Notes on Life from a Poet Lawyerette

Summer, 2010 - A New Beginning

2010-08-11T11:02:00.002-05:00

It's been a year plus since I've posted to this blog. Noah is 4 years old now. In the past four weeks he has attended two weeks of summer camp, he began reading - "Mad" was his first spontaneous word, from an ad for the television show "Mad Men" on the back of a magazine. He also has asked multiple times about sex and death, and is drawn to other children like the proverbial moth. After his first week of Scamper Camp at the Y, that Friday night we were hanging out on my bed talking, and after a conversation involving lots of questions from him about how Matthew and I made him, he said, "Did you and Daddy want to make a smart baby?" My favorite moment was when Matthew went into another room and Noah quietly whispered to me, "Mama, when you're done with Daddy can I marry you next?"

He wakes every day happy and excited to talk about the day. His energy is nonstop, until it's gone, at which time he crashes like a comet in flames. At 6:00 last night I was in the living room talking on the telephone and he crawled up on me and said quietly, "How many minutes will you be on the telephone, Mama?" I was finishing up and said "Two minutes, Honey." (This was one our civilized exchanges around interrupting people while they are on the phone.) 30 seconds later he had fallen asleep in my arms, I hung up the phone and carried him up to bed, where he stayed for the remainder of the night. These moments of profound appreciation for his life and energy happen every day now.

As I gear up this August to contemplate getting back to work on some consulting projects after a bit of a hiatus in July, I struggle with a new sense of guilt at putting energy toward work when his life is blooming so vibrantly in front of me every moment. And yet, after spending the last four years orienting my life around his, and now seeing him begin to widen his circle in obvious ways, I must take his lead.

Mother's Day, 2009

2009-05-11T11:21:00.001-05:00

I had a good day yesterday, in some ways special, and in some ways like all others, filled with such ups and downs, give and take, and just general everything-at-once kinds of things going on, that it can only be described as motherhood:

1. Woke at 5:30 when Noah came and jumped on me. Elation, because he slept through the night for only the second time since weaning completely two weeks ago!

2. Got up with Noah because he wanted me first this morning instead of his father.

3. Helped Noah get dressed because he can take his pajamas off by himself now, so wants to do it immediately.

4. Started the makings for strawberry muffins then went on to clean the catbox (pee-yew) and organize the pantry while Matthew joined us and and he and Noah made the muffins.

5. Sat to a yummy breakfast of eggs and toast and muffins made by Matthew and read a heartfelt card from both of them. Highlight #1 of Mother's Day.

6. Helped clean up, packed the diaper bag and other sundry items needed for any trip out of the house, while Matthew showered.

7. Took a shower and got dressed while Matthew packed lunch.

8. Calmed husband after he freaked out that we were leaving the house an hour later than he'd hoped, although the only task in front of us was to pick up some garden tools at Job Lots for the groundwork happening at one of his schools tomorrow.

9. Calmed myself from having to calm him.

10. Noah fell asleep in the car, but woke 10 minutes later when we arrived at Job Lots, so we all shopped together. Matthew bought his tools and some reflectors for the end of our driveway. Noah bought more toy golf clubs, to add to his collection.

11. We drove home.

12. Unpacked the car, and Noah played golf in the dirt piles around our house that will be used to fill around the foundation, while Matthew raked some of the deep ruts left by the dumptruck that left said dirt piles.

13. This led to Noah learning about worms! Which he loved, because they have no eyes and no teeth. Image for mental forever file: Noah walking toward me with a big handful of worms wiggling all over the place (the worms, not Noah) yelling "Want to touch them, Mama?" Me settling my gag reflex and saying casually, "Sure." Highlight #2 of Mother's Day.

14. We all walked down the driveway together to put in the reflectors, with Noah and Daddy finding new worms all the way. "Wow, this is a big one Mama!"

15. We opened the garage to put something away, which led us to spend the next 45 minutes organizing the garage while Noah moved his worms from dirt pile to rut to dirt pile.

16. We came in and washed up. We changed Noah's entire outfit.

17. I went upstairs and read to Noah on his bed, then lay down with him for a few minutes to help him fall asleep for his nap. He cried because he wanted to come downstairs with me and Daddy and Sidney, our cat. The next moment he fell asleep and stayed that way for two hours.

18. Matthew and I eagerly began to sit down to work on some schoolwork that has been weighing on him and which it is impossible for him to get done during the school day. Moments later, my sister and brother-in-law stopped in to pick up our truck, which they are borrowing for a few days.

19. We visited through Noah's naptime, and I practiced maintaining inner flexibility in expectations around getting anything done in any given window of time, an Essential Strategy for a parent.

20. Noah woke and said hello to Auntie and Uncle on the porch as they headed out, then watched some PBS Sprout on television while I helped Matthew do said work for school. We plowed through two projects and completed them, what teamwork! Highlight #3 of Mother's Day.

21. Matthew and I declared that night "cereal night" and ate granola and yogurt. Rules for cereal night: anyone can call it and anyone else can veto it by volunteering to cook something. I cooked an additional dish for Noah, a big bowl of steamed broccoli with butter. He ate everything.

22. Matthew suddenly became grouchy in the kitchen over another pile of paperwork sitting there, and I brought Noah upstairs in a small huff, temporarily fed up with the seemingly never-ending emotional roller coaster that results from his work demands.

23. I helped Noah into his pj's and was enchanted by his sweet smile and his love for his racecars. My heart softened again.

Digression: Recent funny racecar story. Noah's most recently purchased racecar is one from the Pixar movie "Cars." It's lime green with racing stickers all over it. When we bought it, we were walking toward the registers in the store and he yelled out to a passing employee "I'm buying a new racecar! Want to see it?" The man walked over, and as he did the walkie talkie on his belt blared. Noah said, "Your body talks!" I looked at the man's name tag as I lifted the racecar to show the employee. "Noah, his name is Billy and he has a walkie talkie," I said and pointed to the walkie talkie at the employee's waist. Noah inferred instead that the racecar's name was Billy, and he had a walkie talkie, and so henceforth, that was the racecar's name. I explained once what I had meant, and then let it go. "Billy is a fine name for your car." Now back to Mother's Day.

24. Matthew came up and helped Noah wash up and brush his teeth, while I got into my pajamas and washed up. Division of labor, another Essential Strategy of parenting, although sometimes the trading off feels like we are just cogs in a big oily machine, rather than an actual loving married couple.

25. We read to Noah, and I lay down with him to help him fall asleep.

26. Matthew went to bed. He staves off any work-related anxiety by "banking sleep" as he calls it.

27. Noah asked for a made-up story about Thomas the Tank Engine and I obliged. In this one, Thomas made temporary rainbows by splashing through the puddles gathered on the tracks of his branch line, but they didn't last once the misty water dropped back down, so he waited eagerly for a real rainbow. He was not disappointed, and neither was I. Noah smiled a big grin in the dark when the story ended with a banner of colors glowing above Thomas.

28. Then I asked for quiet. Finally, right?

29. Moments later, when Noah began deep sleep breathing, I headed into our already dark bedroom and pried my way into my husband's sleepy arms.

30. I silently called it a day, a good one - Mother's Day, 2009.

Dancing Queen

2009-01-26T15:30:00.000-05:00

So I did actually just watch "Mamma Mia" two weekends ago, but that isn't exactly inspiring this post. It's a few weeks of using our new YMCA membership that has my spirit tripping the light fantastic. Our local Y has an in-house babysitting program, which means that Noah can happily play with other kids and zillions of toys in a secure room with trained adults while I spend one hour moving my body as much as I can in the cardio room upstairs. This has already proven incredibly freeing and energizing for me, after two-and-a-half years of parenting without regular play groups, programs, classes, or childcare.

I quickly created a routine at the gym, half an hour on the treadmill and another twenty minutes or so on the bike machine, devouring whatever magazines were left on the shelves there. This was great for the first several visits. Although I don't necessarily have lots of baby weight to lose in terms of pounds, there has definitely been a redistribution of things since having Noah, which doesn't feel great. So I quickly was feeling hopeful about that, after a long time of lowered energy, coupled with the inevitable winter-will-never-end physical shutdown.

Then last Thursday I introduced music into my workout. I dug out my black and yellow walkman from the packed up boxes in the garage. It has a radio and tape player in it. I loaded new batteries in it. I also found my two boxes of cassette tapes, some dating back to high school, which include a wondrous stash of mixed tapes. Many of these are from college, including the music lineups from some of the best campus-wide parties. Even more are from after college, during the stretch of years when I danced at Zootz in Portland at least once a week, even after I'd moved back to central Maine.

So my first cassette selection was a mixed tape of dance music I heard at Zootz all the time in 1994. I felt a smidge self-conscious on the treadmill because the women on either side of me had tiny ipods smaller than credit cards, and were wearing ab-baring tops and shorts to my Adidas sweatpants and white men's v-neck. I felt righteous too, but old. Parenting has a way of making me feel that way at times. Used up. Not an ounce of hip left in me.

It took me two songs to figure out how to make the headphones work, which meant I missed hearing "Move This" by Technotronic, and "I Want You" by Julie Roberts, but then it kicked in when I accidentally hit a switch on the walkman that I didn't remember about. A dance beat! Loud! I started running much faster, and grinning at the memories flowing from each song. "A Deeper Love" by Aretha Franklin was poignant, as she just sang at the Presidential Inauguration earlier in the week. My heart was working much faster, and endorphins flooded my brain. I was dancing and running, and fantasized about everyone in the gym noticing how attractive and hip I really am, and giving me an ipod as a group gift so that I wouldn't have to listen to the old walkman any more. It's amazing how music and dancing can torch up the inner flame. I used to feel this way when I'd go out, caring less about whether I interacted with other people all that much, and more about getting this natural buzz going. I used to go to Zootz and dance from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. straight without stopping, and usually without alcohol.

I felt like I could run on the treadmill forever, even though I had to tap the right ear piece regularly to keep the sound streaming on that side. "Life" by Haddaway. Ace of Base, often described at that time as the next ABBA, but really, not so much. I went a half hour, and then the walkman ate my tape when the first side ended. I had to slow to a fast-walk so I could pull on the ribbon and get the twist out. I felt a smidge self-conscious again. Proud and embarrassed to be so old-school. But I fixed it, and ran again. "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. I wondered if Mark Wahlburg looks back fondly on his beginnings. It's a great song, and I ran another twenty minutes. I picked up Noah downstairs in a state of total euphoria, and recreated this bliss for myself on Friday, and Sunday.

So, all to say that in the frozen wasteland that is Maine right now, the passion exists again. These few weeks of getting physical have helped me recapture a small amount of that old strut after way too many years. It's not just parenting, and the stress of going back and forth from feeling that glow of parenting a perfect child to wanting to commit terrible violence to myself so they'll have to take me away from here in an ambulance. It's years before, of doing difficult violence prevention work, dating people who didn't dance, seeing my wardrobe change from mostly interesting clothing to mostly conservative, growing up and leaving clubbing behind... But it's amazing what dancing did for my body, and how it elevates me. Latest lesson learned. If anyone out there is feeling less than, find that song that rips it up, and let it move you.

Tagged by My Sister, In More Ways than One

2008-12-04T12:12:00.001-05:00

So this is a first for me, blogging in response to a prompt from another blogger. Usually these posts come from the internal wellspring, with a large assumption on my part that they stay pretty internal because I cannot imagine that people tune in to my one-blog-a-month pace. My sister Sarah just "tagged" me. Here is the format for this little game:

1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Normally when I receive these little quizzes via e-mail, I fill them out and e-mail them back to the one person who sent it to me, but I do not send it on. One reason I'm responding here is because I've never created a link to anything from within a blog post and it's time I learned, so here's to Sarah for providing me my technology lesson for today. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, (okay, they make links pretty easy for us), my older sister who will be joining us a second time over online with a new website soon, showcasing her beautiful paintings for viewing, drooling, and buying.

My Six Random Items of Interest (and these will be about me, not Noah, although my tendency these days is to find my son way more interesting than me):

1. I am in the process of purging 75% of my clothes closet, in hopes of only keeping the few items of clothes that I really love to wear. It started when my family recently moved, and continues. Another two sweaters came out this morning. Last month I brought my high school prom dress to a consignment shop.

2. My favorite food is the Maine crabmeat roll - I grew up on them at Perry's Snack Shack in Washington County, and now especially love the ones at The Sea Gull on Pemaquid Point, the restaurant and gift shop owned and operated by my mother-in-law.

3. In the 20+ years that I have been writing poems, I have not created continuous breathing room for myself to put them together into manuscripts, but my hope is to someday publish books of poems.

4. I'd also like to take guitar lessons.

5. I drive a bright green 1995 Geo Prizm with almost 304,000 miles on it. And yet, somehow I have days when I feel more worn out than my shiny car. It is the first and only car I've ever owned.

6. My dear mackerel tabby cat Sidney as of this morning weighs 18.5 pounds. Our new holistic veterinarian suggested that we phase Sidney off of the Newman's Own organic dry food because of the heavy carbohydrate content, and begin trying to feed him raw food, as in, raw chicken and ground beef, with bones in there too for calcium. I am disgusted but also strangely excited.

I can't expand from my pattern of not sending on quizzes to anyone, unfortunately, because I know very few other bloggers, but I managed to do this much at least while Noah sleeps upstairs. May others carry the torch onward.

Thanks, Not Tanks

2008-11-26T15:59:00.001-05:00

It's been two months since I've blogged - I've thought of it many times because I could now easily supply another Top 10 most incredible things I've heard out of Noah's mouth, or share details about the miserable process we've gone through to get to the closing on a beautiful parcel of land and construction loan, or in the bigger world could talk about the fact that we now have our first African American President-Elect and the country may be extricated from the nasty war we've been fighting the past several years.

But today, amidst cleaning house to prepare for thirteen dinner guests tomorrow, and reading Noah story books before naptime, and thinking about running away by myself for a few hours to buy myself multiple pairs of earrings, I have one echoing experience to capture here.

Noah has been sleeping with us again. I find it quite ironic, because Matthew couldn't wait to get him out of our bed back in January or whenever it was. He'd had it with cosleeping, and to be fair, none of us were sleeping well at that point. Noah did not, and still does not, like covers, so would kick them down and we would get very cold while he lay perpendicular between us, a wedge, which he was becoming of sorts.

Since being in our rental, I've done my best to keep Noah in his routine of sleeping in his room, but after a stint with a cold, a few rainstorms with fierce winds coming off the water, and his father eagerly inviting "Do you want to sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed tonight?" it's been about two weeks now that we just put him down to sleep in our bed at night.

The downside of this is that I now have even less time in any given 24-hour period to be a little bit free of his energy. Time when my own center can stretch and inhabit the space a bit more. This is also known as "A Break". And A Break when unconscious still counts as A Break.

The upside, which is a major upside and the point of this post, is that I get to wake to his face again. His two-year-old face and his immediate song and chant, "Maki, maki, maki, I want maki, Mumma, maki." The Milk Song. His round cheeks and chin. Every morning, even if I am squinting as I was this morning because we had a massive wind and rainstorm last night and the vent on the kitchen stove sucked air and went "Bam!" every seven minutes, I wake and feel like it's Christmas. Noah's blue eyes, his sweet words, big head of orange-brown hair, smiling and ready to enter another day, full steam ahead. And seeing Matthew excited to experience Noah of course doubles my pleasure of the whole scenario.

Whoever dubbed this stage "The Terrible Twos" when discipline and structure are all-important - bring out the tanks and heavy artillery - left out the way a two-year-old can make any grinchly parent's heart grow three sizes, and grow again, and again, and again. On this Thanksgiving Eve, Santa is surely on his way very soon, but has a tough act to follow with these special mornings when my husband and I wake to our beautiful son.

Spilt Milk

2008-09-28T19:03:00.000-05:00

In the past six or seven weeks, my husband and I have continued to search for a home to buy, in the area of his new job - Waldo County, Maine. We were fortunate to have our own home go under contract - something that seemed sad and monumental the day it happened and now seems like ages ago and not anything to worry about. As our closing date has crept closer and closer, we've had a series of fits and starts, trying to press forward with some places that just weren't right, then falling back and assessing and starting again. We now are looking for land upon which to build, and have fortunately just days ago landed a rental so we will actually have someplace to go when we leave this place.

And really, it isn't just someplace. It's actually an incredible custom-built home on the water in Belfast, Maine. Belfast is a town we didn't even consider looking for a permanent home, because the taxes are so high. Why we are able to affordably rent such a palace, but can't find a modest home to buy, is kind of beyond me. I have stopped trying to figure out the real estate market. Our last back-and-forth with a seller this past week involved him stretching the negotiation out the whole week, all so he could tell us that he would drop the price on his land from $44,900 to $44,400 - what whopping generosity.

