Catching up

Hi!  I'm so glad you're here. Come on in.  I have wine.  You want wine, right?  White or red?  I have an awesome white!  My favorite.  It's Giesen Sauvignon Blanc. It's on sale at Safeway.  There are bread and cheese too. That's the sea salt bread. Safeway. They have the best bakery in town.  Yes, that is sad.  I feel it in my chest a bit too, but when you live on the outer edge of civilization like we do, you just thank god for Safeway and their great big shipping trucks that somehow make it here from actual cities.

I have so much to tell you!  And this is awkward because normally I would let you talk first like a good little hostess, but the astonishing thing about a blog is that only I can talk.  It's both incredibly self-centered and fantastic all at the same time.  So, I'll go first.

You know we got that dog, right?  You remember the dog?  Yes, that one.  Oh you noticed!  Our door is fixed.  We moved the horse-dog to a horse-dog coral in the back. It's fabulous. I love it. I can forget about his existence for hours at a time.

It has many uses.  I don't forget the existence of the children in there for hours at a time. Often.

The other night Matt came in and he asked me for a new towel for the dog.  I have two dog-allotted muddy-foot-wiping towels and I don't like to switch them out. It's a bitch to wash them. I have to first beat them against a rock to try and get all the mud off of them because I imagine that pounds of mud are not good for my washing machine and then I have to wash them.  I KNOW.  Do I look like a pioneer woman to you?  Aside from the fact that I live in the unsettled west hinterlands and I have to carry wood to the wood stove to keep our house warm and now I have livestock in a livestock pen in the back, I mean?  DO I?  It's like living in primitive times.  Before ipads.  When Safeway had the only bakery.

"What's wrong with the old towel?"

"You need to wash it," he told me.

"Why?"

"I wiped the dog with it."

"I know but, it's only mud. You're going to need to wipe him again. Shake it off outside."

"No. I wiped him with it."

We stared at each other in mutual disbelief. My husband in his work boots and Carhart jacket, looking like he recently pulled a calf from a cow's vagina or something equally disgusting.  Which he didn't. Although, I assure you that if he had, he would absolutely wipe that shit on my towels too.

"You wiped the dog's ass on my towel?"  I'm pretty sure that there's exactly one positive to dog ownership over having another child and it is that you do not have to wipe animals' asses for them.

"He had a hanger."

More staring.

"I didn't think that you'd want him in the house like that."  He shrugged. He'd won and he knew it because the only thing worse than my husband wiping the dog's ass with my towel would be the dog wiping his own ass on my rug.  "I can see you mentally blogging this."

Maybe. Matt has this look when he talks about this blog.  It's condescendingly annoyed amusement.  Here I captured it for you.

This is where I get defensive and talk about how much I like writing and thinking and feeling like I'm a part of the greater world. He laughs and says that he understands, after all lots of people spend a significant amount of time on something that involves writing and thinking and being a part of the greater world AND THEY CALL IT A PART TIME JOB. And then I hit him in the face with an ass towel.

(Oh! Guess what? While we're having an aside about my part-time blog that doesn't pay anything and that doesn't even count as writing practice when I write this stream of consciousness drivel - I am moving to Wordpress. I'm beyond excited because Cat is handling the difficult computery side of the whole thing and I'm handling exactly nothing except the part where I ooooohhhh ahhhhh over how pretty it is in draft. If you are thinking of redesigning or moving to Wordpress - talk to Cat. She's incredible.)

The ass towel in question remains on the floor where I occasionally prod it with my foot, muttering ineffectively.  I need to wash it but I am paralyzed by the idea of putting the equivalent of dog toilet paper in my washing washing machine.  But don't worry!  I can do a load of dog toilet paper and contagious fungus towels, because, while we're chatting about things that are horrifyingly disgusting, there's also Quinn.

...

To be continued tomorrow. Because this was, truly, the longest post about ass-wiping and fungus ever written.  Possibly the only post about ass-wiping and fungus ever written, but sadly, I doubt it.

Better half

It's the hurry that gets me and I'm not sure why I rush.  Because it's bedtime. Because I'm tired.

