day intensive writing institute, prepping a manuscript for publication, tearing through my house for showings, looking for a new home for us, and hosting a birthday party, I have never been more tired in my life.

It’s so easy to get snarky with ingénues of any sort, in any matter, when you know what’s coming down the pike.  But they don’t.  To them, in that instant, it is the hardest thing they’ve dealt with.  As is everything that I think is the penultimate exhaustion-inducing tribulation.  But there’s always something more challenging than the last, isn’t there?  Which is another good reason not to resort to snarkiness – karma will come around and knock you on your ass – or at the very least, laugh heartily at your discomfort.

All the more reason to be present.

If we lament our lot now, when we’ve reached the next, progressively more difficult step, we’ll look back and realize we didn’t know how good we had it.

A wise woman with almost as many children as Mrs. Duggar with whom I’ve become acquainted once said, “You always have one more child than you think you can handle.”  So true.  Adding one more straw of any sort isn’t going to break our back, even if we fear it may.  If we only follow our instincts and trust in ourselves, our bodies, our lives, our mindsets will shift naturally to accommodate the weight.

Great advice.  If I wasn’t so damn tired, maybe I’d be able to follow it.

 

 

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