Please don’t ever

Posted on by

Please don’t ever stop mispronouncing the words that you have made your own in that sweet little preschool voice. I really hope that you keep “no known shield protects from my light saver!” and “ready, sgabetti!” and “n-o no; y-o yes!” forever.

Please don’t ever get in a car without a seatbelt or if the driver has been drinking.

Please don’t ever feel embarrassed about the need to sneak into my bed at night to rest your head on my pillow and mumble groggily that you were lonely.

Please don’t ever drink so much that you lose control, or put any substance in your body that will fundamentally alter the part of you that makes you so amazing: your brain.

Please don’t ever stop trying to bribe me by saying I’m the best mommy EVER when you want something sugary.

IMG_0492.JPG

Please don’t ever ignore someone hurting another person or an animal. Stand up. Be you.

Please don’t ever feel it’s okay to add croutons to a panzanella salad. That’s double bread, son. I won’t stand for it.

Please don’t ever doubt that I love you, regardless of what you do. Please know that I love you even more if you realize you have been a jerk, and come back to apologize. Heaven knows I do that often enough.

Please don’t ever stop telling me long stories about your day. I love that you still talk to me and trust me. I will endeavor to continue earning your trust.

Please don’t ever take the last piece of chocolate, unless you live alone. Not even if it is to cure you after a run-in with the dementors. Someone else always needs the last piece of chocolate more.

Please don’t ever do anything that makes you feel that you are being untrue to yourself. Trust your gut. If it feels wrong, do not do it.

Please don’t ever take life too seriously. Except that part about the croutons. I’m serious about that, boys.

IMG_0934.JPG

Moby Dick Parenting

Posted on by

When a friend posted on his blog that one of his favorite artists, Matt Kish, was selling off the original artwork he created for every page of Moby Dick, I clicked right over.

I actually dislike a fair percentage of Melville’s text, but there are some moments in his novel that resonate. I spent seven years studying literature, plus a reading of Moby Dick in high school, which lands me squarely in the “well, damn it, after reading it three times I at least appreciate it, so show me whatchya got” camp of Moby Dick art lookeylooism.

And as I scrolled through the artwork, I realized that the most compelling images correspond with parts of the story that I’ve always connected with. Not man vs. whale, because honestly that trope is too annoying for words; but man against natural elements and against darker forces within himself.

I love these images drawn and painted on found paper by Matt Kish, each inspired by a line from Moby Dick, and each recalling for me some of the hardest moments of parenting.

And my post yesterday inadvertently featured the artwork, so here’s a detailed look at each.

IMG_1217.JPG

Moby Dick aphorism #6: “When a fellow’s soaked through, it’s hard to be sensible, that’s a fact.” I have to admit, this one makes me smile, then choke back the sob that still lives in my throat remembering the intense undertow yanking violently at me when I was the sole source of everything for newborns.

IMG_1220.JPG

“‘I say, pull like god-dam,’ cried the Indian.” The vivid graphics of this and the wave of rhythmic belief in the way Matt penned the words gives me courage when I don’t have any. Melvillean racism aside, I’m buoyed and girded by the Indian’s entreaty.

IMG_1219.JPG
“A sort of badger-haired merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me around.”  This piece is, for me, the most aesthetically beautiful. This is ocean and woman and chaos and man and embodiment and swooning all at once, and I love it. The mental image, too, of a rough and scruffy sea-creature just shaking the crap out of me evokes the paint-spattered, tyrannical toddler who has to power to absolutely upend my life, one moment to the next.

IMG_1218.JPG

This I selected with the intention of hanging it over my son’s dresser to calm me and ground me when nighttime rituals went all to hell. “So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.”  Resplendent, oceanic, dire, exploding, sudden? Yup. That’s my kid, and I love him. And instead of placing this in his room, I centered it with the other art in the living room. It’s the frame most often threatened by children illegally jumping on the couch.

IMG_1221-1.JPG

My photo of this is terrible, so here’s the original.  I love so intensely that the found paper on which Kish painted this vicious and tempered and vibrant art is the dedication page to a book that says “To my Mother and Father with Fondest Love.” Because juxtaposing that parental adoration with the text is priceless. “You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned.” Melville had it all over Freud, because Superego besting Id has nothing on sharks well governed.

This concludes the art tour of my living room wall. Join me tomorrow from the art on the other side of the room.  Maybe.

