Life is not an adaptation of a famous cartoon strip. Maybe.

January 29, 2007 | Category: In My Life

!00 and some days ago, it rained.

I made a pot of soup.

I'm always making a pot of soup.

How many hours have passed over days, weeks, months? With my shoulderblades dancing as I chop-chop-chop with my favorite blade against the plastic cutting board. Maybe slower now, since being sick. Maybe more of a waltz, or a tango - chop-stop-puff-chop....

The snap of the carrots. The wet shuffle through the onion. The slicing long into the heart of the celery.

The steam tickling up from the silvery stock pot as the mirepoix boils.

The feel of the counter pressing into my back as I ponder up where to go with my prepared canvas.

An amethyst swirl of beets? The earthen bubble of puffy white mushrooms? The tang, with a fistful of fresh basil, of simmering tomatoes? Or a do I twist back to the onions, cutting long loopy curls? Reach for a fine port to share with the pot - a sip for me, a gulp for the soup.

It has been a rainy autumn. A rainy winter. It has been mud tracked through my house so thick that, unmopped, it hardens into something that takes scraping off with a butter knife... and much muttering of swear words.

Spiders huddling in our corners.

We waited for the brittle cold, that still has only flown through here and not yet stayed. We salted the stairs again and again, ripping the paint down to wood with all that salt. But no ice to save us from.

The winds have howled through our attic. They have gnashed at our trees, ripping through limbs. Sticks rain down in the night, to be gathered in the morning.

Little damages. Cracked birdfeeders. Scratches on the cars.

We dip the green-sapped sticks in old candle wax, and use them to start great roaring fires in the fireplace. And then, when the rain slips down the chimney, it makes a sudden hiss. And a pop.

It's a long 3 months to be forever refilling the windshield wiper fluid. To be seeing different doctors. To be making and taking appointments long put off. Of stunning moments of clarity that I have not let my shame pull me from.

But I'm not there yet, in stitching it together. I am still remembering the soups. The recipes, all in my head. The different steams and tones and jewels of it all.

I'm remembering the hours spent with my Bear-cub beside me, measuring. Making himself sandwiches. Wrinkling his gorgeous freckled nose at my soup even as he learned to read by recipes, held with a magnet on a can of chicken stock.

Rolling around in the big bed in the dusky afternoon. Maybe one of us jumping, a little. Full of soup and sandwich snack. Waiting for Daddy to come home so we can be all together, our little family.

Meanwhile, pushing my leaping cub to pay attention, to point out the words he knows as we read from a a big book full of vibrant cartoons about a red-headed boy (yes, like you, beautiful Bear) and his friend, a tiger (yes, like your own tiger there, tucked under your arm.)

"It's a magical world, Hobbes, 'ol buddy..." we read. Admiring that the boy gets to be in front of the sled. And that the tiger gets a bright scarf.

And they shove off, down a hill. "...Let's go exploring!" he shouts into the wind.

"Where's the more?" Bear asks me, leaning down from his jumping to turn the page, only to find there are no more pages to turn.

"There is no more," I tell him.

"Of the book?"

"Of all the books. That was the last thing the cartoonist drew of Calvin and Hobbes. This is the end."

Bear stops leaping all together. He huffs, standing still. "No," he says.

"Yes," I refute, flipping the book to the back cover again.

"No, Mommy. Member? They're going exploring. That's the begining. We just don't get to watch anymore."

Oh, I think.

There is something important here. Something in this moment, in the gloaming of the winter sundown. In this exact space on this crumpled bed.

Something....

"I'm home!" CD shouts, bursting in with wild winds slamming the doors open as exclamation. Bear spings off the bed with a high bounce and a shout, "Daddy!" And I follow, more slowly.

Something. Almost ready to be known.

(to be continued...)

The Air Up There

| Category: In My Life

When I was younger, I would wrap the heating pad around the thermometer. Pushing the fine red line up. It's funny how a child thinks that a fever of 115 will get her out of school, but not send her quickly into hospital. It's funny how a parent indulges, with gingerale and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Life is sometimes a cold, winter wind. And you need to huff a few times into the scarf at your neck to warm up your breath. Or rest a bit under the covers on a not-quite-sick day.

I used to feel guilty, about all the people who had it harder than me. The people who fight for any breath, frozen or moisty warm.

My pity didn't help them that needed it. Dropping my allowance into a plastic jug never saved a life. White upper-middle class guilt is shit-all at being productive. In fact, what it does is paralyze.

It's all right to rest.

It's all right to be all right.

It's all right, when the fear creeps into the edge of life, when you're laying awake at 3 in the morning wheezing for breath, to not feel guilty that you have the love and support and yes, damn it, the health insurance to help make sure that both lungs work again. And to pray, pray that one as blessed as I am, could again be blessed to breathe again.

