Category: Introspection

. . . gazing inward, thinking too much, connecting dots.

The Virus Speaks (Incoherently)

I suppose the people in my church would describe me as being standoffish, aloof. The more uncharitable would say I’m stuck-up. Or maybe this is only my own projection upon the unsuspecting and dear parishioners to whom my husband devotes his days and often nights and inevitably, his weekends. No one is ever unkind to my face and only the occasional anonymous soul offers up “constructive” criticism.

Most of it is imagined on my part, if truth be told. I hear their silent words when I dress on Sunday mornings: “Why does she wear the same three outfits over and over?” and “Does she look a little bloated to you?” and “What is with that curly permed look?” [Note: The curl is real.] The real conversations I have following the services are so shallow as to be puddles as opposed to ponds: “Oh, fine. Staying busy!” (said brightly with fake smile.)

I haven’t always been this guarded. Not until I learned by trial and error. As we’d arrive at a new church, one or two women would appear on my doorstep or telephone me frequently, extending a hand of friendship or the use of their washing machine before mine was functional. I’d share bits of myself, innocuous secrets about my life, candid moments freely offered. And I learned to regret it. I learned that those who approach the new pastor’s wife first are those who will end up being trouble.

Given the logistics of my life at the moment–the isolation that comes with schooling at home while tending to younger children–my connections with the outside world are limited. I am unable to leave my house between 7:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., so there are no gym workouts, no lunches with friends, no errands run during daylight hours, no playgroups, no park outings, no manicures, nothing. I depend on a local friend (or two) who calls periodically, the dearer friends who email regularly, my husband’s intermittent phone calls throughout the day and the connections I’ve made through the internet. As you can imagine, each of these arteries bring a bit of life to me, a necessary adult connection and reminder that I am a person, not just a maid who insists children do math problems and keeps the laundry to a manageable mound.

You know how a person can live with a blocked artery? Or two? I guess that’s kind of how I live now, during this season of life. I used to think that if I were simply more outgoing, I would draw more people to myself, but this is less about personality and more about necessary circumstances. But that doesn’t really make it easier. I simply have to endure and find a way to thrive during this demanding time of life.

When I think about how women lived in prior generations, I feel like a whiny baby. Think of how easy it is, how machines and technology and electricity have made life so much easier. Only, I wonder if life isn’t any easier. Chores, perhaps. Life? Not so much. The more connected I am to modern conveniences, the less connected I feel on a human level.

Or maybe that’s just the mucus crazy-talking.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow I will feel better. I hope. Because a virus must end sometime, right?

p.s. I’m not aloof. I’m just shy. Just so you know.

Cryptic and True, All at the Same Time

When my husband is driving and I am the passenger, he is forever reminding me that men have superior depth perception. Especially compared to me. He heard that fact one time and our experiences in motor vehicles seem to back up this idea. I’ll be stomping the imaginary brakes and clutching the arm rests while he’s still accelerating, even though a parade of brake lights shine in front of us. He’ll say, “Relax!” which has never made me relax, not one time, not since the first time he said it to me nineteen years ago.

The other day, I was idly chatting on the phone with my neighbor, the one whose house was hit by a falling tree a few weeks ago. She’d called to let me know her sick son wouldn’t be going to school. (We carpool.) My son wasn’t going either–he missed the whole week due to this flu bug–and then we wandered from topic to topic. I washed dishes while we talked and then stood and gazed out my back window.

Over my back fence is a new development of houses and on the other side of that little development is a sporadic row of trees, tall, spindly Douglas Firs with clumpy branches at the tops of long trunks. They look kind of like feather dusters and during windy days, I liked to watch them sway back and forth.

As you imagine, when we had the wind storm, those feather duster trees whipped back and forth and some of the tops snapped clean off. In recent days, I’ve noticed gaps in the line of trees. And then, that morning, I saw that in that particular stand of Douglas Firs, only one remained.

As I watched that morning, phone to my ear, that tree began to wiggle and then it began to fall. I hollered into my unsuspecting friend’s ear, “OH MY GOSH! THAT TREE IS FALLING! IT’S GOING TO HIT THAT HOUSE!” She has no idea what I was talking about, but having been the recent victim of a falling tree herself, was appropriately panicked.

And then the tree fell, missing the house completely.

