Skipping through Fields of Daisies

Posted on 5 September 2016 by Naptimewriting

I don’t often use this space to twitter about boundless joys. For just over eight years, I’ve blogged to find community, and, generally, my need for connection stems from frustrations, sadness, or observations borne of my disdain for what humanity, as a collective scourge, is doing unto itself.

But I’ll be damned if this isn’t the finest weekend I’ve had in years. Decades. This might be the finest weekend ever.

Set the stage? Sure. I’m in up to my eyes at a great job, slogging through a friendly divorce, and raising two amazing human beings who drive me freaking crazy and make my heart ache all at the same time.

There. All caught up.

Now…this weekend. I planned this a few months back, as summer stretched before me in a long string of work, childcare machinations, family trips, and school-free lack of ritual. I decided that a couple of family trips were not serving my Q3 goal of restoring some of what wall-to-wall kids and work having been doing to my brain and soul.

Yes, I actually have a formal, quarterly goal to chill the eff out. I’m too motivated by formal goals to do anything not on the list, so I put myself on the list.

It’s like I’m growing as a person. Kind of.

I asked my BFF if she wanted to spend Labor Day weekend holed up in local spot by the ocean and hiking trails. Our relationship is anchored in 25 years of enjoying each others’ company but also in being fully willing to wander off by ourselves. We don’t ask each other permission, we don’t mince words, we don’t need to be together a lot, and we don’t get too easily annoyed by each other. We get SUPER annoyed by other people, though. We’re gonna be the best single old ladies, ever.

Like these ladies.

So we spent late Friday to late Monday in a tiny corner of the world right under the Golden Gate Bridge. I picked her up after a meeting at the mediator’s office, where I wept through a discussion of how important revokable trusts are in a divorce, because from here on, the state will assume that my almost-not-husband and I want each other to burn in a fiery hell of destitution and legal disempowerment even regarding our own children. My weekend companion and I took several calls for work, powering through an afternoon of work in half the time, setting up our teams for wild successes next week. Friday ended about 3pm, and my dear friend and I drove across the incomparable Golden Gate Bridge to check into the hotel.

We supped, we read, we ran, we slept. That was the whole weekend. On our own terms, in our own time, at our own pace, for days and days, on repeat. Eat, read, run, eat, read, sleep. In perfect weather. With gorgeous views. In silence, most of the time, but also talking about things small and tall.

There was only one problem: I’m not used to luxuriating in wall-to-wall “there is no wrong choice.” I’m used to cramming little bits of sanity and health into giant gobs of should and must and have to and hurry up.

So I woke panicked because I missed my kids and was sure something was wrong. (There is nothing wrong. They’re healthy and happy and three days without me is a vacation for them, too.)

And I woke panicked because I’d forgotten two things at work. (Whatever. I’ll add them to the long list and get to them as priorities dictate. The work is never done. Ever.)

And I woke panicked because the trip is coming to a close and I still have book and work and handwritten letters to finish. (Yep. That’s as small as it sounds. Cost me three hours of sleep, though. Midnight panic, 3am panic, 5am panic. Super useful way to spend the last night in a quiet, solitary space.)

What a glorious gift, to have nothing to worry about except where and when to eat, run, sleep, and read. It doesn’t get much better.

Most people don’t get this. They can’t afford to take vacations. They can’t leave their children with someone else. They don’t have the time off work, especially with multiple jobs. I’m incredibly lucky that working my brains out and being in the middle of a divorce means I can take vacation.

And I’m immeasurably lucky that I have a friend who makes the whole process exponentially better.

May you all have something like this, and so much more.

Headspace

Posted on 17 August 2016 by Naptimewriting

Everything is relative, of course, but it seems as though there’s no oxygen at 8,000 feet. And everything is relative, of course, but it seems as though a rural vacation is considerably less work than charging hard at moderate levels of adrenaline six days a week to prove my worth at work.

This week, I’m paying off my nostalgia for summers in the high desert, sharing with my boys the quirks of tree-line living, of rural rules and assumptions, of the city mouse’s game “what was that noise?” and “what kind of snake is that?” In between explaining about well water and deer vs elk, I’m taking some deep breaths.

Not just because there’s (relatively) no oxygen here, though. Because everything is different. At home, there’s a busy street 50 feet from our front door. Here, there’s a pond 50 feet from our front door, so stuffed with fish that they throw themselves into the (relatively) thin air to catch grasshoppers. At home, the subway is three blocks away. Here, three blocks is not a recognized form of measurement. There’s here and “about an hour from here.”

We drove four hours from the airport to get to a spot populated by tractors, heron, and large toads.

The first day we enjoyed several major projects. We wandered the yard catching grasshoppers and the boys fished with them, relying on their grandfather to both bait and release the hook from half a dozen bass and bluegill. We wandered the yard looking for antlers and found sun bleached bones from a creature who I’m willing to bet was a calf, and who, judging by the vertical leg bone we dug (with oak sticks) out of a deep hole probably got caught in the mud, and who met her demise some time thereafter.

The boys dug up all the bones they could find, and today we might try to reconstruct the skeleton (which seems to me lacking a lot of the fundamentals, unless cows these days are mostly leg.)
Today we will wander the creek. And the boys will whack down all the dried wild parsley they can find, bashing the weed that does whatever you ask when you’re wielding an oak stick.

I think I’m going to name my band Oak Stick.

I don’t sleep well at elevation, because my sleeping brain is convinced that there’s (relatively) no oxygen. I wake several times a night hyperventilating. But I’ve been here before. From at least the time I could walk through preschool, and every summer since, I’ve been in the southwest, hot and dry days, chilly nights, trouble baking, and breathless. My dad taught me long ago to fight off nighttime oxygen panic by exhaling and only breathing when I actually need air. My brain is wrong. It tricks me.

Just like the panick at work. Self-imposed deadlines and a low-level standard urgency lead me to fly from meeting to meeting, call to call.

It’s not working for me.

Neither does fishing.