Roller coaster Saturday

Posted on by

Most mornings begin abruptly: my eldest wakes and sneaks downstairs, pausing to hug me good morning only if I catch him at the top of the stairs and get his attention. The little one wakes soon after and goes off in search of his brother.

The bickering starts ten seconds later. I suggest kindness, they fight. I suggest they find solution, they fight. I get up and stagger into whatever room they’re electrifying with their nastiness, and they keep bickering.

IMG_1169.JPG

It’s a rough way to wake up. This morning was no different. But instead of helping them navigate their fight about whose pillows were past the halfway point on the couch, I just sat between them. With my book.

And they moved on. And got their own books and joined me, each nestled in a pillow fort on either side of me.

It was glorious. After five minutes one said he was hungry. Best five minutes of my life, I smiled to myself. And I didn’t hold my breath that the peace would linger.

But it did.

And I made them pancakes and they laughed and played and thanked me.

And then started bickering again.

It was very, very nice to read between them. And it was exceedingly nice to have peace until almost 9am.

I won’t hold my breath on it happening again. But I wouldn’t say no to it, either, in case the boys call you and ask if if like this morning repeated, say…tomorrow.

Changing My Name

Posted on by

When Spouse and I were planning our wedding and marriage, I spent copious time on what to do with my last name.

A rose by any other name might be a sunflower.

A rose by any other name might be a sunflower.

Not on the actual “to change or not the change” debate that most women engage in. I did that relatively briefly. I didn’t mind ditching my last name as long as my partner would, too. I refused to be chattel, I would not change my name to his. Period.

And asking a man to change his last name to a new family name was exactly the litmus test I wanted, anyway. I needed a high stakes kind of guy. And I found him on the first try.

I highly prioritized having the same last name as my children. I had this irrational image in my head as I thought of marriage and of retaining my birth name, of my child’s school rifling through emergency contacts, doubting that I was the mother because I had a different last name. That’s crazy, of course, especially given that I live in the “Fly Your Freak Flag High” capital of the world, in which I’d guess at least a third of mothers (and most of my friends) have a different last name than their children (many families here hyphenate, or create a blended name for their child(ren), so that when Ms. Brown and Mr. Jones marry, their children are Brones. Poor things.) But I wholeheartedly rejected the tradition of semantically abandoning my family to join a husband’s family. We were starting something new, and as a family we would honor the tribes from which we came but not in conventional ways.

So most of my name machinations before the wedding centered on creating the new last name both Spouse and I would take. I engaged the process like any naming project for a client: we had a strategy session to determine our core values. We detailed a voice for our family and carefully drew a target for our new name’s sustainability, euphony, credibility, readability, and, instead of URL availability, overall lack of serial killers with the same name.

It wasn’t as cold and corporate as it sounds. The strategic phase took less time than it does with clients because we had no competitive audit to complete. And because we’re not branding a conglomerate. It’s a little family, for heaven’s sake.

We coined and triple checked Harkin based on its resonance with the ideas we wanted encapsulated in our name: haven, hearth, heart, family, warmth. As a bonus, Harkin is a homophone for hearken, which means to listen.

Also, there were no serial killers named Harkin.

So there we had it: a new family, a new name, a defiant cry against patriarchy. (And murder? That’s both strategically and temperamentally consistent. Bonus.)

Fast forward eleven years, and I have a very simple answer to those who ask if I’m changing my name back to my birth name once Spouse and I process paperwork to become Not-Spouses.

No way.

We created this name to represent a haven from the world: our family insulated and cozy against all onslaughts. And that’s what I still want our family to be, regardless of how many houses we live in. I changed my name so my children and I would share the clearest linguistic tie available to families: surname. Regardless of our marital status, Spouse and I both lay claim to being founders of the Harkin clan. We both deserve this name. Neither of us gave it to the other. We earned it. We made a family. We will now put some solid distance between two members of the family. But that doesn’t change our core values as a family. We’re still hearkening to heart and hearth and kinship.

And we’re all going to keep our name.

three years into the name someone else earned it, too.

three years into the name someone else earned it, too.

On calling a spade a spade

Posted on by

This morning, I was trying to find my lightbox. It’s finally raining in California, praise Neptune, and moisture is so welcome I have to hide my fear of all things dark and cloudy.

But I really can’t make it through winter, even winters that are overcast only 10% of the time. I have biochemical needs, y’all, and bread can’t fill all of my seratonin gaps.

