I was surprised to look down and see your toothbrush was not there. I shouldn't have been.
Then I looked in the linen closet and your travel case was gone, too. It almost made me rethink things.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
She Sews Those New Blue Jeans
Just finished cleaning the kitchen, top to bottom.
Baby has a cold. Poor thing. Can't sleep. Keeps losing her pacifier because she can't breathe through her nose.
Dylan came back from his sleep over with his grandparents and immediately began hitting me. Later, when we were playing in the basement, the baby crawled across the room and my mom clapped for her. So Dylan had to show us how fast he could crawl. My heart breaks. There is not enough love in the world for him.
Must work now. Make lunch. Pay bills. Write New Years Cards. Start non-profit. Write novel. Make love to husband. Lose 10 pounds. Be glamorous. Fly.
Off to email land ...
Baby has a cold. Poor thing. Can't sleep. Keeps losing her pacifier because she can't breathe through her nose.
Dylan came back from his sleep over with his grandparents and immediately began hitting me. Later, when we were playing in the basement, the baby crawled across the room and my mom clapped for her. So Dylan had to show us how fast he could crawl. My heart breaks. There is not enough love in the world for him.
Must work now. Make lunch. Pay bills. Write New Years Cards. Start non-profit. Write novel. Make love to husband. Lose 10 pounds. Be glamorous. Fly.
Off to email land ...
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monsters revisited
I just reread the first monsters entry and it seems so cold. It is true that those numbers stress me out, but it is the underlying emotions that are the true monsters. It is not so much the logistics of daycare, the numbers on the scale, or the negative balance in my bank account, but the fear that I am not a good mother, that my children will be traumatized and ruined, that I have no self control, that I am weak, that my life and its attendant bills are beyond my control, that all things are chaos spinning just beyond my grasp, and that my husband and children, too, are out there, uncontrollable, not submissive to lists, rules, or the world as I seek to draw it - these are the things that keep me up at night.
Which is scarier - that these fears are true, or the fact that my mind is comprised of these fears?
Which is scarier - that these fears are true, or the fact that my mind is comprised of these fears?
Frogs
I stand in the doorway of the basement bedroom and breath in the deep smell of mold and oak. The dark is soft and surrounds me, as if it is made of the breath of my sleeping children, for they are the ones inside the room, and I am filled with both the knowledge that they are completely safe and at peace, and also the deeper pit of truth that these are merely momentary states of being. Motherhood surely is the breaking of delicate teeth on such a hard rock beneath the gush of juice and peach fuzz to which George Eliot referred.
I hold their little hands, the dimples beneath my rough thumbs, and it is all I can do to keep from breaking their little fingers in this overpowering love. If Mary Gordon did not know the emotional life of motherhood would be such physical sensation, then she was a fool. I knew what to expect in that regard; what I don't know is how to contain or channel it. The rush that comes over me could cause me to beat my children senseless or crush them with my kisses. Perhaps it is me, their own life and love giver, who stands the greatest danger to them, as Lennie Small was to his victim.
It is wet here in Vermont and all day Dylan was promised frogs. There were none at the nature preserve today and he bore up incredibly well for a three year old. So later, when his uncle found one in the garage, it was only the man's sense to give him directions ahead of time - cup it gently in leaf litter, then let it go back into the puddle, then wash your hands with soap - that preserved the tiny brown thing's slippery life. Dylan was practically hyperventilating with anticipation. It was all I could do to keep from crushing him into the moment, as wildflower into a scrapbook.
I hold their little hands, the dimples beneath my rough thumbs, and it is all I can do to keep from breaking their little fingers in this overpowering love. If Mary Gordon did not know the emotional life of motherhood would be such physical sensation, then she was a fool. I knew what to expect in that regard; what I don't know is how to contain or channel it. The rush that comes over me could cause me to beat my children senseless or crush them with my kisses. Perhaps it is me, their own life and love giver, who stands the greatest danger to them, as Lennie Small was to his victim.
