In the Beginning, at the End, and a Little in Between

My alarm rang at 5:10 a.m. and I decided on the spot to forsake my walking partner and stay in bed. My head felt like a granite stone stuck to my pillow by the force of gravity. Who can get out of bed with such a heavy head, let alone walk with it balanced precariously upon one’s shoulders?

CuteBaby’s mom dropped him off with this concerned comment, “Last night, he had some paper in his poop.” I responded with horror, “From my house?” She didn’t come out and say so, but seriously, the kid is five months old. It’s not as if he’s been to the library and chowed down on a few books while she was working. He rolls now and my floor is admittedly not pristine, so apparently he found and ingested some kind of paper while under my care. I suck.

While he napped, I vacuumed until my a wide ribbon of gray smoke wafted from the vacuum cleaner. I changed the belt and cleaned the filter, to no avail. The vacuum is dead. May the vacuum rest in peace.

When I returned from Target tonight, the boys were sprawled in the family room watching television. I ignored them until a ruckus broke out. TwinBoyA yelled at YoungestBoy for spilling his glass of milk which TwinBoyA left sitting on the carpet in the middle of the floor since dinnertime three hours earlier.

He thought YoungestBoy was at fault for not noticing this glass of milk in the middle of the floor.

And so ends a delightful day of digested paper and spilled milk.

Tomorrow’s goals:
Prevent CuteBaby from swallowing foreign objects.
Plan dinner before dinner-time.
Keep children alive.

I’m keeping it simple.

Counting Down

Come close. I can only whisper this. Shhhhh.

I can’t wait until my twins are old enough to leave home. Only six more years.

I’m not kidding.

This afternoon at 2:30 p.m., Babygirl woke just as my husband took the twins to their meeting with their mentor teacher. I’d secretly hoped she’d sleep longer so the house would be quiet all at once. It was not to be. Instead, her long-legged, lean body wobbled on my left knee while I clicked and clacked on the computer keyboard and discovered that the twins had done very little work for the day.

We are on Week Five, counting down to the end of the school year. They must accomplish a great deal of work so we can end on schedule. It’s not optional. Each day this week, they need to do eight lessons. Today, TwinBoyA did three lessons successfully. TwinBoyB did four lessons, all wrong. He failed two assessments and skimmed over his literature to such an extent that he missed had no idea when the Middle Ages were and what the Crusades were.

I typed out a letter to each child explaining what they’d accomplished and what they needed to finish before they could play or watch television. Upon their return, TwinBoyA read his letter and cheerfully finished five more lessons. TwinBoyB exclaimed at the unfairness of life, stomped his feet, cried a few dramatic tears, declared he would not do anymore work and furthermore told me firmly, “DO NOT TALK TO ME ANYMORE!”

I search my heart and find that I will not miss this. As my husband left (I can’t remember where he went), DaycareKid and CuteBaby woke. YoungestBoy returned from school. The two neighbor boys showed up and I told them they could only play in the back yard. The baby needed his bottle, so I sat on the floor feeding him while TwinBoyB babbled on and on, struggling to find a way to avoid actually reading his science material. He took the assessment four more times after failing it the first time. Finally, he understood that the inner core of the earth is the inner part.

At one point, I was trying to get to the laundry room to put YoungestBoy’s baseball shirt into the dryer, but I kept getting distracted. CuteBaby needed a diaper change. The phone rang. Babygirl wanted shoes on. I need to pee. Oh wait, the laundry room . . . oh, I need to fold that basket of stuff.

Then I smelled the unmistakable odor of a half-potty-trained kid gone wrong.

“Did you p o o p in your pants?” I asked DaycareKid.

Big brown eyes looked innocent and he said, “No.”

I said, “Come here.”

I felt his backside and found a solid little ping-pong ball of it hanging in his brand new Spiderman underpants. Why do kids think no one will notice this personal problem?

(Well, this is a rambling story, isn’t it?)

