My kid

Yesterday we danced at a local elementary school. By we I mean, not me, but I was there to shuttle ballerina's on and off and chase them down the hall. Four classes dance a 1/2 hour program 4 times.

In the middle of this, Coray was standing in the hall, looking impossibly elegant in her midnight blue velvet bodice and stage make up. A reporter approcahed her and asked about ballet, the school, her class, how long she had been studying. Then the reporter asked why they were performing at the elementary school. Without missing a beat Coray replied, "We feel like it's important to give back to the community."

I don't know why I think that is so funny. Even today it makes me giggle. But if ever there was genetic evidenc that this is my child, it would have to be her ability to stand there with aching feet and a torturous stick on bra and say with a totally straight face "We feel like it's important to give back to the community."

Nice to know the PR gene does not skip a generation.

Post script: I went to the store and purchased the paper where Coray's interview appeared today. I read it to her ( the quote was quite a bit longer than what I quoted). I complemented her on her poise and how well she represented the school. "How did you know how to do that so well?" I asked. "Mother", she said, "When you spend as much time reading about great Roman leaders as I have, you just know what to say."

Apparently it does skip a generation.

Momma, hands, and the really nice cliche guy in the parking lot

I was putting groceries in my car. Apparently, it isn't annoying enough to remember what you need, make a list, wander all over the store trying to unravel the scavanger hunt of where they might hide it, and pay for it. Nope. You need the weight bearing excercise of tossing groceries for 8 into the back of a 4 wheel drive suburban.

Anyway.

A college kid walked by playing his guitar. Because of course you would just wander around town like a troubador playing "Stairway to Heaven" on your very shiny red guitar. Is there another song?

He made me think of my mom. I remembered her elegant fingers dancing across the strings of her pale honey colored guitar. It made me happy to think of her playing "It aint me, babe" and me watching her lovely fingers. I always wanted hands like hers. Elegant and strong.

I have dad's hands. Great square blocks on thick wrists. Oh, and they're red. They are perfectly useful hands. They're good in a fight since it's pretty much like hitting someone with a 10 pound hammer. They can carry a lot. Great hulking hands like mine can hold up the world and sometimes they do.

But Momma's hands were pretty and they made pretty music while I sat on her bed and listened to her play all the songs that meant that she didn't love my dad. Her pretty songs and her wanted some place else to be.

That is how we are all connected. We are all tied up in three bars of a song. And one boy being a cliche in a parking lot in Idaho is the story of my parents and how they didn't stay together and how I wanted her hands and have his.

Crappy, crappy parenting

So my kid is 9 and can't ride a bike. It's time for the bike safety rodeo in Cub Scouts. I gave in and bought a bike.

He was happy. For 3 1/2 minutes. Then, I tried to teach him to ride a bike. This was a bad idea. I should not be allowed to teach anyone anything ever. I should be hired to give encouragement in hostage situations. All the bad guys would kill themselves immediately. So I gave him some helpful pointers that did nothing to facilitate bike riding. Then I got mad because he wasn't implementing my useless suggestions. Then he started crying because I gave him some more helpful pointers on some personality defects of his and ordered him to fix them immediately.

He did not learn to ride the bike. There were tears and yelling.

Fast forward 28 minutes. Kid is at pack meeting where I have informed his leader he can't ride the bike. I look out my living room window and what do I see? My kid. Riding a bike.

Well who'd a thunk it? Telling him everyone falls and not to be such a baby weren't the key to success. Shocking.

Man, I hope my kids survive me. They are so cool. Sam is riding by smiling from ear to ear but he's going to remember that his mom was big stupid jerk and made him cry when he was afraid of riding his bike.

Looks like we're having humble pie for dinner again.

Inertia

Superhero and famed philosopher, The Tick, is fondly remembered for punctuating his falls with, "Gravity is a harsh mistress." (If you don't know who The Tick is, do us both a favor and don't tell me. Just slink away and use google to correct the horrendous gaps in your education. Don't make me lose all faith in you or give me reason to mock you with the lazer like intensity of a thousand suns. Feel the shame. Fix it in private.)

He's right. While I have no fear of heights, I have great fear of depths and falling to them. Mostly the landing part. But there is something worse than gravity, a force more destructive by far. Inertia.

And I am intertia's bitch.