And as I pulled all the sheets down to look in the linen closet, my first thought was, “Seriously, woman, why don’t you fold your sheets?”

IMG_1175

My second thought was, “I should really learn how to fold fitted sheets. My grandma can do it, and I’m pretty sure it’s what defines civilized people from uncivilized.”

My third was, “What a bunch of hooey! There is no correlation between civilization and fitted sheets. None. There is no reason I have to fold anything in this linen closet. I am a good person and I absolutely reject the notion that my worth and my family’s happiness revolve around the status of my stupid effing sheets!”

The lies we tell about “should” are increasingly unraveling my thin hold on propriety.

Because here’s the thing. For a long time women were expected to keep house. And there were no floors, but they swept dirt floors. And there was one set of sheets and they washed in the tub (or creek) and scrubbed on the washboard, and they wrung out sheets and banged them against rocks. And they hung their clothes to dry.

And I have no idea what that was like. Maybe I would have folded my sheets.

But now I have an electronic box into which I type my ideas, and buttons to push to get those words sent places, and sometimes someone pays me for those words. And from that box come tales of others in desperate need, forsaken by their government or their employer or their family and pushed into small corners by violence or racism or hatred or hunger or disease.

So you can take your folded fitted sheets and shove them in your linen closet, but I’m fresh out of fucks to give.

I refuse to buy into the bullshit of what I should do. I have never folded my sheets, and though there is something dark inside me telling me I’m wrong and bad and weak for not folding sheets, I absolutely refuse to start now. No way. Folded sheets don’t make me grown up. Making tough choices and doing the best I can and remembering all of every day that I am not the only human trying to make my way on this planet, and that, in fact, many of the rest need help seventeen levels beyond folded goddamned sheets…those are the things that make me a grownup. Holding up friends as they die and bringing dinner to a family whose child is dreadfully ill, that is what makes me a grown-ass, don’t you dare tell me about fitted sheets, woman.

You know what I thought as I defiantly rolled up the sheets and shoved them in the closet after I found my lightbox? I thought, “Eleanor Roosevelt sure as hell wouldn’t want me folding fitted sheets.” What has stuck with me most over the past few days since I finished the biography examining the personal lives of those in the White House during World War II, are two relatively simple concepts: 1) women’s role in society is almost always circumscribed for her by others and 2) really great thinking requires taking long and frequent breaks.

Doris Kearns Goodwin makes very clear that Rosie the Riveter was persona non grata after the war. “Yeah, thanks for the help, but we were kidding about you being important.” Once all the efforts of women on the homefront helped secure peace, years of begging women to sacrifice for the country, of asking them to work as hard as they could, had produced results beyond anyone’s hopes. Women kicked ass in the factories. They owned their work. And they loved doing it. According to Goodwin, 79% of women said after the war that they preferred work to being at home, and 70% of those were married with kids. They preferred being with others doing something meaningful to ironing and folding fitted sheets. Of course they did. So the women wanted to continue to work. But factories fired them without a second thought, telling the women who made the American war effort possible that they weren’t wanted.

And that’s when the propaganda morphed from Rosie the Riveter to Suzy Homemaker. This is the part ringing in my ears a week later…the ads that for years promised automatic dishwashing and automated clothes drying to enable working women were all of a sudden ads for intricate recipes that took all day to prepare. Magazine articles that had urged women to help their men by helping the military-industrial complex became articles about how children whose mothers work grow up to be delinquents and criminals. (All of this is paraphrased, from my faulty memory that is boiling in rage against linen closet manners. This is not my thesis, it represents the tea leaves left in the bottom of my cup by Ms. Goodwin. If you want the exact wording from No Ordinary Time, get it from your library and read for yourself. For now, all you have is me and my seething indignation to go on, so roll with it.)

And so what is the propaganda telling us now, I’ve been mulling this week? Be thin and pretty and submissive, paint yourself perfectly, write the code but don’t criticize what the code depicts or enables, be there for your kids all the time unless you’re a CEO, buy lots of things, have a bucket list, spend time in nature, care about those in need, meditate, do yoga, put away your phone, buy another phone, be fully present every moment of the day, promise to sleep a lot but cheat and barely sleep so you can play the ‘I’m more tired than you are’ game of personal success, and eat only what you’ve grown yourself and spent 48 hours sprouting and 12 hours preparing but then god help you if it’s not raw and exactly as it was hunted by cave people.

