Wild Winds

September 28, 2006 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

The first time I fell in love, it was autumn. I was 21. I thought I was world-weary, sage, and strong.

I was wrong.

I remember the first kiss, because in so many ways, it was my first real kiss. If I touch my lips now, I can still feel that spark.

Walking his dog after dinner, a sweater against the cool wind, we pictured our lives. Kids, jobs, house, vacations, retirement, world. We set it to music. We decorated the bedrooms. We twined up our fingers and grinned at each other as we strolled.

Ask me. I still remember our future-daughter's name.

Then a decade passed and none of it came true. You put that much love, admiration, passion into a bond and bind it with gold. Don't matter a damn. Won't get it done.

Life is half chances and half perserverance. And you never get to choose. The strangest things happen out of the blue on an ordinairy, isn't-it-warm-for-the-season Thursday afternoon.

The train pulls away, and you say goodbye.

It's autumn again.

Yet another decade gone.

Don't get so many of those that I wouldn't notice.

I remember last fall, squeezing the stuffing out of every day. So busy that my hands shook. The guy who spoke French with an Irish accent would call at 6am. Bear had to be at school by 8:30. Elia always made me wait. CD wanted dinner before karate. And the e.VP who'd ring me at 9pm looking for status on tomorrow, 'cuz he could never remember what time zone I was in.

I knew every second what I was feeling. The rush of sensation like I was being pushed through some kind of crazy neon tunnel. And each night, Bear would sleep as I watched - a day older. And I'd wonder what kind of day it had been, through his eyes and toes and ears.

You know?

I was thinking about that today. Kind of quiet day, as I sorted through some more of the endless piles I've made in my slow (some might say leisurely) scrub of the house. As I did dishes. As I picked out Bear's clothes, and cheered him on during his writing practice. And listened about how Kindergarten class went.

I watched the branches bow to the wind outside the window and I lost myself to thought in the living room.

It occurred to me, that I never had that daughter.

It occured to me that I got a hell of a first kiss.

It occured to me that I get less done in a day than I used to in an hour.

It occurred to me that, well, that's OK by me.

This is not the autumn of dreams. This is not the autumn of kisses. This is not the autumn of tears. This is not the autumn wrestling regrets as I watch my son sleep.

Now is a new season. An autumn of the next decade.

Of dusky afternoons making soup. Of ennui and fine lines. This is the season of my bright green suede jacket, and the scarf I picked up in Paris last year. Of looming disaster and waffles in the morning. This is the season of mothering, and letting go. Of knock-knock jokes and finishing long-started things. Of gusts that lift my hair, and of growing it long again. Of breezes that tug the pitches out of the strike zone, and maybe bring my husband's arms back around mine.

I love this time of year. Of pumpkins and squash and crunchy leaves and freshly sharpened pencils. I remembered that this afternoon as the steam from cooking pasta melted my face and my aged cat watched from the chair.

You know why people fight so hard to love, to marry, to become parents?

Because it's worth it.

This life, these choices, His will, a different pace. For this season.

An autumn of wild winds.

About, now in progress.

September 20, 2006 | Category: In My Life

I decided to try my hand at a graphic for the "about" page...

Whaddya think?

If You Give a Pig a Pancake

September 19, 2006 | Category: In My Life

I finally, finally got a manicure last Thursday. And it's already ruined.

Freaking TV broke.

Let me sum up.

No. Is too complicated.

Let me explain....

See, once upon a time, we bought an antique door while in New England. Then we strapped it on the roof of the van and drove it the million billion miles home - with it fluttering and crashing "thwacka thwacka THWACKA" the entire way.

70-dozen-bajillion Advil later, it was raining when we pulled into the driveway. So we untied it and carried it into the little garage at the back of our property.

"Careful... careful... ok.. HEAVE!!" *crash* "We'll take it out and strip it and revarnish it as soon as the weather clears..."

*crickets chirp*

Then, 2-plus years later, the television died.

So hi-ho, hi-ho to Best Buy, where the nice people smoked crack and decided to give US (of which, half is unemployed) no-interest for 18 months. An hour later, we're walking back to the infamous Thwacka van with a TV as thick as Volume 1 of unabridged Shakespeare and costing as much as my first semester at Loyola.