It’s all about depth perception. And how mine is wacky. I always sense danger when danger is not within arm’s reach. As you can imagine, this makes me jumpy and suspicious.

But “jumpy” and “suspicious” are pejorative words. I prefer to think of myself as aware and discerning. For each negative, there’s a positive, right? And, if you are negative, you must admit that for every positive there’s a negative. Maybe that’s just me.

As I pick my way through the maze of life, occasionally bumping into dead ends and circling in cul-de-sacs going nowhere, I sometimes open a door and come face to face with a sneering, leering crowd who holds up a distorted mirror, reflecting back a warped image of myself.

And so I do what any jumpy and suspicious aware and discerning girl would do. I already know what I look like–I am obsessively aware of my true self and how I really am when I’m in the dark–and I refuse to play along with a fun-house mirror game in which I am psychoanalyzed by the clowns. My faults are grievous enough as it is. So, I slam the door closed, deadbolt it, build a brick wall in front it, drag a heavy chest in front of the wall and carry on.

No looping back for me. No changing my mind and turning back. No way for them to get in and no way for me to waver. And once that door is barricaded, it’s like the fate of those drug tunnels that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sometimes find burrowing under the border between Mexico or Canada and the U.S. Even though the tunnels are engineering marvels, testimony to the dedication and determination of their creators, the DEA officials unapologetically fill them with concrete.

I’ve filled in the tunnels with concrete. I go forward. I won’t look back.

The weird thing is that I thought they were closer than they really were. My depth perception fails me again.

I Need Therapy. Or Sunshine.

It’s a minute until 11 p.m., my self-imposed bedtime, yet I haven’t blogged. I spent my morning reading the boys’ history book to them, quizzing them, discussing U.S. history with them, waiting for them to find a sharpened pencil and to stop grabbing at each other. I learned more than I did in high school, and not just about history.

And so, I didn’t get as much laundry done as I should have. And my formerly clean kitchen is a disaster.

Tonight, I’m feeling jealous of the most famous Mommy Blogger of all, which is undeniably the stupidest feeling I’ve had this week. I want someone to give me a plane ticket and sit me at a table and think what I have to say about blogging and motherhood is worthwhile. I also want to fit into her pants.

As I said, stupid emotion. I can’t even believe I’m confessing.

What else? Well, today, our main television died with a click and the smell of smoke. The picture had been flickering and fading in recent days, so I was not surprised, but my 3-year old daughter was sorrowful and said, “Mommy, I’m sorry I broke the t.v.” I went right out tonight and bought a new one at Target. To my great mirth, a teen aged boy was sent to fetch my 27-inch television and load it into my car. I could have beat him arm-wrestling and I certainly outweigh him. And my skin is clearer. But still.

He and his cohort finagled that television out of its gigantic box and into my front seat. I probably should have given him a tip. (Tip: Never mix bleach and ammonia.)

Tomorrow’s Friday, which should bring waves of joy to my heart. And yet. Saturday my husband will be attending a daylong workshop. Woe is me. I thought about taking the children somewhere on Saturday, but honestly, the boys would be annoyed if I interfered with their Saturday morning cartoons and my daughter’s nap time is at 1:30 p.m. Kids! How can we have fun if they are so inflexible!?

My desk looks like an office store exploded.

Could I possibly be any more inspiring and fun?

Now, go read someone with 40,000 readers a day.

On The Middle Ages

I want to talk about having a point of view and about how we come to see the world through our own unique set of eyeglasses. But I just can’t tonight. I have sudden onset of adult attention deficit disorder which scrambled my brain like a half dozen eggs.

I can’t think straight. That’s what will happen to you if seventy-five percent of your children are ill, but only vaguely under the weather so that they merely behave like hooligans, shrieking and chasing and then whining and crying when they fall and whack their heads on the couch. And then you start to regret keeping the 7-year old home from school with his sore throat because, really, he seems fine, though sniffling and coughing from time to time, usually in the direction of a baby’s bottle.

And my cat seems ill. I need to make an appointment for her to see the vet tomorrow. I also need to make an appointment to have my mop hair cut and I want an appointment on Saturday, but I can’t make the appointment because I have some kind of mental disorder which makes me pathologically reluctant to dial the number and make an appointment for any reason, no matter how important or mundane. But my colorist is coming on Friday night and surely, surely the planets will align and my stylist (I can’t remember her name, it’s been so long) will have an appointment just for me on Saturday. At one-ish, so I will look tremendously stunning for my birthday dinner.