I have become so adept at the subtle art of holding still that even leaning forward seems an act of supreme courage. It's pathetic. My husband wants to buy me a new house. A new house. Yay. And for those of you who haven't seen my current house, let me explain that crap-tastic does not even begin to describe it. It was a crap job when it was built in 1920. Seriously. I can't use the Crock pot and the microwave at the same time because the electrical service shuts down and the breaker sits there openly weeping at the strain. The plumbing was obviously constructed on a dare and there is 1 window on each floor that opens. Also there are sample strips of orange shag carpet covering the walls on the way down the stairs, you can see daylight under all the exterior doors, and I am pretty sure that the circa 1967 monster antennae is actually holding up part of the roof.

I hate this house. We bought the house for the development potential of the property. The potential for the property is great. So is the potential that this craptastic house will end up being featured in a tragic news story after it blows up/ falls down/ or gets flooded for biullionth time.

Jeff wants to get me a house with a 220 electrical service. Wow. And hardwood floors. And plumbing that can handle a dishwasher. He's getting crazy. He's talking about a house air purification system and double pane windows. Shocking.

I do not want to talk about a new house. I actually probably need one. It does occur to me that this house might be less than ideal for someone with respiratory problems. I get that. Also my kids really need more room and I am willing to dream of a world where all bathrooms have sinks that work. But I do not want to talk about a new house.

Because getting there from here takes moving forward and I am holding perfectly still. And eating a brownie. And watching The Tick. While inertia chokes the life out of me.

5 minutes at the end of the world

I was going to say I love you
I wanted to build some little hall
with words
where you could come
and be with me
Then I remembered
that you have seen me every day
You know all my ugly secrets
and all my shining things
You have felt my love
and you have seen it fail
You have seen me try again
So I'll just say, "Always"
And I'll be reaching
for your hand
the next time
we go spinning by

My disapearing face

I lost 40 pounds. Good for me. I had gotten fatter and slower with each baby and after Jimmy was born, I resolved to do something about it. I joined Curves and worked out faithfully. Really faithfully. I did the diet. I measured my food. I felt so good and slowly but surely, I lost the weight.

I looked at my face, now slimmer again, and thought "This is me".

Identity is a funny thing. How was that face more mine than the fat face? How could I see more of myself in the skinnier girl than I could in the fat one?

Now I am fat again but it is worse this time. I am not just fat. I am steroid fat. A year of prednisone has not just added weight but has actually changed the shape of my body, my face and even my lips. I am not just me and bigger, I have taken on the anonymous roundness of steroids. My cheekbones are gone. My lips are shaped like slugs. Much of what defined my face to me is gone.

Is this face mine? Am I less myself now? I look at this roundness and feel myself disappearing behind a moon mask. Why? Why is this not me, too?

Why can I only see myself as a woman I may never be again? And how, if I cannot find me in here, can I expect anyone else to? I tell myself the right things. Jeff says only kind things about it. I brace myself, encourage myself, reassure myself.

But then, every time I walk past a mirror or a window, I think, "Who in the HELL is that?" How did who I am become my face? And how do I undo that? How do I do I carry at this face that feels strange and bloated and looks alien and feel whole? Why am I this shallow? And if I cannot have my own face again, how do I make peace with the one that I am left with?

For Beefche

My friend is sad today
her mother is gone
her very own mommy
who birthed her and held her
and yelled sometimes
and did great things
and made bad dinners
and remembered the funny story
about the time when my friend was three
and loved her all her life

I am sad just to know
that there is such sorrow
of no more lovely mother
and no more "you were themost beautiful girl..."
Mother's keep our stories
and with them pieces of ourselves
tied up in long forgotten ribbons on dead flowers
and written in pictureson crumbling yellow paper

I am amazed to find
there are no words to fix this
there are surely words enough
to breakand tear and injure
but none now that I want to fix
this motherless world
for one loved heartI have only this-

I will wait with you
while you find your way
back to all the pieces of you
and all the stories of her
and the way she laughed
and her undone things
and the hope of an Easter
for everyone we've loved
and all the pieces of ourselves
that they carried away with them
to sit at the feet of God.

Gallows humor and people that don't end up on the news

My friend broke the temple today. She is the primary president and they are building a temple out of sugar cubes given for scripture reading done by the children. Almost half a year into the project, she sends the hopes and dreams of 105 crashing to the floor. She's kind of an overachiever anyway. Anybody can break a covenant or break the reverence over the temple. She goes for just breaking the temple. I admire her commitment to excellence.

Am I mean? Is it mean that it is funny to me? I fully recognize how frustrating it must have been, the work involved in repairs, the embarrassment. But when I check, deep down inside, it's still just plain funny.