At 5:20 p.m., I carted CuteBaby upstairs to hand over YoungestBoy’s baseball shirt to my news-watching husband and he said in surprise, “He’s still here?”

Yes. Him, DaycareKid, Babygirl, TwinBoyA, TwinBoyB, YoungestBoy, and Neighbor Kid One and Neighbor Kid Two. I was trying to feed YoungestBoy an early dinner, answer the phone, hold CuteBaby, wipe DaycareKid’s nose, shake off the leech-like grip of Babygirl, boil potatoes and not go insane. The daycare moms both came at once, the phone rang again, my husband left with YoungestKid, but not before bumping the car into Babygirl’s trike which was abandoned at the car bumper by DaycareKid on the way to his own car.

Yes, yes, yes . . . we’ve been over this before and I should be am savoring these crazy days of mothering. But I can’t see how I will miss TwinBoyB’s antics and his complete lack of interest in all things academic. I sat in the living room at 7:00 p.m., going over his literature lesson with him. He is fully capable of reading his student guide and the accompanying literature book, but he most often won’t do so without eagle-eyed supervision.

Why? Why? Why? (I say this while flailing my arms in the air, clutching great snarls of my own unruly hair and foaming–just a little–at the mouth.)

Maybe this is like transition in labor. You know, that point where you think, “I absolutely cannot do this. I changed my mind. I’m not having a baby.” You are too far in to change your mind and there is no choice but to carry on, breathe in, breathe out, focus on the end result, maybe scream a little and clutch the sides of the birthing pool and look into the eyes of the women in the room who know that they did it and you will, too, and someday, you’ll forget just how much it hurt. Maybe even tomorrow.

I hope so. I’m looking into the eyes of those of you who did this and lived–and I’m talking about having twelve-year old boys who hate school. We’ll be okay, right? Right? I can do this, right?

Okay, then. Okay. Tomorrow’s a new day, a new opportunity to accidentally squish slugs while I’m walking in the rain and a new chance to get this mothering thing right.

Salamander in Her Pocket

Despite a rotten night of restless sleep, I met my friend for our morning walk at 5:30 a.m. I kind of wish it were still pitch black at that hour of the morning so no one could see how rumpled and bleary I am that early in the morning. How does my friend appear so fresh and with such smooth hair?

A drizzle fell on us, the exact kind of rain which characterizes our region and causes transplanted people from sunny states to curse and then forsake my Evergreen State. We chatted as we hurried along. I looked at the ground to avoid stepping on slugs and to keep the raindrops from falling into my eyes.

Right in the road, I spotted a lizard-like creature. “Look!” I said. She leaned over and peered at it, then said, “Cool!” and picked it up by its tail.


Not Actual Salamander Posted by Hello

She cupped the salamander in her hand said, “You can give it to [YoungestBoy].” She knows how much he loves animals. Then she zipped it into her pocket.

“I hope you don’t forget that thing in there.”

And on we walked, stepping carefully around the baby slugs which are growing larger each day.


Slimy Example of Full-Grown Slugs Posted by Hello

I worried in silence about that salamander. Would she expect me to transfer it to my pocket? What do salamanders eat? Could it live in a jar temporarily?

When we approached her house and my car, I remembered the salamander.

She did not and I didn’t say a word.

Call me squeamish, but I just didn’t want a slimy pocket pet, even for a moment. I’m not a very good Boy-Mom and clearly, I’m an even worse friend.

This? Or That? Maybe the Other Thing

I have a logjam of things to talk about. This? That? The other thing?

I’ve been brewing up a mental storm about my sister, the one I invited to be the photographer to my second homebirth. What a fiasco! We haven’t spoken in two and a half years when she left town for Japan and took with her twelve pictures of my birth which I expressly forbade her to keep. (She had copies made and didn’t think I’d notice, I guess.) She’s in town and I need to talk all about it here because my husband is sick of hearing about it and I don’t want to put my mother in the middle of it and because she is so irritating I grind my teeth together just thinking about the photographic image of my unclothed self with a baby half-born circulating throughout Asia. If I ever go to Japan, people will recognize me from behind. (If I am devoid of clothing, that is.)