I’m middle-aged. This didn’t used to bother me, but then again, I didn’t used to be middle-aged. When I turned twenty-six, I was despondent, but that was because I wanted a fetus in my uterus and my uterus was uncooperative, to say the least. So, I was working at an insurance company in the correpondence department, earning a fairly decent salary, enjoying flex-time, excellent healthcare benefits, including dental and eyecare . . . and yet, I couldn’t stop crying in the bathroom because all I wanted was to be a Mom with a capital “M.” I thought all my dreams would come true if only I were parenting an impressionable infant who adored me.

And then we adopted twins who had the temerity to throw fits in my general direction and to poop on the carpet when I had my back turned and to disregard my preference for sleeping past 7 a.m. I turned out to still have issues, financial issues, identity crisis issues, loneliness issues, and bad-hair issues. I know. How can anyone be so short-sighted? But I was. I pinned all my hopes and dreams on a drooling human being who would be dependent on me for its twenty-four hour entertainment needs.

Ha.

Where was I? Oh, so when I turned twenty-six, two years after my dad died, two years into the black hole of infertility, two years into a job that bored me silly, I was a mite depressed. No other birthday has bothered me. But as I mentioned, back then I wasn’t middle-aged. And now I am.

My mother is only twenty-two years older than me, which sounds like a lot, right? Two decades and a little more . . . yet, I can remember twenty-two years ago and I’m scared because it doesn’t seem so distant. Twenty-two years ago, I was in my first year of college. I remember the weather (brittle cold, windy, trees starkly naked), the clothes I wore (a blue dress with a ruffled neckline that I constantly tugged up), the status of my hair (permed and shoulder length), the weird taste of the chocolate shakes in the Student Union. I remember my shoes (black low heels with interlocking circles of leather that were slightly too big and slipped off if I walked too fast), my friend’s braces (Wilma*joy, only seventeen and overly enthusiastic), the round moon at night whose beauty made me want to weep while I strolled back to my dorm from the library.

Twenty-two years is not that long. And my mother? She just got a cane. A cane! Her lifetime of avoiding physical exertion and neglecting her body while buying yet another pair of lime green ballet flats with matching purse has caught up with her. She winces when she walks. She unbends slowly when she stands, taking as long as a drawbridge to stretch upright.

I do not want to be her. I want to be energetic and physically fit and able to run up the stairs and stoop down to pick up a fork off the floor. I know I can’t do much about the crepepaper state of my eyelids or the age spots (age spots!)on my hands. Age is inevitable–preferable, really, when you consider the alternative–but I’m a little irritated by the physical changes which are happening without my permission. (Yes, I’m talking about you spider veins!)

I wished today that I could see myself side by side, standing next to the sixteen year old me and the twenty-five year old me. I judged myself so harshly then, measured myself against impossible standards and then berated myself for not meeting them. I’d like to apologize to the me of the past.

Now? Now I try to be gentle. I try not to criticize myself for things I cannot control. I stand up straight and welcome another birthday and I would be extremely pleased if only I could once and for all settle on a grown-up hairstyle which would take into account both my natural curls, my unruly cowlicks, my desire for straight hair and which would eliminate my default look, which we liked to call “Weary Cocker Spaniel.”

On the other hand, my grandmother is ninety-nine and if I live that long, I’m not even half-way there.

But I still need a hairstyle.

Time Warp

All four seasons collided today in my back yard. After the preschoolers trailed in wet leaves, I realized the lull in the rain practically required me to rake up the slimy leaves.

So, at naptime, I donned gloves and boots and ventured into the soggy back yard. I raked leaves (autumn), while the sun shone (summer), noted the green shoots from crocuses and daffodils in the flowerbeds (spring) and yet, it is January (winter, according to the calendar). The afternoon was so pleasant and my mood reflected the sunny skies. That’s what I love about the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes the seasons merge together or appear out of order, unlike the snowy winters of northern Michigan where a relentless cold wind blew west to east, leaving six foot drifts of snow by winter’s end.

The rain eventually stops.