So I’m back to reading and writing. Exhaling completely and then forcing myself to wait until I really need a breath. Listening to what works rather than the stressful combination of “should” and “hurry” I’ve concocted. Recalibrating.

Reset

Posted on 16 July 2015 by Naptimewriting

No matter how busy the days have been over the past few weeks (I’m going to pass on the hyperbole and cliches, but it’s been pretty freaking busy), I’m able to catch my breath. To smile. To look around and really see.

The pace of changes in our family have accelerated, but the rhythm has slowed. Because I’m building intention into our rituals, our conversations, and our home.

I’ve boxed up all the wedding china. And I’ve replaced it with a classic family tradition: a mess or a miracle, depending on your perspective.

A few weeks after my grandma died, my mom invited me to look around and claim my memories. I went right to the kitchen.

If nobody has claimed them, I want two of these.

She asked if I was kidding. They’re chipped and cracked, she noted. Sure. But they’re the plates we used every week for Sunday dinner after my mom moved us back to California in 1979. Every week. Grandma and Grandpa and mom and kids and aunts and uncles and cousins.

I wasn’t kidding. I wanted two.

She gave me four.

The day I got them home I dig through the boxes in the garage. I didn’t know what they looked like, but knew they were there…in a dusty white file box labeled “grandma china.” Paternal grandma. Died in the early 90s. China came to me years later. And I never used it.

I took four and put them with maternal grandma’s plates.

Paternal grandma was one delightful half of my wholly delightful sciencey grandparents, whom I visited several times a year in Tucson. Scrabble and tennis and gin rummy and butter rum LifeSavers. And though I miss both her and grandpa every day, I have no memory of the plates. But who cares…they’re a piece of the people I adored. They remind me of lemon meringue pie and monsoon rains and Kodak carousels of global travels and a blue checked tablecloth.

My mom figured out what I was doing, and saved me a few of these.

Maternal grandma’s. I stopped caring about the stories and just basked in nostalgia and the glory of building from good memories. Starting over with just me and my boys and the legacy of love and kindness that is their birthright.

My kitchen is dripping with metaphor. Seriously, it’s like a bad freshman essay in there. And I love every cornball connotation.

A few days ago mom put four plates in my car. It was a frantic day of fraught decisions and parenting fails and traffic and yuck. I thanked her and heartlessly forgot them.

And today after work I remembered mustard for my boys’ favorite veggie burger recipe (lentils, rice, cashews, and a big pinch of organic shut-up-if-you-hate-veggie-burgers). And pulling the groceries out of the car I remembered mom’s plates.

I didn’t really look. I washed them. And I served burgers on them.

And after the kids went to bed I payed attention.

My mom got these as wedding presents. Her marriage ended when I was five. She didn’t want the plates.

My grandma did.

So now I serve my family homemade food on plates my grandma valued even as my mom wanted to shed the memories they represented.

Grandma gave them a second chance, and new memories.

And now I’m doing the same.

Starting my way, with my family, and making my choices based on love, nostalgia, and a willingness to shed formal for cobbled together and beautiful.

Strange land

Posted on 4 April 2015 by Naptimewriting

I don’t t understand this place. The beach has sunrise, not sunset.

Photos from my pre-dawn run…

A recipe for family

Posted on 28 March 2015 by Naptimewriting

I’ve been missing my grandmas this month, having lost one twenty years ago and another a month ago.

So I’ve been baking all their favorite recipes.

On St. Patrick’s Day I made my sweet Rose’s soda bread. I first made it right after college, living in Boston, when a St. Patrick’s Day card from my mom made me call her in a panic because it would be my first year since age four without her famous Irish soda bread.

The recipe is still on the back of that Snoopy card from my mom, though the See’s cocoa-and-nougat Irish potatoes that accompanied it are long gone.

My kids love the family’s soda bread. I love the bread. It’s one of our Springtime rituals. And for the first time in twenty years, my soda bread tasted terrible. It was dry and crumbly.

I felt I’d failed grandma.

She will likely forgive me, since she’s a swell old gal, and was known to muddle perhaps one recipe a year herself. And because I never question her patience with and love for me. Ever.

But that recipe got me thinking about all my heirloom recipes. My great grandmother’s honey cakes, the recipe for which my aunt gave me on my wedding day, nestled in the sterling silver tiers on which she used to serve them. My uncle’s crepes, a special treat for the kids the morning after thanksgiving, which we wolfed down as the grownups lolled about in sleeping bags and we giggled at how much powdered sugar we could keep off the table by just licking it off the thin pancakes.

During this nostalgic romp through my food memories, I found my beloved grandmother’s Crested Butte Chocolate Cake recipe. I love this recipe. I used to swear by this recipe to impress and nourish the friends who made me feel adored. But since a treasured aunt, my godmother, gave me the phenomenal Moosewood Cooks at Home, I’ve been making their 6-Minute Chocolate Cake. To the exclusion of my grandmother’s old standby, and my favorite.

Finding the cocoa-dusted recipe cards for this cake made my week.

I made my nieces this wonderful cake for a family celebration of birthdays and loss. To celebrate the end of a very stressful month. To celebrate my son turning five. To celebrate love and life. And grandmas.

Yes, he cut his own piece. And he ate a every bite.

Super Fly

Posted on 15 March 2015 by Naptimewriting

As Peanut developed his birthday present wish list this year, he got engaged in a writing project in class. They’re working on nonfiction writing, and are researching to become experts, then writing a book with catchy chapter titles. It’s incredible to watch.

Peanut chose to cultivate expertise in carnivorous plants. We worked together on how to group the information. Should Venus flytraps be their own chapter? Should all pitcher plants be their own chapter? Should the plant types come up only incidentally as he writes about the ways in which carnivorous plants lure, catch, and digest their prey?

One morning, on a hike, a lovely friend asked Peanut what he was working on in school. And as he explained it, another friend turned to me and asked if we knew about the local carnivorous plant nursery. What in the holy awesome?!…No, we didn’t.