No, the real, supersecret, dark truth is that I'm tired of them.  I want the kitchen clean, dishwasher loaded, counters wiped down, sodden leftovers stored. I want it done now while they bounce off of walls and each other upstairs, supposedly getting their pajamas on, so that when I come down, after stories and teeth and a calming round of our favorite John Denver songs, I can revel in the straight-lined, stacked cleanliness.

I need this to write, to think, to breathe free of them for a few short hours.  I want a cleared, wiped table waiting for me. Its deep, rain forest dark brown surface shined.  My computer ready. A glass of water weeping onto the much abused wood.

In my hurry, Nate's desires are less adorable baby behaviors and more annoyances.  "Elp ew. Elp ew." He likes to help me load the dishes. In my better moments, I hand him the rinsed plastic cups and the less dangerous silverware for haphazard storage on the bottom rack.  I ignore his fumbling placement and happily fish errant forks and spoons from under the slimy rubber seal at the bottom of the dishwasher after he is tucked into bed.  In more amiable moods, I let him close the soap dispenser and the dishwasher door, his favorite step in the process. "Cose it. Cose it."  Time after time, I patiently open it again before handing him another spoon to stow half in and half out of the silverware holder.

Tonight, I block the door before it clicks shut and knock it back towards the ground with unnecessary ire.  I ignore his outstretched hands. "Elp ew. Elp ew." My dark fixation on the interrupted task and not the child.

Of course, I knock the door back open too quickly one too many times.  "No, Nay-nay. No, baby. Nazer, no thank you. No close it." Of course, I do.  And it bumps his fat lower lip on the way down, which quivers in more horror and outrage than pain and then drops open to emit not only a bellowing, sorrowful cry, but also a stream of drool spun through with bright, cherry red blood.

It dribbles down his brown jersey, making dark marks as it falls. A scarlet "I" for impatience perhaps.  Or a scarlet "S" for shame.

I call out for Matt, my hands wet and shriveled, covered with dish soap and dinner remains and he swoops Nate away to the couch with an ice cube I've grabbed from the freezer.  I can hear them as I finish the kitchen at last, first words of comfort and then giggling and chatting. When I peek, Nate is seated on his Daddy's lap, facing him, laughing, the bump forgotten. Suddenly, thankfully, I am one of two. Half of the whole.

Guilt is something on which I try not to dwell. We hurry. Shit happens. I forget, wallow in the reminder and forget again.  I will snuggle him tonight.  I will try to be better tomorrow.  That is the blessing and the curse of this parenting gig.  Still, I can't help but think that he won't want to "elp me" forever. He won't care to "cose it."  I'll be both sorry and grateful when his toddling red head is absent from my kitchen at pajama time.

In my best moments, I am my own better half.

Water torture

It rains and rains and rains and rains. The ground melts, grass, rocks, sidewalk, pavement, into an indeterminate gray-brown mush.  The sky melts down the edges of the horizon into the straggly tree line.  The gnome hats of snow on top of the fence posts on the corner melt and run weakly down the side to the ground.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I start to fade like Bilbo wearing that damn ring. It's so easy to let the evil dripping in.

Drip. Drip. Drip. It's the sound of my brain melting.

You have to fight it. Claw your way to color. Pour it inside you and surround yourself with it and dunk your head under its icy surface until your edges sharpen and you feel and think and see and hear around the gray.

With an extra-hot, creamy (forget nonfat, pull out the big guns), extra-pump chai.  Pump it, barista. Make the spice bite my tongue when I sip.  It tastes like multi-colored glitter.

With a fire so hot that sparks fly from our chimney. It pulses inside the woodstove, draws my eye, focuses my mind.

With Nate's giggles, Quinn's outraged three-year-old screams, Hampton Noodle's snores, Garrett's precise, formal questions, Saige's tap-dancing, watch me, momma, watch me.

Click. Clickity-click. Click.


Hold me. Feed Me. Help me. Love me. Pop rocks of emotion, fizzing on my tongue.

I turn to them like the sun, close my eyes, warm my face. 



March in the Pacific, NW.  We hates it, precious.