I ratcheted up the steroids again. The pain and fatigue and confusion have come crashing down on me. I was laying on the couch today with my feet so swollen that I could not walk on them and my daughter sat next to me and took my hand. With a suspiciously sweet look on her face, she took my hand and began singing "Puff the magic ankles, lived on mom's legs...." Hilarious. I laughed and laughed. The kids then made a sport of guessing how many hours tills one of my feet exploded. Juli shut that down with a lecture on gambling. Because apparently it's fine to wonder if your mother is going to explode but we don't believe in betting on when that might be. And that's funny.

I have been reading a lot of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. I have been so attracted to their insight and the language they use to express it. I was going to blog about that. But then I remembered that my Lit teaching friend might get a little anxious if I had a blog that could basically be entitled "Smart talented women who offed themselves". I wondered how I could love their work so much and agree with so much of their insights and still see more possibilities than what they ultimately saw.

I hope it's because I think exploding ankles and smashed temples and chaos are funny. I think humor gets a bad rap as a defense mechanism. I don't know that crying about something is dealing with it in a more authentic way than laughing until milk spews out your nose. They are both ways of seeing what is there. The smashed temple is truly smashed, there is heartbreak and there is humor. What is wrong with choosing to laugh?

I can cry for days about what has become of my health and my daily life. And all those tears are valid. But when you are dealing with the irony of a medication that can make your hair fall out and make you grow a mustache while causing both fatigue and insomnia you have to acknowledge the inherent humor in that. How many people get to look into get a hair transplant from their lip?

Yeah it might be a blocking defense mechanism but I think is more than that. When I cry about something I am acknowledging what it has done to me. And that is OK. Sometimes it is even good and I probably need to get better at expressing those moments when it hurts. But laughing is OK too because it acknowledges not just what a situation has done to me but my power to define it. Finding the humor says "World, I am not your dancing monkey".

I wish that Sylvia Plath would have known that. I wish in her silken fine poetry she could have found one finely twined giggle about the worlds most cruel and heartless husband being famous for his sensitive reflective poetry. Maybe if she could have laughed she could have seen some possibility beyond her head in the oven and her children raised by the woman her husband was breaking her heart over.

Defining is a way of owning. And to own something, we must be more than it is. I laugh and Goliath shrinks, the odds change, and the tragedy becomes a sad diorama in my hands.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Sometimes the waters just won't part

I talked to the the clinic manager at National Jewish Hospital today. It's all set, I am admitted into their clinic program. Yeah. I'm in.

And as a patient, I can look forward to scheduling my first clinic visit in August or September. Good thing we go my admission rushed huh?

In the meantime, because of my deterioration, I will remain on steroids without cycling off again.

So, I'm going to turtle up for a little while and feel really really sorry for myself. I know that you will all be worried and want to help. I'm just not really up to dealing with it all right now. I love you guys. I will suck it up and regroup. Just not right now.

Take a stand

A great evil has swept across our Nation. Once again we have narrowly survived it's divisive ravages. Only time will tell if we will be able to weather another assault next year. Now is the time for action. Now is the time to rise up and take a stand. Now is the time to defeat Mother's Day. Let's come together and banish this pseudo holiday from our calendars and wallets and hearts once and for all.

I understand the larger idea, honoring mothers. But we as a people aren't so capable of latching on to larger ideas. What we latch on to is "How this is all about me". This is where the idea breaks down. I participate in an online community. Thus far we have had special mothers day acknowledgements for motherless children, children of abusive mothers, single women, married women without children, married women without children by choice, women who are like mothers to some people, and Dad's because Father's day is under celebrated.

We have heard from complaints from everyone from the single, childless woman who insists that as a woman she is entitled to Mothers Day off of her church responsibilities to the married but childless woman who feels that it is an insult to be given a Mother's Day flower at church because it just highlights the fact that she is not really a mother. And that's all before you get to the angst of mothers who secretly suspect that every second of their parenting is destined for a tell all book after their kids get out of prison, the mother who screamed and swore to get her kids into the pew to hear talks about how sweet and nice mothers are, and the mothers who have become increasingly aware that their children are going to turn out just like them.

It all breaks down. Single mothers break down into single mothers by choice single mothers by abandonment or widows. Married women without kids get broken down into married women struggling with infertility, married women without kids by choice, and married women without kids struggling to overcome traumatic events and resolve their issues about having children. Married women with children get broken down by employment, socio-economic status, parenting style, whether or not they blow on owies, and pretty much every other facet of their lives.