Because pancreas. Or something. Spleen? Spleens that you need if you’re freediving, for that burst of oxygen just before you die? Save your freediving spleen with the paleo love of coconut and dates!

Geezus Cheeses on a Cracker. What else are we supposed to do? Please, do give me another list. I’m sure you can tax the limits of human endurance further.

So I see balled up sheets, I begin to tell myself to fold them, and I rage against post-war misogynist propaganda for a while.

Easy enough, right?

Nope. Because the other thing that stuck with me about No Ordinary Time is how much time FDR spent relaxing. And I’m not making any allowances here for his physical pain and exhaustion, and I note that. But I’m not mocking his leisure, so I feel rather free to recap the man’s daily schedule, which included a lot of sleep and entertainment. I’m reiterating what I understood from the book: that his leisure, including copious time spent with good friends over good food and good wine and good games, was integral to his ability to create. That without nightly card games and trips to the islands, he never would have come up with lend-lease. The guy woke late, ate, read, worked a bit, ate, relaxed, worked a bit, and held court in the library every evening. He played cards and spoke with friends and took some time to stare across the yard now and then. And he was a war-time President. I’m guessing he had quite a few things to do. I mean, he didn’t have to submit FSA receipts by the end of this month, or anything, but still.

Still.

He managed to take a break several times a day. We don’t do that. As a culture, we don’t do that enough. There are now articles telling you that it’s important to let your brain rest. To do some dishes and let information sink in so you can really process it. The are gorgeous, moving diatribes against productivity that render me incoherent with longing and sadness and a renewed refusal to fold my sheets.

So what is this bullshit about doing everything and having everything? I can’t do or have or be everything. Can’t. Won’t.

I will not fold my fitted sheets.
I will not do yoga retreats.
I will not make my nutty spreads.
I will not make my family’s beds.
I will not mop the stupid floor.
I will not scrub my muddy door.
I will not put my dear self last.
I will not eat my food so fast.
I will not say yes anymore.
I will not take on tasks galore.

I will not keep a crazy pace.
I will not join your insane race.

IMG_1079-4

Minor Book Spoilers

Posted on by

Thought I’d come right out in the title and say there are spoilers herein, but I won’t start them until I warn you specifically.

The root cause of this post is that I want you to either listen to or read No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers. Go get them both from your library or independent local bookseller. One’s a history, one’s a novel. They’re both remarkable and I must get you to read them. Or, really, listen to them. They both make ideal audiobooks.

Back to the promise of my title…I despise spoilers. I absolutely won’t read the back cover of books or the reviews because there are so darned many clues to the book that I want to discover, not be handed. I don’t want to know before I read a text where the basic story is going. I don’t want to know how many years Mitchell’s new book spans (thanks for nothing, NPR) because even that bit of information sets up an expectation and the beginning of my calculations.

So in this post, I will warn you of minor spoilers (the type most readers don’t mind), and what I call SPOILERS, which are genuinely much less informative or revealing than any major book review is. So I’m overly careful with what I warn you about. Because I try to preserve your unsullied reading experience as much as I can. I prefer to read completely uninformed, and I assume out of kindness that you do, as well.

Completely unwitting is how I began listening to Dave Eggers’s Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?. I knew absolutely nothing about the novel when I downloaded. And after approximately 4 lines, I was completely hooked.

[next paragraph contains minor spoiler about format and structure]
I’m not sure I will listen to many novels on audiobook, because I prefer to read fiction so I can pause, reread, and stop on the visual placeholder of a word rather than hinging on voices. But [minor spoiler alert] Eggers’s book is entirely dialogue. This theatrical set up is very kind to the audiobook format. When I heard the title page and the list of voice actors, I was confused. It’s very rare to have an audiobook have more than one narrator. (Another minor spoiler alert: Gone Girl had two, because the novel has two narrators.) But each character needed a voice for YFWATATPDTLF to function as an aural text.

Holy gobsmacking guacamole salad, y’all. You have to hear this book. I don’t know if you have to read it. I haven’t read it. I’ve only listening to it read by highly skilled voiceover actors. The New York Times Sunday Book Review was not kind to the novel, in part because the reviewer missed several nuanced points about the characters and dialogue. And I believe the audiobook and the actors cast in the roles were the difference between my interpretation and Phil Klay’s.