CD's hands sweating and face grim. Because my husband? Is very fiscally conservative. He loses sleep when our financial health slips from Kermit to Ernie.

However, this is a terrible reality for him because as an Icelander he is also bred to be acquisitive and gadget-crazy. He's always fighting the cat-like compulsion to bat around and buy bright shiny things like tin foil balls and Surround Sound systems.

So it's just best for him if we NEVER go into Best Buy. Where the one half of him is thinking about the cost of money and interest rates and getting nauseaus and the other side of him is thinking "ooooh! Pretty dials!"

We survive the trip. We survive the parking lot. Then he looks at me after sliding the Thinnest.TV.Ever into the van and says "next to the house and the car, this is the most expensive thing we've ever bought." He's wrong, the couch cost more but I'm not arguing the point with a 6-foot green-faced husband.

We get home, and place a plank over the stairs and roll a wheelbarrow into our living room to snag the Dead.Humongous.TV and roll it into the alley and then, with quiet pomp and a little circumstance, CD gently rests Thinnest.TV on the stand.

Which is in direct line of sight of the front foor.

Which we never lock unless we're home.

Because, frankly, the door is older than the dirt in the front yard, literally. We suspect the lock in it was made by Barbary Pirates. It can't be replaced, the holes aren't in any place useful to current lock mechanisms. The only key we have for it is the copy of a copy of a copy of a sailor man and only works on days ending in "shit!".

CD stands out on the front steps. He looks in at the new TV. The old TV weighed 250 pounds. We figured, if someone stole it we could always find the thief in the emergency room with a hernia. We got nothing worth stealing, we always said.

Yeah.

So this weekend, the "thwacka" door was uncovered during an archeological dig of the garage and pulled onto sawhorses to be restored.

To the sounds of Ziggy Marley and Muddy Waters, we sanded and sanded and scraped and sanded. And scraped. Oh, and swept the driveway.

There is a children's book called "If you give a Pig a Pancake" about how one thing ALWAYS leads to another. How, if you give a pig a pancake, you'll end up with a syrup-covered bovine in a tutu using up all your Polaroid film.

And what I'm saying is - my fingers are sore and my manicure is destroyed.

Because the TV broke.

(But worth it, maybe?)

I make a lousy wife

September 13, 2006 | Category: In My Life

It has been CD's complaint since I left my job that I don't clean enough.

When I worked, we had Elia here every day. And Elia? Is a clean freak. God love her. Each night, I would exit my little office to see the tidy floors and hear the hum of the dishwasher.

It took a LOT of stress off a stressful few years to have Elia around. Because I am NOT exactly Lady Tidy and CD? Good Lord. CD is a living PigPen.

My messiness comes with 3 scoops of guilt. My old-fashioned Yankee parents drilled into me from the youngest age that a messy house is a sin.

His cleaning dysfunction comes with a strange sort of blindness. He can't even see the chaotic mess that erupts in his wake. He just knows that when he comes home from work that the Mess is here, waving to him cheerfully as it snacks on Lorna Doones.

So his first, terror-stricken, thought when I left my job and Elia left us was... WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN?!

(With a beady glance that said 'And it better be YOU'.)

There were negotiations, there were discussions. Jimmy Carter visited and facilitated a treaty. The UN sent in troops to enforce the terms.

And yet. Our house is a bloody wreck.

In the past 6 months, I have attempted to maintain a 50%-and-no-more policy with a don't-mess-don't-clean codicil.

But mostly? I haven't written.

(What? You didn't notice?)

I lost a gig that 6 months ago I could have whipped out without a sweat. I have sat, impotent, at my keyboard.

Lost.

In a messy house.

Conflicted, unable to concentrate. Trying to put up blinders so I won't be distracted by laundry that needs folding, toys that need tidying, trash that needs binning.

Feeling waves of guilt like a fever, because how dare I take time for this? How DARE I - without Elia to clean and mind Bear - lock myself in my mind and my words?

Last night, CD said - 'You are Depressed! You need therapy!'

I gave him a blank, dead-fish kind of a look. A little bubble over my head with the word "huh?" in it.