Then that night, a brainy science-y toy catalog came in the mail. Peanut leafed through and found a carnivorous plant terrarium. What in the amazing coincidence?!….Cool!

I didn’t know you can just go to Sonoma County and buy a Venus flytrap and a sundew. I didn’t know you could have them in and around your home. Neither, it turns out, did my expert. He thought they were magical tropical rarities, not local realities.

So I offered to take him and to buy some plants for his birthday. He lit up like a dancer allowed backstage at the Nutcracker.

The guy who toured us around the nursery got his first bug-devouring plant when he was 11. And he still has it.

Peanut is 9. And now is the proud owner of a pitcher plant, sundew, and Venus flytrap. Not the WKRP kind. The real kind.

He even talked me into getting his brother a carnivorous plant. Because he’s awesome that way.

pitcher plant half full of insect devouring acid. Now living on my desk in case of trolls.

Small people mining the yard for flytrap prey. Together. Without fighting. Nothing brings brothers together like sacrificing insects to plants.

The three Musketeers, saving us from wayward aphids one drop of acid at a time.

Venus Flytrap. Note the shriveled, black head at about 4:00 on this plant. The heads can only close 2-3 times, and if they don’t catch something tasty, they go black. All heads go black, the plant dies. Somewhat like the dreams of academics.

Sundew. All those droplets are acid. D. capillaris, for those who care. Pink sundew.

Sundew for the brother. Cape sundew. D. capensis. Proud devourer of six aphids this afternoon. Score!

Yin and Yang

Posted on 12 March 2015 by Naptimewriting

Writing on the circle of life is trite and cliche, but here I am again, a year later, with another birthday/deathday post.

Last year my friend died on my youngest son’s birthday. The end of one life at 44 and celebration of 4 years for another offered a roller coaster of emotion that forced me into hyperawareness. I took 450 photos at the beach that day, and kept 85. I can recall the physical position of my body for each of those 85, and how many tears or deep breaths followed each.

This year my eldest is having a birthday on the same day we bury my grandmother. The morning included giggles and chess and special treats. The midday involved tears and reciting prayers, hugging and trying to tolerate loved ones. And traffic. Jesus Farnsworth Christ, the traffic. Then laughter and french toast dinner and gifts and a long chapter book.

My brain almost shut down with exhaustion that night, having stimulated every single part of my neuro-cognitive-emotive mind, from memory to emotion to quantum physics and stifled Church giggles. (Seriously, if you tell a group of Irish Catholics that the response to the interstitial prayers is ‘Lord, have mercy,’ you can’t help but laugh when, by the fourth round, they’re all saying, ‘Lord, hear our prayer.’ Such is religious Pavlovian response, and I reserve the right to laugh out loud, even at a solemn event, when my brother shrugs and says, ‘Lord, hear our prayer and also have mercy.’)

The nature of life is death. We know this. But there are quite a few days of full-blown glorious life before we reach our eventual death, even if we die, as my friend did, painfully young. The counterbalance to joy is sorrow. And exhaustion. My sorrow on this birthday-deathday was keenest at the point in my reading where I said, “look at all she has left.” Because I was lucky enough to have a grandma whom I adored, meet and love my children. I don’t know that life gets better than that. I really don’t. Accomplishments and glorious food and wondrous sunrises and breathtaking hikes…these pale beside the knowledge that my beloved lived long enough to love what I made. To forgive me my tresspasses as I forgave those who trespassed against me. To offer a sign of peace.

Peace be with you. And also with every single person on this planet, amen. Please. Every single person, forgetting none. Genuine peace. Thank you. Amen.

Of course it’s hard to have a memorial, regardless of circumstance; and it was particularly hard to have a memorial on the day my amazing baby turns Nine. I felt I couldn’t fully mourn because I had a cake to make, a boy to cherish, a life to live. Nobody is fond of death. We rarely talk about it, except when we need a cathartic release of all the stress and pain woven into our daily lives. You can’t cry about a tough meeting, but you can cry about your grandma’s stroke. You can’t cry about the pressures of co-parenting with a person with priorities so completely different you wonder why you ever made it past the first date, but you can cry that your friend died too young, leaving his children irreparably altered. This sorrow, though, is always tempered by the joys of life. Nobody’s death is all of another person’s life. We all have parts of ourselves untouched by even the closest loves. I feel guilty that part of my life are seemingly undisturbed by grandma’s death, just as I feel guilty that parts of my life don’t change just because my children live, thrive, grow, and blossom.

As hard as it is to say goodbye, I loved my grandmother. That’s richer than chocolate mousse. She loved me. That’s sweeter than clean, clear water on a hot day. We told each other we loved and appreciated one another. That’s better than gold. Heck, that’s better than applause. I saw her a few days before her stroke, and brought her a favorite treat that she enjoyed with marked pleasure, despite all her frustrations about not being able to read, walk, or hear as she wanted to. She high-fived my son and told me stories from her time as a young mother, a time when women had to quit their jobs once they married because employers assumed marriage was for childbearing, women were exclusive childrearers, and work was for men. It was a good visit. And it was one of hundreds.

I’d still really like one more talk with her. Or ten. Or maybe one thousand. Yes. One thousand more talk, please.

We are a miracle, my family. Your family is one, too, with all its blemishes and warts and struggles and eases. We are miraculous because of those who came first, who built, and who endured.

My grandmother did these with style and grace.

“My mom used to say, ‘Am I responsible for all this?'”

And so in honor of my dear, sweet grandma, I offer a birthday card. Because life doesn’t stop, even when there is pain, even when there is sorrow. In fact, life becomes more sweet, and I pay even closer attention.

Happy next phase, grandma. May your next eternity be peaceful, restful, exciting, and funny. I love your laugh and hope the Universe gets some piece of it, forever.

Happy, happy birthday to my incredible, hilarious, impressive Nine Year Old. May your next 90 years be full of people like your Great Grandma: kind, understanding, resilient, and welcoming. And may you bring some piece of that to the people you meet, as well. I love your laugh and hope the Universe gets some piece of it, too, forever.