I’ve queried several friends and relatives, pleading with them to tell me what to do. Should I go to school, with the eventual goal of becoming a nurse? Or not? Am I too old? Nearly everyone has encouraged me to pursue schooling . . . and I think that’s probably the wise thing to do. I told myself to day I can always quit–at any step, I can quit. The important thing is to start, take the first step.

I know a terrible fact about myself, though, that threatens to trip me. I am sequential in my approach to life and tasks and sometimes this is a problem because I can’t do a particular thing until I do something else first. For instance, I can’t bake cookies until the kitchen is completely clean. And I can’t work on scrapbooks until my house is tidy. Can I go to class while my laundry remains wrinkled?

I’m worried that I can’t possibly start school until every thing else lines up in impeccable order, which is clearly impossible since I live in a house with four children, three cats, school-at-home books stacked on my desk, a cupboard jumbled with Corningware and Tupperware without matching lids, and thirty-seven unmatched socks who’ve lost mates.

I am distressed to skip ahead when all this isn’t quite lined up and resolved. But this will never be lined up and resolved and I must lift up my eyes and focus on the future. For in ten years, I will be fifty . . . but will I be fifty with an interesting, lucrative, flexible job or will I be fifty, wondering why I never did get my act together?

Well, for now, that question looms stark while the answer remains blurry around the edges. But I think the essence of the answer involves accepting the jumble around me and forging ahead.

Tomorrow I will make a list of the steps I should take. One step at a time, even if that voice in my head is screeching in panic about the random insanity of starting something when everything else is half-unraveled. That’s not crazy, right? That’s progress.

All Whine. No Cheese.

I woke up this morning from a terrible dream in which I was heading to jail for an unknown crime and in my arms, I held my daughter. Halfway there, I said to the friendly lady driving the SUV, “Oh wait. Will I be able to take my daughter with me?” and she laughed and said, “No. She’ll go to daycare.”

Perhaps it says something about me that the idea of being incarcerated didn’t faze me, but the thought of my daughter being tended by strangers freaked me out. She’s a clingy vine of a girl and to pluck her from me would be to kill her. Or at least turn her into a whiner.

So I woke up feeling panicked and despondent and that mood has plagued me all day. In a classic downward spiraling thought pattern, I’ve reminded myself of all that is wrong and sad in my life.

For instance, my bangs are wonky, and by that, I do mean “askew.” My natural curl has developed a devious mind of its own and if I could, I would set my head aflame in revenge. I can’t decide what to do. More bangs? Less bangs? No bangs? Bang-bang! I need a revolver. (No bangs is a bad idea. Have you seen my forehead lately? There’s a reason for that.) I need to call my colorist. Maybe that would make me feel better. I need a stylist, too, one who works miracles.

My house is shabby and not in a chic way. Although I am not too proud to accept hand-me-downs, sometimes I wish I had three wishes. I’d spend one of them on a nice, new, custom-built, furnished home. With a view. From my vantage point, I am within view of the following second-hand items: television stand, couch, lamp, chair, desk, Little Tikes kitchen, coffee table, kitchen table, kitchen chairs, trash compactor, preschool-sized table, shelf, buffet, piano, kids’ desk . . . and though I am normally satisfied with my thrifty purchases, not today. Today I’m despondent because my daughter was ripped from my arms in a dream.

My age annoys me. I fully intended to be a young mother–a young, stylish mother–and then infertility pushed me in a corner and my twins came when I was 28. Not too old, right? But then, a second child when I was 33, and the last when I was 37. Now I will most certainly be the oldest kindergarten mother. Which. Okay. Fine. Big deal.

I would like to note that when my mother was my age, I was in my second year of college. See?

And what about the Rest of My Life? Anvilcloud will say this is typical for my age but angst still feels icky. I intended to start prerequisites for a nursing degree this year, but I postponed it for another year. How can I fit another duty into my life when I already want to run away some days?

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. See that? Time’s ticking away! I prop my elbows on my second-hand desk and cradle my forehead in my cold hands. Cold hands! I practically have one foot in the grave already! My hands are cold and soon, my heart will stop pumping entirely and my daughter will wail her loss and they’ll roll me into a grave and that will be that.