[Next paragraph contains SPOILER about acting choices in the audiobook version]
The reason Klay missed something rather important may have been that he read rather than heard the book, for he seemed to have not understood that many of the characters seek to fool the main character. They agree with or disagree with him at various times with the intent of beguiling. Klay seems very angry that some of the characters would agree with wildly inappropriate speeches by a character, but the way I heard the text, those agreeing were patronizing the speaker. Perhaps the acting choices of the audiobook performers made me more aware of this. Maybe giving Eggers the benefit of the doubt for having meticulously rendered several highly flawed characters allowed me to see the dialogue for what it was: not Franzian political diatribe but nuanced interpersonal psychological chess.

[End of Spoilers, and you may now laugh at my definition of spoilers. I warned you. I want to know nothing in advance and try to give you the same courtesy.]

I highly recommend listening to Eggers’s novel. As a character study of desperation and humanity, it’s compelling. As an audiobook, it’s ideal.

I also highly recommend listening to Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time. As a historical study in the way personality flaws form the shifting sands on which history explodes, it’s riveting.

[Update and enormous spoiler, November 19, 11pm: Phil Klay just won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel Redeployment. His misinterpretation of an exchange in Eggers’s novel between the main character and the Senator lies in his misreading a suggestion for the isolation of mentally unstable people as a suggestion for the isolation of former soldiers. Eggers does not conflate the two. The main character does. There’s a big difference between the main character thinking he’s like a war survivor, and the Senator humoring him, and Eggers thinking that all war survivors are crazy. Klay simply misunderstands, an error which I believe would be solved hearing the book rather than reading it.]

Why I’ll Probably Quit National Blog Post Writing Month

Posted on by

I have perhaps 20 demands on my time at any moment, and blogging is often near the bottom. So the challenge to put blog posts at the forefront excited and energized me. But I might quit.

Because I’ve realized, just as with National Novel Writing Month, when I have false deadlines and self imposed “write a certain number of words each day” or “post every day” rigors, I produce schlock. I don’t write the stories that are burning to be told, in language of which I’m proud and with time to mull the best structure. I generate crud, and submit it because I’ve said that I “have to.”

gutter, rainwater, pollen, leaves. Unstill life.

gutter, rainwater, pollen, leaves. Unstill life.

For me, right now, challenges become a homework assignment rather than an inspiration. Blogging has become a chore instead of the thing I genuinely enjoy doing.My writing sounds slapdash, crammed into the crevices I have left, rather than something moved to the forefront and finessed because it’s important.

So we’ll see how it goes. Today is Day 18, and I’ve posted 17 times. And about 5 of those posts are just rotten. I don’t like those odds. I’d rather post 10 times and feel satisfied with the writing than post 18 times and feel my blog’s quality is suffering for the exercise.

But wait! I think…what about all those ideas in that file called “post ideas”? Well, if those are compelling enough stories to tell, then I would have done so by now. And I still can. Rejecting the challenge doesn’t mean I can’t post daily. It means I don’t have to.

But wait! I think again, What about committing to something important and writing as part of a huge group of dedicated writers?! Frankly, I don’t care. Writing is a solitary exercise, and while I cherish the tightly knit group of writers with whom I rarely share my fiction, I don’t care whether the whole world is writing right nor or not. What other people do is none of my business. I’m a grown-ass woman, and I don’t need any more chores. I’ve had a tiny blog for eight years, and my audience changes little whether I write daily or monthly. I wrote every day for years. And life changed in many ways such that I don’t have as much to say publicly, both because I’m inwardly focused on my family right now and don’t have time, and because I don’t want to share as much as I once did. Blogging every day for a month as part of a group challenge is not going to make me a better blogger. It’s not going to reinvigorate my writing. It’s going to exhaust me and stifle my willingness to share. Because the creeping profanity in this post is suggesting to me I’m resentful, and if I keep going with this bad attitude, I have nobody but myself to blame. I began a blog to find a community, and I found one. Bigger than I’d hoped. As an introverted curmudgeon at heart, I often want to pull up my welcome mat and say, “I already have enough friends, thank you and good bye.”

I don’t, of course, because for each dear reader I lose there’s a new face in the comments or subscription list, whose own blog is wonderful to read and whose comments make me feel less alone in those dark moments most writers have at 1:23 each morning. So the community stays small and I adore every reader. Gah. Does that mean I have to sit up straight and wear mascara ‘cuz you are here again?