I blame St. Patricks day. Money hungry people produced all those "Kiss Me I'm Irish" trinkets. Who was checking? Who was validating that the wearer of that dancing leprechaun pin was in fact of Irish descent? No one. They just sold them to everyone in search of the all mighty dollar and now we all feel entitled to have every holiday apply to us personally.

So as a mother of 6 kids, I say, let's scrap Mother's Day. You cannot synopsize the experiences of every woman into one holiday. And once you have made every caveat necessary to encompass all situations the holiday has become more about not stepping in minefields than moms anyway. So for the 85% of women who loathe and detest the holiday, let's just scrap it. For the 10% that like it because they are manipulative shrews and use it to further compound the endless manipulation of their offspring, you don't deserve a holiday. And for the remaining 5% who just like it because they are happy go lucky people who enjoy a party, we can substitute "Try a new variety of pickle" day.

Otherwise what we are left with it "Happy Mothers or others who may or may not be actively parenting minor units whether by choice or other wise and whether to the best of their ability or not with no intent to compound the grief of those not parenting minor units or those raised by horrifically unfit mothers who beat them or smoked crack or wore a mumu top with sweatpants to the school program Day". That just looks plain silly on a card.

Being important and being chosen

My friend felt un-important yesterday. It was one of those days that she just felt, overlooked, dismissed, and invisible. I felt sad because she was sad. She wanted to feel like she mattered. She wanted to feel like she was important and needed. But she didn't. She felt invisible and extra, one more great cog in the wheel of blah.

I wanted to tell her that she was important. I wanted to remind her how much she does for everyone. I wanted to say that she was important and essential. I think, maybe we think that is a shortcut for being loved. I wanted her to know that she is loved.

But maybe there is something better than being important. Maybe being needed is not the way to find a place either. In a hundred years, few people will even remember me. How important could I possibly be? Maybe the very greatest joy of life is not people loving us because they need us but because they choose to.

My friend helps me out a lot these days. When I am shaking and throwing up she drives my kids to school. She feeds me on bad days. She fixes things that break. I appreciate her. I am grateful for the help. Some days are so hard, I cannot imagine how I would do it with the help I receive from so many.

But that isn't why I love her. I love her because she is the only grown up I know that laughs from her toes. She doubles over and her cheeks turn hot pink, and she laughs and waves her hand in the air because she is laughing too hard to breathe. That's awesome. I love her because she is very smart and very silly. She loves Jane Austen and Joy from "My name is Earl". She wears endless whimsical bracelets and thinks equations mean something. And she has single handily brought back florals with a evangelical zealousness not seen outside of English Manor houses. She wonders and she learns. She knows all the newest technology and giggles over vintage wedding dresses.

If I have to be affiliated with other human beings, I think I want the ones I choose because they laugh like a seizure and get excited about life. I need a friend to talk to but I would rather choose the one that bought 15 cubic yards of manure and then worried about it being stolen in the night than just someone I needed. I need someone to help me watch over my children but I chose for it to be my too smart friend as she regales me with tales of qualitative research.

I don't know how important any of us ever really are. But maybe the coolest thing is to not be important for any reason other than who you are and the way you laugh and the way you see the world.

Important is OK if you want to settle for that. But I think chosen is better.

I was crazy one day

I went crazy one day. I stood there and I watched things that just weren't so, happening right in front of me. Sophie was laughing and showing me a dance and I saw blood and it was pouring from a gash in her neck that wasn't really there.

"Well", thought I, "that's a new one".

I could see both things. I could see the not real thing and I could see myself see it and knew it wasn't real.

I wondered if finally I have had Enough. I wondered if I had finally slipped my cog. I wondered if it was true what I have always feared- deep down inside I am crazy. Not just a little bit crazy but stark raving mad, the kind of wacko that sees blood that isn't there.

So I went to bed because 9 out of 10 times that is the thing to do. More problems would solve themselves if we just went to bed. I layed there very still, trying hard not to believe the crazy and wondering what I could expect in my new life as a nut job. Would it all be blood and terrifying injuries and the crippling fear that I had caused them? Or would I see the occasional unicorn or maybe a giant talking rabbit? There is so much to ponder when embarking on a new life.