The write brain at BlogHer

After intense negotiations with Matt, I managed to badger him into a final affirmative on my trip to BlogHer in San Diego in August. All by my lonesome.  No children whatsoever.  (I did not enjoy taking Nate to NYC last year, a fact that I am happy to discuss with anyone who is curious, but mostly involves bitching about having a dang baby with me all the time.)

And I've been thinking all along about how badly I'd like to talk about writing process, the craft of writing and the evolution of self as a writer on-line with the incredible people that congregate at BlogHer.  So, I forced myself to be a bit braver than I usually am and I wrote to two of my favorite writers. I discussed with them (okay, there may have been some begging) the possibility of proposing a writing process Room of Your Own discussion.

I know, it's outside of my comfort zone, but this is the year of courage in my little world.

Unbelievably Bon, whose writing routinely leaves me speechless, and Deb, whose tight, fabulous essays on life as a Kindergarten teacher make me laugh and cry, agreed to the idea and we have a Room of Your Own proposal on writing craft up right this very second.

It's all a bit last minute and that is my fault because my courage rests on a mountain of procrastination and waffling, but it's there and there are still 48 hours to say you would attend and make my life happier.

I don't ask much of y'all do I?   I'm asking now, if you are going to BlogHer and discussing our inner artists interests you at all, please run over and click that "you would attend" the session.  While you're there, read through the list.  There are fabulous proposals.  Some of my favorites are The Many Faces of Cause Marketing, Great Blog Design, From Page to Stage and Cease Fire: A call to end the war between women.

thank you.  i adore the people here and I adore the idea of talking about writing with you.

I think the universe may have just told me to ... nah

I didn't intend that last post as a call for people to "delurk" and comment, but I love that some of you said hi.  The comments are absolutely lovely.  Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts with me sometimes.

Before I published a post about blogging and life and commenting and feelings and that padded closet we all keep inside as a place to stuff our hurts, I promised myself that I would keep up with the discussion, not just read your thoughts and smile. The universe had other plans.  I was struck, last night, a little after eleven, with the quickest, most foul stomach bug that I have yet encountered.  It's like my children are little scientific experiments in how to create the most noxious, nausea-inducing, head-spinning stomach crap and give it to me for a few laughs at how well I moan over the toilet. 

I had a few friends over for a glass of wine and not five minutes after they left I got that little something is not right feeling. You know the one?  Five minutes later I was lying on the bathroom floor making insane bargains with the universe if I could please not feel like this ever again and if I was going to puke could we get it over with already.

The universe obliged.  As I horked up lung tissue, I became increasing alarmed. I felt like hell, sweaty and dizzy and, you know, like I was losing the contents of my stomach into the toilet and the contents of my stomach were RED.

So I sobbed to Matt, "get in here, I think I'm puking blood."

Matt deigned to glance into the toilet from the bathroom door.  "Or you drank red wine.  Did you drink red wine?"

Well, golly gee, I surely did.  It was one glass. Must we discuss my drinking habits from my death toilet? WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

"It's wine. Not blood.  Wine."

Huh.  Fairly relevant after all.  Objection overruled.  That shit stains, in case you were wondering.

Stomach empty, I was in that narrow flu-honeymoon, post-puking window when you KNOW you need to crawl into bed and go to sleep or you will most surely be right back in the bathroom.  I croaked that Matt should switch the gold for candy in the Leprechaun traps and also could he dye the milk green, please?

Matt completely ignored me because he doesn't believe in Hallmark-sells-Leprechaun-card holidays and because he wants our children to grow up without any magic or whimsy in their lives.  I, for one, pre-child-fast-acting-death-flu-from-hell had done my part by helping them make Leprechaun traps and then warning them to stay in their beds because Leprechauns nibble and their teeth are sharp.  This slightly cruel twist backfired on me SPECTACULARLY when I had to spend the first hour after bedtime escorting sobbing children to the bathroom. "Ah-ah-ah doooon't want to be ni-ni-ni-bbled."  Touche, you twisted, Grimm-brothers-reading-psycho and here, here's a foul preschool stomach fungus too.

In my weakened state, I did manage to put the candy in the traps. Because for the love of saints and little, green people and rainbows, Matthew, what is the point of enduring a night of terror worrying about being nibbled by a sharp-toothed Leprechaun if you don't get any freaking candy out of it?