Finally in this last three days, comes the actual inspiration for this post - we have begun PACKING. I've been anticipating it for so long, it's actually been fun most of the time so far. I love to sort, organize, pare down, and purge. Carrying four thumbtacks from the kitchen, three rooms away to the box which contains all the materials from our desk drawers, and putting them into the thumbtack container I've already started there, brings me inner peace. A sense of calm knowing that things are in their places. For the most part, now that we are in the midst of the move, I have not run into any emotional walls, and have done well working over our candle cupboard, the bookcases, and kitchen cabinets. I banged my head against them (the emotional walls, not the kitchen cabinets) for most of the summer and the early part of this month, so moving forward finally through the change has been a welcome relief.

Until today, when Matthew and I tackled the basement. While we've spent the past year sorting and selling things from down there, it still caused the mover to say "Wow, that's a lot of stuff," when he came a few days ago to give me an estimate. So we chipped away all day today and actually packed about three quarters of it. When Noah got up from his nap, Matthew went up to put together the Christmas train set that Noah spied and had to unpack, and I decided to empty our chest freezer.

Now, we are just a little bit famous in our small circle for having a lot of organic beef in our freezer. We used to do half-cows, but a year ago we bought an entire cow. People can't get away from a visit with us without having some beef in their hands. One Christmas we gave away frozen roasts at a holiday party. This fall, however, in anticipation of our move we didn't buy any beef, so now we have an amount left that would fit in the side-by-side refrigerator we have in our kitchen. I brought it right up. The only other things of note in the chest freezer were the bags and bags of frozen breast milk that I once so carefully packaged and labeled. It was all over a year old, well beyond when the books say breastmilk is still good, and I knew months ago I should have taken care of it. Not until today was I ready to deal with it, and it still was the last thing I took out of the freezer. I unloaded the bags into a wire rack and carried the rack up to the kitchen sink. I thought I would just let it sit there and melt, but five minutes later I came back and ran hot water over each bag, sliding the icy lumps out. I felt all slurry, a good-bye registering - to this time, to Noah's babyhood, to this place that brought us together as a married couple and a family. Good-bye to the spot of many wonderful celebrations and the best day-to-day life I've had so far. I slowly emptied all the bags, and it was done. Nothing else to do but turn off and unplug the freezer. Isn't that just like time, to come so heavily into the room, and then walk out like nothing happened.

Now here I sit just a little while later. Noah is in the living room, playing along with his Christmas train and singing a song amidst bare walls and boxes, and I feel ready, thankfully - on the other side of some line that I've been shrinking away from for months. "I thought I could - I thought I could - I thought I could," is maybe what comes to mind. Our transition continues, but we are definitely off, onto another adventure together in a new and beautiful place.

Forgiveness

2008-08-09T11:12:00.002-05:00

A book I am reading, which I have to unhappily say I don't think is well-written but does have some helpful ideas in it, reminded me this morning that the true purpose of forgiveness is to reopen the door inside myself that lets positive experiences in. This is relevant because the past few weeks have been difficult ones in my little part of the world, and I've increasingly taken refuge inside myself, building a pretty tough reinforcement between me and the outside, between me and my husband, even between me and other parts of myself.

On the most positive view of things, Noah turned two last month and has begun swimming in language, sometimes repeating what he hears, but mostly tumbling, screaming, exclaiming his thoughts as he has them. He also has taken up basketball, golf, tennis, and soccer, with a joy that is infectious.

Another positive development is that after a year of searching, my husband has found a new job in another county in Maine, and started July 1st. It is over an hour away, so we have put our house on the market and have been looking to purchase a home closer to that neck of the woods. We've been anticipating this change for such a long time, and then suddenly it arrived. I have mixed feelings about it all - the decision to relocate for his job which also brings us closer to the ocean is one that feels right, and yet leaving the home where we married and where I have all my memories of Noah's life so far, is painful. In my own small way, I feel like a homeless refugee, even though we certainly are not in those circumstances for real. I'm upset about it, and I'm upset about all the fleeting summer energy it's taking to go through this transition. I don't know where I belong. Right now I'm nowhere.

As the weeks have gone on, with long days of me looking at houses with Noah while Matthew works, I've worn down. Trying to fit in some summer fun here and there has been difficult while all this other stuff sits in the wings, asserting that it is the real star of the show. Having any time with my husband has been impossible, so all the time we have together is either reentry or preparing to be apart - we are not usually at our best in these times. When my birthday came and went this past Thursday I wanted the day to be over, something I don't think I've ever felt in my life. I'm very sentimental when it comes to celebrating birthdays and other special occasions for myself or others. It was a hard day for me, in the end, when usually I spend that day enjoying things and visioning about the year to come. That added a touch of bitterness to my already foul mood this week.

Now a few days beyond, I understand that what I want is for this TIME to be over, this time of looking and not knowing, of having my roots exposed while we look for our next home, of having too many things to focus on, all while the beautiful but dratted fall air is already starting to fold into the mornings.

And today I guess I am getting tired of feeling lousy. So as this book discusses, the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post, since my valve to outside positive experience has been seriously closing, the answer, to begin to enjoy again, to be thankful for what is behind and what is to come, is to forgive right now. Forgive sounds like kind of a hefty action for some mostly circumstantial happenings, but isn't it all circumstantial? Isn't the slight over breakfast just as big or small as the grief of leaving my home? Isn't it all, as a dear old friend used to say, (and pardon the curse word) just AFGO - Another Fucking Growth Opportunity? It sure is easier to get angry at Matthew or someone else than it is to stay focused on the choice, the one I've made, to leave this dear place I love so much - close to my work, my friends, the place I've centered my life for years. I'm sorry that this feels like it does, I'm sorry to leave this place, and I hope the move happens soon so the equilibrium can right again - I need the outside circumstances to reflect the leaving I'm already doing.

The Grass Is Greener

2008-07-06T21:58:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I was down at Long Pond swimming with Noah. He gazed longingly at a pair of orange goggles that a little girl had slung up on the edge of the lake, and also admired her glittery flip flops. I asked him to leave them alone, when the girl's mother said, "Excuse me, Miss? It's fine if he plays with any of that stuff. We don't mind at all." I said thanks and managed a few other lines of conversation, but was in somewhat of a daze as my head replayed and struggled with "Miss? Miss?" I haven't been called Miss by anyone in a long time. I think it was in my days as a bank teller when I was always being called Miss by the customers. I connect this lakeside experience to one I had earlier this week when I was carded in line at the grocery store when I brought up a bottle of wine to celebrate with my husband, who has just gotten a new job. I looked at the woman at the check-out incredulously and told her that I'm turning 39 next month. She said she never would have believed it.

Now on one hand, I think 38 is a fine age, and I wouldn't take my 20s back for anything. On the other, I honestly received a small thrill from being seen as younger than I am. What this really told me (other than how I am sucked into the yucky culture that values youth over experience), is that suddenly I am on the side of the line where I know loud and clear that I am no longer young.

I have a partially-burned candle in a kitchen drawer from my 30th birthday, shaped like a gravestone, that bears the words "Here lies my youth." I got it for myself as a joyful good-bye to the decade that had been less than fun to get through. It was wonderful sarcasm, because I was leaving an "old" life behind, and heading into a much fresher one. And my reality continues to be that I enjoy aging, especially in recent years. Becoming a mother has, on the whole, made me feel more young inside. So has has getting to know myself better as an adult and letting youthful confusion and inexperience, and the misery it can produce, slide off me.

And now as I head forward in this time, Noah marches along beside me, his flags waving. This Friday he will turn 2. Tonight as Matthew used a knife to cut cheese for crackers, Noah said "Knife, knife?" and I explained briefly for the fortieth time that knives weren't for babies and that when he was a big boy he would be able to use a knife. A few minutes later we were talking with him about his upcoming birthday, and I told him that he would be 2 years old. He thought for a minute and said, "Knife?" There it was, he had it - the yearning to be old enough, to be able to do life more fully, like he sees everyone doing it around him. Coupled with my yearning to find my own simple truths again. There we sat, side by side on the stools in the kitchen, holding hands. It's another reason why being a mother is so wonderful - this child gives me the roadmap back, while I give him the one forward.

Kate Who?

2008-06-04T20:12:00.000-05:00

On one recent morning Noah and I sat on my bed after his bathtime, and I was playing our name game with him. "Who is your brother?" Noah made a "c" with his hand and yelled out "Co-Co!" which is his nickname for his 16-year-old stepbrother Colby, who now also goes by "Coke" and "Colby Doo", bless his heart. "Who is Matthew?" I asked, and Noah thought for a second and responded "Daddeee! Daddeee!" with no small amount of glee in his voice. "Who is Sidney?" Noah made the sign for "cat" and said "Catncatncat." Finally, I asked, "Who is Kate?" Noah concentrated very hard for quite a few seconds, and then said with excitement, "Peow!" I laughed and said "Yes, Katy is a plow, isn't she?" (See Katy and the Big Snow, by Virginia Lee Burton, one of Noah's favorite books right now.)

This was both a delightful and sad moment for me. I love the book too, and this plow Katy is one serious go-getter, not unlike myself at times. I also was struck by how I am so totally Mumma-Mommy-Mum now that it's rare for me to ever hear my own name spoken in my home. Even Matthew addresses me as "Mum" a lot of times when Noah isn't even in the room. As I write this, I remember reading in a magazine blurb many months ago that this is a sure sign of impending doom in a marriage. But I digress.

As Noah approaches two years old, and shows his excitement more and more for everything around him, I feel like my own motivation for anything other than him is creeping along like an old camel who has decided she really doesn't need water ever again and she'll just live on whatever she's got stored up in her hump for the REST OF HER LIFE. I am tired of my old mental loops of thinking about how and when and what to do, which personal goal or project to push forward with the minute amount of "free time" I have when Noah naps...How to make it happen for myself, some modicum of my old productivity, doing things for others or myself - that goes beyond getting clean and dressed. I feel today like giving up on all that and just being Mommy. Trying to be anything else often leaves me down and tired, more tired than the regular exhaustion that comes from being a parent. Cosmically tired.

There are days like this when I imagine myself to be the mythological Tityrus. He was chained to a rock for his crimes, while a vulture fed upon his heart and entrails, which were ever renewed as fast as devoured. The doctrine of endless punishment was born and suits me well when I need to see my husband Matthew as the vulture, reaping the benefits of me over and over and over again - me the co-parent, childcare provider (for those times when I know what I'm doing doesn't rise to the level of parenting, but is much more like just keeping Noah alive until someone who can be more responsible comes back to help out), grocery shopper, housekeeper, master organizer... And of course, it's me who's the real vulture, bitterly attacking myself again and again with mean and useless messages, which I really can't be affording to do given that I need to raise this dear boy and don't have a lot of energy for other things, which is the whole point.

My old life is so over. I can't really even pretend sometimes that I have parts of it, and I think that's the way I've been approaching things so far. The endless cultural conversation about mothers doing it all and of course looking good while they do it is a paradigm that is not only unattainable, it seems to me to spell out a formula for not being present with my child, my partner, and myself. On some level, it's absolutely impossible to be responsible for a tiny person's safety and security and to enjoy that little life, and still expect to exercise, celebrate regular intimate moments with my partner, contribute to society, and be socially and politically active, unless I make them part of some new paradigm together. They can't be compartmentalized and ticked off a list.

When I planned my return to work after three months of maternity leave, I proposed to come back at reduced hours, and Noah would be with me on-site. As Matthew helped me strategize how to plan that time and what work to focus on, he said something brilliant: that I could approach it as doing the same job with less time, or I could approach it as a completely new job. This was an incredibly novel and helpful way to think about things, and I know that it applies here. Being a mother, and wanting to get outside in the long overdue warm weather, and moving forward with projects through my consulting business, and oh yes, making time with my husband, they all have to overlap now and have something to do with one another in a big, messy, mudpie sort of way. I can't just barrel through until it's all done, in that Katy snow plow sort of way that I used to do. I have to more intentionally find the counterpoints in the day to being Mommy, Mommy the rock, Mommy the thing that Noah can love or safely rage against or whatever else he needs to do. I have to find Kate in this new place, Kate as my source, Kate as my reference point, this new woman, Kate.

Mission Impossible: Episode 10,001

2008-05-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Now wait a minute, what happened to April? The first time I put a note in my calendar to post this particular blog was three weeks ago. It has since appeared on about ten different dates in my calendar. Fruitless planning...and now it is May, and I hear yellow finches calling outside through the open window in our computer room. Some people call such rooms offices, but ours has not graduated to that title as I'm just as likely to be doing my consulting project work on the living room couch or sitting up in bed as here at my desk.

So anyway, lately, when I have trimmed Noah's fingernails by flashlight after he's asleep in bed for the night, or popped bites of scrambled eggs into his mouth as he wildly waves his arms at the bouquet of flowers on the table ("Oooohhh! Dat! Dat! Dat!"), I have increasingly felt what a covert operation motherhood must be to be at all successful. For this boy to be bathed, dressed, fed, happy, healthy, and all the other things he needs and deserves to be, involves stealth and sometimes what feels like a magician's sleight-of-hand. It's simply impossible to negotiate everything outloud with an almost two-year-old. Even as I write that, I know that this is a bigger reality. It's impossible to negotiate everything outloud with a 37-year-old as well (which would be my age), and I sometimes feel a palpable sense of my own prickly behavior when I start to catch either of my own parents looking out for me. As if, "How dare they, those parents!"

In screenwriting, this aspect of things might be considered a subplot. On the surface of things, in the major plotlines, people are saying and doing things, la-la-la-ing along nicely, and in fact lots happens this way. But what makes a good screenplay and story great is when the subplot actively and visibly rolls along underneath. One of the characters says something, and their true wish or need is for the exact opposite, or some other variation. Something happens, and it is what didn't happen that makes the most impact. It is the the subplot that most needs to be reconciled or actualized, driven to resolution, for characters to become our heros and heroines.

So it is with Noah and me. His plot and surface goal for most days, is to do, well, what's fun I guess. Noah wants to do what is fun. Wow, people, what a place to be! If I set aside even a day a week to focus only on what's fun and perhaps three or four duty-driven or responsible-to-others type things, I wonder how much more balanced I'd be. For Noah though, on most days my subplot for him is that he bathe, get dressed, eat, and be active for a good part of the day. Luckily, all of these things can involve fun, as well as some flexibility. I am finding that transitions are potentially the least fun for Noah. He's usually very easy going when given some notice that a change is coming, but still often emits that wonderful energy of "This is great, why stop?" when something truly needs to happen, like a nap let's say because he's lost coordination and has started to fall down every other minute. So the music starts - da-da-daaaaa, da-da-daaaaa - and I become a superspy, plotting avenues to get his late-morning diaper changed and a blanket over him without him noticing too much.

I was reading an article this week that someone sent me in anticipation of Mother's Day tomorrow. It was written by Anna Quinlan and in one part she talks about wishing she had raised her kids with a little less drive to get them on to the next thing, and had been more present with whatever was happening in the moment (I paraphrase). It has taken me a few days to sort out why this actually rubbed me crossways, because I love Anna's writing, and I think it's because for me being a mother is more complicated than being present with your children with where they are at any given moment. For me it is doing everything I can to be open to Noah and to making his life fun, and is also recognizing that it's a major responsibility I have to help move his subplot along. It's also getting out of his way sometimes, and trying to meet my own needs somehow too. I can't forget about that, even though I really have a lot of the time. While there is flexibility with almost everything Noah "needs to do" if I allow it to exist, there is so much about this relationship I have with my dear son that is guiding him and and not letting him see me do it. Ethan Hunt has nothing on me.

Homeland Policy (part two)

2008-03-28T20:55:00.001-05:00

Report on night number two of the closed-door policy: Noah went to bed last night just after 7:00. He woke briefly at 8:30. Matthew was working furiously on a job application in the office under Noah's bedroom, and when he telephoned a friend to request a reference, his voice carried through the ceiling. I held my breath as I heard Noah cry briefly, go to the door, and then returning to tumble back into bed. Total time awake, three minutes. He awoke next in the middle of the night, for seven minutes, and then slept again until 6:00 in the morning. I am filled with gratitude at his goodness. I am not yet relaxed about this whole thing, as evidenced by my complete attention to the total number of minutes he is alone and awake in his bedroom, but I creep toward adjusting.

Domestic Policy and (En)treaties

2008-03-27T14:24:00.001-05:00

The prolific musician Paul Simon released a greatest hits collection in 1988 called "Negotiations and Love Songs" and yesterday I woke thinking how apt and wry a title this is becoming for my newest experiences of Noah's toddlerhood. Parenting Noah in the last several weeks has brought me the farthest out of my comfort zone as I've been to date. I'm sure this is just the beginning, but it has been a hard realization after so many truly blessed months of feeling like a competent mother.