Sigh. Whatever. I want to blog more, so I will. I want to honor the NaBloPoWriMo community, so I might. I want a place to whine about blogging, so here I am. Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow. And maybe I’ll wait a day or two. There is no reward for trudging through a thing just because you should. There are rewards for recognizing when a self-imposed should seems ill-fitting.

Now it is my time to rend and tear the garment, else allow it to lie as falls without alteration, and feel in this exercise the discomfort of something not quite right. What I learn from the binding and gaping is a test of patience.

I’ll let you know what I find, though. And not just because it’ll count as another post.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Posted on by

I just finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book No Ordinary Time, about the effect on WWII America of the interpersonal relationships in the White House and throughout the homefront.

It’s an amazing book that has me all exited. Because I often forget, if I’m not reminded by Pulitzer-Prize-winning authors, that mothers who’ve changed the world rarely do so in one, long, eighty-year push. That women often phase their efforts, stringing together impressive lives that include long breaks we don’t talk about in most history lessons. Spells of insecurity, years of depression, a decade or two of childrearing.

I had always assumed, ridiculous child that I am, that Eleanor Roosevelt had spent her entire adult life changing the course of feminist history.

And she did significantly and impressively change American history. But not in one unwavering straight line toward advocacy and activism.

So, bolstered by the reminder that we do all that we can when we can, and that, as Ann Marie Slaughter has said, we have investment intervals in any number of efforts, projects, and careers, I still have time to change the world.

I might even have separate bedrooms and a marriage that acts like a partnership rather than a marriage.

Maybe.

For now I’m just happy that Neil Kramer’s mom has boldly staked her claim for feminism.

Flawless is a strong word

Posted on by

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.

01774a30c5e7ba3fb09167bc8218c595412f3e2623

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.

01f61e7f84c61dc5e32fa884d215a5107f16c63502

0182f8a84ed5778e094a2638ce9f9fe85f73f36a77

013623a9534de0915bd3ee2d4ef9936b0d8cdd6046

Sigh

Posted on by

I have intermittent wifi on a ladies’ birthday weekend. So I don’t care that I missed a post day in this most honorable “post every day” NaBloPoWriMo. And I don’t care that I can’t upload an awesome photo for you today. I’ve tried.

I have clean air and homemade toffee. And I think I can say without qualification, that this is the meaning of life.

Now I lie, not lay, down to sleep.

Posted on by

I don’t do well with rules, so National Blog Post Writing Month’s premise of posting every day for a month is irking me. But I signed up for the challenge voluntarily, it’s time to put on my Big Girl pants and get it done.

If a tree can artistically render another tree species in its leaf, I can write a blog post.

If a tree can artistically render another tree species in its leaf, I can write a blog post.

I just finished a two-month challenge with different parameters and different aims. But I bristled at those rules, too, mostly because I’m a grown-ass woman and I know what’s good for me and what’s not, and I’ll do the choosing, thank you very much.

I made it through the longer challenge, and I will make it through this daily blogging thing, too. Even if I want to rail against boundaries and melodramatically perceived imprisonment.

Now, I’m tired, so I’m only telling you one thing today: my eldest’s son shirt was in my drawer and I had my arms in it to put it on before I noticed the 8 on the tag. I’m not 8. He is.

It struck me as very sad that my son is almost big enough to share my clothes. Soon he will share my car keys. Then he will leave. And I’m so excited to find out what he will be and where he will go.

But for now I want him here and I want more time, not less.

I’m going to go pull his size 6s out of the garage, where they’re waiting for his brother. And I’m going to make my third grader wear size 6 until I’m darned good and ready to have him writing in cursive and multiplying and performing Greek plays.

I think, in base ten, that’s about 8 more years.

Sounds about right

Posted on by

I flew through an entire audiobook today, and am settling well into the idea that this particular medium is ideal for histories and biographies.

As the book finished, I was changing sheets on the bunk bed, the little guy was in the bathtub, and the big guy was sorting laundry. It’s getting harder to tell his clothes from mine, and we now take longer to check tags to make sure he doesn’t wear my shirts to school.

I flopped onto the lower bunk to choose my next audiobook. Unfortunately, I told Peanut as he threw his brother’s laundry across the room, other library patrons are currently listening to all the good books. Darn the choice to live in a town where other readers have the same tastes.

As the guard changed and the little guy clambered out of the bath to let his brother in, I found a guided meditation book and clicked to hear the sample. Bells gently chimed, subtle music rumbled from my phone.