I dyed the milk green too with my final non-puking breath.  The kids loved it.  They shrieked and capered and laughed hysterically this morning.  How did they do it?  Those naughty Leprechauns! Did they kiss it? Sprinkle magic in it?

Matt stumbled, at this point, bleary-eyed and stiff, from the basement where he had spent the night avoiding my gagging and also my germs.  He observed the scene with Al Bundy distaste, lifted up the half-full gallon of milk and informed my little parrots bluntly:  No. He peed in it.

Thank you, Matt, the magic is well and truly dead.  I, however, survived. Barely.

And now, a little whimsy in the form of sharp-toothed green men traps.

That last one is just cute.

The benefit of the doubt

This is a bloggity post about bloggers and blogging.  I don't know why I'm weighing in, I usually don't. The more I thought about this issue and how it comes up in blogland from time to time (but especially in this conference season), the more I realized that, of course, it's also a life-ity lifelike post about living.  Skip at will, see you on the back side.

I've written posts that I love to which no one responded.

I've read posts that I love and failed to respond.

I've seen projects come together on line and wished with all my heart that I'd been included.

I've asked to be included in projects that I am thrilled every day to be a part of.

I've had panel proposals for conferences rejected.

I've failed to propose really good ideas for fear of being rejected.

I've been taken off of a "big" blogger's sidebar without explanation. 

I realized I hadn't carefully read the blog or commented in over a year.

I don't even have a blogroll.

I've felt hurt that I wasn't invited to a party.

I've held parties and been unable to invite everyone.

I unintentionally hurt a friend of ten years on facebook.

I've been unnecessarily unpleasant on twitter.  Once.  I regret it.


No amount of regret will change the fact that some people only know me through that behavior.

I've been unfollowed on twitter.

I've been really, really supportive on twitter and on my blog.

I try.

I've felt lonely at BlogHer.

I've felt incredibly included at BlogHer.

I've been sad at the lack of response to an email.

I've failed to respond to emails.

I've lost out on deepening friendships made online because I hate to talk on the phone.

I've lost touch with incredibly dear friends met all over the world because I hate to talk on the phone.

I hate to talk on the phone.

I've stopped commenting on a blog even though I read it every day.

I've lost track of bloggers I love because of a problem with their feed.

I'm lazy and computer issues irritate me.

I have limited time on-line.

I've wondered why someone has stopped commenting here or never responds to my comments.

I've lain awake at 3:00 a.m. worrying about the fact that I haven't responded to comments.

I've lain awake at 3:00 a.m. worrying about the fact that I probably ought to worry about playing with my children instead of blogging.

I play with my children, okay, quit judging me.

I've been the mom at Kindergarten pick up that feels like all the other moms are friends and have playdates and carpool except for me.

I've been the mom at preschool who is friends with so many moms that she doesn't get a chance to talk to everyone.

I've cried and lost sleep when someone hurt my feelings.

I've told myself that there is no doubt that someone else in the world has cried and lost sleep when I've hurt their feelings.

I've driven my husband almost to spousicide working out my hurt feelings. I've realized it's mostly my own shit.

I'd never make someone feel that way on purpose.

I don't think very many people in this world would make me feel that way on purpose.

I've picked up on someone else's pain and been there for them.

I've failed to pick up on someone else's pain.

I've felt angry and disappointed that someone failed to pick up on my pain.

I've yelled at people I love.

I've been yelled at and it feels crappy.

My neighbor has told me to fuck off.

I'm not in general a person at whom others swear. I didn't sleep that night.

I've never told anyone to "fuck off."  To their face.

I've asked someone who is having trouble getting pregnant if they want any more kids.

I've been asked in the last two months if we're going to have any more kids.

I don't know, do you see what I see?  I don't think blogging is petty or "cliquey" or fraught with horrible, mean people.  Blogging is relating to and interacting with people, which is really hard. Rewarding and joyful and hard.  Bloggers are people.  And people are complicated.  People suck sometimes. I suck sometimes. The mantra that I try (and sometimes fail) to keep in my head is benefit of the doubt.  Our entire legal system is based on it.  Lives are spared or lost by it.  We need to give ourselves - and others - the benefit of the doubt. 