Peanut, 2006-infinity and beyond.

And

Rose 1916-2015.

Eyes open, head up

Posted on 19 February 2015 by Naptimewriting

On a hike with a friend Monday I saw

And on a walk to clear my head Tuesday I absorbed

And on a run Wednesday I was ignored by

And on a run Thursday I spied

Paying attention is my favorite thing ever.

Filling the Spaces

Posted on 16 February 2015 by Naptimewriting

One of the unexpected journeys in the process of separation is reorganization. Not just reconfiguration of stuff, but of ideas and intention and meaning.

A third of the furniture goes, a quarter of the closets empty, much of the cupboards’ contents thin…there’s more space. And in those spaces there’s a lot of unearthed treasure. It’s as though the furniture has been emptied, unbolted from the wall, and moved to the center of the room. Now I get to put everything back together a different way and collect the little treasures that fell into the gaps years ago. Pennies, dust, LEGO wheels, and a long-lost photograph all reward my efforts at fixing what doesn’t feel right.

Since the house has less in it, I’ve realized what I do and don’t use, what is and isn’t important, where I do and don’t feel comfortable. Connection to what feels right waxes and wanes; excitement over exploring the spaces I find and sense of home I create is ephemeral. While the boys are awake, the house is full of life and noise and life. And it’s just right and too much all at the same time. While I work the house fades away and I’m in a known, safe place playing to my skills. When there’s no work and no children, I’m puzzled by the lack of flow around me. The books are in the wrong places and I need to reorganize. The bed drawers stick and I’m suddenly just enraged that I don’t have a dresser. I buy one and build it and feel triumphant, trying to create a new space that is all mine and fits just right. Then, in settling into the newness, I notice something else that is all wrong and needs a good reconfiguring.

The roller coaster in and out of discomfort isn’t about stuff, of course. It’s not a function of dresser or lack of dresser. The issue is not that few of the projects boxed in the garage are ever going to see the light of day, nor is the real problem that I don’t even know how to begin purging those old projects.

The sense of unease comes from not knowing which parts of my life to keep. Do I want to be more of the old me, the person from before the marriage? Am I some of those parts plus other facets I shaped with my husband and with my kids? Have I completely shed the pre-Spouse self and now need to crawl out of the marital shell as a completely new person? That’s a lot of pressure to metamorphose. Am I what I choose now to keep and what I ditch? Do I have to define myself right now, today, or can I actually give myself some time, try things out, explore and evaluate? Is unknowing exploration a quality only of youth, or am I allowed some leeway? If I buy a new dresser because the organization in my room is genuinely dreadful and not working for me, and I get gorgeous unfinished pine and paint it in glorious ways as a way to feel I own all my life changes, then I decide I hate it, can I just Craigslist my transition self and get a new one?

At least three friends are in the midst of the seeking, the sorting, the excavation; one is upset about the physical mess of splitting two merged lives into two separate lives.

The good and bad news is you can’t sort out who you are in an afternoon. Or a weekend. Or a month. You have to sit in the mess for a while. Parts of your house’s going to be a disaster as long as your heart, your head, and your life is a disaster. But in that disorganized clutter is a whole mess of opportunity.

This process isn’t like splitting a pizza dough recipe. There is no simple, William Sonoma tool for cleaving a family into two tidy sections. Not even in the annual parody.

But the messiness is an unexpected benefit of this process. Space to make changes, space to reevaluate, belongings dumped in a heap and begging to be evaluated. What’s working? What’s not? What do I need? Who I am?

In the empty and messy spaces, there is opportunity for new and opportunity for do-over. I don’t have to fill all the spaces right now. Or ever. I could leave them alone for a while. Wipe them clean and fill them with different ideas. Or shift endlessly. Consolidate and decorate and ponder. Try something and see how it goes. Put everything in boxes in the garage and donate them next year if I still don’t need them.

I’m excited to see what I find during the excavation, and how I fill or retain the spaces as I come across them. I can’t wait to sweep out the corners of my life I haven’t seen in years but that I’m slowing down to examine lately.

Flawless is a strong word

Posted on 16 November 2014 by Naptimewriting

I don’t want to dissect this statement too carefully, because life is never as hyperbolic as I make it sound, but this might have been the best weekend ever.

Friday I met a dear friend for coffee. We unburdened and relaxed a bit. Then I packed my bags and went to another treasured friend’s house. She had planned a ladies’ weekend for us in honor of our birthdays. When I came back my extended family threw me a grand party.

Those bare details would be enough for me. From coffee with a friend through dinner with beloved family, I would have gloated that this weekend was wonderful. But the details were stunning.

The weekend included:
sleeping late two days in a row (something I haven’t done in 9 years)
a scenic run in good company
several walks along the beach
being caught off guard by a wave
sunshine
copious food that I didn’t have to prepare
my first massage in almost six years
genuine and complete quiet
75 pages a book I’ve been dying to start for several years
several trips into a sauna, which resonates physically for me with nostalgia and safety
a hilarious moment when I came out of my hotel bathroom to find a small bird eating my dessert
a pink-fluffy-cloud sunrise in a pale blue sky over the ocean
two hours of quiet driving with a great audiobook
a happy house that my children and their dad had cleaned
the smells of a dinner my sons made for our party
fourteen people I love celebrating our mutual adoration with good food and wine
a gorgeous birthday cake
thoughtful homemade gifts
and a night where my children played kindly with cousins without incident.

There wasn’t any of it that could have been better. None.

I can’t remember saying that about a full two day stretch before.

Blessed, charmed, lucky, and grateful don’t even begin to articulate my current existence.

On joy and feeling at home

Posted on 9 November 2014 by Naptimewriting

Today was the Berkeley Half Marathon, but this is not a running post, I swear. This is a post about what happens when love and elation and pure physical joy combine on a bright and clear Fall day in the Bay Area.