It is wet here in Vermont and all day Dylan was promised frogs. There were none at the nature preserve today and he bore up incredibly well for a three year old. So later, when his uncle found one in the garage, it was only the man's sense to give him directions ahead of time - cup it gently in leaf litter, then let it go back into the puddle, then wash your hands with soap - that preserved the tiny brown thing's slippery life. Dylan was practically hyperventilating with anticipation. It was all I could do to keep from crushing him into the moment, as wildflower into a scrapbook.
Monsters
Dylan is obsessed with monsters. And we call Joey "Miss Monster". But the real monsters are, of course, within us. It seems to me that no sooner do I finish scanning the shadows on my child's dark bedroom wall, than I am suddenly locked into my own, staring at the ceiling as my husband snores beside me, and numbers flip over and over in my head. How many calories have I eaten today? How many dollars have we spent? How much is coming in? Are there any unexpected expenses: tickets, discovered wages from the IRS, cracked macbook screens?
I add up the columns again and again in my head as the passing headlights march across my ceiling, wavy from the blinds, their sound sources muted by the air conditioner, which surely is costing more than we can afford in utility bills. Again and again the columns do not add up. Again and again, I run through the drop off and pick up times times, the daycare locations, the number of hours I am supposed to put in at work, the modes of transportation. Again and again, there seem not to be enough hours in a day. Which leads to spending more on quick meals, which leads to more calories, which leads to more columns that don't add up, which leads to knots in my stomach, which leads to a short temper when Dylan won't brush his teeth and Joey won't play on the floor for one single minute so I can just button my pants. Which leads me to yell at my husband when he comes home with a parking ticket, which leads me to eat chocolate, which leads me to lie in bed awake at night, which leads me to write this blog.
And then it is sometimes the light of day that kills the monsters. We are on vacation (another set of monsters to be left for a different entry). Larry was up half the night with his own monsters; he feared he'd overbid on a job and wouldn't get it. I calmed him a bit by telling him he was wise to bid a bit higher because he was 1) worth it and 2) not turning any profit by lowballing all these estimates. But, as with checking under Dylan's bed and in his closet, I can do very little to assure my husband there are no monsters. When he checked his email this morning, he found he had gotten the job (and I think at a very fair price, in the end). His sigh of relief was the breeze across our day, a physical sensation all five of us could wind our fingers through.
How is it that sex and monsters are so closely woven?
I add up the columns again and again in my head as the passing headlights march across my ceiling, wavy from the blinds, their sound sources muted by the air conditioner, which surely is costing more than we can afford in utility bills. Again and again the columns do not add up. Again and again, I run through the drop off and pick up times times, the daycare locations, the number of hours I am supposed to put in at work, the modes of transportation. Again and again, there seem not to be enough hours in a day. Which leads to spending more on quick meals, which leads to more calories, which leads to more columns that don't add up, which leads to knots in my stomach, which leads to a short temper when Dylan won't brush his teeth and Joey won't play on the floor for one single minute so I can just button my pants. Which leads me to yell at my husband when he comes home with a parking ticket, which leads me to eat chocolate, which leads me to lie in bed awake at night, which leads me to write this blog.
And then it is sometimes the light of day that kills the monsters. We are on vacation (another set of monsters to be left for a different entry). Larry was up half the night with his own monsters; he feared he'd overbid on a job and wouldn't get it. I calmed him a bit by telling him he was wise to bid a bit higher because he was 1) worth it and 2) not turning any profit by lowballing all these estimates. But, as with checking under Dylan's bed and in his closet, I can do very little to assure my husband there are no monsters. When he checked his email this morning, he found he had gotten the job (and I think at a very fair price, in the end). His sigh of relief was the breeze across our day, a physical sensation all five of us could wind our fingers through.
How is it that sex and monsters are so closely woven?
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