Noah is 20 months old, and exploring his world as much he possibly can. This includes strengthening his independence, while of course continuing to be very dependent. A situation none of us would find easy or fun, and yet it has startled Matthew and I at moments to see Noah asserting so LOUDLY and ADAMANTLY about how he doesn't want us to pull off his shirt before bathtime, or doesn't want us to touch the tower of blocks, or any number of things that we've coasted along doing forever until now. It's not about rhyme or reason, and largely causes us to smile a lot and offer empathetic support for Noah finding his way while we try to stay out of the way. Except, of course, for the point of this blog - the real rub. Noah's sleep has been really disrupted, for nights on end, more than ever in his life. Therefore, so has ours.

Our history with sleep involves co-sleeping with Noah until he was 16 months old, when he then moved to a single mattress bed on the floor of our room for two months, and then in January moved down the hall into his own room. He's never slept in a crib. Once he'd really settled into his room, I weaned him from breastfeeding at night, and then weaned him from having me lie down and/or sleep with him, which brings us to where we have been for some weeks now - I have continued to respond to his wakeful cries in the night by going and sitting by him on the bed until he falls asleep, and then would creep back to my own bed. A few weeks ago we hit a plateau as this "I want...Can I get?" phase started and it started to be five times a night that he would call for me. Then he wouldn't fall asleep deeply enough so I could get out his door before he woke and cried for me again. Then he was getting out of bed and padding down the hall to get me several times a night.

While I've had tired nights before, and actually Noah has never slept all the way through a night, what was excruciating about this was that as a parent I had arrived at the edge of a new cliff. Each transition before I had been able to help Noah make by remaining physically close to him. Looking back I don't know whether this was more comforting to him or me. As Matthew and I gathered information and talked in the last two days to come up with a new plan together to help Noah get better sleep and stay in his room at night, it became clear that he would not be able to enter a process of disorganization and then problem-solving to learn to comfort himself if I (or Matthew) was always there to do the job for him. And the fact that all three of us were now sleeping poorly despite my dogged response to Noah's cries was telling us that change was again upon us. So Matthew and I wrangled and struggled and talked and finally agreed that we would do the most scary thing we've had to do so far with Noah: shut his bedroom door.

To type that, it seems very inocuous compared to the strong negative connotations both Matthew and I had with doing this. Neither of us are proponents of the "cry it out" method and we know that our tolerance for Noah's crying, discomfort, and distress is pretty low. We both feared traumatizing him by withdrawing from him and containing him in his room. But we finally agreed that we could talk with him about this plan, would place a new nightlight in the room, offer a lovey to him that he could use or not use, and would try it. A child development specialist we rely on for assistance had offered in a phone call yesterday afternoon that we could try 15 minutes of waiting after Noah wakes in the night, and Matthew and I agreed that we could tolerate this much distress on Noah's part, but not much more more. We enjoyed a bath, putting on pajamas, reading books, and I nursed Noah down to sleep. Matthew and I went downstairs to watch a little t.v. and try to unwind, both basically thinking that the night ahead could be pure hell.

Noah woke around the time he usually does in the night - the clock said 11:59. I tensed and both Matthew and I were immediately completely alert and listening. Interestingly, Noah called for Matthew first, an unusual thing for him. Since I had done most of the talking at bedtime about the plan, I think Noah knew that I wasn't going to come tonight. He usually knows when I mean business. So he called for Matthew for about 30 seconds. Then he called for me. Then he called for the cat. "Cat! Caaaaat!" At this time Matthew said "He's so smart." We could hear Noah thinking, trying to figure out what to do. Then he started knocking on his door really loudly. He rattled the doorknob. Matthew and I held hands and listened. Four minutes had passed. Noah started to cry hard, and then quickly began to gag and choke, a really painful thing to hear as any parent knows who has a child who has this secondary response to an unwanted event. A few times when Noah has cried really hard for a long time he has done this. It's AWFUL. Matthew and I had agreed beforehand that if he did that for more than 30 seconds, then Matthew would go in and comfort Noah and try to calm him down and get out of the room again as quickly as possible. Noah stopped and it got quiet for a minute. Matthew said, "He's thinking." I had enough room in my brain to notice how different Matthew and I were responding. I was lying there stiff as a board warding off thoughts that I am a terrible mother, and he was a sports announcer giving an empathetic play-by-play of our son's words and deeds. "He's on his bed," he said next, with some amount of wonder in his voice. It had been six minutes. Noah went back to the door and started really yelling loudly for me. He did this for about another six or seven minutes and unbelievably, 14 minutes from his first cry, we heard him go to his bed. "He's going to safety," said Matthew. At exactly 15 minutes Noah was silent, asleep. I got up and turned up the monitor to hear Noah breathing for a minute, and then got back in bed. Matthew and I debriefed for a few minutes, and went back to sleep. Noah didn't wake again until 6:00 a.m.

The light was coming in the window, and Matthew and I went and got Noah when we heard him stir. On his bed with him was a book, a diaper, the container of diaper wipes, and his sippy cup of water. The things he'd take to a deserted island if stranded. I felt, well, like we'd all made it through alive. So great was my fear, my wanting to do the right thing for Noah.

I can't say that I slept well last night, from listening so hard, but I learned my own lessons, distinct ones from Noah's. First, what felt so intensely like a parenting issue, negotiation, and decision, was so much really a developmental issue for Noah. It's his job to ask for what he wants and what he knows, and to work to gain control of his own little life. It doesn't mean he always gets what he wants, because new things become appropriate as he grows. Second, while the goal was to give Noah the opportunity to learn a new skill, he was teaching us at least as much. Creating space for opportunity is not abandonment or brokenness. A hard one for me to remember, as this is a vulnerability I've long lived with. Finally, I am so blessed to learn that all those earlier months and moments of giving him love and space to be himself are mattering already, because he has the support to use what he has inside him to step off his own little cliff and find - amazing! The net is right there for him. What more could a mother want for her child than this - resourcefulness and strength.

It's this mix of having to take the lead, make the rules, have control, use force, guide and shape, give up, nudge and allow, and let go. This impossible mix that had us pleading with Noah two days ago, and making a plan as his parents the next. On this day I feel so blessed that my deepest belief has proved out that with the closing of his bedroom door, a host of new bridges are built.

While My Baby Gently Weeps

2008-03-24T11:08:00.001-05:00

Matthew and I continue to say that Noah is an old soul. He seems to express deep emotions that are years beyond his years. Matthew and I have thought for a very long time how amazing it is that he would sit on the floor in front of our shelf of photo albums, pull them out, flip through for a long time, and then would begin weeping. Not the frustrated cry, not the angry cry, not the "I want something right now" cry, but weeping. We would hear him sniffle, and then he'd drop his head, and then he would cry big sad tears. Weeping with the sweet sentimentality that I thought we were imbued with only when we get older.

Last week he had another reason to weep. He's been missing his "Dadn" while he is away at work. At first, the only love object that got this special pronounciation was our cat, Sidney, who for some time was referred to as "Catncatncatncat." Now he has taken on another completely different pronounciation that is kind of a Snagglepuss-with-Long-Island-dialect, "Cyaaaaat. Cyaaaaat. Cyaaaaat." Anyway, last week, "Dada" became "Dadn," which Matthew takes to mean that Noah truly loves him now in some way he didn't before. So anyway, one day after bathtime in the morning, Noah took the largest of the rubber ducks in the tub and proclaimed it "Dadn." Then he carried the duck around with him all day, and wept on it. He would play with me for a while, or we would read, and then he would hold up his "Dadn" duck while making the baby sign for "Daddy" at the same time, and big crocodile tears would roll down his cheeks. I'd hold him tight and tell him I miss Daddy too, and this would prompt Noah to open his mouth wide and wail with the saddest sobs I've ever heard. I would nurse him and he'd have to stop nursing to cry and sob. I've never seen anything like this. Much of my young life I worked as a personal caregiver and watched over many babies who never revealed this absolutely sweet heartbreaking behavior.

We called Daddy at work on both of these days, and Noah would listen intently while Matthew talked to him, and then would burble and chat himself whenever Matthew paused. He would do well for a while after the call, and then would weep again. Those two nights he also wanted Matthew to sleep in bed with him in the middle of the night, a huge first. Usually, if Daddy tries to help out at night he is met with arms pushing him away and screams for "Mamaaaaa! Mamaaaaa!" But on these nights Matthew got into bed with him and held him tightly and slept beside him. I prayed that Noah didn't know something tragic that I don't, because he acted like Matthew was going away forever, or had been gone forever.

After those two days, there was another sea change. As many people have said, there is no getting comfortable with any certain stage, and even calling behaviors a stage seems ridiculous when it's only two days of said behaviors, but he was back to our light-hearted love of a son. He was happy, didn't mention Matthew much when he wasn't around, and slept wonderfully and happily again at night with only a few wakeful moments.

It's a mystery, this parenting thing. While I can probably count on my two hands the times I've actually panicked because of either being afraid for his safety and well-being, or because I absolutely didn't know what to do, many more times do I watch in wonder like a student looking at an admired teacher, and do what I can, amazed when things make a difference to him, or when he shifts gears seemingly effortlessly, from joyful to bereft, or from pain to peace. He is moved by tides and waters deeper than I can see. And when he shows us his tender heart so plainly there is no more sweet and sad song out there.

Cat Caveat

2008-02-17T19:07:00.000-05:00

Noah has always liked our cat Sidney, but he has recently discovered him on a new level. We will be down in the living room at any given time, reading books, working on puzzles, playing with his train or blocks, and he will suddenly jump up, sing out - "Catncatncatncat!" - run to the stairs, and head up to find the cat wherever he might be passed out at the time. This now happens several times a day. And he makes offerings to the cat, giving Sid his most prized possessions: one day he laid out three organic Cheerios-type cereal in front of Sid, another day a matchbox car, another day a board book opened so Sidney could read. He loves that cat, and points to the floor next to where he's sitting, inviting Sid to come and be with him, to be his friend and playmate. It's so sweet to see Noah lay his heart out.

The cat has simultaneously been showing more signs of interest and affection toward Noah. A few weeks ago he started wandering in to Noah's bedroom to sleep at the end of his bed when Noah takes his naps. This makes Noah shake all over with excitement when he wakes to find the cat there. Sidney also started purring when Noah pats him. But unfortunately, this new and more intense connection has even more recently resulted in Noah trying to lie on Sidney to feel the love even more, to crawl under the bed or couch after Sid once he'd removed himself in retreat, and to chase him eagerly from room to room to try to get him to come and play. It's love gone wrong. Sidney has gone from mewling warnings, to slapping Noah on the shirt, to scratching his hand and cheek. Noah acts so confused when he gets scratched, because he loves Sidney so much.

I remember reading advice to never leave a cat in the same room with the baby, but Sidney always had a very friendly and passive relationship with Noah when he was a toothless, bald, immobile sweet baby-blob. Even when Noah cried Sidney would stay close, and look concerned. But in the last two days Matthew and I have had more than one heated conversation about this being the end of the road for Noah's love affair with Sidney. I am now officially the mother I used to joke about who wails "Someone could put an eye out!"

So our plus-size kitty has to take a back seat (but he actually gets the whole upstairs) to Noah. This sweet baby kitten whom I've loved so much the past 3 1/2 years isn't the "top dog" any longer. It's a clear back seat for the animal. Of course it's not so bad for Sid, who has a pretty great life here with us, but so hard for me to remove him once he's given his warning meow, like I would a jar of poison or bottle of thumbtacks. He was the first creature in my adult life to unlock my maternal instincts and feelings, and really paved the way for the baby human to come along later. And Noah will not always be this adamant about pursuing him, I feel sure. Until that time, Sidney and I will have our early morning time, when Matthew takes Noah downstairs and I sleep for another hour, and the cat crawls up onto my chest as he has since he was a kitten, and settles down to sleep, soaking up the love there for him.

Top Five Noah Verbalizations to Celebrate Mid-January

2008-01-24T00:27:00.000-05:00

5. The universal "ca" which as of this morning stands for "car", "clock", "cow", and sometimes "chicken." You have to keep your eyes open for what's going on or you'll miss the correct interpretration. When they say that communication is only partially about what is said outloud, they are so right!

4. Another great new word in the past two weeks - here's a clue: What rumbles down the street removing snow so we can safely drive on our road? It rhymes with "meow", yes, it's "pyeow!"

3. No more struggling to remember which name goes with which family member. It's all for one and one for all. He names all of us when he names one of us: "MumDadCoCoCaCa." If brother Colby hasn't been around for a while or if the cat is on the outs, he reverts to the abbreviated "DadMumDad."

2. When we are sitting at the dinner table, and I go around the table pointing to all of us, or if Noah and I are looking at a photograph album and I point to people in the pictures, saying, "Who's that?" "Who's that?" He answers loudly "Da-Da!" "Co-Co!" I point to myself, "Who's that" He says "Mum." I touch his shoulder, "Who's that?" In a much quieter voice, his small little Noah voice, he says "No-no." Beloved, No-No, our Noah.

And the Number One verbalization to celebrate in this cold month of January...

1. Noah loves his older step-brother Colby, and when Colby is here Noah can be heard saying (or more likely screaming) "Co-Co! Co-Co! Co-Co!" as a constant invitation to come play, look at this, and as a general "I love you more than toast with butter!" This weekend he started saying it just out of the corner of his mouth, but just as loud - "Co-Co-Co-Co!" Before our eyes he became Popeye the Sailor Man! "Ar-Ar-Ar-Ar!"

Some Days the Eagle, Some the Statue Below

2008-01-11T13:49:00.000-05:00

Last week we entered a new transition with Noah. After some very difficult nights of me being awake with him, and trying to wean him at night but him crying for milk for a very long time, and my dear husband getting so sleep-deprived that he was becoming shall we say less than supportive in those wee hours, I'd had it. I moved Noah's bed into his Own Room. I took out much of the stuff we've been storing in his room all these many months that the room has gone unused by the baby. I took out the plants that we'd lined against the windows for the winter. I washed and hung new curtains. I brought toys into the room. I brought in all Noah's books that had been in our bedroom. I brought his diapers and wipes and bum cream into his room. This had never yet been Noah's place to be and spend time. Until this day.

Since then, my new ability to go in and close Noah's door and focus on Noah at night without also being preoccupied with Matthew's needs across the room has brought me huge relief. I feel that I've been able to so much better balance Noah's nights of great progress with the others that involve sheer exhaustion and me mining patience out of the ceiling and cracks in the floor when I've used all mine up.

Early this week Noah slept seven-and-a-half hours straight at night without waking and asking for me or asking for milk. I woke feeling incredibly optimistic about life. Noah then took a two-and-a-half hour nap in the morning, so I had a long shower, caught up on e-mail, did some consulting work, and actually did some pleasure reading. When he woke up we found three missing puzzle pieces that had been gone for weeks - they had drifted under the dryer in the upstairs washer/dryer closet. Moments later I located a matchbox car that had disappeared ages before the puzzle pieces - it was in the cat's carpeted climbing tower, in the back of the compartment at the bottom. It isn't often lately that I have a day of finding things, let me tell you. It was a great day. So kind of like at Christmas, I'm realizing that there are rarely perfect 24-hour periods of time, but there are lots of great moments almost every day. Almost.

Because there was of course yesterday. I woke up exhausted, as Noah had woken tearfully several times in the night and was forceful about wanting milk, even pulling my hair a few times in his frustration. I don't know where I found a gentle nighttime voice for those last hours between 3:00 and 5:00. Matthew got up with Noah at 5:30 and I went back to our bed for another hour but it was not restful sleep. Matthew left for work and I went to the refrigerator to start breakfast for Noah and me. The bulb in the refrigerator blew and I saw a small bolt of electricity shoot across the air in there. I took out the milk and bread and closed the door, trying to ignore the fact that the refrigerator was no longer humming. Then the toaster broke. Then when I was making scrambled eggs Noah played with the tea kettle and dropped it on the tile floor, breaking a big circular chunk of enamel off the side. And for the first time he wasn't really excited about eating scrambled eggs, so I ended up scraping them dry off the floor later.