I won’t have any cool accomplishments to put in that newspaper obituary. I can’t stop reading the obituaries, which is why I am aware of how young some people are when they die. Plus, the fact that my own dad was 47. FORTY-SEVEN. If I die when I am 47, I only have six more years. Six. More. Years.

I want to be alone. I’m lonely! I want to sleep. I want to stay up late! I want a clean house. I want to ignore housework!

I need one of those fancy psychiatrists to patch my two halves back together again and infuse me with cheerfulness.

Do you know that my 99-year old grandmother still worries about her weight? I want to stop worrying about my weight–and my wonky bangs–before I turn 99. Is that too much to ask?

Of course, I can count my blessings, name them one by one. I can. I do. I remember. But sometimes, the skies stay gray all day, my brow stays furrowed, and I feel like weeping.

This ridiculous moodswing brought you courtesy of:
–My Uterus–
–now wreaking havoc for thirty-one miserable years–

When I Imagine Another Life

Sometimes I imagine a life different than the one I lead. This life involves an actual hairstyle and interaction with adults–or at least people who do not insist on standing on the bathroom counter and licking my chapstick while I’m prying open my eyes and pressing contact lenses to my eyeballs. In my imagined life, stuff (like shoes and magazines and clean dishes and the remote control and the cushions on the couch and the crocheted afghans) would stay put. I could sit on the toilet seat without wiping it off first.

I would get a paycheck and a W-2 form and tote a leather bag back and forth to a Very Important Job. I’d eat lunch in restaurants with silverware and work out at the gym on my way back home. Weekends would be for sleeping in, seeing movies and getting pedicures. Only the telephone would interrupt my reading and I wouldn’t have to answer it, unlike the whining voice calling from the bathtub which will not be ignored.

And in my spare time, I’d write Meaningful Prose which would magically work itself into novel form, find itself an agent, get itself published, garner itself glowing reviews, and sell fifty thousand copies. And then I’d go on Oprah and become Very Rich.

I’d spend time at a cottage at the beach with friends so witty and amusing that I’d overcome my natural inclination to hibernate and laugh my head off instead.

And while I walked barefoot along the frothy beach, shivering in the always chilly ocean wind, I’d imagine another life, the life I have right now, the one full of life and noise and unmatched socks.

A Few Notes

Once, in college, I knew a girl who liked a boy who liked me. Then, that girl hated me. One night, as I quietly prepared for bed in my dorm room (my roommate always went to bed so early) I heard voices in the bathroom that linked my room to the next suite.

They were talking about me. More specifically, they were mocking me. I stood in silence and eavesdropped in horror until my roommate bolted from her bed and whacked that bathroom door, bringing that mortifying incident to an end.

I still think about how it felt, though, to hear people making fun of me. It’s odd and even today, on occasion, I stumble into the same strange land.

* * *

With regards to the outrage I hear expressed over occasional mis-spending of the $2,000 FEMA debit cards . . . it sure seems to me that once you give someone something, it’s theirs to do with as they please. So, if people displaced by the hurricane wish to buy something outrageous and expensive, they have that right. Why are people so outraged? Haven’t they ever been behind someone in the grocery store who was buying something with food stamps that seemed to them to be inappropriate? Don’t they know people who spend good money on cigarettes and beer while their children receive free lunches? This is just more of the same thing. People who get “free” money seem to spend it a little carelessly, if you ask me.

* * *

Twenty years ago, I met my husband. My summer roommate pointed him out to me and I pulled aside the curtains just in time to see him spit on the ground. He’d been running in the North Carolina summer heat and he was sweaty. He looked nothing like the Man of My Dreams. A few days later, we met after I made a smart aleck remark during a Bible study. Imagine. Me, being sarcastic.

Well, that wasn’t a big stretch, was it?

And twenty years later, here I am, living happily ever after with a man who has ugly feet and a heart of beauty.

Criminals Who Look Like Us

Mothers of small children will tell you that just because you are a stay-at-home mother doesn’t mean that you get to watch daytime television, unless of course, you’re talking about Nick Jr. or Disney Playhouse. However, mothers of small babies will tell you that television keeps them company because you can only gaze into the eyes of your drooling infant for so long.