But that storm will have to continue to strengthen to hurricane force, because tonight I want to talk about my dad.

Tonight I went to a production of “Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.” I sat near the back and smiled with anticipation when the lights dimmed. A woman sang, then an actor burst onto the stage. Tears sprang to my eyes and I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying.

Why? I’m getting to be an old sap, but crying? At a romping musical? Where a stageful of men sing and prance and wave hats in the air?

Then I remembered sitting in the small audience at the Community College playhouse watching my dad on stage performing his heart out. For one play, he shaved his head to play a German spy in a spoof of some sort. I remember a bird prop going horribly wrong and the audience howling with laughter while my dad and his leading lady improvised hilarious lines.

My dad was more alive when he stood on a stage than at any other moment of his life. He emoted, he sang, he even danced a little. His eyes shone and he projected confidence and joy. He performed only in community theater, but he adored the stage. My youngest sister (not the picture-thief) has file folders stuffed with photographs of him and press clippings.

The theater itself was dingy and small, but the magic outshone the reality of that small building. The make-up, the glaring lights, the bare-bones props somehow led to a magical pot of gold and ushered us to another time and place.

I saw my dad in new light when I saw him perform, but I always wondered if maybe I were glimpsing his true self, his secret self, the self that was almost extinguished–but not quite–by his harsh father and his broken home and his desperate marriage and dismal job. At home, sometimes the actor-dad would burst through the regular scheduled monotony of our lives–job, school, job, school, job, school–and he would leap onto his tip-toes like a two-hundred pound ballerina with a goatee and sing, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty!” And I would roll my eyes at him and laugh.

So when I sit in the audience and watch actors perform, I cry, even when it’s funny. Every baldish man with a goatee and a too-long nose reminds me of him. When it’s over and we clap, I blink back tears. The lights come on and I look down and dig in my purse and pretend I wasn’t about to cry for no reason at all.

No reason–except that for a second, I felt my dad in the room. Then the stage went dark all over again.

The Longest Walk

Yesterday, Babygirl and I walked around our circle. You’d think that two healthy human beings could cover one-tenth of a mile in a reasonable amount of time, but no. Not when one of those human beings is two and a half. (I asked her, “How old are you?” and she said, without pause, “Twenty.”)

Babygirl jogged at first. Then she did a bear-crawl and became distracted by a black ant. We stopped to gaze at the Gnome-Lady’s house. She has twenty-seven gnomes strategically placed around her front yard. I convinced Babygirl that the Lady would not want her to walk on the rocks to see the gnomes.

We were nearly half-way around the block. Then came the puddles. Babygirl stooped to look down the storm drain. She jumped in the puddle. Because she is close to the ground, she noticed a ladybug crawling along. I placed the newsletter I carried near the ladybug so the bug would climb onto the paper. I thought we might take the insect home, but it flew away.

A few houses later, Babygirl saw rocks. She stopped and stuffed her shorts pockets full, awkwardly crossing her right arm across her small body to put the rocks into her left pocket.

When we finally reached home nearly an hour later, I emptied ten rocks from her pockets.

As someone said recently, the days are long, but the years are so short. Before I know it, she really will be twenty. I hope we’ll still take meandering walks together, even thought she might be wishing we’d go a little quicker and I’ll be the one stopping to poke at ladybugs.

Wondering

A few things I wonder:

1) When did “scrapbook” turn into a verb?
2) Do people realize there is a difference between a conservative Christian and a Christian conservative? I’m one, but not the other.
3) Are labels ever helpful? Does it give you a clearer picture of me when I describe myself as a Republican or do you automatically think I’ve been lobotomized by the right-wing media? I think labels blur true identity. I shun them, but sometimes I use them reluctantly as a short-cut because really, who has time to read a year’s worth of blog posts?