A short time after breakfast Noah started falling down a lot so I knew it was naptime, even though the clock only said 9:30. I took him up to his bed, anxious for a chance to unwind in a long, hot shower. He went down quickly, and I got in the shower. I was in the shower just long enough to discover that the conditioner I'd bought myself was actually a second bottle of shampoo. My hair would be impossible to comb through. Then the doorbell rang. It couldn't be my 11:00 appointment already, could it? I got out and put on my robe and went downstairs, my hair dripping. I peeked out the study window to see who it was, not intending to answer the door as I was. It was my friend and neighbor, with whom I'd arranged to watch Noah next Thursday, not today. She was obviously having an off day too, so I invited her in and we ended up talking until my 11:00 appointment did show up. Since I was still in my robe I went upstairs to get dressed, thinking that I had to find some way to get into a groove with this day. I went on to break a bowl while setting the table for lunch with my guest, and burned my finger and thumb on the pizza stone when I lifted it from the oven. The total lack of perfection going on all around me was really wearing me down, but somehow didn't break me. I was actually in kind of a silly mood when my husband got called from work to see how Noah and I were doing. At some point it's a good thing I guess to just stop trying and see what happens next.

Two real days, and sometimes I don't understand how I could feel so completely off one day and how everything just seems to click and make me go all teary from the joy of it all on another. And I forget that Noah, and Matthew, and everyone are meanwhile having their eagle and statue days too, and of course, none of our days are necessarily the same ones. And it's never even a whole day that can't be rescued. Last night Noah had his best night yet - he woke a few times, but never cried, and never persisted asking for milk, just said into the dark a few times in his sweet tiny voice, "Mama? Mama?"

The Christmas Letter I Didn't Send

2007-12-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

To My Dear Family and Friends,

Although Christmas has come and gone, and some of you may still receive a holiday card from me in the mail, it will not be accompanied by the usual letter in which I try to pull together the meaningful events of the year with some sort of reflective tone and hopeful stance toward the coming year. Should any of you happen to visit my blog, here you will find that offering.

I'm struck tonight how I rarely rue the passing of a year anymore. As I've gotten older, each year has brought more and more moments of being present, trying harder and more intentionally to reach my actual goals and dreams, and less times when I sit and miss the Glory Days of my youth, which in my case were pretty much more guts and less glory. Each year also brings me more stinging realizations about my hard edges, and how much more I wish I was doing in general to actualize myself. I guess in the end, the last twelve months are what they are, and there's no going back now.

Initially, by way of catching up on the last many weeks since my last post, I'll sum up by saying this: I've been sick recently. Pretty much constantly. I've had all of Noah's first three colds, plus one to grow on, and really, it's been more days under the weather than healthy, so it basically feels like I haven't taken a smooth breath through my nose since October. And I'm still blowing my nose a few times a day. So for any of you who have wondered, you haven't missed much, except for of course all the amazing developments in Noah's life that keep me happy, if not also slightly strung out. He is communicating with one- and two-word sentences, is using 40+ baby signs, and can be heard at any time of day or night saying "meow" or "hee-haw" or one of the other wonderful animal sounds that he loves to make. He is sleeping in his own bed now instead of snuggling in with my husband and me. He is climbing on anything he can find that will give him just a bit of added height - sometimes this means standing up ever so carefully on a flattened cardboard box, a lot of work for very little payoff. He is moving and slimming down, but still has enough chub in his lower body to make even a miser smile. He weighed in at 31 pounds at his last well-baby visit with our family doctor, and is wearing 4T shirts. He turns 18 months old in January. I add the past 12 months into the previous year and can say without hesitating that these have been the best two years of my entire life.

Aside from parenting Noah, there have been many other wonderful things this year that make me feel very thankful as I think back over them:

Late last winter my husband and I went completely debt-free except for our mortgage, with the help of Dave Ramsey. I have mentioned him on my blog before, and he is worth mentioning again. By following his financial planning steps and utilizing his guidance and motivational techniques, we kissed off over $25,000 worth of debt (credit cards, motorcycle loan, student loan, etc.) in two years. We now own no credit cards and are living within our means for the first time in either of our adult lives.
After that milestone, we purchased a new computer with cash and upgraded from dial-up to high-speed internet. What a difference it is to purchase something that we could actually pay for and own outright! I gave my ten-year-old laptop to a techy computer friend as salvage.
In May it became apparent that Noah would in fact soon walk instead of dragging himself around on the floor forever, so the blissful months of him being able to come to work with me were coming to an end. After much weighing of options, I decided to leave my job of eight years as a domestic violence Community Educator. For me, coming home to be with Noah was the clear and obvious thing to do, but it meant leaving the workplace at which I had grown up and into the professional and ethical person I try to be today. Just like that, on June 26th, it was over.
June also brought my stepson Colby's graduation from 8th Grade, and he headed into a second summer of washing dishes in the family restaurant.
This year Matthew and I have continued our efforts to take better care of our bodies and the earth. We joined our local CSA - community supported agriculture - farm and enjoyed organic vegetables all summer and fall. We invested in low-energy bulbs throughout our house. We switched our electricity supply over to water and wind. We have a lot more to do, but these concrete things have helped balance the distress we feel every time we visit the gas pump, or have fuel oil delivered to our home. I still sometimes miss my old hair products, laden with ammonium laurel sulphate, but when I look at a bottle in the drug store, I am still able to hold off on buying it.
I was not idle for long, in terms of work. Still wanting to make a contribution to a movement that I care so much about, I decided to make a go of consulting, and in the summer mapped out some projects with a few clients. I also decided to continue on a volunteer basis with some of the statewide domestic violence-related task forces and committees that have been a part of my employment in past years. Although income was certainly a hoped-for outcome, my primary goal was finding a way to keep my balance while offering the best I can to Noah. And so far, with the support of Matthew and the flexibility in his work to be with Noah if I am out at a training or meeting, it's actually working.
July brought Noah's first birthday, which we celebrated in concert with his brother Colby, who turned 16 the same month. We took a day to enjoy a family cookout and swim in the lake, the perfect Maine party.
In August, Noah started walking. Also that month, I turned 38. Enough said about that. It's almost entirely great to be this age, although when I think about having another baby, which Matthew and I hope to do, I intellectually shudder a bit at how compressed time seems when it comes to additional years of diapering and nursing.
In the fall Matthew and I began planning for Christmas. This has never happened in our relationship before. The first year I celebrated the holiday with him, I was at his house with his son on Christmas Eve and he was out shopping. We were wrapping gifts at 9:00 p.m. that night. I swore to myself I would never do that again! This year we gave homemade applesauce, organic lavendar sachets, mixed CDs, and cards made of construction paper. We were also intentional about the gifts that we bought, and it made the slide to the Christmas season about a hundred times less anxiety-producing.

And that brings us to where we are now, in December. Post-Christmas, I feel good. I also feel relieved. No matter the preparation, the holidays bring surprise - many unplanned joyous moments, right through to times of flat-out terror. Just like the rest of the year, right? Sometimes being a mother feels like it's life or death, all the time. Here's one example of what prolonged hypervigilance can do for you - at one family gathering we were at, I was looking around the room and down the hall for Noah, and finally said outloud "Where's the baby?" One of the other folks there pointed back at me and said "He's there." He was lying in my lap breastfeeding. Talk about checking out - I'd gone to the Grand Canyon in my mind. Another more wonderful memorable moment from the past week - Matthew and I spontaneously gave Noah his first haircut in the bath on Christmas Eve. I thought I would be sad to see his baby curls go, but somehow he looks even sweeter to me than he did before. Finally, the terror I spoke of earlier, when at my in-laws' house their tiny chihuahua snarled and bit Noah in the face when he walked near the dog's food bowl, thankfully only leaving a dark bruise on his lip. It was heart-stopping when my husband scooped Noah up and his face was hidden in Matthew's shoulder and I hadn't yet seen the damage. Life or death, all the time. And throughout it all, the moments are peppered with Noah's newest catchphrases - "Oh no!" he sings out in his little voice when something goes awry. "No," he says while he closes his eyes and sways his head like Stevie Wonder when his Daddy asks him for a kiss. "Mama!" I hear him say in staccato from another room when he needs to know I am there. God Bless us, every one.

In closing and on a happily lighter note, this New Year's I want to take a few sentences to thank the New England Patriots, who will hopefully create history tonight by going undefeated, in a final regular season game against the New York Giants. This has been a season worth watching, and a team that continues to be worth rooting for. My household, with its moments of harmony, exhaustion, sarcastic insults, and quiet comings together, has united weekly to watch this team make it happen, and they have brought a lot of excitement into our lives as fans. For anyone else who is pulling for them to make it all the way - Go Pats!

Happy New Year to you all, with my best wishes for all good things to come your way.

Love, Kate

"That Da-Da."

2007-11-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

My husband has been away a lot in the past few weeks. He works with schools around the state that have been identified as needing improvement based on their students' testing scores. Many days he drives to these schools and back in a day, but has also been away some overnights because some of his schools are up north in The County, Aroostook County that is, also known as God's Country, the land of potatoes, or what I quietly think of as a Hell of a Long Way From Home. These trips and travels have coincided with Noah getting his first serious cold. I have to say first that he's never been sick in 15 months, so I know that we have been doing well overall, but this one was a doozie for his first. Lots of flowing green goo, a rumbling growly cough, and several long nights with his wide open fish mouth glommed onto my breast. Two days after he got sick, I did too, which made all of the above even more trying and pitiful. The first marathon-length day when the pressure in my head made me wonder if my sinuses would in fact blow up in a messy green and red display was Matthew's first day away on one of these overnights in Aroostook County.

I lowered my expectations drastically for the day and went into keeping-Noah-alive-while-I-try-to-remain-in-a-prone-position mode. If we happened to have any fun too, well, that would just be gravy. The first day passed peacefully, though I wondered at nightfall if I was wearing the skin off my knuckles from all the handwashing I was doing. Noah, bless his heart, remained his cheerful self for the most part, so I took his lead and did not descend into the mild despair and self-loathing which often accompanies me being sick. We stacked blocks, read books, and rolled matchbox cars on every inch of the furniture, the wood floors, our bodies, and the cat. When Matthew called in that night after Noah went to bed, I was glad to report that we'd gotten through the day just fine, although I felt terrible.

The next day, I woke with complete laryngitis. This changed the options for the day considerably. I could not read books to Noah, could not sing him to sleep at naptime or bedtime, could not ask him to do anything, and could not answer his questions - "Dat? Dat? Dat? HaDaaaaaat? (Translation: What's that?)." The last time I had laryngitis was my wedding day. My wedding week, actually. I wondered then, as I did now, what kind of symbolic meaning it had that my voice was gone. Was it to keep me from marrying my soon-to-be husband? To literally make it impossible for me to speak the vows? I thought then it was to help me step back and let the day happen without too much of the usual verbal direction on my part. To just let the joy come to me. Hopefully I won't ruefully look back on this in 10 years as an angry, divorced woman cursing the day I met my dear husband in the first place and wishing I had kept my mouth shut instead of rasping out an "I do." The only reason I can write that mean old sentence at all is that this was the spirit I was in on that second day of my cold - I had let's say a smidgen of resentment that I was home taking care of our little sick baby while I was sick myself with no one to take care of Me.

So it was laryngitis again. I whispered my way through the day with Noah, and since he was still his usual cheerful self, we again made it easily through the day. The real reason this is worth writing down is that I suddenly noticed that the more hours that went by when I didn't have to listen to myself talk, the happier I became. By nightfall I realized how incredibly sick of listening to myself talk I was. Listening to decision after decision after decision, talking both sides of the conversation with Noah and sometimes Matthew, communicating or overcommunicating with everyone in my life. The more hours that passed with me moving silently through the house, cuddling and playing with Noah without describing outloud what we were doing every second, the more I thought I might have to start living like this all the time.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a word-lover. I love to write of course, and I also love to talk. I love to find the best words to match the intention, to use words to find clarity, to lift an idea even higher by the way it's expressed. I'm a Leo as I think I've mentioned in this blog before, though a Leo perhaps lacking some confidence, so rather than just liking to hear myself talk, I like to be pleasantly surprised when other people are interested in hearing me talk. And while Noah is a captive audience, and is certainly sponging up lots of what I say, it's not scintillating around here in the word department because he knows less than ten syllables. And let's face it, conversation with oneself and a 15-month-old can only take you so far.

The daylong hiatus from speaking turned into two, and three, before my voice returned to more than a forced squeak. My husband came home that Friday night, and was exhausted and needed taking care of. I threw a drop more resentment down the well, promised myself I'd pump it out later, and made fresh biscuits for dinner.

Now it's almost a week later, another Saturday when we've had to make the difficult transition from it being the two of us to my husband and stepson being around the house too. I still have a bit of a whisky-voice, and cannot sing to Noah without sounding like a teenaged boy all gutteral than suddenly choir-worthy, but fortunately or unfortunately I'm back to talking a lot most of the time. I have to say, I miss the peace and quiet. Not that that has kept me from starting all kinds of uncomfortable conversations with everyone in the house, and feeling a bit like I have three children here instead of one. Terrible thoughts and feelings, and Matthew does not deserve this. His presence has shaped so much that is good in my life.

While Noah napped upstairs moments ago, Matthew and Colby raked leaves together in the backyard, and I've had this time to write, things have crept into balance again. For the afternoon that is left I want to quietly offer this, to try to suck up some of the water in that well: I'd like to whisper more, or show instead of tell, or sometimes just let more things go out into the silence without comment or interpretation on my part. Sometimes my words crowd things out, besides my own sanity, and these long recent days I have missed my husband so much, thinking at times that it's all up to me. As Noah simply and importantly reminded me this morning when he pointed to Matthew and spoke his first sentence, "That Da-Da. That Da-Da."

Giving so much to our kids doesn't leave a lot left over for each other, or for ourselves. But we are still a team, even though neither of us feel much like starters.

What does a car do? A car goes "Brrrrrooommm"!

2007-10-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

Well, life as a mother just gets better and better. I don't remember people saying to me that 15 months old was a favorite time with their children, but this past several weeks has been wonderful. I think I've moved past the total shock of being out of a full-time job for the first time in 10+ years, and am starting to feel truly peaceful about being at home with Noah. Even on the evenings when I am still trying to put him to bed after 45 minutes of reading books, nursing, and singing, and he is restlessly rolling his body around while still nursing and keeping his thumb sunk into my belly button, I find him an endless source of joy and hilarity.

Probably three weeks ago, Noah discovered matchbox cars. I often have to gently pry them from his fists when he has fallen asleep at night, so deep is his love and attachment to them. They sit on most of our windowsills around the house, where he can roll them back and forth, send them careening off into the air, or closely examine the wheels from eye level a few inches away. My husband and I have been trying to teach him to make the car sound, you know, brrrrrrrooooom, but for a few weeks we got just a birdlike trill.

Then two weeks ago a high school friend and her husband visited, and it was a beautiful October day so they drove their motorcycle to my house to enjoy the foliage. As the Harley Davidson Road King/Ultraglide cruised into our driveway, Noah heard the unmistakable sound of the engine and ran to the front window to see. Then I heard him say, "Brrrrroooommmm" in his tiny voice, obviously understanding how engines roar and growl. Now when I put him to bed, and we lie in the dark, often before he lets go he gives one last little "Brrrooom" in his sweet tired baby voice.

The explosion of matchbox cars and accompanying sounds in our house has made my husband very happy. Matthew has a particular love of cars, and is famous for being able to name just about any make and model of car that drives by us on the road, as well as detailing various interesting nuances of the engine. My stepson Colby has asked me on more than one occasion, "How does he know that?" I think perhaps Matthew doesn't actually have a job, he just goes off to the library every day and memorizes car data from old Consumer Reports magazines. In any case, with Noah at this moment, it seems to be quite beautifully like father, like son. And I, for perhaps the first time, am learning to appreciate the details of cars, through Noah's studied observation of every line and spin of the tiny wheels. And then just this weekend I wrote "ca", on the piece of paper on the fridge, the tenth word we have been able to make out from his ever blossoming speech.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2007-09-24T20:57:00.000-05:00

Many blogs ago I expressed sadness that my boy Noah had no interest in the book Goodnight Moon, which is one of my favorites and of course a classic besides. Well, all that has changed. We read this book almost every night now, and have for the past few months. Several weeks ago, though, something happened when we were reading, that made me think twice about my earlier lament.