Breathe deep.

It's amazing the thoughts that begin to fly through a brain after so many days of shallow air. Of drowsy lapses in time.

How it was so wrong of me to be angry at the sickness. At how good I have it, and how selfish I was to resent the constraints and other-time-ness of being ill. How I must be lacking in grace, and gratitude, and faith. Because I cried in frustration. And lashed out.

And then I remembered, shrunk back to being little. The old-fashioned stick thermometer. The smell of Vicks and my mom letting me watch television in the daytime. The rest of a day smuggled out of routine.

What it was like, to wake up again to a new sun, a new number on the calendar. Her determined face. Pulling on school clothes. A little sad to not have one more day. A little excited to be rushing for the bus, wondering what gone on while I was away.

I finally felt better yesterday. The doctor said on Friday, when I finished the drug therapy, that I would. In a day or two, she said.

And then, suddenly, she was right.

I took a long shower, and got clean. We did errands, a bit. We cleaned the son's room, determinedly. We squabbled, and made up. We made dinner and played Old Maid after.

I said to myself, "oh tomorrow"! I went to sleep, excitedly knowing I would wake up better in the morning.

But then, I woke up and found that I just didn't want to race back into life.

Two weeks of awful ill. Of coughing so hard I would pee myself. Of breathing in ragged, shallow sips and dying for more. Of pills and puffs and disgusting yuck.

But this morning? Was my sick day.

My indulgance, that I didn't deserve. That others can't afford. A long last nap. A cup of actual coffee. A stretch and the nothing of listening to my own lungs fill up, and pause, and slowly release.

When I was younger, this would have bound me in guilt. With lectures to my self about sloth and the hardships of others.

I am older now.

And able, finally, to understand why the airlines always tell you to put your own air on first, before taking care of others.

Breathe deep.

Well, that stinks.

January 24, 2007 | Category:

I have pneumonia.

After a trip to my nice doctor, I have a purple thing to breathe out of, a basket full of prescriptions, and the humidifier has made my whole house smell nice and methol-like.

The good news is that I actually do feel a bit better.

Meanwhile, thank you for the well wishes and good thoughts. They mean the world to me, and to my very tired husband who has been pulling double duty now for days.

(Not so fast) Not Dead Yet

January 22, 2007 | Category: In My Life

Last week, instead of posting about the end of this 100 Day challenge, I crawled into bed with a chest cold. And there I still am.

Forgive me. I hope to be back to health soon.

And then what?

January 09, 2007 | Category: In My Life

This blog is a true story.

It's my life.

And now the question I am facing... is there anything left to write?

Yeah, the last 7 years have been like a soap opera.

You know the plot, right? First Luke and Laura break up. Then they get back together.

The bad guy ties her up and she swings over a vat of something nasty. "Oh, Luke!" she cries, her hair rippling down her back. "I've always loved you!"

He shouts her name and struggles to get to her, but in a puff of mist.. she is gone!

Or maybe that was Bo and Hope.

Anyway.

The dips and rises of a life can seem like that sometimes. Like the chapters of a story. Working through time ... to find love, to get pregnant, to stay pregnant, to give birth, to stay married, to stay faithful.

In 2000, the first crisis tied up with a little blue bow. Bear was born after a very high-risk pregnancy. For 7 tense months I had written out my fear and his progress. But on September 6, he was born pink and squirming.

I remember thinking that I was at 'Happily Ever After'.

Yeah, anyone who has ever watched a soap opera knows .... there is no 'Happily Ever After'.

But who could tell me back then? After so many pregnancies, and so many months, there I was. Happily married and a new mother to the most amazing child ever born (just saying).

We'd just bought our first house, a fixer-upper on a quiet street yet so close to the city that we could see the top of the Sears Tower in the morning sun.

We were unpacking. Living in clutter. Hunting the extra toilet paper out of a box titled 'kitchen' and laughing over dinner made in a single saucepan.

Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be?

But just underneath the Rockwellian picture, there was something wrong.

Cue the music from Jaws.

You know how it is. Like a cold coming on. I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't know how bad it would get.

It got bad.

Dread, anyway.

My baby was pink and perfect. My husband was ashen and oversleeping each morning. Struggling to get through the days.

It wasn't a cold.

I called my old company and asked for my job back. They gave me a new one. In North Carolina. I hired a nanny, and stuffed my swollen boobs in a blouse, and got on a plane every week.

A few weeks later, "Honey," he said on the phone as I paced a garden in Raleigh. "I was just fired."

After that firecracker explosion came the avalanche. All the stuff we'd built up slid down and I watched, horrified, as the next 6 months ruined the bright man I loved.

Until October came, with brilliant orange and red leaves. In a moment of utter exhaustion and agony, I asked him to leave.

Just for a while, I said. Just until we remember how to breath.