I’ve thought often about leaving Berkeley. I did leave, actually, after college. For Boston. And after passing through four Boston suburbs in three years, I came back. I left again a few years later. For Southern California. Good gawd, don’t ever do that. I came back.

And lately I’ve been talking about leaving again. Cost of living here is astronomical. Self righteousness is, too. I’m used to being the weirdest in a place, not one of the most conservative. And I’d like to raise my boys without working 80 hours a week, which is what it would take at these prices. Note that housing costs five times the national average here. It’s crowded and expensive and the pace is relentless. That leaves me feeling agitated quite often.

But it’s sunny and warm almost all year. The population is highly educated, the air and water are clean, the food is phenomenal, we’ve built a large and wonderful community of friends here, and the number of museums within a 20 mile radius is staggering.

So we live here and raise our boys here. And I run here.

The half marathon today covered all my regular runs, offering magical moments of “hey, I haven’t been here since I was pregnant with Butterbean” and “this is where our soccer team plays” and “I lived there in college” and “there’s my favorite fire fighter!” The course was peopled, end to end, with wonderful neighbors and friends, all cheering for the 9,000+ runners who busted their butts today.

I don’t know that many people who watch races have any earthly idea how important each cheer, each clap, each cowbell is for runners. I felt like I was flying today because of all the community love. The best homemade signs: “This seems like a lot of work for a free banana!” and “Puppies at the finish line!”

You want to make someone’s day? Say “woo!” every once in a while as a race goes by your house. You want to feel adored? Run the Boston marathon. The whole town comes out to yell for strangers making one of the toughest 4-hour efforts of their lives. It’s beautiful thing to witness.

That's my friend Anna! She's AMAZING. She won the race and set a course record. Photo credit: Camila Bernal for San Francisco Examiner

Speaking of beautiful, that’s my friend Anna! She’s AMAZING. She won the race and set a course record. Photo credit: Camila Bernal for San Francisco Examiner

Even better? Today a dream came true for me. I’ve always wanted to be doing something challenging and to have my boys holler “way to go, Mommy!”

For the first time in nine years, I heard “Yay, Mommy!” And I heard some version of it four times. Their dad came over early in the morning so the whole family could drive me to the start line. And then he drove our sons to four different places on the course so they could holler for me. And high-five me. And let me choke back sobs of joy while I silently insisted to myself that I channel that energy rather than wasting it on electrolyte-depleting tears.

Oooh, how I wanted to sob. I was doing my best and my kids got to see it and congratulate me loudly? Shut the front door. That’s heaven right there.

Today I ran along the water, basking in the stately presence of the Golden Gate Bridge, who was peeking out above Karl the Fog to wink at us. “It’s always warmer over there, amirite?” the bridge crowed. Today I beamed as members of Peanut’s soccer team and Butter’s preschool yelled for me and chased me as far as they could. Today I offered to help runners who had obviously been held back by injuries on the course. because love trumps all else in a community race. Today I ran without music or mental chatter because I was surrounded by a thick stream of runners and supporters, all of whom made me see the streets in a new way: communal, engaged, human.

Today felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket of sunshine with a fresh bowl of freshly picked strawberries and blueberries that I got to share with family and friends. It was a brilliant party. And I loved every minute of it. Many of my moments of joy are cut short: by reality, by the pain of others, by life. Today I had two full hours of uninterrupted joy. and the kids didn’t start fighting for at least 10 minutes after I finished, so let’s call it 130 minutes.

Thank you Berkeley, co-parent, and friends. You’re the best.

[This isn’t a post about running, but I must say for my running peeps that I finished between my goal time and my secret no-way goal time. Icing!]

My love letter to audiobooks

Posted on 16 October 2014 by Naptimewriting

I’d gotten to the point in my midlife when I thought I wouldn’t fall in love again. I’ve had my turns with relationships, and learned something glorious from each. My love for my children teaches me about infinity and about dark human frailties. My love for my friends dances about like dandelion seeds, unpredictable and lovely.

And until I found you I thought nothing could surprise me.

Friends told me about you. I wasn’t ready, so I didn’t really hear them. Blah blah podcasts, blah blah library downloads. “No, thanks,” I thought. Audiobooks are what my parents listen to when they drive cross country. Books on tape we call them. You can’t hope to get a good story going in the 20 minutes on the way to the increasingly-too-freaking-far-away preschool. I can’t hear a story…really hear…on the way to the grocery store or a meeting.

The kids and I checked out audio CDs for long day trips. King Arthur legend stuff and The Hobbit. Things I didn’t want to read aloud at night. Because that reading is precious. First the back and forth of “little guy chooses a book, then big guy reads from his Just-Right chapter book, then little guy gets another, then big guy reads again…” until we brush teeth. Then the big story after lights out. Well, lights out except for the sea turtle who throws stars on the ceiling, a gift from their uncle that keeps us company all Fall and Winter. Turtle time is big story time…Peanut and I deliberate in the library and in front of our bookcases full of kids’ books. Charlotte’s Web, Phantom Tollbooth, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter. I save those marvelous books for “real” reading: my voice, our mismatched-but-once-inextricably-linked bodies cuddled in the big chair, focused on the spotlighted page that becomes, in the book light’s insistence, a stage on which our nightly story plays out.

Audiobooks were for the stuff I didn’t want to read. That we could finish on a trip to the beach and back, or that took too much work.

Crawling back to the river is too hard. Can’t an audiobook do this for me?

But then I got an email. Two free books to try it out. Any titles you want.

Um…can’t hurt to try? Blind date with an audiobook. I’m not ready for something new, and I don’t foresee love in my future, but I can try. Whatever. Free is good. Novelty is sometimes okay, even for the change-averse.

Oh, good heaven how you bowled me over.

Our first date was in the car, after a client kick-off meeting when I needed to relax a bit. We connected. I laughed. At once I knew we were going to be friends. And when I got home, you came in with me. You followed me around as I set up my desk for the new project, as I planned dinner. You walked with me when it was time to pick up my son at school, and it just felt right. I wasn’t ashamed. I was having a good time.