I am interested to hear if anyone else already knew what I'm about to tell you, so please, let me know...As avid readers of the book Goodnight Moon know, there is a red balloon in the room, and it hangs out in the upper right hand corner of the little bunny's bedroom. Well, one night when my husband and I were reading the book outloud, my 1-year-old Noah started pointing intensely at the wall in that area of the picture of the room. "Dat! Dat! Dat!" I was confused because there was nothing there to name, and kind of glossed over it and kept reading. At the next picture of the room he did the same thing. "Dat! Dat! Dat!" with a much more disturbed tone in his voice. We continued reading until he stopped us and made us turn the pages back to those earlier ones. He pointed again. Slowly it dawned on us that he was telling us that the balloon didn't appear in those pictures in the middle of the book. We flipped ahead to the last page, when the room is dark, and the balloon was there again, but it was GONE in the middle pages. Noah began perseverating on this, going back and forth between the early pages and the middle pages, then to the end page and back to the middle, getting more and more agitated, pointing and whimpering, and at one point sounding very sad and near tears. And it didn't just happen that night. It happened every night since. After a week of it, when he would sadly give his "Dat. Dat. Dat." when we got to those balloon-less pages, my husband suggested that we hide the book, but I said no, let's work through it. We half-heartedly made up some explanation that the balloon was on the floor, but it didn't convince him or us, so we dropped that and just talked about how it happily reappeared on the last page.

Why is the balloon gone, is there something subliminal to be known here? Is it altering the myth in a way I should know? After reading so many books where the illustrator is careful to include the little butterfly on each page, or the tiny mouse dragging a banana, so children can look and point to them every time, to leave a detail out of this magnitude seems like it could only be intentional. Especially when all the other elements of the room remain from picture to picture.

We just read the book again tonight, and thankfully Noah seems to feel better about it. After weeks and weeks of dogging that balloon through the pages, he has begun to focus on the glowing red fire and the wood beside it, instead of the balloon. But I am left with lingering thoughts - with the hundreds of times I've read that book in my life I am impressed that Noah noticed this striking omission when I never did, but more importantly, why, Ms. Wise Brown, why?

The Universal "Duh!"

2007-09-12T15:52:00.000-05:00

There is a wonderful old comic strip, and unfortunately right now I can't remember whether it is Doonesbury or Bloom County - my apologies to both artists, Mommy Brain strikes again - and it depicts someone, either a person or Opus the penguin, watching "Lassie" on television. Lassie is barking at her boy, Billy or Tommy, again, no recollection of the actual name of the famous child character, and it goes something like this:

Boy: Hey girl, what is it?
Lassie: Woof, woof!
Boy: What, someone's in trouble?
Lassie: Woof, woof!
Boy: What's that? Someone's trapped in an abandoned mine three miles away and needs insulin fast?
Lassie: Woof, woof!

Now, aside from the fact that there is nothing funny at all about the tragedy of real people trapped in mines, the essence of this comic has stayed with me for over twenty years and still tickles my funny bone.

Fast forward, to my living room a few days ago. My husband and son and I had just finished dinner, and I was cleaning up while they played together in the living room. The bigger context here is that many of Noah's initial words - "Guck!" (duck), "Gat!" (cat), and "Dat!" (that) - have given way to him uttering "Duh!" or sometimes "Dah!" or "Dur!" probably sixteen to twenty thousand times a day. It means everything - "What's that? I want that! Look at that! See the wheel on that little car? I want to chew on the toe of my new shoes! See me poke the eye on my doll Lukas?" Because I am with Noah all day, I have learned to read the whole communication, which as educators and others know is much more than what is actually said outloud. This amazes my husband on a regular basis even though when he watches Noah's eyes and what Noah points at and leans toward most times he can hit the jackpot as well as to what Noah is talking or gesticulating wildly about. Note the following exchange, though, which represented a real leap from relying on body language and other nonverbal cues, with Matthew and Noah in the living room and me out of sight in the kitchen washing dishes.

Matthew: Do you want to play ball Noah?
Noah: Duh! Duh!
Matthew: How about a book?
Noah: Duh! Duh!
Me, calling from the kitchen: He wants his little flag out of the yogurt container across the room.
Matthew: Huh? Okay. (He walks across the living room, reaches for the hand-held flag and hands it to Noah.)
Noah: (Blissful silence)
Matthew: What the...?
Me: (Blissful silence)

This is a moment when I felt so good to be Noah's mother. In the light of today, of course I recognize he could have wanted something totally different but been thrilled to be handed his flag which he also loves so much, but in that moment from the kitchen sink I was so sure it was the flag that he needed and wanted that the connection was made real between us in ways that I often don't feel, like when he is flailing wildly and kicking my shoulders and head if it's close enough while I am trying to change his diaper.

And if this happening wasn't enough to make me feel as if the universe was really noticing how hard I am trying at this parenting thing, something else drove it home. After I tucked this moment and recollection of that comic away for purposes of this blog, my husband and son and I got together a few days later for breakfast and a hike with the family of a friend who was actually my high school sweetheart. As we all walked in the early afternoon sunshine, his kids excited to push Noah's stroller up the initial incline, my friend quoted the comic outloud to his son, who really appreciates a good joke. I couldn't believe it. I had introduced my friend to that comic all those years ago, and it had stuck with him as well. So for anyone who thinks that high school experiences don't count, or that good humor isn't really the stuff of life, or that the universe doesn't provide signals all the time to us if we just pay attention, chew on this! It makes for a wonderful meal.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2007-08-30T14:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I haven't really been on vacation. It's just been some more great weeks with a one-year-old who is now walking. Noah is so proud of himself! My husband and I got him his first pair of shoes last week - Stride Rite Derbys size 5 extra wide in navy blue - and our boy loves them at least as much as we do. The first day he had them on he walked up and down our driveway about ten times, across the street to see the chickens who live there, back and forth along our street. He didn't want to come inside. It's a whole new world, now that he's on his feet. He looked at the laces "Dat! Dat! Dat!" He gnawed on the soles. My heart grew another size.

But anyway, I didn't want to blog again until I'd gotten around on the internet as I promised myself I would, to actually seek out some other mom-writers' blogs to help me feel less like an alien with a serious egocentrism problem. Or at least, to help me find the other struggling aliens on the planet. And I did my homework! There's a heck of a lot out there, (of course, right?) and a lot of it kind of shocked me with the amount of intimate information, graphic swearing, personal photographs and such. Am I the only one concerned about having my uniquely identifying information floating out in cyberspace for anyone to review, critique, and use to exploit me?

That said, in this New American Neighborhood called the internet I found three sites, or I guess I can actually say three women, that I liked right away for different reasons. The first and the one I responded to most quickly is www.notesfromthetrenches.com, and her companion blog, www.inthetrenchesofmotherhood.com - this woman has 7 children and an awesome list of 40 things she wants to do before she turns 40. It's the "life list" that Ellen DeGeneres and many others talk about. You know, the one that I should be working on right now instead of distracting myself with things that likely won't enhance my long-term quality of life at all?

The other two sites I liked enough to bookmark are www.threekidcircus.com and www.mothergoosemouse.com. "Threekid" posted a few days ago about writing from her closet, which she is turning into an office. This tickled my funny bone to no end, because I am forever joking with friends after going to an event with lots of people or delivering a training to a big group that I need to go sit in my closet for a few hours to recoup my energies. "Mothergoose" has a splashpage and some F-bombs that I didn't take to write away, but as I read a few of her posts I was drawn in by many things, not the least of which was that she recently quoted a Talking Heads song. She also had some great weather pictures in and around her home in Colorado, with wry text to usher them along.

So three women out there doing some great writing about parenting and real life as a mother. I find this very heartening, because of course it means there are really thousands of others trying to find their way as a mom and a writer just like me. I also find it a bit intimidating, because of course it means that anyone can have a blog (and they do, just like me) and put their life tidbits out there and what's the point? That big question always lurks - why bother? I hate this question because there's no great answer that doesn't just sound like the goody-goody saying something in the face of the much cooler, sexier, more sophisticated looking person who then of course has to be the more miserable one in this scenario because she isn't doing anything for herself, while we humble but more self-aware people are trying much harder to get it right and lead good satisfying lives. (Did I ever mention that my astrological sign is Leo? By all accounts, Leos can be at least sometimes arrogant about what they think they know, and I know that I am no exception.)

But presumably, arrogance aside, these women, and me too, are putting it out there because it helps. It helps us. And in this world, we can only start there. Being so attentive to the diverse needs of someone else, my little son someone, there is not much I seem to be able to do to help myself in the ways I used to. So I muddle back to this new lifeline, and press on, hoping it matters. My next assignment - post comments to these new women I've become aware of living lives across the country, to introduce myself and extend a hand. It feels a little like my first day of school.

Helloooo Out There...

2007-08-11T18:16:00.000-05:00

I have been lamenting lately that I don't know any women or men with children my age whom I am really close with who are staying home with their children. Lamenting is maybe putting it too strongly, it's more like noticing. I am blessed with great friends, and am not necessarily looking (or even able to make room) for more close friends, but do notice that I don't have that commonality with those in my close circle around being a new mom and most recently, an at-home mom too. I have gotten out to one library story hour, but have yet to attend a play group, mostly because the people energy I have goes towards maintaining my existing friendships and family relationships. So there it is. I can't even clearly measure how important my need is to have additional connections, I only know that the isolation that I feel around being Noah's primary caregiver goes beyond what I can talk about easily with most people in my life right now.

Saying "I feel isolated," just doesn't seem to carry the emotion I have about it. "I feel massively responsible," gets closer. "I feel alone in this full-time mission to keep him not just alive, but happy, healthy, and thriving, while being a full-time witness to his early life" might sum up the whole kitten kaboodle, but still isn't specific enough. It's that it's tough luck if I don't feel like putting him to bed on a night when it takes an hour instead of ten minutes. Or how annoying it is wiping slung food particles off the kitchen tile after every meal, trying to focus on how exciting it is that Noah is learning to eat and sometimes even with a fork. Or how when Noah gives a glowing smile after walking, or stacking a block tower seven blocks high, there is no other adult for me to turn to and say - "How amazing is this?" Or when my husband is at work, how it is just me and Noah here. For many days in a row.

There is nothing like it, and I know the answer is not to whine for a long time but to go out and ask the universe for what I want. So my goal is to start engaging a bit more in the blogosphere to find some similarly situated bloggers - perhaps cyberspace is the new YWCA group for a mom like me? Where I can connect without taking on more than I can handle? Here I go - I hope to see you in the ether.

My Recent Experiences as a Clothes Horse: Bad Luck or a Reminder from the Universe?

2007-07-22T13:21:00.000-05:00

The past few days I have had many thoughts of clothes. Yes, clothes. We've had an influx of clothes for Noah lately - from his birthday, my husband's finds in Uncle Henry's (the local swap-and-sell guide), and a friend who gave us bags of hand-me-down boys clothes when she found out that her baby-to-be is a girl. So I've been washing and folding, sorting and refolding tiny little rompers, Hawaiian shirts, sweaters, bucket hats, and many other wonderful and precious pieces that he'll be able to wear in the coming couple of years.

I used to think I would keep all his outfits, because they were all so sweet and tiny and wonderful. Now as they overflow his bureaus and lie in piles on the twin bed we set up in his bedroom, it is becoming more of a blur in which just a few pieces stand out as being favorites. And even these just pale in comparison to the adorableness of the boy himself, so I've found myself wondering how long we'll hang on to these things. These precious things.

Some of my ability to anticipate letting go of probably most of his baby clothes has come from my own recent experiences with precious frocks. After Noah was born, I packed up my maternity clothes into a large trash bag and stowed it in the trunk of my car to loan to a friend who was pregnant. That weekend, my husband and stepson went to the transfer station (the dump) in my car and mistook the bag for trash, throwing it into the hopper along with the scraps from the previous night's meal. I looked in my car a few days later and noticed the bag was gone, but assumed Matthew had taken it out of my trunk. I asked him that night, and cried when it became clear what had happened. He was mortified, so I ended up feeling badly for him and moving on quickly to the mindset that it was just clothing. Just clothing. I had that special time, and have pictures of it, and now of course the baby. It's just clothing.

Then this spring when I was cleaning out my closet, I slid my wedding dress out and unzipped the garment bag to take a look. To my horror, I discovered that the bag had stained my dress. I took it to the dry cleaner immediately and their best efforts could not remove the stains, and made the silk dangerously weak in spots. The dress was ruined. I am pursuing a complaint against the store that sold me the garment bag, but am not hopeful this will yield satisfaction. Even if by some miracle I could squeeze some money out of this huge corporation, I couldn't replace the dress. So what could I do? Be sad, but again, tell myself, it's just clothing. Just clothing. I had the wedding, and have the pictures, and the husband. It's just clothing.

Dave Ramsey, author of the book The Total Money Makeover, talks about "stuffitis" and how it can lead to financial woes when we think buying things will make us happier, more peaceful, more satisfied with life, and we end up broke and stressed out instead. I think it also leads to more general emotional and spiritual woe, when objects and stuff start to take the place of actual experiences, moments in time that come and go, and need to be replaced by next moments. While heirlooms seem a different sort of category than perhaps other sorts of things that accumulate uncomfortably, I still think that my wedding dress, and maternity clothes, and Noah's precious newborn onesies can only speak hearsay about those special fleeting times. They don't hold something better than what is inside me or Noah for having lived through those moments so prettily dressed.

Dumber, But Still as Stubborn

2007-07-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

All day today I've been thinking about my 20th high school reunion, which is tonight. I've been trying to decide what I will wear (how to look hip and still be able to breastfeed at a moment's notice), whether I'll put my hair up or leave it down (neither mattering to me as much as the fact that I have a lot of gray), and what it will be like to see friends, especially my closest high school poet friend Amy whom I haven't heard from almost since we graduated. I'm excited to bring Noah, who just turned 1 last week, and Matthew my husband, and hope that other folks have found as much joy in their lives as I have. All in all, I've got a mix of positive anticipation, and dread. My usual emotions before going to an event with lots of people, ramped up by the fact that this is revisiting the past and who knows what these lots of people will be like now.

So a few hours ago I went online to see who else had signed up to come to the reunion, and saw that it is actually next Saturday, not tonight. I looked at the screen and re-read the webpage several times, not believing that I had the date wrong. I then went and checked the flyer, still thinking that I was right about it being tonight and the website had a serious typo. The flyer said it is next week too. I think I went into shock briefly. I walked into the living room and said to Matthew, "The reunion. It's not tonight. It's next week. I don't know what the hell is going on with me." He commented that the way I was driving earlier in the day was pretty bad too - I couldn't remember where the highway exit was, even though I've driven by it every day for the last two years. I guess I was relieved enough that I didn't have to go tonight that I found this more humorous than insulting. On another day I might have unleashed the hounds on him.

The last couple of months I have referred to myself as having "Mommy Brain", but this is the first time I've gotten mixed up about something of any real importance to me. Usually it's just not remembering the name of something or someone while in a conversation. But this afternoon if I hadn't gone online, we would have gotten dressed up and gone over there only to find ourselves all alone in the parking lot of a country club of which we are not members.

So does being a mother mean that whole brain cells become co-opted or flat out call it quits? My dad said to me recently that even though I was feeling like I had half a brain, that half still probably works better than many other people's. He's my dad, so he has to say that, but it still felt good to hear. I'm fortunate that others in my life have also offered me validation that I still can be rational, even while in a swirl of parenting a baby. On my last day of work a few weeks ago, the Office Manager who is famous for re-writing well known songs with personalized lyrics sang me a tune from The Wizard of Oz that went "If I only had a brain...like Kate's." That is not to say that I think I'm all that, but I do greatly enjoy and constantly practice organizing things, schedules, systems, spaces, and people. I would hate to see this go. It brings me peace to sort a junk drawer, or to spell out my schedule a month in advance. It feels right. Which is why getting a date wrong rocks my boat. One mistake like this can only lead to others, and to chaos.

And so my by brain, quickly accelerating to avoid this possibility, jumped from shock at our need to change our plans into the thought, "This happened so that you would have something to blog about, you've been neglecting your blog for the past several weeks, and this would be a compact story, sort of humorous, sort of insightful, sort of stupid, kind of like where you're at right now. Share the wealth!" Ahhh, lemons into pleasing tarts, lined up in rows. Makes things right again. Have a bite with me?

The Morning Toilet Slam and other Chart-Toppers

2007-06-29T21:42:00.000-05:00

Many times before I became a mother I heard or read that I would never be able to use the bathroom alone once I had a child. No one mentioned that when I went to use the bathroom, my 11-month-old would put his head down and crawl as fast as he could after me, pull himself up on my legs, grab the toilet seat, and slam it back and forth against my spine several times as I sat trying to do what I was there for.