Last week, the little kids were all napping, but the baby wasn’t and I happened surf past CourtTV and caught part of the trial of Sabine Bieber. Mrs. Bieber cared for children in a daycare. She apparently valued naptime even more than I do (how can that be possible?) because she gave the little ones Diphenhydramine, aka generic Benadryl, to make them drowsy at naptime.

One-year old Dane died from her negligence. Now, Mrs. Bieber faces forty years in prison.

I used to think that a giant gulf existed between criminals and me. I judged them harshly when I considered their crimes. And yet, consider this case. You might shake your head in disbelief and wave her fingers around your temple in the universal sign for “ca-razy!”

But really, how porous are the boundaries that separate us from these women? One bad decision leads to a worse decision. A lapse in judgment shakes the foundation until you see the world crookedly and the thoughts in your own head don’t seem nuts at all. The horizon is hidden by the fog of choice after choice that soon leads you backwards, far from your original goal. Disorientation rules.

It’s all speculation, of course. Who really knows what led these women–women very much like you or your neighbor or even me–to take the steps they did? Nothing is as simple as it first appears and human behavior is more mysterious than anyone can explain.

A couple of Christmases ago, when my daughter was only three months old, my husband received a phone call from a pastor in New York. The New York pastor asked my husband to visit a girl in a nearby jail. He went several times and pieced together bits of her story. When she was released (after six weeks, as I recall), he brought her to our house so she could prepare to go home to New York. (She needed the court’s permission before she could even leave the state.)

I was worried until she walked through the door and then I saw that she was much like my own sister, a lost and wandering soul with flushed cheeks and a ponytail.

She stayed with us a week. I will never be the same again. She held my baby, helped me in the kitchen, ran errands with me and kept me company. After a week, we bought her an airline ticket, gave her cash for the bus which would shuttle her home and sent her on her way. She’s living happily ever after at the moment and I like to think that we served as a sturdy stepping stone along the way. I hope her life continues to unfold with serenity and strength.

Meanwhile, I consider the sad cases of Sabine Bieber and Judy Brown. And while my compassion used to be heaped solely upon the victims of crimes, I can’t do that anymore. I am too much like the ones sitting alone in a barred cell.

And you are, too, I suspect.

Enough?

A few days ago, this thought barged into my head: Is this enough? What if I never write a book? What if I never figure out what I want to do? What if this is the last house I live in? What if I never do fill the flowerbed in the backyard with top soil and plant five hundred daffodils? Is this enough?

Early in my marriage and in the midst of our infertile days, I thought, well, fine! I’ll just go to school (more) and become a nurse. And even though I didn’t have children then, I had a full-time job and my husband was starting a church. I was the song-leader, the pianist, the youth pastor and the children’s church leader. I enrolled in a biology course at the local community college, the first step to nursing school. My life was full to the brim and I was exhausted and miserable.

Then one day, in class, I doodled a list of my goals. My first goal was to be a mother. Nothing else mattered to me. I finished the class and put aside the goal of becoming a nurse. Now I wonder if that was the right decision. The clock is tick-tocking and although I know I could dust off that old dream, that doesn’t change the fact that if I went to school when my daughter does in three years, I would be be 45 when I finished. Too old? No, you’ll all say. That’s not too old! My dad at 47-years old had just enrolled in the University of Washington. He would have started in September 1989, but he died instead. He didn’t think it was too old.

I can’t think of anything else I really want to do. I am an efficient and organized office-worker, but, alas, a clock-watcher. I can’t stand the feeling of being chained to a desk in a cubicle somewhere. I loved working retail–I worked in an office supply store one holiday season–but the pay is dismal and the hours unreliable.

And I don’t want to work just to earn a paycheck. If I have to devote my time to a job, I want it to be a job that matters. Which, of course, takes me back to nursing.

But in the meantime, is this is enough? What if nothing ever changes?

And I realized, this is enough. Today I count my blessings instead of the number of milk encusted glasses in the sink. I kick shoes out of my path and scoop poop from the litterbox and carry baskets of clothes upstairs and think this is enough. If my picture appeared on the obituary page, I’d be okay. Well, I’d be dead, but I’d be satisfied with my life.

Tomorrow will come and the tomorrow after that, and then the seasons will change and before I know it, the path will split into two and I’ll have decisions to make. But for now, this is enough.

(Although, maybe this is just a way to excuse my lack of career ambition.)