I knew our relationship would be challenging for my children, and I knew they had to come first, no matter how I was falling for you. I believe very firmly that they shouldn’t meet anyone new in my life right now. They need to know they’re the most important voices in my life. So I hit pause on our new…whatever this is, I don’t dare label it yet because you’re too new and I’m too caught up to be objective…and walked home with my son. And we played and talked and did our family things. Without you. We picked up my younger son and we all went to soccer. Without you. On the pitch we had dinner, the one I had prepared while you were reading to me. And I smiled a silly schoolgirl grin. Because eating now reminded me of great books. And walking reminded me of great books. And the car, that dreaded convenience that gets me to and from the 10,000 places a day we should be? It reminds me of you and how happy you make me.

Predictably, I’ve gotten a bit lax about keeping you and my family separate. Now when I make breakfast you’re with me, reading to me and filling our hectic morning with measured, adult speech where was there was only shrieking and teasing and laughter and whining. And when the kids want something or I have to help them, you steel me for the less-savory of my tasks with your gentle 30-second rewind and your reassuring pause button. “I’ll wait for you,” you seem to say. “Go ahead. Take care of your family. You love them and they love you and I’ll just wait.”

And you do. And when I return, hours or days later, you know just where we left off. You’ve wooed me with humor and impressed me with heart-wrenching moments. You keep me company while I clean, cook, and write invoices. You make carpooling and grocery shopping engaging.

You make me love mindless tasks, something I haven’t felt since I was young and child-free and trying to discern the origins of the Universe while I vacuumed. Though I value what I do for my family as much as I do the tasks I complete for clients, somehow I don’t feel the family-work is enough. Before you, dishes were a necessary waste of time, and they kept me from what I love. Grocery runs were just stupid burdens. Making lunch? A chore.

And now, with you, I love the grocery store. And dishes. Lunches have become intricate and engaging because I can justify seeding a pomegranate and shaping sandwiches. I have to do these tasks with or without you. But you make them interesting. And productive. I know I could try the rest of my life to fight the need to make every waking moment productive, but why? It’s who I am.

And you get that. You love that. You understand me, and, I am here to say loudly and in front of the whole Internet, I love that about you. What I’ve missed most about my old life, my life before kids, is reading. Frequent, barely-pausing-to-blink, all-engrossing engagement in books.

I’m not going to get into semantics. I don’t know if our relationship is reading or if it’s listening or if it’s entertainment. I won’t slow down long enough to care. I don’t do the high-brow/low-brow arguments that graduate school pretty well beats out of readers. And I don’t want to examine yet…oh, heavens, not while our love is still new…what you’re doing to my relationship with music.

Thank you for the three wonderful books you’ve read me over the past two weeks. I hope my intense love continues to grow. I adore you so much I’m willing to share you with others, which is something I could only ever say about my children. You’re welcome to be as compelling as you want and to draw as many people to yourself as you want.

The more the merrier, dear love. Bring ’em on.

Group storytelling

Posted on 21 September 2014 by Naptimewriting

As our family dissolves its current form and grows again to a new structure, we’re developing dozens of lovely traditions.

And my absolute favorite is the family story.

We talk each day about our favorite parts of the day, and our biggest challenges; we talk about gratitude and feelings.

And now, when the kids seem bored, when we share time together, when we travel in the car, and especially when dim lighting and clean teeth spell the end of the day, we invent a story. Together. Sometimes as three people, and sometimes as four. Each person tells one sentence of a new story. Each subsequent person builds upon it. Until it’s done. And then we do it again.

Tonight:

There once was a tree with several leaves.
And nearby there was a tree with lots of leaves.
And those two trees began growing toward each other.
One day they touched together.
And they began dripping honey.
And they grew together some more.
And they spilled all the honey on the ground.
This made them fight.
A bear stopped by to say, “Don’t worry, there’s enough honey for everyone.”
So every animal in the forest came and took what they needed.
And the trees were happy.
And the animals were happy.
And full of honey.
The End.

Trying Hard Not to Rearrange Furniture

Posted on 1 September 2014 by Naptimewriting

I texted friends yesterday that I might need them to come help me move furniture. By the time they replied their faux excitement about the prospect of carrying my stuff around the house, I told them it might not be necessary.

Maybe.

When I’m stressed, I rearrange furniture. As a child whose family relocated a lot, and as an adult who has moved 17 times since freshman year of college, I learned that change comes in big, obvious, irreversible phases that look like new opportunities amongst the rearranged furniture. Moving to a new place was always about hope and new starts and gentle change. Because everything’s still there, just the space is different.

When my adrenals rattle my teeth with doses of neurochemicals that say I should panic, I connect the sensation with living somewhere new. So I either move or I change the whole layout of the house. I don’t actually plan to move right now, so I need to make my house look as though I’ve moved.

(Totally not my house. I love how that weird suburban McMansion photo shoot used light and a throw rug to make me think they really rearranged. False. My kind of rearranging means this room would have the furniture from another room and all this fly-fishing-cabin stuff would be in the kids’ room. Or garage. Rearranging isn’t moving something two feet. It’s relocating and purging until you don’t recognize the room at all.)

But didn’t I just rearrange a few months ago? Some of the furniture left to go to Spouse’s new apartment. Some got sold. And some went downstairs this week because I’m getting a new roommate.

Yep. I’m 41 years old, newly single parent, and I’m taking on a boarder to help cover the rent. All I have to do is start cooking cabbage and washing neighbor’s laundry and I’ll be a set-piece in a late-Nineteenth-Century American novel.

School started last week, which has unnerved me, too. So the need to rearrange is likely stemming from big changes. But still everyone is healthy and reasonably happy. Despite the separation, the boys’ dad spends a lot of time at our house being a parent and showing the kids that he’s not leaving.

That means, though, his admirable efforts at making the boys feel loved and safe are all. up. in. my. face.

Poor guy. He came over last weekend so I could work. And after a long day of chasing after kids and bikes and scooters, he took a shower.