This is just one of the more hilarious things that Noah is doing these days. Everything seems like a small science experiment to him now, to be figured out, repeated many times and preferably loudly, until it is well understood. His endless repetition of "Guck!" for "Duck!" has now been replaced by "Dat! Dat! Dat!" ("What's that? I want that! Look at that!") He can turn light switches off and on, he can hit the garage door opener, he is mesmerized by the ceiling fans in our house. It is not just electronics and machinery that catch his interest though. We must, every time we go out for a walk, stop in across the street at the neighbor's so Noah can see the 5 rescue chickens who live there now - Marie Antoinette, Bertha, Betty, and two others who also have names but I can't remember them. We stop there on the way out for our walk ("Dat! Dat! Dat!"), and again on the way back ("Dat! Dat! Dat!"). Now that Noah can stand on his tip-toes and see out our living room windows, he points to our neighbor's house and tells us ("Dat! Dat! Dat!") that he is thinking about the chickens and needs us to get off of our rear ends and get him over there to commune with them. We visit the chickens on average 5-6 times a day now. And did I mention that he cries EVERY time we leave the chicken lady's driveway? He loves those chickens.

In the spirit of late-night television master Dave Letterman, but in the length a tired mother can muster, here are the top five most funny things that the off-and-running Noah has brought to our lives recently. In some cases, these are things that we have brought upon ourselves, because let's face it, parents have to have fun too...

5. Meet "Nigel", one of Noah's alter-egos - a fluffy-coiffed Brit with sideburns who emerges when Noah wakes from his morning nap after going to bed with wet hair from his post-breakfast tubby. Cheerio!

4. The Pope wave. At least, Matthew says it's the Pope - I only recognize it from Italian mafia movies. When Noah waves, it's underhand and out in front. A joy to behold, especially if there is a slight delay so that the person who waved at him first is long gone before Noah gets his own mitt up.

3. Noah sitting up trying to find his bee-bo amidst his tummy rolls and almost rolling over on his head. Thank you Sandra Boynton for introducing us to a shorter and much funnier way to say "belly button."

2. Shrieking and shaking all over with excitement when he sees our cat Sidney, who looks back with all the interest of a meatloaf. Day in and day out, this dynamic remains. Noah the hysterical fan and and Sid the aloof rock star. Until, earlier this week Noah woke early, crawled to the end of our bed where Sidney was sleeping, quietly sat next to him, and leaned over and kissed him while we watched. Then he did it again, and again, and again. We thought, success! Noah has learned to be gentle with the cat! That afternoon he was back, going after Sidney on the windowsill with one of his best screech voices.

And the number one (1.) things that Noah is doing that currently floats my boat? Can anything top the morning toilet slam?

Chasing Noah in his Tot Rider II. He sits in it and is off faster than the Road Runner, going around the loop on the first floor of our house. He finds me, hiding behind the front door with just a foot or hand sticking out, and when he does he screams and races forward, laughing wildly, until he runs the Tot Rider II into the wall or a chair. I run by him, mock screaming and waving my arms, to hide behind the wall in the kitchen, and then to crouch by the island in kitchen and then back around to the front door again, wherever he knows I will be next. This is the game we now play daily and it gets both our heartrates up, if not from running around, then from all out laughing.

This is the goods. Laughter makes these memories great.

Paper Trail

2007-06-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

Eight years
of trainings and task forces,
creating curricula,
selling ideas
and myself
now boils down
to this -

shelves of 3-ring binders,
final reports,
quality improvement plans
and meeting minutes.
Suddenly it's all just history.

It feels both grinchly and sad to take it with me.
I know it will not benefit others if I keep it
and know as surely that it will be thrown away
if I leave it behind.
The next person will have her own vision.
Things in her office will need her handwriting on them.
I sort through all the drawers
and understand that "the work" as we all label it,
the passion we all share,
the movement to which we all belong,
doesn't live in these folders and files.
They are dead
and I am gone.

I relegate the boxes to a table and file cabinet
in my basement
and pray that it all meant something more than this.
Please let it be more, with a now
and a future.
Let it be the setting sun on the Atlantic
that plays with the waves until its last beams can't reach
and then still is only moving on to brighten other places.
Let it be something that lasts,
a few of the cobblestones
laid down on the road
that leads women out of darkness and danger
and into the light.

Endings

2007-05-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

Recently as I was walking on my street with Noah in his stroller, I asked myself if I was overstaying at my job. The last time I remember asking myself an overstaying question was with my ex-fiance ten years ago. I mused in a journal entry in the messy middle of things if I would one day look back at the experience and see clearly how right it was to end the relationship. In fact I did, and it was. Just that small remembering is enough to help me already be bouncing back from the sad news I received last week that the flexibility I have enjoyed at work in bringing my baby with me has bottomed out.

The universe seems to have answered my current overstaying question in the affirmative, because my recent proposal to begin working from home for the bulk of my part-time job was rejected by the Executive Director of my organization. This proposal was based on the fact that in the past several months that I've been back at work since maternity leave, much of my work could have been done from home, and also that my son is getting increasingly mobile and in general less comfortable in the office. It was also based on the fact that I still feel passion for the work and think I still have a meaningful contribution to make.

I've worked at a domestic violence organization for coming up on 8 years now, and it would not be an understatement to say that I've poured myself into the job from the time I came on board. I think it's also fair to say that I have grown up at the job, both professionally and personally. Being a part of a social movement, one that has allowed me to blend passion and profession, has made for an exciting career so far. When I was in college and law school, I didn't know there was such a thing as a domestic violence community educator out there in the world. It's been a powerful fit for me. I don't want to stop doing it, working as part of this organization, being a part of this team of individuals.

Except, maybe I do? My history frustrates me in that I know the two truths. I've had those experiences where there were lots of indicators saying move on and find the next thing, but other parts of me clinging, clinging, clinging to the current reality.

Becoming a mother has changed everything, and now I face the decisions that working mothers everywhere have had to consider. Who am I working for? I work for the man - the little man, that is. Little Noah. He needs my best contributions. And with what I have left over to think about working outside the home, in the years that I have worked at the Family Violence Project in Maine, I have grown the program and grown myself and there hopefully is enough stability in both to find the next iteration of the work. I do feel confident that whether it be consulting, or creating some new organization, I will find some other way to continue to give to this movement that I care so much about.

I also have thought a couple of times in the past few days about the actress who plays Susan on the television show "ER." This actress was in the original cast for several years, and left during the show's initial wild popularity. She said she needed to spend time with her family and ground her life again. I don't remember seeing her act in anything else for several years. She then returned to the cast of "ER" and brought the same talent and warmth to her acting and character as she had in the earlier episodes. This helps me take heart that even if I totally "opt out" as the pundits are now calling it when a mother does not hold a jobby job, "opting in" later will work out if I want it to.

I can even quietly admit, that since hearing from my supervisor last week and navigating that first weepy day, a strange peace has come over me. I remember when I worked for years at a bank in my early 20s - when I went to law school I kept working on weekends, but it was less and less, and when I finally left altogether I had a good feeling thinking about the things I would no longer need to do because I was not a teller anymore - no more having to try and sell bank cards to older folks who preferred passbooks, is just one example. So even in these moments of getting a handle on this big change, and worrying a bit about our finances, I am also having moments when I consider the things at work that I won't mind seeing go out of my life. I don't need to list those things here, because I'm sure most people have certain things about their jobs that don't fit on their personal favorites list. But I will say, that I won't miss them, and that is an interesting thing to recognize.

So, into a new kind of freedom I leap, as I prepare to give my resignation in two days. The next part of the road is not yet laid in front of me. I am lucky, though, that I can look back and feel proud of the well-cobbled path I have carefully worked on to this place where I now stand.

Fall From Grace

2007-05-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

In the past 72 hours, I have heard many scary stories. Heart-stopping moments for mothers. A young son who became trapped under a capsized canoe. A girl who lifted her baby brother from the ladder of a jungle gym and he went face forward into the wood. A daughter who toddled toward traffic-laden Route One from her quiet yard. A little one who sat with a friend and they painted their teeth with White-Out. A tiny girl who lifted her baby sister from a crib and carried her down the stairs by herself, to the adults' horror below in the living room. (That last "baby sister" was me.)

And now I have my own first scary story. Noah is fine. But he might not have been. He took a major tumble on our cellar steps late Monday afternoon and miraculously has only a tiny bruise on his left cheek to show for it. His parents however, Matthew and I, suffered psychic damage that I now undertand time will likely alternately repair and keep rubbing raw as life continues to happen to this baby boy.

Noah began crawling just a few weeks ago. It's a miraculous and wonderful thing to see his big round bottom wiggling along as he puts one knee in front of the other. He is fast, and so proud of himself to be able to move toward things he is interested in. He can also pull himself to a standing position, and cares less about his toys because he wants to be up, up, up. He has a curious mind and is adamant about doing things. Days after the safety locks went on the under-sink cabinets in our bathroom upstairs, he continues to go back and check to see if the doors will open the way he remembers they used to. And today if that cellar door were open just a crack, he would still go for it. He has no memory or fear even though those stairs could have done him in.

I have read so many articles and magazine blurbs about babyproofing a home. Safety latches, baby gates, outlet covers, poisons, cupboards, electrical cords, crib bars, houseplants, and on and on and on. But I haven't seen a single piece of writing on how to handle the emotions around the first big fall, even though I am gathering that every baby has one, and then some. Nor did any mother share details about this side of parenting with me during my pregnancy, though I heard many labor stories and other exciting and sometimes wrenching things.

If I consider my own injury list as a little person, I can rattle off many, many incidents: pulling a pottery lamp down on my head, requiring stitches; breaking my leg by falling off my bicycle; doing somersaults on my bed and cutting my head when I came up into the chimney that went through my bedroom; sustaining huge scrapes on my hands and knees from running full speed down the road we lived on and falling into the pavement, etc. But in raising this sweet baby for the past 10 months, it never occurred to me what it would be like to be on the other side of this equation. I think I was assuming Noah would never really have anything bad happen - not my baby. That first bump Noah incurred that I mentioned several posts ago seems now like a romantic token little incident. We are in the big time now.

So those emotions I mentioned, so exploding they were physically impossible to ignore, made breathing difficult, caused panic in my body in the form of shaking legs, became a voice in my head screaming, "This is it. I had my chance. He's broken his neck. He's dead." I remember yelling outloud, "Nooooooooo!" Feeling that I needed to be calm for little Noah as I picked him up and felt him all over. This was the stuff of pure trauma and days later my stomach still flips over when I think of it.

After the ER visit and assurances from the doctor and several nurses that Noah had absolutely nothing wrong with him, we went home and he was sleeping peacefully by 9 p.m. And by the next day, Noah had moved on. (He actually seemed to have moved on way sooner than that.) He was maybe a bit more clingy than usual, or maybe it was us that was clingy with him. Really he was his usual rambunctious, sweet self. And he wanted us to go there with him, back into life. Matthew and I were both feeling fragile, our nerves shot. But we absolutely had to take that big breath and go on with the day. His day, our days. What else was there to do? Noah was smiling and wanted us to play with him, and read to him, and give him his bath, and go for walks. He did not want to sit in our laps and be hugged and stared at with big grateful doe-eyes all day.

So here we go, a few days later gingerly stepping along the path with him again. My stepfather offered me a pearl this week when he e-mailed me and said (I paraphrase, and probably poorly, because unfortunately I already deleted the e-mail so I can't quote him directly), "Once you become scared/scarred as a parent, it becomes even more important to stay present and enjoy every second, and also simultaneously more difficult to do so." I cannot imagine it ever getting easy to know that my boy is at risk for something terrible, though already in these past few days I've started to accept it as reality. That first step, from where we were just a weekend ago, is a doozy.

Everything Old is Still Great

2007-04-26T20:52:00.000-05:00

As I lay in bed last night in the dark, I suddenly came to an awareness that I'd been humming "Edelweiss" from "The Sound of Music" over and over for a solid half hour, and meanwhile had been having a thorough inner discussion with myself about something completely different while not missing a beat with the song. This is one of Noah's regular bedtime tunes. I start with something more upbeat like "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", usually inserting "...he had a duck" and "...he had a cat" many times in between just a few other animals, because he knows those words ("guck" and "gat") and delights in saying them when I sing them. Then I sing "Hush Little Baby" because he likes to hear about Daddy getting him things. Then maybe "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or some modern folk song if I can remember the lyrics. Then it's "Edelweiss" and "Edelweiss" and more "Edelweiss", singing and then humming, until it's all over for the night and Noah turns away, sighing into the dark. I've been singing these same songs for nine months now, with little variation, at this same time each evening. Noah wiggles and snuggles up against me because he knows it's time to let go. How blessed are we to have a baby that loves to go to bed.

Some reading I received this week from our "home visitor", a child development specialist who visits us monthly and provides various tools to help us be good parents, discussed how much babies like repetition. They enjoy recognizing things they know, and grow confidence when they can expect and predict what will happen next.

Noah has many books, but Matthew and I both know what his favorites are, even though it's rare that the three of us all sit and read together. In some books, he even has favorite moments that he's made clear to us - he laughs, or points, or looks carefully at certain pages. In Doggies by Sandra Boynton, it's this one: "9 dogs on a moonlit night - Owwwwoooooo!" In The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle it's the page with all the different foods that the caterpillar eats through (one slice of swiss cheese, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, etc.). Noah rushes through the other pages to get to that one. It's easy to tell the books that he's not interested in because he either tosses them aside like yesterday's newspaper, or pushes them out of our hands when we start to read them. Unfortunately, Goodnight Moon is one such book. He's just not interested. Which is just awful to me because I love that book. I keep thinking that maybe he'll enjoy it this time, but whenever I try it he grabs it from my hand and stretches way over so he can drop it off the edge of the bed. How much clearer can he be?

Loving what you love, and being just fine with more of it...Ain't it the truth for all of us? In this world of New and Better, how right Noah is - there are so many things that as an adult I know I can practice or come back to over and over again, to bring me to a place of comfort, solace, relaxation, confidence:

Long showers or baths
Going to the ocean
Movies
A phone call to that dearest friend
Music
A simple meal
My journal or poetry notebook

Ahhh. My favorite things. Just listing them out feels like staking my territory. What are the old standbys that make you feel like you've come home?

This and That, All the Time

2007-04-25T21:14:00.000-05:00

Today I feel full of the constant swings involved in parenting. It's a life where beautiful moments are punctuated by blasting vomit.

Noah shifts from laughing outloud at something to crying as heartily as if he's been orphaned and left for dead. When he laughs it comes from his belly, he flaps his arms, wiggles his feet like he's swimming, and smiles with his whole face. His eyes disappear into slits peeking out from above his big cheeks and all his teeth (five now, soon six) show like a Jack O'lantern. Then when he cries, seconds later because he wants to be picked up, his little wide-open mouth turns down and he yells "Waaaaaaah!" and his face turns red and he turns to look at me so I can know just how unhappy or mad he is with whatever the current situation is. In his excitement and joy and his fear and discomfort he is simply the sweetest thing I've ever known.

A week ago today he said Mama for the first time. He said it four times that day. It really sounded like "Mum-Mum" and he said it the first time when he needed help. In the morning he had crawled backwards into the wall, and couldn't go anywhere. He still hadn't learned to go forward, although that milestone came just three days later, this past Saturday. So he was backed up, and I was across the room but sort of out of his sight, and he said "Mum-Mum!" Clear as day. And the tone was "Mama! I need help! Come and get me!" Then later that day a friend was visiting, the woman who married my husband and me, and he was sitting in her lap and turned to me and said it again twice, quietly, as he rubbed his hand back and forth on his ear. This gesture is his shortcut baby sign for Mama. Finally at night, at bedtime when I was reading to him and holding him in my lap, he said it again.

So that is how it happened, but this is how it felt. It felt like no matter how long the war in Iraq goes on, or how badly the earth is being misused to its core, or how domestic violence is never going to go away, or how there's never as much money coming into our lives as we'd wish for, it's all good, because I am Mum-Mum. They are words I never knew I would hear in my life, and certainly couldn't imagine how they would feel, even in recent weeks as I anticipated it happening. I am Mum-Mum. Since that day a week ago, Noah has changed his name for me, and now it is "Na-Na." It still makes a warm feeling spread through my body as if I'd had a sip of wine.

Alongside this blissful development, those teeth I mentioned before have been causing Noah some serious pain, and none of us are sleeping all that well on recent nights. He's nursing more to get through it, which in itself is not a problem - it's the fact that he's started biting me. This too is something that I never knew I would feel in my life, and certainly couldn't imagine how it would feel even as I heard stories from other women about it happening to them. Holy smokes, it's worse than labor in some ways, because at least labor for me had an evolving intensity and one stage led to the next so by the time the most painful part was happening it didn't seem out of the blue or anything. But this, yikes. It's a sharp pain in a delicate place, and it becomes very frustrating for me when he does it over and over again, which has thankfully only happened a few times, but imagine this: He goes to sleep at night by nursing, and he's exhausted and crying because he's so tired, and every time I try to nurse him he bites me because his teeth hurt. This isn't fair for anyone involved. This imagined evening was actually two nights ago and it was a trial. I had to deliver the verbal "Stop - bite" message every time, and then somehow find the courage to start nursing him again to get him off to sleep. He usually goes to bed at 7:00 p.m. and is asleep by 7:30 but on this night he didn't fall asleep until after 9:00.