(Postscript: Snarky vent-bitching to your closest friends or husband completely excluded. Of course. Wasn't that one of the ten commandments? Thou shalt be allowed two to three friends and one significant other for confidential snarky vent-bitching.  Bolt of lightening.)

Vacancy

Nate is a first rate communicator, despite his garbled, nonsense babble.  He pratters something at me in fluent Ewok and I cock my head, puzzled, but undaunted.

"Vroom vroom?"

"Uh uh."

"I hungry?"

"NO."

"I thirsty?"

"NO THIRSTY."

I glance around the room and spy Garrett's indestructible digital camera on the mantel.  Ahhh.  "Do you want the cheese?" I ask Nate.

I've found it, I know because his response, when you understand him, is always the same.  His face spreads into a cheek-splitting smile and he raises his chubby, just-barely-still-baby arms high above his head and brings them down to his knees with a satisfying smack.  "UH HUH!" He exclaims.  "UHHUH! UHHUH! Teez."

I should really take a video of it.  Trust me, it's cute.  Not youtube cute, but watch-in-ten-years-with-tears-in-your-eyes-cute, certainly.  I have a flip camera.  I have had a flip camera for OVER A YEAR. I've never used it.  Not even once.  I know.  I know.  But it's just one thing too many, do you know what I mean?  It's one thing more to charge, to carry, to remember and I can't do it.  My brain is at capacity for poignant, yearning memories and ways of preserving them and I feel that if I add one more thing, one more media, one more task, one more burden that must be applied equally, times four, I will melt into a greasy puddle of inaction.

There must be some balance between living your life and recording it, no?

Still. Four nights ago, when he waddled, proud beyond reason, into the Snow White room at bedtime, the littlest duckling in the row behind his big brothers and sister, I wished, for a moment, for some faceless documentarian standing behind me silently recording our lives.  I wished to both live it and sit in front of the TV later, watching it over and over with tears of pride and joy and fear streaming down my cheeks.

The nursery at Chez Any is vacant.  I have never endured this move without the pressure of a taunt, overstretched belly nudging us along.  Nearly toddler out. Newborn baby in.  This has, in the past, been a moment of beginning, a focus on nesting and cleaning and preparation.

I stood on the blue and green rope rug later that night, as my children slept in an adorable row, one, two, three, four, someone shut the bedroom door, across the hall and felt that odd, expectant, watchfulness of an empty room.  The gorgeous crib mattressless, the beautiful art, hand-painted for my children, suddenly forlorn.  I tried it out, the sadness. It was there, but it was soft and fuzzy and through the mist, I could see the ghost of a little writing desk in the corner.  The sweet, pinstriped-green nursery curtains fell away so that the bright sunlight could stream in.  The pretty built-ins held my files, not outgrown, mismatched socks.  Behind me, where I sensed the presence of the little-used rocking chair, my very own bookcase.

An empty room.  Imagine, it's still a beginning.

Rocking the red pumps

I'm not actually, but only because I'm a sneakers and jeans kind of girl. I will however make my blog wear red pumps for a good cause.

March 10th is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The Red Pump Project is a nationwide initiative to raise awareness about the increasing impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls and to encourage ladies to take action. While progress has definitely been made in the areas of AIDS prevention and treatment, women still represent 27% of all new AIDS diagnoses, with African-American women accounting for 66% of that group.

According to The Red Pump Project site, “[e]very 35 minutes, a woman tests positive for HIV in the United States.”

There's no doubt that we can change that fact and awareness is the first step.

In Haiti, my daughter's birth country, an estimated 2.2 percent of adults are HIV positive. Haiti has what USAID calls a generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic.  As in many countries, there are substantial differences in the burden of the epidemic. Women are disproportionately affected, which means that children are disproportionately affected.    (Source: US AID Haiti HIV/AIDS Health Profile.)  It may also interest you to know that the USA is one of few countries that allows adoption of HIV positive children.