He wasn't supposed to agree. He was supposed to suddenly change back and put on a cape and swoop me into his arms and tell me that everything would be all better now.

He left.

You know how it is. People rally. They help out. But behind your back, they don't understand. They say things like what an awful guy he is and how everyone saw it coming.

I didn't see it coming.

And he isn't awful.

He came back 6 weeks later and we had to face facts; what was driving us apart was more than just a little bad patch.

And for the next 3 years, we struggled. We did not go lightly into turning things around. To keep sane, I started another blog. I started writing it all out. Teeth clenched, wit sharpened.

Furious, invigorated, screaming over the soap opera life could be:

And then the smoke alarm went off in the front of the house... My living room was on fire.

Perversely, in the midst of it all, I was getting promoted. Get a larger staff, larger budgets, more responsibility. Projects to install a new server somewhere became projects to replace all servers, everywhere.

It made me all dizzy. The highs and the lows and the ominous organ music.

Some days, I would wake up and still be in love with the man I saw - even if I hated how we far apart we were. Some days, it would seem like there was no hope.

Some days, I would eat too damn much chocolate.

Most days, I thought I would break.

So I went a little crazy myself and got into fights with the people at Dunkin Donuts, and watched my own health declinee - taking my sanity with it.

"Well, OK," I told her. "But you understand that it's no win if my fingers stop hurting but I wet the bed."

And just when I thought it was already as crazy and awful as I could stand, came that day. My son had been suffering with a 104 fever for 7 days and nothing was helping. The hospital could treat the heat but couldn't find a cause.

And I was ready for him to crumble. I was ready to deal with the craziness that normal had become.

But in a stunning turn of events, my husband was steady. He seemed ready - the crisis proved something we hadn't even realized....

We were all right.

You know how it is. You struggle with something for so long that you can't exactly know when it got better. When the cool began to warm. When the pouring rain began to putter down to a drip.

A week later, one lazy afternoon, in a big bed. My husband rested at the center. Our blessedly recovering son asleep in the crook of one arm. Me curled up under the other. "I'm going to quit my job," I said. Like I had threatened so many times before. "I'm going to stay home, and take care of him. While he still needs me to. While I still need to. I'm going to give my notice, I mean it this time."

And he sighed. "I know," he said.

And then it was quiet.

It was almost year ago that I told my management that I was leaving. Started a long, slow, chaotic rebuild of this unpredictable life. It was almost 100 days ago that I decided to stop mourning what had happened, and challenged myself to make more of this time and this chance.

And today, this morning, I woke up to my son climbing into bed next to me. Laying his soft cheek on my shoulder.

I opened the door, and blinked at the sun.

I ground the coffee, and made breakfast.

I checked my mail, and hunted up clean underwear.

I touched my toes, and brushed my teeth.

I had a thumb war with my son.

The thing about Luke and Laura is that they can never just be. I mean, who would watch that?

Would anyone watch if Luke got Laura down from her perlous perch, and took her to live in the suburbs?

The most amount of drama we have these days was when my husband used a flashlight to find a pair of matching socks yesterday morning, because it was still dark and he didn't want to wake me up.

It's not much to read about, I guess.

In fact, it's not much to write about.

It's this fragile, new rhythm in our lives and sometimes I don't understand. It leaves me with calm days and little inspiration for dramatic posts and a kind of dizzy unfamiliar sense of things.

But God. I think it's happiness.

It's happiness.

You know how it is.

You struggle to find things to say, wondering what happened to all the brilliant drama.

And realize...

Life got good. Well, better.

But it makes me wonder... what does it mean when these 100 days is done? What will there be to say?

And I don't have an answer.

I don't know if there is one.

What if video killed the radio star. And there was no 'then what' to the former Corporate Mommy?

TMI

January 08, 2007 | Category: In My Life

I'm just gonna say, that as I get a little older I am noticing that once a month I get sentimental, crabby, and dripping melancholy. No, I was never like this before. Yes, I was one of the lucky ones. No, I don't think it was about time. Yes, it may affect my tone of voice and my topics. You got a problem with that? Then send Midol.

... and the deep blue sea

January 04, 2007 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

I don't know how my son managed to have fun at such a half-hearted attempt at camp - but when I picked him up (about 2 hours early), he was smiling.

I had gotten nothing done, nothing.

In a couple of months we are selling this house. I look around. And freak the hell out.

So much to do. We'll be working right up to the minute our first open house starts.

And? And? We still haven't decided where we're moving. What comes next.

Leaving Dee's party on Monday, I was disengaging from a conversation. I think I was talking about swimming with the dolphins last month off Key largo.

"Wait," she asked - "what's new with the house?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, we picked out a kitchen. And we have some kind of plan. Whatever comes together by April or so - that's when the house goes up for sale. "

"Then where?"