But he put a new soap in the shower. After I opened the shower door and saw it, I called him to the bathroom and extensively explained the concept of leaving things as you find them. He has thoughtfully moved tons of my stuff in the past few months, and it’s driving me crazy. I put my running shoes by the door so I don’t forget them, he puts them in the closet where they belong. I put the kids’ lunch boxes on the counter because they need to be washed, he puts them in the cupboard where they should be. I hang a jacket on a doorknob because it needs to go into storage, he puts it back in the closet where it used to live. I might have used the phase “You’re welcome here, but you don’t live here, so stop deciding where stuff goes,” instead of biting my tongue, as I should.

For years we’ve been using the nicer downstairs shower. But that is now part of the in-law rental unit, and I’ve consolidated everything from both bathrooms into the smaller one upstairs. And it felt nice and grownup and efficient to finally have a space that nobody in the whole family uses but me.

My shower. MY shower.

And then I come home after banging my brains against a federal grant proposal, and there’s a soap MY SHOWER.

I am fully aware that he didn’t do anything wrong. The guy wanted soap. It doesn’t matter whether he thought I forgot or couldn’t find the soap, or whether he didn’t think anything at all except “I need soap.” It’s a fair desire, that of having soap in a drenching cubicle whose primary purpose is cleaning. I can’t fault him for wanting, finding, and getting soap.

Except it was my shower. MY shower. Was. Now it has ex-partner-who-wanted-soap-and-found-soap-and-added-soap tainted idea-germs all over it. I don’t want his ideas in my shower.

That’s so stupid I can barely type it. But this is my blog and my truth, so I’m willing to be crazy here, even if only for a little…well, okay, most of the time.

But it comes down to this simple and difficult reality: separating from a partner with whom I will coparent for a long, long time is genuinely challenging. I like the world black and white, not grey. I want extremes. And when I am part of a relationship that ends, I want it to actually end.

Surprise that’s not a surprise: there’s no ending a relationship with a co-parent. We’re not teenagers anymore and we can’t just stop calling each other and avoid each other at the mall. This is joint-back-to-school-night territory, y’all.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been prepared for the apocalypse, as long as that catastrophic upheaval involves the complete inability to buy soap. I once had a roommate laugh, “Well, at least we’re prepared for the next Great Soap Famine,” unwittingly insensitive to the hoarding tendencies that make me collect soap in neat rows at the back of bathroom cupboards. I had rows and rows of soap in the hall cupboard of many of those 17 apartments, but I’ve been working to whittle down the stock since moving back to the Bay Area several years ago. I don’t need to prepare for the emergency poverty that might strike and leave me without soap (or any means of buying soap). I don’t need to imagine a time when there’s no soap at the store or no open stores when I need soap or no…I don’t know what. I don’t know why I hoard soap. It’s not as though I shower that much. I just know I need to stop hoarding soap. I have enough, I tell myself as I pass the soap aisle. I have enough, I am enough, I will always have enough, I will always be enough.

Don’t worry…I would never ever hoard unwrapped soap. They get goopy after a while, you know.

But since Butter was conceived five years ago, I’ve been hoarding shower gel. Not using it, because I do prefer soap. But paring down the soap collection has me compelled to build a shower gel stash. I shouldn’t call it a hoard. That diminishes the mental illness that genuine hoarders have. I only have six or seven half-gallon bottles of shower gel. Whenever Grocery Outlet has the big 32-ounce size of my favorite brand of natural, toxin-free beauty products, I buy the shower gel. And shampoo. And conditioner. But not compulsively. That would be crazy. I only buy another jug of organic cleansing products if the scent is right. There’s no use hoarding gardenia shampoo or rose conditioner. I don’t want my apocalypse miserable, people. I just want to be prepared. And really, really, really clean for the zombies. Or maybe prepared in the event that bake sales in the zombie age become soap sales.

I only have three half gallons of shampoo, four of conditioner, and six of shower gel. And that’s totally normal and not at all weird.

So my new shower, my space that meant embracing change and taking a deep breath and accepting hard choices…that shower had shower gel but no soap. That shower, the one we haven’t used in the three years since we moved in, was old and small, but refreshing and cozy and mine. And grownup. So I pulled out of the cupboard matching half-gallon pump bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel. No soap so that the tiny soap dish could be for a razor. So that I wouldn’t have to clean soap-drip off the cramped walls. So that I could freaking have something in this world the way I want it without worrying about sinking into soapless poverty.

And now the man who is permanently part of my life but not of my future, who is a committed co-parent but a distant memory, who is familiar but now a stranger—that man put soap in my shower.

So I told him not to put soap in the shower. I explained my plan and my shower gel and my need to feel like I own something. And to fight the panic of that by embracing a decrease in the shower gel stock.

He understood. And he was gracious about it. He is back to being gracious about my brands of crazy, now that he gets to live somewhere else. Or stay somewhere else most of the time and come over to be with his kids and hear theories on soap use now and then.

I was glad he understood.

But then the next day he rearranged the shower gel and the shampoo and put them in the wrong places and now the shower is ruined.

I just can’t even.

Poor guy. He’ll never understand. He just doesn’t get it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. He doesn’t have to understand my kind of crazy.

I just always hoped he would.

And last night, when I mentioned the text to my friends asking for furniture help, my co-parent offered to help me rearrange the garage. Full on “pull everything out, purge some stuff, reorganize the rest, and put it all back” hour-long garage shuffle. The type he’s fought for years.

I told him that he’s a very kind person to help me engage in my favorite form of free therapy: work out panic with heavy physical labor.

Maybe he does actually understand my crazy.

Or maybe he feels guilty about the soap.

I’m starting to think I have a real problem, because this photo makes me twitchy. The soap is broken. The. Soap. Is. Broken. That is very bad.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Posted on 31 August 2014 by Naptimewriting

Peanut has been fascinated by caves for a long time. His only visit to a cave was in utero, when Spouse and I went to Karchner Caverns in Arizona. I was seven months pregnant and had several almost-panic-attacks while underground. Humidity, claustrophobia, and pregnancy-induced inability to breathe made the cave terrifying. But gorgeous. And somehow that must have stuck with him.