That's all.  Thanks for reading; I appreciated the awareness that this initiative brought to me and I wanted to pass it on.  Okay, I lied. One more thing.  If you haven't experienced The Julie Project, I strongly recommend it.  It's a painful, astonishing look at the devastating impact of AIDS on one young woman's life.  Just don't click that link until you have an hour or so because you won't be able to leave your computer until you've seen the entire project.  And take tissues.

xoxo, Stacey

It's my birthday and I'll write long, rambly posts if I want to

This should have been published yesterday, but it got late and I was tired and full of wine.

It's my birthday and I'm sitting in my filthy minivan waiting for Kindergarten registration to open at our local elementary school.  Oh hell yes, I'm forty-five minutes early.  Don't you all know me by now? I have my extra-hot chai clutched in one hand and the heat on against the below-freezing chill.  I scrounge a purple pen from the wrappers and slimy chapsticks and tissues stuffed into the bottom of the dash console so that I can write, on the back of my daughter's immunization record, that my heart feels tight and my stomach flips in lazy anticipation of some slightly dreaded event.

But it's not Kindergarten.

For once, it's not the unstoppable aging of my first babies.  The school is a sweet little building with a red tile roof and white stucco walls.  I'll spend my next ten years - the better part of my forties - here in one manner or another. Picking up or dropping off. Volunteering. Meeting. Organizing. Fundraising.  I'm thirty-eight today and I'm not angsty about being a mother. 

I'm restless for all I left behind five years and five months ago.  I'm grieving buried dreams.

***********************************************

The grass is high and deliberately unkempt beside the paths.   I wander here often, breaking stems and scuffing worn, well-trod routes.  Some of the markers are obviously visited more than others, the weeds pushed aside, the grime of months turned to years wiped from the stone.  On the fringes, where the meandering paths don't reach, there are headstones all but lost to heavily seeded stalks, fallen leaves and hardy stinging nettles.

It's a small cemetery enclosed by a low fence buried in the tangle.  I wander through the tombstones again today, tracing a word there, running my hand over smooth stone here. There are no stone angels, no pillars, no ornaments.  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the fresh hole that draws me.  The marker is in place, a single word carved on its surface.  "Seven."

I stand beside the hole and nudge the dirt with my foot, but I can't quite push it in.  I still have two years.  I have only Antarctica left.  It's a silly, frivolous thing, but it never occurred to me, overripe with Garrett at 41 weeks that along with a gorgeous, big, baby boy, I was about to push out any hope of standing on my seventh and final continent before I turned forty.


What dreams have you buried? Do you mourn them?

**********************************************

It's a lovely day.  Matt takes the children away all morning and I have the silent, still, waiting house to myself.  I organize closets - oh hell yes, I do, surely you know me and how I revel in the orderliness, by now.  Each box stacked.  Outgrown clothes packed away. The 2T and 4T boxes pulled out, the clothes moved to newly emptied drawers.

The afternoon passes in lazy fun. My mom calls.  My sisters.  A treasured friend brings me flowers, the first hesitant daffodils. I am blown twitter and facebook kisses all day. Each peek at the computer brings a new smile. Matt indulges me in a trip to the mall where I arrange a special baby gift for my heart-sister while she surprises me to tears with her words.  (And a glimpse at the ghost of my hair past. May it rest in peace. Good. God.)

He lets me slip away before dinner - my sweet Matt - with only a little bit of a grumble and I sit in a coffee shop and breathe quiet, adult company in through my nose and out through my mouth like a prayer, my chakras strengthened by the act of stepping briefly back into this other world before I meet my girlfriends - my lifelines, my anchors in my upsidedown mommy world - for wine and treats.

I am spoiled with love and goodness.  I hiss powerful, talismanic words of protection against the roiling dragon in my chest.  I know Matt has an answering demon in him. If I push him, even the tiniest bit, if we feed each other's restlessness, we are gone. Packed suddenly. Houses sold, children herded. Another state. Another country. Another world. 

But no. Some dreams are meant to be buried. Temporarily, at least. My children will have this. Sweet red tile and white walls. Soccer and dance and swimming.