I woke up and carefully considered the evenings events, both the actual and the lunatic. It occurred to me that something was not right. It occurred to me that maybe I did not want to see things that were not so and feel fear without a reason and smile and talk to children while I could feel my brain wiggling. This left me with a conundrum. Who do you tell? What do you say?

It took a while to think it through. It occurred to me that someone as medicated as me might be having a reaction. I decided to entertain that thought. I decided that my meds were finally killing me and I would have to go off the steroids and my lungs would slam shut and I would die a crazy breathless woman and the whole world would traipse over to look at my house and criticize as I lay dead on the floor.

But I called the doctor anyway. It turns out that I am a genius. And an idiot. After carefully explaining to the doctor that I was having a psychotic reaction to steroids and was either going to go crazy or suffocate I sat waiting for the straight jacket and the shocked look. I told him about the blood and waited for him to call the police and have my children moved to a secret location far away from the loony. I told him about the wiggling darkness that crept up at night and circled my face while I held very still. I told him I ate 5 tacos and forgot.

He said, "When did this start?"

"Last week," I said.

"Uh," he paused flipping through the chart, "how long have you been taking Ambien?"

"Since...last week."

It turns out that for the vast majority of people, Ambien causes deep and restful sleep. And for a little tiny sliver it causes buckets of imaginary blood and wiggling wells of darkness to fall into all night long. I came home and flushed the Ambien down the toilet. I can go back to not sleeping. At least insomnia induces giggling silly nuttiness. I'll save the buckets of blood for my vampire movies.

I wondered how often I have sat there thinking the world was ending or believing there was something wrong with me because I just didn't want to say what was happening. I wonder how many of the things that I am terrified of are so simple that a question will make them go.

I have a new resolve. Next time I go crazy, I am just saying something right away. Maybe I am the problem. But maybe I am not. Maybe I can just flush the crazy down the toilet and take a nap. That's worth asking an embarrassing question.

Amadou and Miriam

She put on the disc and assumed her post at the kitchen sink. The music rose, a quiet beat behind the despairing sigh of covered counters and un-vacuumed floor. The music rose undaunted by her despair and self-recrimination. The music rose and washed over her until it found one secret soft place in her soul and slipped down into her aching joints and stiffened frame.

She moved. Her hips sway in gentle circles. Her back flowed to keep the time. Her hands reached, like she once danced to Bob Marley. She was the girl who would follow Lloyd Cole anywhere. In that moment, she was all the women she'd ever been, the punk princess and the mother who grieved over dishes and the little girl who thought Janis Joplin could hold up the sky.

She danced, like someone who'd forgotten that the whole world was watching. She remembered her mother and her guitar and Cotton Eyed Joe.

They watched, with a touch of shame, her mother hips swinging and abandon on her face. She was familiar but they didn't completely know her. She was the mother who wants things done right now and the girl who danced all night. She was easy and the pain that has weighed on her could not keep pace with Mon Amour, ma cherie. She is laughing now.

They giggle and tease her just a little. But they will remember they day she wasn't broken. And she danced with pretty Thai hands, and stomping feet from Africa, and Caravanning hips like they've never seen before. They will remember that she was no ballerina but the music moved right through her and she was all the women she'd ever been in the kitchen while they watched.

On two lives

Years ago, a woman that I loved and respected very much gave me a poem to read. It was her favorite poem. I read it with all the wisdom and insight of a young woman with no responsibilities in this world.

It was stupid. And depressing. The poem was the mournful tale of a dying woman who revealed to her daughter that hanging in her closet was one spectacular red dress that she had denied herself wearing. It is the mournful symbol of a life of self-denial and repression. I thought the mother was pathetic. Wear the dress or don't wear the dress. Why hang the albatross in your closet?

Then I was hanging up clothes in my closet. And I noticed for the first time how many lovely things I have, with tags still on them. I wondered how I ended up with one life hanging in my closet and one life on my back. How did I become a someone waiting for someday to do something?

There is something funny about getting good and sick. It makes you want to hurry up and push all these lives together. If there isn't a someday then what is left is right now.

This is how it came to be that I sat yesterday in a glamorous black pantsuit completely inappropriate for day wear holding a puking toddler. The three inch pearl brooch banged his head once when he flailed around but other than that he didn't mind. An the brocade kitten heels were perfect for a day spent in a chair.

I don't know what I accomplished by this freakish display. Maybe nothing at all. But today it is 4 inch pink wedges with a black skirt and white shirt and a 1950's gingham apron and an up do. I will run out of some days. I'll be flat damned if I am going to do it with the tags still on my clothes.