Mmmmm. Cave bacon.

We’ve watched the cave episode of Planet Earth maybe five times in a year. He can’t stop talking about a cave movie they watched at school last year.

He’s been asking to go to a cave for months. And I mostly assumed that outside Mammoth Caves and Carlsbad, there aren’t many around us.

Foolish Muggle.

When I finally looked on the googles, I found caves that are literally on the way to our big Tahoe camping trip every year.

So we crammed the kids in the car and tolerated their incessant bickering to see this (all photos below are mine):

Helictites make me think of Unicorns. And this cave had millions of them.

See? Unicorn horns.

I had forgotten how miraculous it feels to crawl through a small hole in the heat-cracked earth and arrive in a cool, wide, dark tomb carved over tens of thousands of years by slightly acidic water.

We have a friend who caves, but Peanut has only met her once and thus can’t be duly impressed by her hobby/avocation. I want to send her the following photos, though, because we can lure her out to California.

How about a pool 150 feet down from the cave entrance?

It’s intensely beautiful to watch kids stare way up and then waaaaaay down to learn the difference between stalactites and stalagtites.

I see you hiding in the draperies, bacon. Sparkly calcite cannot disguise your mock deliciousness.

Forgot to ask if this white residue on this flowstone was more of the moon milk we saw on the walls. Mmmm. Bacterial moon milk.

I love this dinosaur-mouth configuration so much.

Theatrical lighting wholeheartedly approved. Wowzers.

The best part wasn’t even the cave, which is saying a lot. The best part was the rock shop on the way out.

A bit of background: I love rock shops more than any single thing in my life, kids notwithstanding. Maybe. Depends on the day. I have dozens, really and truly dozens, of childhood memories of rock shops. I can tell you exactly which rock I bought or found and at which rockshop of patch of earth for every rock ever obtained from the time I was 7. Seriously. I distinctly remember why each of those rocks called to me. Because they call loudly.

And I cannot be dragged from a rock shop until I’m done. Forget can’t…I will not. Not that I’d know. Nobody has ever tried. I have lovely memories of my parents waiting for me at rock shops. Of being left alone to wander, gently touch, careful consider while they were…ah, hell, I don’t know where they were. I can’t imagine they were looking, too. Bored at the door? Consuming secret cookie stashes while I wasn’t looking? I never considered them, selfish rockhound that I am. I’m guessing they were patient at first. And I’m guessing that they got bored, or that my brother got bored, or that I somehow tried everyone’s patience. But know what? I don’t remember caring one whit whether everyone was exasperated with the rock shop or not. I was prepared to spend all day filling my one-ounce cup with perfect rock chip specimens, even if it killed my whole family.

So when my boys entered the rock shop after an hour below ground in a majestic cave, I rather expected them to shrug and ask for candy. My poor sugar-denied kids always ask for candy. And I always say no.

Anticipating their request and their disinterest in the rock shop, I made a beeline to the rock candy I saw as soon as we entered, and waited for them to follow. I was going to make this cave, this rock shop, memorable for my kids, who likely cared more for sugar than for rocks.

But the little guy ignored me and stood, eyes wide, in front of the pick-your-own-rocks barrel. Fill a bag with any rocks you choose? Any at all? My idea of heaven and his idea of…a whole afternoon of joy. He’s four, y’all. And he spent 20 minutes choosing the best rocks. Never once did he see me at the candy display. He was so engrossed in rock selection that he didn’t look up even when his dad offered tiger’s eye rocks for the bag. “Dad,” he said without looking at either the man or the stone, “this is my choice. Stop it.”

Not bad for a pink-obsessed 4yo…these were his actual selections and he’s still quite proud of them.

No DNA test needed.

The eldest wandered aimlessly. It was as though he couldn’t find the right rock. I let him be, scouring the shelves for rocks that were one part neglected, one part magic, one part architectural marvel, and one part undervalued.

Butter finished his rock bag. He appreciated the rock candy. We went outside with his dad to slurp and ponder his treasure.

And still Peanut wandered. I chose my rock carefully. I triple checked to be sure I wasn’t missing anything on the shelves.

And still he wandered.

I stayed back and watched for a while. I showed him my finds and he seemed duly unimpressed. I offered suggestions for areas in which to look for something that might speak to him.

And he seemed stymied. No break-your-own-geodes because his aunt and uncle gave him the best geodes ever two years ago, and he doesn’t want more. No dogtooth calcite, for reasons only a psychologist will be able to discern. No broken shark teeth because he found real, intact, beautiful fossilized shark teeth with his dad at the beach. No arrowheads because, “Mom, who would want that? They’re replicas!”

And then he found the select-a-pendant-and-cord display.

He chose his treasure quickly. Clearly not a natural specimen, and he doesn’t care. Clearly on a weak bale, and he doesn’t care. Clearly exactly and precisely the man-shaped rock he needs right this very minute oh my gawd I can’t wait. He appreciated his rock candy, but not as much as his necklace.

He made it to the car before he realized his necklace had already fallen off.

Parking lot of gravel. Grey rock on grey cord.

A lot of looking.

Butter found it for him, how I’ll never know. In the middle of the parking lot.

So we have our cave experience. And our rocks. We don’t have any more rock candy. But it was as delicious as any Doozer sugar sculpture*.

* I read that Doozers’ buildings are allegedly radish dust, but those are clearly made of sugar. My entire childhood will be a lie if Doozer buildings aren’t basically rock candy.

So we’ve visited our first cave. And our first rock shop. And our first rock tragedy was narrowly averted by a hero within our own family.

All, my friends, ALL was right with the world in that moment.**

**Except that almost nothing is right with the larger world right now, and that rock candy might not be a Doozer creation. But I’m trying to not have a sad on my cave and rock post. Because perfection.

NaptimeWriting

This had better be quick. They're gonna find me soon.

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