In the hall, half-lit by the bedside lamp, he hugs me tight. I can see the black and white photographs on our bedroom wall.  The children of my first lifetime recorded.  Bangkok. Haiti. Sydney. Hong Kong. Kathmandu.  Banished here to make room for other names in the family room.  

Did you have fun?  I did, but I'm old; I'm getting old. There's time, he whispers, because he knows me. 

There's a strange smell in the hall. I glance down and notice that the bottom of the laundry basket outside the Snow White room is filled with liquid.  Socks float, half sunk beside a soggy dryer sheet.  What is that? I ask him.  I don't know. Garrett.  He sleep-peed.  Damn him.  We laugh ourselves to sleep, spoiled and happy and restless, cuddled together, to dream about our dreams come true.

Comments are closed because I've already been sent more sweetness than I deserve and because my birthday is over and because I'm just thinking out loud and you shouldn't have to read it, let alone say anything.  I hope your buried dreams have fertilized rich, unexpected lives.

Other Mothers

It started on Tuesday night.

"Is there school tomorrow?" Garrett asked me.

"Yes," I nodded, "of course."

"Oh. I want to stay here with you.  I don't like those mean boys."

"Which boys, Gee?"

Although, I knew. The names are always the same.  Biblical. One very old testament. The other pope-esque.  It is a Christian school, after all.  The truth is, if I let myself hear it, he's been talking about these "mean boys" on and off all year.  I would probe and it would feel harmless.  I'd ask Saige and it seemed fine. They chase us.  They won't let us slide.  There is so much supervision at school.  They are both always excited to go in the morning.

I sensed the change this week. How are they 'mean' Garrett. Do they call you names? Silence. Do they chase you?  Do they push?  Do they say mean words?  Head turned, he set his jaw in a stubborn pout. I won't tell you.

I don't know, Matt, I struggled in bed at night, what do I do?  Is he being tormented or is he just pissed about the slide?  Are we talking bullying here or kids that don't want to play what he wants to play?  We agreed to wait for conferences next week and ask Mrs S. Was he not making friends? Was he singled out?

Friday afternoon, the shit hit the fan.  As I approached the classroom door, I saw a grim Mrs. S handing out "stop and thinks" to three moms of three boys.  One with a pope-esque name and one old testament.  I knew it had to do with Garrett.

I fell down the rabbit hole of mother-guilt and self doubt and school doubt and omifuckinggod how on earth will I raise children from here because they aren't babies any more and other people are around them without me. Mean people.  Mean people who raise mean children.  Dammit.  I felt sick to my stomach and hot and it was all I could do not to cry as Garrett and I talked to Mrs S. about speaking up and that the boys would not be allowed to come to recess or PE if they bothered Garrett again. 

Who hasn't felt left out and sad and isolated and for Pete's sake my five-year-old boy feels this way? Really?

I don't know the parents in this class well and it's my own damn fault.  I'm busy and I have close, wonderful friends and I'm overly involved in other areas of my kids' lives.  So, my child aside, I felt isolated and it was easy to turn it into flippant anger.  Not storming the school yelling and screaming anger, just bitching to Matt and Elise anger, but still.  I kvetched about terrible parents and their mean, aggressive children more than I'd like to admit.

This amazing thing happened.  Mom J called me.  Horrified, her voice shaking, she said that they had experienced this with their older boy and they knew how you ached for your child and J knew it was wrong and it absolutely would not happen again.  J wrote a letter to Garrett. By the end of the weekend, I felt a little sorry for J.

And then Mom Pope wrote to me.  The same.  Little Pope had been the target of spitting earlier that year.  They were so sorry.  He was writing a letter as well and his behavior would not be tolerated.  They had strong values and they were trying to teach them.

I could see Garrett's confidence grow as he read the letters. As he understood that he had spoken up and Mrs. S had talked to everyone's parents and this was not okay. That the adults would try to make it better. He talked about being pushed down in PE, the incident that caused all the fuss.  And then he something that opened my eyes.  Quentin told me to tell someone.  Quentin? I asked.  When they pushed me down, he told me that I needed to tell someone because it wasn't okay for them to do that to me and so I told the teacher.

Quentin.  Another six-year-old boy. 