This was a rough time, but was miraculously followed by a beautifully sunny morning. Noah woke happy, and ate a great breakfast, loved his bath, and played on the floor as if all his toys were new. He went down easily and napped for two hours with the bedroom windows open and our orange gauzy curtains fluttering in the warm breeze. It was breathtaking and I almost cried when I looked in on him because of the light and the air and his gentle breathing. The night before was totally irrelevant and a distant memory.

Last Saturday, as I mentioned, he crawled forward for the first time. He achieved this by digging his little toes into the bedroom carpet, arching his rump up so his body looked like a bridge, and lurching forward. Since then it has evolved quickly so he is up on all fours, going forward on his knees and pulling his feet behind him like a little seal tail. He also is pulling himself to a standing position, most easily by sitting on the floor by his crib and using the rails to pull up. This has caused much cheering and clapping and amazement on the part of his father and me. We have been truly excited for him, and I also have felt proud of us for being present with his current stage of development rather than mourning the loss of our darling bald and toothless baby of just a few months ago.

But today, as he pulled himself up again, this time using the edge of a small maple table in our bedroom, he lost his grip and konked his forehead on the edge. He cried loudly, open-mouthed, with a look of shock and confusion on his face - "Why? Why? Why?" I saw a red mark and goose-egg rising - his first one. I snuggled him in and comforted him and told him I was sorry it happened and that I loved him and that he would be alright, and I did actually believe that. At the same time I felt my own pain rising up. It's beginning - no matter how vigilant I am, this dear baby will be hurt. He's perfect, and it's inevitable. His life is happening at full speed, full of wonders and dangers, and he is discovering them so fast. I know that I need to hope that he discovers the richness of both, because I do believe what they say about deep pain allowing deep joy at the other end of the spectrum, but even small injustices or hurts are not easy things for me to watch in one so young and tender. I know he deserves the world, and sometimes unfortunately, I know he will get it.

Time Change

2007-04-16T09:53:00.000-05:00

How and where does the time go? In one of the free parenting magazines I receive I read a line recently that I can half identify with. "As a parent, the days go by slowly but the years go by quickly." In my world, the days go quickly as well. Noah has happily found his own routine without us pushing one on him, and if I pay attention and stick to it, then a typical day looks like this:

1. Wake up. If we're all lucky.
2. Noah fills his diaper in a massive way like clockwork between 6:30 and 7 a.m. This requires a complete change of outfit.
3. Go downstairs for breakfast. Noah sucks on organic Cheerios while I make myself something and warm up some real food for him.
4. Go upstairs and give Noah a bath and get him dressed.
5. Play for a little bit until Noah wants to have milk and lie down.
6. Noah naps. I shower and get dressed, and if Noah continues to sleep than I go online and check e-mail or write or clean the house or pay bills or do any number of other pleasurable possibilities.
7. We play for a while together, or he plays with his toys and I continue above mentioned possibilities nearby. As long as he doesn't try to eat the dirt out of the plants, he is usually fine on the living room floor on his quilt with all his toys.
8. We have lunch. Noah now loves yogurt, like his Dad. Matthew panics if we only have one tub of Stonyfield Banilla left in the refrigerator.
9. We play for a while, often upstairs since he has another play area on the floor of our bedroom.
10. Noah naps again. If I have energy, I do a little work for my job, or I do paperwork, or phone a friend. If my energy is flagging, I watch television and let my brain rest.
11. Matthew comes home from work and we make dinner.
12. The bedtime routine: We get Noah's pjs on, Daddy reads him books, and then Noah goes down with me at 7 p.m.
13. The day usually ends for all intents and purposes there. It's rare that I have energy left for much else after Noah goes to sleep. We'll read or watch a little television but if we are up still at 8:30 it's unusual.

With only slight deviations if Noah gets up early or sleeps in, or if it is a weekend and Matthew is home all day, that is what my time looks like. On days that we run errands, or the two days a week that I go to work with Noah, I plug in said errands or time in the office between steps 6 and 11.

So 9 months' worth of days have slid by, and my being has become so attuned to this routine that I often don't look at the clock all day. I no longer wear a watch (the last time I wore one was when I was in labor), and when I do check the time it seems like it is always bedtime. I cannot believe the number of times the clock has read 6:00 p.m. when I glance at it - time to wind down for the night.

This is not how I used to approach time. The current culture, my job, and I'll admit my natural tendencies too, have made me a multitasker. While I of course still do some things at once (do the laundry while playing with Noah, make a phone call while walking him in the stroller around the 1st floor of our house), I no longer approach every 15-minute segment of time as if it is a meaningful unit in which I can accomplish 3 errands or 10 e-mails or other larger projects. My oldest sister who is also a mother said on the phone recently that it was hard for her to contemplate going out to run even a quick errand when my niece was a baby because of everything that had to happen for that to be accomplished (for us today: get dressed for the outdoors, get Noah dressed for the outdoors, stock the diaper bag and add car toys and another couple toys for my pocket, pack water and a snack for both of us, find my glasses, lock the house, turn the heat down, check the stove to make sure it's off so I don't burn the house down (a nod to my mother)...). It's not bad, but it's light years away from when I would shower, grab my list, and go knock off 15 errands in three hours.

Was my quality of life worse then? Certainly Noah adds a dimension to my experience that is wonderfully unlike anything I've ever known, but things were also pretty great before he came into my life. I prided myself on how much I could get done. Another thing I have read in many of the magazines is that once you become a parent, you should never expect to get anything done again. Don't expect to take a shower before 4 p.m., to do anything on that TO DO list that is on the fridge, etc. I really hated reading this, largely because it makes it sound like active parenting isn't doing anything or should be seen in competition with other more meaning things I might be doing, but thankfully it is really only sort of true even in the best way they might mean it - don't expect to be able to do things for yourself.

I have been able to shower every morning since Noah was born, which is good because that's how I wake up to full consciousness. I grew up in a house without running water, so after 20+ years now of living with plumbing I still appreciate a hot shower a lot. While it's true that I am not accomplishing things quickly on the schedule or personal lists that I had before he was born, I can see (most days) that the point is that the list has changed. When Matthew and I decided to have a baby, Noah became the top thing we were doing. And from Noah's perspective, when I can tune in to it, it's amazing how much we do every day - the multiple costume changes, playing with rubber ducks in the kitchen sink and soaking everything, reading stacks of books, discovering sparkly Mardi Gras beads, rolling balls, crawling around, dumping out every container with balls or dominoes or anything within reach, nursing, napping... It's a lot, every day, all the time for him. It's his new life.

So do I miss being Little Miss Do-It-All? Only sometimes, and interestingly, it never takes a day or even an hour of multitasking at my old speed to right the balance. It takes doing one small thing that I feel is important, and noticing that it is done and I did it. That's it. This is one of the gifts that Noah has given me, one way in which being a parent is covering over an old open manhole in my heart. One feeling I was often plagued with in the Time Before Noah and do not experience nearly as often today is this - that feeling that it's never enough, never enough, no matter how I work to make every minute productive and helpful to others, it's never enough. One of the rewards of being Noah's mother is that he tells me every day what enough really is - for him, for others, and for me. And I no longer wish for more hours in the day to get more than that done.

Good Things

2007-04-06T14:20:00.000-05:00

Noah falls asleep on our big bed
and the air settles, becomes still.
The cat snores in the other room.
I carry warm piles of folded laundry to our bureaus
to the shushshushshush of my slippers on the carpet.

Some days puttering at home feels desperate
- other times, peaceful.

The warm yellow sunlight melts
much of the snow from two days ago.
Spring had brought a late storm
to make the daffodills
shiver in their stalks.

Let nature find its way without me
- today I am in here, enjoying these good things.

Home on the Range

2007-03-29T09:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing a lot here lately, or doing much of anything it seems. This past weekend I figured out why. And it wasn't a good time.

I changed the tagline on my blog last night, adding the phrase at the end, "and sometimes more specifically, motherhood." This is because the meaning of life seems to have stealthily boiled itself down to this in recent months.

I did not expect this. Having a baby at 36 for me meant that I had a full and established life and many fulfilling self-identities. Writer, feminist, domestic violence advocate, wife, loyal friend to many...These things were all me, or at least who I tried to be. Dare I say I actually felt pretty well-adjusted after many years of being what I considered very out of balance. Welcoming Noah into my life felt truly like a holy blessing, as I think I had felt somewhere deep inside me that this would never be possible for me. As my pregnancy progressed (and the hormone-induced sickness receded), I became more and more excited and confident. And it has been a wonderful eight-and-a-half months since Noah was born.

So why, then, in the past few weeks, did I turn sour on myself? I began having more complaints about work, and at home became more grumbly with my husband and more listless about my own writing projects. I still felt joy at being with Noah, but everything else seemed to be blanching out. I was starting to feel and act negatively toward myself because of all these hard feelings that were surfacing about seeming minutiae (compared to the monumentally fabulous Noah) that have piled up over months and months. It continued it that vein, until this past Sunday, when I had just had it, and shut down. I didn't want to talk with anyone, including my husband, and felt miserable. I didn't feel I could even call a friend.

Finally late on Sunday night - late being 8:15 p.m. in the new land of Mommy time - I called my best friend. I told him I hadn't called before because I didn't have any energy to give or to listen to him and that didn't seem fair. I heard myself talking in a very small little girl-sounding voice, slow and almost a whisper, which made me recognize I just don't get vulnerable all that often anymore. That made me very sad and I cried and said how lonely and isolated I felt. I said I did't feel I had the right to complain about anything when I had this wonderful baby, a patient and loving husband, live in a great home, have a flexible job, relative financial stability...It must be me that was the problem here. Oh those old demons. And Kevin, my dearest friend, slowly said the following: "Katie, you are entitled to the full range of emotions every day, no matter what is going on, just like everyone else." I felt the anchor go down and stick in the mud. Yes, of course. I knew once that was true, but had forgotten it. In all of the loving and feeding and diapering and playing and reading and kissing and cuddling and peek-a-boo-ing, I had utterly forgotten it.

Then we talked about how being a mother for me is easy and hard. What I find easy is seeing and understanding Noah's needs. It feels very natural to tune into his sounds, facial expressions, gestures, cries. And given that he is big and smiling, I think what my husband and I are doing with him is working very well overall. What is hard, is that it is every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Unless Noah is with Matthew, my highest thoughts are of his safety, comfort, and happiness. All the time. And it has to be that way - Noah is so vulnerable and new and deserves my best efforts to give him a good start in life. Anything else feels selfish.

I started to feel a little bit better, saying these things, until Noah cried upstairs 15 minutes into the call, and I had to hang up, stuff my feelings back down, and go take care of him. The next morning I still felt lousy and emotionally hung over and it went like this. Matthew leaving for work: Don't I get a kiss? Me: No, I don't want to do that anymore.

Ouch.

Throughout the course of that day, I took many steps. I called a friend who works in the field at another organization in Maine and talked through my recent work concerns and this mothering mess. Then an acquaintance called and gently pushed through my resistance to kindness and we planned an afternoon visit that day for our babies to meet each other and us to talk. Then that night the woman who married my husband and I called, and I let go and talked openly.

That was so big, to let go. When I went into labor one of the most challenging moments was when I was having hard contractions but had not been checked to see if I was progressing, and so all I knew was that I was not dilated much at all - maybe 1 centimeter. I couldn't believe that these contractions didn't count, because they were so painful and strong. The previous 18 hours I had more mild contractions at home that I was most comfortable dealing with in a side-lying position. So that's what I was trying again and it was not working at all. Matthew asked what I needed and I said I had no idea. I felt panic. For a moment I clung to the idea that I should be lying down because that should start working any second. I quickly broke that train of thought because it was simply too painful to stay that way, and got up to try something else.

So I get it. It's too painful in the long run to recognize Noah's needs and not my own as well. It's not an either-or. A friend of mine who was a judge at the time mailed me a card to welcome Noah a while back and it read, "Parenting is not a sprint but a marathon." I loved the idea at the time - now I'm starting to get it. While I've read as often as anyone else the articles in every parenting magazine published about "taking time for yourself," I didn't understand how that would become real for me. I knew how to do that. Self-care in the past meant treating myself to lunch with a girlfriend or splurging on a pedicure. Now I need time just to feel my feelings, to create my opinions, to make small plans for myself, to maintain some sense of all that I am now. I want Noah to know all that I am, and I want him to know that he gets to be all that he is too.

Monday night over dinner my husband and I talked some of this over. He made the astute observation that I could also be grieving for my old life and identity(ies), even while I embrace this new one - a whole topic for another day. This shift to being a mother is so profound I think I'm just starting to take it in emotionally. But in those two days, I know I made some headway toward being a mother and bringing forward some of the other important parts of me at the same time. At the end of it I felt peaceful, like I'd come home.

The Wake Up Call: Spring-a-Ding-Ding

2007-03-21T08:29:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day of spring. Which isn't saying much, considering the deep freeze that we are experiencing in Maine. The sun is bright in that very cold way, the light almost white instead of a warming yellow.

Spring, spring, what changes will it bring? As if on cue, my day yesterday brought a torrent of realization. My current work situation is suddenly a claustrophobic fit, though like an uncomfortable piece of clothing I can't figure out if the neck is too high, or the sleeves too long, or if it's just all wrong. In typical fashion, I notice changes and then work backwards to my feelings and ideas about them. Most of the time these days, I am so busy trying to be calm and rational that I don't hear my insides screaming. But really, what's a mother to do? I used to spend my days questioning what my own needs were, and now I am completely focused on keeping someone else alive and happy, and so I don't ask myself on any kind of regular basis, "What do you need to do for yourself right now?" This is a question my best friend and I have asked each other many times over the years, as we stood in for each other's self-caring self when he or she abandoned us to our self-loathing ways.

As I have spoken to various people about my discomfort at work, which has something to do with not feeling like I'm getting enough done (my stuff), and something to do with the other people and structure of the organization (external stuff), I get encouragement to focus on what I need and want to do. In the past this would reassure me, yet now it confuses me, like I don't know what that means any more. I've been working as a domestic violence educator and trainer for almost eight years. In more ways than one, I have grown up at this job. I feel blessed to be able to bind passion and profession. I have made many friends. I love the work, as hard as it is.

I have also been extremely lucky that I am able to bring Noah to work with me the two days I am in the office. I do some additional work from home, altogether totalling around 20 hours per week. I have been saying to people lately that I want to continue to ride this wave as long as I can, because I still feel I have a contribution to make to the domestic violence movement. That said, my son is growing, and changing, and getting more wiggly, so the flexibility to bring him with me is lessening on his side, and the policy at work says too that he can come to work only until he is mobile. So since he is my priority, does the arrow automatically point to Answer B: leave my job?

I know there is another way to get what I want, but unlike before Noah was here when I could quietly plan and strategize, I only have Noah's napping moments to gather my thoughts while trying to fold laundry or clean the house. But this much is clear: a new season is here. Noah is eight months old and needs different things. And my needs are less visible, but still pulsing like the old heart under the floorboards. It's been a long winter of hunkering down and trying to work the current system. Now it's spring, my time to grow too.

Hair Cares

2007-03-14T12:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I called to make an appointment at my favorite salon in southern Maine. It was TIME, if you know what I mean. Why is it that there is such a sudden tipping point with hair - one day it is a reasonably minimal part of my personhood and the next an unmanageable barrier to me living a normal life?

Like so many other aspects of my body and self, my hair has experienced a sharp swing of the pendulum in the past twelve months. Toward the end of my pregnancy, by which time I'd downed several large bottles of Solgar prenatal vitamins, my hair was thicker than it had ever been. It was long, curly, and healthy. A co-worker of mine actually tossed the word "lustrous" at me one day as if I was in a Pantene commercial. It was surprising to me that any part of my body could be thriving, since I spent over half of my pregnancy dry heaving and lying on the bathroom floor while my cat watched me from the doorway, shaking his head at his mother's loss of dignity.

I learned after Noah was born, that about four to six months after labor my hair might start falling out. This seemed impossible since it was in such a glorious state, and also because I was continuing to take the less glorious horse tranquilizer-sized vitamins. Whether due to hormone shifts, or the fact that breastmilk contains the glue that keeps my hair stuck to my head and I basically was sucked dry, my hair did indeed start to come out in great fistfuls in the shower or whenever I touched a comb to my scalp. I told my husband we could make another cat to be a companion to Sidney, our eighteen pound mackerel tabby. Less funny was trying to vacuum the upstairs carpeting in our house, because my hair would fill the bag and jam the vacuum head, no matter how often we cleaned.