“I like that book,” said Butterbean.

“Oh, yeah? It’s about meditation.”

“Well, I like it,” he said.

“Why is there a booger in the tub?!” Peanut hollered from the other room.

“Remember when I told your brother to quit blowing his nose in the tub?” I hollered back and shot a look at the little guy, who giggled.

“Come get it! Please?” he bellowed. The meditation chimes kept bleating at me. I brought the tub-bound, lanky young man a tissue. Without complaining that he has to recycle tub water, he wiped. I tossed and washed.

“That’s gross,” he said. “Really, that’s gross!” he hollered.

“Mom!” hollered the little guy, still in the bedroom with the meditation sample, “he’s teasing me!”

“Am not!”

“Teasing, teasing, teasing! Stop it I don’t like it!”

I walked back into the bedroom. The meditation chimes had stopped and I knelt beside the bed to cancel the sample. Peanut called for me to fetch more fraternal flotsam.

At just that moment, an earthquake rumbled and I held the bunk bed, checking the intensity and assessing the position of both kids. I could move the preschooler into the doorway and…wait, it’s not an earthquake. It’s just the cats fighting on the top bunk.

I turned off my phone and told the little guy to choose his bedtime books.

There’s no way guided meditation on my phone is the sound I need in my evening, even if Butter likes it. I need teasing and whining and giggles and silly, growing children, and cat earthquakes.

chaos, an interpretive dance

chaos, an interpretive dance

I also need another good nonfiction listen tomorrow. Hook me up, Berkeley library patrons. Return your audiobooks. I could use a copy of Salt, NPH’s memoir, or Dataclysm.

My app and me

Posted on by

I don’t think writing on my phone will ever feel as natural as typing. But tonight I’m trying the WordPress app for three reasons.

1. It’s National Blog Post Writing Month, and I’ve committed to writing every day all November.

2. I’m already upstairs curled up next to cats.

3. I’ve been in front of the computer all day, catching up on deadlines, and for now is like to use my left thumb and right index finger only. Or nobly, as autocorrect wanted me to say. I think it’s rather pretentious to find me noble for phone blogging, Phone, but I will take that compliment. At least you love me more than the kid who fake cried for 5 minutes because I wouldn’t let him hold the obscenely bright book light as he fell asleep, and who paused the fake cry long enough to tell me he hates me.

Hated by a four-year-old yet noble to a phone.

Anyone wanna guess why parents are glued to handheld devices at the playground?

IMG_1023.JPG

Nightmares made funny

Posted on by

Butterbean, at the ripe old age of Four, has dozens of nightmares a week. And like his mother, he talks in his sleep, so I hear the dialogue for a lot of his worst dreams.

wildbex.php

It would seem, from circumstantial evidence around midnight, that his older brother and his preschool friends torment him, a lot, in his dreams. It would seem, from what he bellows at the imaginary aggressors in his dreams, that nobody gives him a turn.

And that he had it first.

And that people should just…NO!…just stop and…NO!…people should..NOOOOOOO!…just knock it off. Times infinity.

He had a lot of nightmares the other night. I stopped working to walk upstairs and comfort him at least a dozen times. I smoothed his hair. I adjusted his covers. I woke him to use the bathroom.

And he kept yelling at all the people wronging him and taking his toys and making him wait too long. Including me.

“Mommy! Mooooommmm? Stop it!” Out like a light and yelling at me for maligning him.

So I turned off the computer and put him in my bed. I brushed my teeth in the dark and climbed in. And the first few times he kicked and bellowed, I smoothed his hair and Shhhhhh’d him.

And within 20 minutes, he was laughing out loud in his sleep.

He giggled and curled in a ball and snuggled next to me.

And laughed some more.

I didn’t sleep much that night.

But I did for just one night what I won’t be able to do during the days: I stopped whatever he perceived as injustice. And I got him comfortable enough to laugh.

Would that it were that easy, through his life, to stop all the injustice, to get him everything he wants, and make him comfortable enough to laugh. I wouldn’t it I could, of course, but I really want to. That’s not my job. Life will be unfair, he will be left wanting, and many days he won’t have the space to giggle. But if I fix everything he’ll never be a fully functioning adult.

For now, though, I get some space, in the dark of the small numbers, to make everything better.

That is my superpower.

On joy and feeling at home

Posted on by

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!]