But I don’t really want to be swept into any category like so many crumbs on the floor.

I decided today that when one woman presumes to speak for All Women, she ends up speaking for no one, not even herself. I get annoyed when I read in a book or article how “women” feel about this or that. I speak for myself, no one else. I’ve never had trouble speaking up.

Just ask my seventh grade teacher. I was sent to the principal’s office for being mouthy. I was only asking questions. Why did we have to go over every single answer on the worksheet? My teacher did not appreciate my impertinence.

So I shut up in class for the next five years. Kudos to that teacher for shutting me down.

But I digress. All I’m saying is, “scrapbook” is a noun, not a verb.

Discombobulated

What? It’s already past 10:00 p.m. A half-full, Costco-sized ketchup bottle sits on the kitchen counter. Open Prang watercolor paints on the kitchen table accompany Babygirl’s latest ragged freezer paper painting. I never did correct TwinBoyB’s grammar work from today, nor did I put water in the crockpot after I scooped out the remaining stew. My house looks somewhat abandoned, as if we all ran out during a fire drill.

But you can’t really blame me because last night I googled a variation of myself and found a stunning mention of a particular blog posting I made way back in February. I discovered this last night at 11:15 p.m., way too late for a woman whose alarm rings at 5:10 a.m. I’ve been preoccupied ever since with this derogatory mention of myself in a stranger’s lecture.

I had already been contemplating how disconnected I feel from our society, how belittled I feel as a woman who votes Republican, cherishes her faith and stays at home as a primary caregiver. I am sick to death of the mockery of conservative Christianity by people who claim to embrace diversity and tolerance. I am weary of the voices that refuse to admit that those of us who oppose abortion might have a valid point. There is all take and no give, it seems.

Why–please, someone tell me–why are women of faith, Republican women, women who scrapbook–assumed to be stupid? As if our default position is one of unthinking acceptance of ridiculous theology and backward political viewpoints? As if we are the ones who are intolerant and judgmental? All too often I find myself in the spotlight of judgment by people vastly different from me. All I can do is squint through that glare, trying to look into the eyes of those on the other side. Turn off the light! Come closer and sit down. We can talk, you know. I’ve got nothing to hide, even though I’m made to feel ridiculous for my belief system. I resent the implication that I am dim because of my conservative leanings and my choice to stay at home and raise my children.

I speak my personal truth here. Sometimes I throw caution to the wind and knowingly spout off something provocative, like when I called Michael Moore “smarmy.” Most often, I’m just describing how things look from here, inside my house, inside my head. I think this goes a long way towards forging common ground–because if you begin to see my viewpoint and offer me a glimpse of your viewpoint, we can find those intersections of our lives and see that we are really not all that different. With common ground, comes understanding.

This is not a monologue. It’s my half of a dialogue and ideally, you provide the other half by commenting here, writing on your own blog or even mentally mulling things over.

As for me, I might clean up the kitchen counter before I go to bed, but most likely, I’ll leave that for tomorrow. I’d hate to have nothing to do in the morning.

My Mother

When my mother was my age, I was 18. I hadn’t lived with her–or even in the same town–for nearly half my life. After my dad divorced her, she latched on to a series of bad husbands, each one a little worse than the one before.

First Husband: My dad. Married when they were nineteen. He dragged us around the country, twenty-five moves in five years, looking for that elusive job which would be worthy of him. He divorced her after thirteen years, a bout of cancer and chemo, four kids and a couple of silent years.

Second Husband: Unemployed, drove a yellow van, lots of previous marriages, stepchildren. My dad took custody of us when this man came into the picture. He was 9 years older than my mother and after five years of marriage, took all her belongings in the divorce.

Third Husband: Illiterate, a lot older than her. He didn’t seem to have a job, either, and worse, he had a bad habit of breaking coffee cups and other items on her head. She left after a year and a half.