"Well, we think Iceland for a visit this summer. And maybe England."

We looked at each other while I pulled on my coat.

"I don't know where we'll end up," I admitted. "Maybe back here. Maybe Canada. We've decided to be open."

And I thought 'That sounds insane. That sounds utterly nuts! When in the world did I go from coffee-talk about my job and Bear's life to being the off-kilter loony tune who doesn't know where she and her family are going to be living in 6 months? This woman is about to give me such a look! Such a comment!.' And I even braced myself a little.

Because this is all wrong, right?

But she just called "Good Luck!" as we started down the stairs to the car.

Don't Listen To Your Gut

January 03, 2007 | Category: Mother to the First Power

Bear misses being around other kids. So I signed him up for a couple of days at a Snowflake Camp through the park district to help fill in over the long Christmas break from school.

After I did that, I found out some of his friends would be visiting Chicago. But still, this morning, I dressed him up and took him over to the rec building.

Egads.

It was a sad little group of 6 boys - half around 10 years old and half around 6 years old (Bear's age). The big boys were hucking a basketball at each other with no discernible rules except to throw as hard as they could. The younger boys were making bracelets with lanyards.

Bear went and investigated a corner of the room.

"Look," I told him, after forcing the counselors to introduce themselves, "you don't have to stay. This was supposed to be fun."

"I know," he answered, looking around. "But it's OK. You can go. Just come back after lunch, OK?"

I found a chair and watched for another 15 minutes. Nothing much improved.

"Bear?" I called him over from looking out the window at the windy, empty playground. "You sure? I can just sit out in the hall and read my book, if you want more time to make up your mind."

"I'm fine," he insisted. "It's good for a little while."

I don't want to be one of those mothers. The ones that hover long after their kids have pushed away for some independance.

But, man, it was so hard to put the van in gear and drive away.

Time heals... nothing

January 02, 2007 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

When I was growing up, I hoarded resentment.

After all, there was so much of it lying around to be had.

I saw the inequities all around me, and it seemed like my straw was always shortest in the sucks-the-worst competitions.

I didn't know then. I didn't know that an upper-middle-class white girl in New England has it so damn good that she doesn't know from inequity.
That little crack in the cosmic egg came later.

In the meantime, back in that time, it was so hard to keep in the anger at the unfairness.

Sometimes, my family still makes choices that baffle me. And there will be this strange Twilight Zone moment when I'll just get so pissed.

Even though, in the long and deep of things, it doesn't really effect me. Even though I immediately snap back.

The conditioning of childhood has left these buttons in me that I don't seem to be able to disarm.

I mean, I'm a grown-up - right? I'm over it.

So why does what they do still just sock me in the gut, if only for a moment?

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

January 01, 2007 | Category: In My Life

Wow, it's 2007. When I was young, I tried to picture what it was like to be alive in the '2 thousands' but really, besides the certainty of flying cars (dammit), I couldn't really wrap my mind about something so far away.

A few days ago, I was convinced tha we would start the year adopted by a new little smudge of a cat, but that slut went back to his own family a few blocks over. It was nice to have him around, for a couple of days. Even if he was a screamer. It gave us thoughts, of the adopting kind. Although we have a lot on our hands with our fading old dame, Maggie.

So instead, we cleaned ourselves up and went a-visiting. Saying 'Happy New Year' to everyone we passed. Wait. Have I mentioned? HAPPY NEW YEAR!

At Dee's open house, a freind of hers was saying that she'd butted heads with the new pastor at her church a couple of weeks ago when Colossians 3:18 - "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord" had come up in the Lectionary.

I guess the new pastor had avoided discussing the passage in his sermon.

I could see why.

Not too long ago, just as far back as my childhood, a pastor could have stood behind that lectern and said "Women, remember that your husband is the head of the family. He is the final word."

Then he could have stood at the back of the Church and everyone would have smiled and shook his hand and said "nice sermon". Maybe, in some places, he still can.

I'm not going to argue the context of the passage. Wikipedia does a better job at it than I could.

I think our agreement, sipping Sangria in Dee's Logan Square condo, was not in how outdated and demeaning such a passage can seem - especially as it is almost always read standalone and out of context.

But that there should be dialogue.

The point is no longer to prove who is wrong and who is right, but for there to be a way for us to have a peaceable discussion even if we disagree.

I realized that this is part of my excitement at being alive in the world today.

20 years ago, the woman would have been calling up the pastor demanding that the passage be called out as sexist. Now? She called the pastor to ask why he avoided opening the topic up in his sermon. Because there is so much valuable work that happens when we talk to each otehr. And listen.

And for the record, I have struggled with the most of Paul's letters most of my life. But I like how my New Testement professor, long ago, used to sum up all of those chapters into one sentence;

Be good to each other and let Love lead in all the relationships of your life.