Here I sit, humbled by the PhD candidacy that is parenting.  There is no university, no program, no book, no study that could teach me as much as I've learned in the last five years. About love. About life. About stories. About other people. About innate goodness. About the power of reaching out. About the danger of assuming that you understand a situation when you view it only from your perspective. About judgment. About forgiveness. About faith. About human nature.

I'd like to know Quentin's mom because I want to understand the magic words that prepare a six-year-old to respond to a classmate's difficulties with such calm, supportive wisdom.  I am not sure that I possess this child's maturity and clearness of vision at thirty-seven.

Garrett will repeat Kindergarten next year.  He'll be the big kid.  The oldest.  I'd like to hope - without their example - that I would have handled any aggressive behavior my own son shows half as well as these mothers did.  I'll never know because I have their compassion to guide me.

I am grateful for other mothers tonight.  And I am learning from them.

Get your free milk here!

I'm (really, really freaking excited and proud to be) over at Scary Mommy's today writing about writing. And blogging. And why I'm willing to spend so much time and effort and maybe, sometimes, on good days, yes Dad, I KNOW some people make money when they put this much of their heart into something "talent" on writing for "free."

If you're interested, you can read it here (the comments are awesome too). Moooooooooooooooo.

Held

At a trauma training, I heard a story of a little girl about six years old.  She was throwing blocks at preschool.  Nasty behavior.  She lobbed them intentionally and hard, at the wall, at a glass window, at other children.  In thinking about it, I felt angry at her.  Knock it off you little shit, you're going to break something or hurt someone.  I thought about dealing with that behavior at our co-op preschool and it dragged me down, made me feel tired and fed up.

Then, they played a tape. The same little girl at about eleven the night before the blocks flew on the phone with a 911 operator.  She sobbed hysterically. She screamed into the phone: He's hurting my mother! He's hurting my mother! He's hurting my mother he'shurtingmymotherhe'shurtingmymother.

The entire story changed.  I went from mild irritation to viscerally wanting to protect her and hold her anger close, to let her know that it was just fine.  You THROW those blocks, baby girl, right here, where it's safe. You throw them because I know you're pissed off and you're scared and you're confused and the people that are supposed to keep you safe are hurting each other.

I felt ashamed of my initial reaction.  I am, to put it kindly, an easily (if generally silently) irritated person.  Changing that takes work. Of course, I understand that adults can't go around hurling blocks at people's heads and chaulk it up to a shitty evening, but the lesson about knowing the whole story hit me hard in my aching, punching bag heart.

What I've learned (and forgotten and relearned and lapsed and learned anew) from motherhood and from blogging - from writing about motherhood and from reading the writings of others about motherhood is this:  The story changes everything. And every single person has a story.

We can't possibly know about the phone call.  The endless moments of before that led to right now.

I am changed (changing? trying to change?) by raising these little people because for them I want to be someone who understands and remembers the complexities of stories as I venture out into this world.  I want to be someone who, in the moment before judgment snaps the jaws of my mind closed, breathes and thinks, what about the phone call?

Our stories are important.  Our stories  - and yes, o evil and terrible commenters of the New York Times, I do mean all of us, even, gasp!, mothers - are everything.  They are pieces of us held up to the light and turned around. Even the darkest moments have a luminescent beauty because they are an integral part of the whole.  Of the who.  To be held in our story telling, to be seen and heard and still held safe and cherished by even one person who finds us beautiful because of who we are or because of what we reflect in them is something that we all crave.

Sitting at auditions for Listen To Your Mother in Spokane, Elise and I held twenty-one of those stories, fragile and strong and impossibly complex at once, in our inadequate hands. It was both shattering and fulfilling.  I heard pieces of strangers that they might not have shared with their closest friends. I heard pieces of friends that I didn't know existed.

It will be nearly impossible to choose between them and cast a show, but we will do it.  Because that will mean that on Mother's Day, we'll get to place those stories in three hundred more hands.  Every story heard matters. Hopefully, that's one more person that can't forget that we all have a story.  Every single one of us.

Huge hugs and thanks to the women that had the courage to read for us on Saturday.  I can only write about the day from my perspective, but they were the superstars.