Fourth Husband: She met and married him while I was away at college, so mostly, I only heard stories and didn’t have to sit in the same room with him while he sprawled on the couch in his undershirt, drinking beer. I heard that he threatened her with a shotgun, threatened to kill himself, and was a mean drunk. She sneaked away, one box in her car trunk at a time, and disappeared from his stinky life about the time I got married. I think her marriage lasted a few years, less than five, though.

While I was busy preparing for my (first and only) wedding–that sacred bonding time between mothers and daughters–my mother was scheming and planning her escape from her disgusting fourth husband. I sewed my own wedding dress, located my own florist, picked out my cake–I did it all alone because my mother was involved in the drama of her own life. As usual.

Two years later, during the time my dad was ill and dying, she started dating again through classified ads. She ended up living with some guy with a repaired harelip for six or seven years. I only wish I were kidding. He would wear sweatpants and undershirts to family holiday celebrations. He knew everything about everything–at least he thought he did–and he tried to recruit me for a multi-level marketing scam. My mother basically abandoned my teenage sister to live with this man, but she told us she was renting a room from him. (He took in two or three boarders in his split level house.)

Remarkably enough, my mother and I now have a fairly close relationship. She lives in the same town I do now–and she lives alone. We see each other and/or talk on the phone every week. She babysits my kids. She’s 62 now, a genuine senior citizen with a handicapped parking permit. I try not to ask her about things that are none of my business, so many of my questions go unanswered, questions like, “What were you thinking?” and “How could you give up custody of your four children so easily? Did you miss us? Or were you relieved to be rid of us?” Our relationship is easy and we laugh a lot, but there are huge hunks of time and giant categories we just don’t talk about. Ever.

When I was a child, I wanted her to pat my head and tell me how pretty and smart I was, but she was busy, really, really busy. She had four children, too, and she seems to have amnesia, because she says to me, “I don’t know how you do it.” She does know, though–you just do it a day at a time, Monday through Friday, one bowl of Cheerios at a time. She doesn’t seem to remember much–her dismal marriage to my father and my brother, sisters and I overwhelmed her. She was barely finished growing up when she gave birth to three of us, all in a row, sixteen months apart and then my “oops” sister, five years later. Her early marriage limped along from one crisis to another.

What I wanted most from her was her attention. What she did most was overlook me. I was easy to ignore. Who notices the easy child, the one who achieves, the good girl, the bookworm? And then she left me and my siblings, just as I was on the cusp of adolescence, on the brink of the most terrifying years of life–middle school.

She feels guilty, I know. And I’ve forgiven her, completely. She did the best she could with what she had at the time. She gave me as much as she could. I don’t hold any of it against her.

Mother’s Day card shopping is a challenge, though. They tend towards the sappy factor: “Mother: My Best Friend, The One Who Was Always There For Me.” It’s a chore to find a plain card that just says, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I bet if I designed a card that said, “What the HELL were you thinking when you left me for your new boyfriend? Happy Mother’s Day!” I’d make at least five or ten bucks marketing it.

Wanting Mommy

He’s only two and already, he shuttles between mommy’s house and daddy’s house. This afternoon, he cried and cried and when I said, “What’s wrong? What do you want?” he sobbed, “I want mommy!” I called her on the phone, but when I held the receiver to his ear, he just stared at me with giant tears glistening in his eyes and backed away from the earpiece. He wants his mommy, not just a voice on the phone.

Bummer for him, though, because this is Daddy’s Week. They switch off and this is the week he’ll only see his mother on Wednesday night. The rest of the time, he’ll be at daddy’s house. He no longer really has a house–he’s a guest at either his mom’s house or his dad’s house.

I’ve been watching him since he was a year old and now I see him more than either of his parents do.

Something is wrong with this picture.

I don’t understand this. At all. I can’t imagine separation from my daughter who is the same age. She wouldn’t understand it.

Tonight, while I held her, she looked up at me and said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

So am I.

So am I.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.