'If you weren't,' he told me, 'the house would be clean!'

See, when all you got is a hammer - then every problem is a nail. Believe you me.

I've been to psychiatrists, therapists, neurologists, and my GP. You know what they say? That I am going through a major shift in life, that I need to sleep more, that I would benefit from having a counselor to help me wade through my choices and my direction, and that I should work out 3 times a week and take fish pills.

I sigh.

He said, 'I'm tired of coming home and the house isn't any cleaner than when I left and you expect me to clean AND watch Bear while you..."

It took a whole night and this morning for my fuse to finally reach the TNT that is the deepest part of my brain. If his cell phone was made of a flammable material, it would have exploded in hs hand - leaving him with smoking eyebrows and a shocked expression.

I'm rolling up the damn doormat, and I'm declaring independance.

I can't live like this anymore.

I left my job for many reasons, good ones.

And none of them included becoming a better maid.

I can't let my indecision wreck me anymore. Sure it sounds specious - unwashed dishes doesn't equal writer's block.... right?

But in my case, it has.

Like a blogger I once loved, I'm not Donna Reed.

I have to put those expectations away. And I have to refuse to let anyone else put them on me.

It is time to lay down the guilt. Gently. And then kick it smosh it burn it with that crappy incense leftover from my college days.

If you love me, you want me to be happy. You want me to write, because I am a writer. Maybe not a very good one - but it is in my DNA, this compulsion. You want to hear the tapetty of the keyboard more than the hum of the dishwasher. You understand that my sanity and my bliss comes from this.

And maybe it isn't fair to say all this aloud, on a blog visible from space.

But I needed to say it.

Finally.

And screw the house.

Letting him down...

September 12, 2006 | Category: Mother to the First Power

There are days when I am just certain that I am the worst mommy alive.

Last year, I was all organized for Bear's birthday before we left for New England - I had the invitations, the address book, the reservation made at My Gym.

This year, in my chaos, I had to enlist CD long distance after I had already left. It took about 20 phone calls and 3 different reservations before we came to a date with My Gym and then I was in the strange position of sending out sort of anonymous Birthday Invitation fliers to his new school and invitations to his old classmates.

Last night we got a call from My Gym - however it happened in the flurry of calling in August... there was a miscommunication.

Bear doesn't have the venue for this weekend when we thought. Another party is in there at that time and they were confirmed first.

I tried to look calm as I broke the news to Bear. He listened, and didn't cry.

More stoic than me.

DOING MY DUTY

September 11, 2006 | Category: Not The Nightly News

Today is CD's Birthday. It is also our wedding anniversary. And it is, of course, another anniversary. We've struggled in the past couple of years to reconcile all this on one day - with complications resting atop like a thin Al Fredo, seeping in.

But this year, it's been made easy for me.

For the first time in my life, I've been called to Jury Duty. Interestingly, in criminal court.

Somewhat fitting, I think.

On the day you were born

September 05, 2006 | Category: Mother to the First Power

We will wake him up, and pull him between us in bed. Like we do, every year, on this morning. And we will tell him his story...

Mommy sat, like a bird on her eggs, for 236 days.

Actually, it was 276 days until your egg hatched - but there were 24 days before we knew about you and 16 days during the second trimester when we went to LA and swam in the rooftop pool of the Intercontinental Hotel.

So, yes, it was 236 days of bedrest when all the nice doctors listened with all their instruments and decided that it was time, really time, for you to be born.

At the Evanston Northwestern Hospital, they gave me a special medicine at 5PM that would poke my body and tell it you should be born.

By 9PM your Nana arrived from Boston, and your Aunt Dee was there, and Daddy was singing to you inside of me.

At 1AM, we took a long hot shower. It was supposed to make me feel better, and it did because I laughed and laughed to see your daddy climb in with me with all his clothes on.

At 3AM, I was given a shot to make me rest. Your dad and Aunt Dee would giggle as I would wake up and shout "ow ow ow" with each contraction and then fall back asleep.

At 9AM I got a really BIG shot called an "epidural" and then the nurses said I should try and push you out.

At 11:15AM Daddy saw your head when I pushed! The doctor told us your head was turned the wrong way to be born and manually worked you around to the right position.

At 1PM the doctor said "great pushing but Bear hasn't turned all the way and was well and truly stuck."

2PM, they said "Stop Pushing!" Sweetie, you were jammed in my pelvis. In case you've forgotten, let me remind you: Neither of us liked you there.

At 3PM, the emergency C-section began. It took 52 more minutes to free you. My body was really tired and the machines all were beeping and almost simultaneously, you were born and the doctors decided it was time for me to rest.

As they took you out of my tummy by your feet, you stretched out into the world. The doctor turned you right side up and you surprised her by lifting your head. Then you reached out and grabbed her around the neck. (Yes, Bear, like a hug) She had your handprint there for hours.

Your dad cut your cord and they harvested your stem cells to be donated for someone who needed them - because you didn't anymore. (You see? From the very start, your birth was a blessing.)

The people in white coats rubbed you, measured you, and wrapped you cozy in a blanket. Then your dad grabbed you up. I got to see you and you had dark blue eyes and big cheeks. Your dad held you close to me, close to our faces so you could see your mommy and daddy.

The nurses and doctors wanted to take you to the nursery but they just had to wait until I was stable before your dad consented to leave my side. Because, he was never about to leave yours.

Hours later, when I woke up in Recovery, your dad brought you to me again.

Finally, we really met.

I smelled you and touched you and memorized your face. For a long, long time the three of us rested on that bed together quietly, the way we still do.

On the day you were born, it was warm. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds. A doctor walked with your tiny handprint on her neck. The Cubs were winning in extra innings. Jane Addams would have been 140 years old...

And a miracle happened.

Was I the miracle?

Yes, Bear. You were. And you still are.

verisimilitude.

September 02, 2006 | Category: In My Life

verisimilitude \ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun: 1. The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true. 2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

I wrote an article on spec a couple of weeks ago. It lacked verisimilitude. Too shiny-happpy-people, if you know what I mean. I only live cinema verite - can't write it, unfortunately for my bank account.

Well, we'll see.

We're now 6 weeks away from running aground. CD is doggie paddling against the undertow, trying to stay afloat long enough to breathe. Bear swings between acting out and clutching at me madly.

It's been a wonderful summer, wish you were here.

Fall's coming, the breezes are chilled. Remembering back to when the teachers would assign a 500-hundred word essay on what we wanted to be when we grew up. Remembering the view outside the bedroom window, the taste of the pencil eraser in my mouth.

An astronaut?

A parent?

A doctor?

A teacher?

A ballerina?

A cop who shot out of highrise buildings, bullets flying and dripping blood as the bad guys stood on the steps long enough to get a clear shot?

The music from the radio, the posters on the wall, the breeze.

"What if I don't want to go to the new school every single day?" he asks from the backseat.

"Because why?" I ask.

(Mumbling) "Because I don't like the new teacher."

"Sweetie, you're going to have to man up and go to kindergarten. Every day."

"Why?"

"Because it teaches you how to get what you want."

"What if I want to NOT go to school?"

(Score one for the kid.) "Well, Bear - tell me something. What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Everything. I want to fly jets and be a police officer and a paleontologist and a black belt. And a Daddy."

"Those are great things to want to be. So think about them for a second."

(Softly, looking for the trap.) "OK...."

"The only way to get to make those dreams come true is to study, and practice, and you'll really need money which you can get from working everyday. And I want you to get your dreams, but I don't have a fairy wand that could make your them come true. But I CAN help you learn perseverance."

"What's that?"

"That's going to kindergarten. Every single day."

(Long silence.)

"Mommy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"What did you want to be when YOU grew up?"

(Glance in the rearview mirror, the copper hair, the cherub's cheeks.)

"This."

"This what?"

Almost out of money, CD's struggling, will we have to sell the house? Can I get a waitressing gig, maybe?

"This sweetie. Right this minute now. To have memories of teaching and serving and traveling. And to be in this car, right now, with yummy leftover birthday cake and balloons in the trunk and you. To be Daddy's wife. To be your Mommy. I wanted this, and maybe - just an ounce more faith."

"Really, Mommy?"

"Yes, Bear. This. This was my dream, and now it's true."