While I can't say that my hair is my biggest vanity by a long shot, this was disturbing to me. It revealed how little control I have over the working parts of this body-machine when nature comes into play. No amount of hair-strengthening shampoo could have prevented this from happening. Of course this kind of thing is happening all the time anyway - my hair is graying, and my laugh lines aren't looking so funny at times - but it's mostly so gradual that I don't notice it. Or at least, I don't mind it. This was different, it was hair today, gone tomorrow.

It's just hair of course, so I went about my business, trying not to pay attention to it or at least not to get all fussy about it. And sure enough, as the books said would happen, this past week it stopped falling out and is already noticeably growing back. It's been an amazing experience, becoming a mother, because one day I feel as if it's up to me to steer the ship, and the next day I'm just along for the ride. It's changes like this hair thing that remind me not to get too precious about other things as well. Most things in life could in fact quite suddenly fall out at the roots, and might just do that if that is what it takes to get me to the next best place in life. And isn't this the best, I have a boy with the fullest head of hair I've ever seen on a baby. I wouldn't give up these times for anything.

Mythology

2007-03-12T14:08:00.000-05:00

Looking at the pictures
of the old house
now lifted on a pedestal
instead of where it was
falling into the earth
it's undeniable.

We ran through those years
on small legs
not wanting to comb the tangles from underneath our hair.
Playing, schooling,
little people who didn't know there was a big picture
to care about.

Meanwhile our parents tore out walls,
painted the green clapboards blue,
built more rooms off the back.
They planted trees
and we all worked the land.
I thought we were the Ingalls family
trying to tame something livable out of the wild.

We left this
too quickly for me to understand
what I was leaving:
House
and childhood.

Twenty years past
the old life encased by ten more
the house remains,
scraped down to its original size
but overgrown around like the castle and the briars.
I wonder about the three tiny princesses sleeping inside
dreaming the dream of the sunny hill
with the fern, the animals
and the sweet blue patches of berries.

Words

2007-03-07T14:03:00.000-05:00

A few days ago a word came to mind and brought with it such an immediate and personal association that I have to write about it. I was feeling apologetic about something I'd done earlier in the day but hadn't had a chance yet to talk with my husband about it, and I thought of the word "rueful." I quickly then thought the following: "Nancy Drew was always 'rueful.' Boy I used to wish I was Nancy Drew - strawberry blonde hair, smart, always being kidnapped and then rescued by her bland but loyal boyfriend Ned." Why was she rueful? Her sleuthy ways usually wound up getting her caught in a ravine or in some other kind of mortal danger. She never stopped seeking out mystery and adventure, but she was always rueful about it when she found herself in over her spunky strawberry blonde head. "Rueful" isn't a word I've ever used much outloud, nor do I think I've ever written it before now, but it's obviously high on my internal vocabulary list and has had this lasting memory attached to it since I was five years old and read Carolyn Keene books. It's not even my favorite word, but I still remember it, and it quietly comes up a lot.

My truly favorite words don't actually get used much outloud either. In the privacy of my mind it's a close race between "paradox" and "juxtapose", but the former definitely wins. Apart from its marvelous sound, the meaning of "paradox" is most appealing to me - something that is true and untrue, or two things that shouldn't both be true somehow, or opposites that make perfect sense. It reminds me of "dilemma" where there is no clear right or wrong choice, only two choices that may both be right or wrong to some greater or lesser degree. It's life in the nuance of velvety gray, instead of stark black or white. There is a monologue in the musical The Fantastiks in which the narrator character uses the word "paradox" to describe why people in close relationships need distance, a wall between them, or sometimes even a hurt, so love can continue to flourish. I can still hear my high school sweetheart speaking the line.

Words are powerful. They store a lot. Many years ago, my English teacher Mr. DuBlois shared an anecdote about a college classmate of his named Kenny (I think that was his name - it has been 20 years since I heard this). When they were in a lecture together, Mr. DuBlois would write copious notes to be sure to remember all the pertinent details for exam time. Kenny would sit listening throughout the lecture, and then at the end would write one word in his notebook to summarize the entire class. This small story was mythological-sized for me, one reason being that it pointed out the weight-bearing ability of a well-chosen word.

Words can change us. The old childhood na-nee na-nee boo boo saying that went, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me" is ridiculous. As a domestic violence trainer, I talk all the time about how emotional and verbal abuse can cause harm to an equal or greater extent than a fist. I know all of us can remember a time, maybe even from 20+ years ago, when someone said something that was so cutting and unjust that we can still picture the scene, what we were wearing, what was said, and how. I was in 8th Grade math class when I suggested to my teacher Mr. Pinkham another way of talking through a problem written on the board. He turned toward me, or turned on me, held out the long white piece of chalk he carried and said in a loud and sarcastic tone, "Maybe you'd like to teach the whole class?" I burst out crying and felt deeply ashamed and sorry I'd spoken. I still go ouch somewhere inside me when I think of that time so long ago. And how much worse these kinds of things damage us when they are said to us by a loved one, over and over and over at close range. It still shocks my heart when I remember that I was once engaged to a man who repeatedly called me "the most manipulative bitch he'd ever met." I am not someone who believes those words anymore, but I will always be someone who did once, because it was said to me by someone I mistakenly trusted.

Words also alter and bind me in more positive ways. I will forever remember the first moments of my wedding, in which my husband-to-be Matthew opened the ceremony by saying to our small group of guests, "Today is our wedding day." He suddenly bowed his head for a moment to compose himself because his voice caught as he spoke. That day and the words we spoke to each other began this unique time in my life, these best two years to date, being joyfully married and blessed with a healthy, hilarious baby boy. Matthew and I wrote our wedding vows together ahead of time, and chose our words carefully, trying to match them to our intentions for our relationship.

I love words. I think when they are used for good, they can ease people through even the most tight or uncomfortable spot. An intimate conversation, or a celebratory poem, or a burst of writing, can make the most tough situation for me start to go down like a cool glass of water. Words are such a small part of communication, and are so small compared to deed, but they not only serve to enliven and illuminate my reality, they transform it.

Perfectionism kills what might otherwise be a fairly decent time

2007-02-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

As I lay next to my son this morning, trying to ease him into a nap, I wrestled again with the thought that I haven't written lately. Being sick for the past two weeks, I've had this thought about a thousand times as I shuffle around the house in my slippers getting tea and changing diapers. My brain of course seizes on this short-term reality and instead of comforting me with "You're sick, plus it's winter, just go with it," it taunts me with, "Well, that's it, no more writing in you, Loser. Thought you were so special for creating a blog and now look at you, just a couple of weeks into it and you're totally stalled out." It's relentless. Needless to say, I have been feeling increasingly worthless and morose.

This is why I don't like being sick. The physical symptoms are usually bearable. It's the fact that when my body needs to rest, my mind can get contemptuous. As a result, I don't get sick all that often, and rarely for this long. My sister called the other day after reading one of my last posts and wanted to see if I was feeling better. I told her, "I don't really do anything." She replied, "That's okay, I do a lot, and none of it means anything." We laughed. She was feeling equally emotionally stricken, and I instantly felt better. If there was some external thing out there oppressing us all, it couldn't just be that I am a total failure, right?

So, back to bed this morning. I was listening to the stream in my head that I'd heard many times already in the past several days: "I wonder if I'll ever have another good idea to write about. Why haven't I been able to write? Is the only good writing I ever do about conflict and negativity? If I give up sarcasm for Lent will I have anything at all left to say? Real writers wouldn't go through this..." Then another thought came to mind, so abruptly that I lifted my head. "You're worried about writing something complete, a neat brown package of a piece. You're feeling pressure to make it good, whatever it is. Write about that." Everything was moving again then. Noah went to sleep, and I almost ran to my computer. I wanted desperately to write something clever, and I knew I could do it. Maybe I would end the last paragraph in the middle of a sentence, to emphasize that things don't always have to be perfect, tied with a bow, and that I was okay with this. Maybe, maybe, I felt the possibilities...But ten minutes into it, Noah woke up. I had barely gotten online because my dial-up is so freaking slow, and the tide turned again.

For a moment I was frustrated because I needed to write, to be a writer again, but it dissipated quickly. This was still a much better place to be - ready to write, but needing to tend to my dear babe. This position was a million times better than me with time on my hands but nary an insight in sight.

So we went through the next many hours of our day, welcoming two consecutive visitors at the house, Noah doing great even though he was cranky and needed sleep. Finally a half hour ago he let go to the quiet of the afternoon, and I was able to come back to the computer with less urgency and more curiosity as to what might happen next. And lookie here, I got out of the way enough that a post has worked itself out. As will my cold, and hopefully this drive I have to always be pushing forward in a straight line.

A mentor of mine once said, "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good." I need to be even more forgiving with myself - the perfect needs to stand aside for the hideous, because at least then I'd keep writing, and it's the process of writing that keeps me alive, not the stack of finished copy. Another person said, and I wish I could remember who, "You have to write a lot of sad clown poems." Perhaps if I'd written more of those poems in the past two weeks, I'd have a masterpiece today. But starting again right now is what I have, and hopefully will have again, the next time I think it's really over for good.

Sick Poem

2007-02-22T11:45:00.001-05:00

A slurry several days:
cancelled plans
hot showers to clear my head
and soup to ease
the sickness.

How could anything flow
when time
crawls
and lying in bed
is the common denominator
of the days?

Was I ever creative?
Did I ever have anything to say?
Will words ever leap forward
from my mind again?
My muse drools
and drifts, frozen
like the deep cold snow.

Stuffy Nose Blues

2007-02-17T12:20:00.000-05:00

don't take breathin' for granted
you gotta realize you got somethin' to lose
no don't take that clear winter air for granted
you might catch the stuffy nose blues

now i had me a husban'
who baked me sweet chocolate cake
filled the house with lovin' air, that husban'
but i cried "there gotta be a mistake!"

cause i had the stuffy nose blues
yeah, daddy, i had the stuffy nose blues

it makes life leaner
and people meaner
when they're sick, and lonely, and blue
so

take that walk
cruise by that park
and live all day out in the snow
'cause when you can't you wish
you could ditch yo' bed and you miss

those days without
the sleepy, tissue-box huggin', stuffy nose blues

Restraint

2007-02-15T17:48:00.000-05:00

This blog will be a lovely place for me to practice restraint. While my poems have always been on the shorter side, I tend to talk fast and furious when I'm really fired up about something, so I wish for this to be a happy medium. If I can get to the point with just a few juicy examples, I'll sleep better at night. I remember in a first group therapy session many years ago, the facilitator asked us each to introduce ourselves and say a bit about why we were there. He noted that we should not try to offer our full laundry list of issues, as experiences would emerge through the weeks as they became relevant. Some other time I may comment on the spectacular assistance I received from those years of processing life with other people, but I'm practicing restraint here, remember?

Another reason I'm concerned with being concise comes from a rejection letter I received from a Maine literary journal oh, a hundred years ago, and still remember, word for word. Handwritten on the bottom of the form letter was the following comment about my poems: "These are quite skillful, but not pithy enough for Puckerbrush." I thought about omitting the name of the journal in that quote, but it really makes the sentence, and truly, as anyone knows who submits poems for publication, a handwritten rejection is still great.

I also want to practice being less restrained in some ways. One of my biggest concerns lately as a new mother is wanting to model Good Expression of My Emotions. In a previous post I mentioned that anger needs some work in this department. My ability to express anger in a positive way seems fundamentally connected to my sense of humor. This is unfortunate, because when I'm ticked off I am usually not laughing. In fact I often become Very Serious, because I think I quickly focus on restraining the emotion raining down inside me, instead of letting it rise. So, sometimes restraint good, sometimes restraint bad. This the kind I want to avoid, because it doesn't work at all and I usually leak out poison in the form of wretched sarcasm that creates more problems, instead of just saying "I'm ticked off" and moving on with my life.

I don't kid myself that making any progress at all will be easy. In the movie Pretty Woman, Richard Gere plays a rich businessman whose corporation frequently takes over and dismantles financially weaker companies. Because he is truly miserable, he meets the unlikely prostitute Julia Roberts, who helps him see the error in his ways as he falls in love with her. To sum up the ending, his grinchly heart grows multiple sizes. Anyway, at one point in the movie, they are talking about Gere's father and what a difficult relationship the two had, and Gere says something like, "It took me ten years of therapy to be able to say, 'I am very angry at my father.' I'll say it again, 'I am very angry at him.' " The writing is great, the delivery is great, and the reality is great.

What I am practicing trying to remember, is that when I do recognize my anger directly and outloud, my true sense of humor returns to help out. Not the dark, sarcastic humor, but the kind that is really funny and makes me feel lighter. Recent examples are proving this out:

1. The other day, I was extremely annoyed at myself for breaking a glass right when I needed to leave for work. I said to myself, "I want to destroy this whole kitchen by taking off my own head, adding a fuse, and flinging it full force just to watch the whole mess explode." I instantly felt better, because extreme thinking can be hilarious to me, and put things right back into perspective. I swept up the glass, and left the house.

2. Last week I decided that whenever I clenched my teeth because my boy was complaining loudly about something - like not wanting to lie down to sleep even though he can't see straight anymore - I would try and notice it, loosen my jaw, and think something like "Save your teeth. Forget the whales." So far this has been working, and instead of quietly bursting a blood vessel in my forehead, I realize I'm frustrated, and release it. I can go much more peacefully about the business of easing Noah to a sitting position and handing him his wind-up giraffe Andy for a few minutes until he rubs his eyes and starts to let go.

3. In January at a staff meeting at my office we began strategic planning. I went into the three-hour session with some grouchy anticipation, because there wasn't much planned structure for the session which worried me, and I'd also been tired from recent nights o' teething. I was certain that with needing to help Noah withstand this long meeting at the end of an already long work day, I would show myself to be the humorless wretch I was feeling. But then something wonderful happened. The facilitator asked us to go around the room and each briefly introduce ourselves and she mentioned that she felt sure she knew some of us already from another strategic planning process she had done with the organization several years ago. I piped up and said loudly "Do you ever really know anyone?" The room broke out in surprised and delighted laughter. My own grinchly attitude dissipated, and I was ready to go on with whatever happened next.

Humor can be a big help in releasing anger. Of course, not everything that makes me angry has a funny side. But most things at least have humanity written all over them, and taking time to notice this usually allows my anger to loosen up and come free from the restraints that bind it to me.

Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T17:04:00.000-05:00

brings a blizzard
outside and
a cold in my head.
Napping away the day
seems the prudent
no, loving
thing to do
for everyone involved.

Lolling on the bed next to me
in a milk-drunk haze,
my son rubs his fists in his eyes
and tries to keep playing.
He pulls his stuffed monkey close to his face
and growls into its fur.
He shakes his bumble bee rattle.
He rubs his eyes again
and energy spent,
he turns away from me, arches his back
and is gone.

His back resembles
a stack of pancakes.
Cherubim got nothin'
on him.

My husband drapes a blanket over us
and throws an arm over his son.
Falling asleep
I think how
thick the love feels today
like sweet red jam
on a warm slice of bread.

Teething. I'd prefer locusts.

2007-02-11T14:53:00.000-05:00

My baby boy is seven months old today. In the past three weeks, he has been cutting teeth. One sharp little nugget has already broken through his bottom gums, and one next to it looks to be close to the surface. He is restless and thrashy at night, mewling for milk almost every hour, and for the first time since his birth, I am sleep-deprived.

I love to sleep. It strikes me as a little odd that I am afraid of death, and yet have no issues with completely shutting my body down for half or more of every day. When I was a girl it was known among my friends that I could konk out in ten seconds, because during sleepovers they would count it down once the lights went out. Fast forward to my first weeks as a student at Bates College, and I remember being the only one of the four of us in my dorm room who went to bed at 11:00 p.m. I'd lie in bed watching a tiny television and say to myself, "I'm not going to lose who I am, and I like to go to bed early." So there. While I quickly gave up that pattern in favor of all-night card games and of course, My Studies, my overall commitment to sleep remained constant as I began the fine art of napping. I've never taken so many naps as I did on those Friday afternoons before meeting friends for dinner at Commons.

When I was pregnant last year, being exhausted was one of the new-mothery things I was most worried about, because I know I get testy when I don't have the full complement of shuteye hours that I need. I also can feel nauseous, panicky, and downright hopeless. Not the best shape to be in when caring for a newborn, I felt sure. More than one woman during that time told me to ignore all impulses to get things done when the baby is napping, and instead "sleep when baby sleeps."

Lo and behold, when Noah came home with us, he slept well. No, he was a Great Sleeper. We would all go to bed at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. in our big bed, and sleep until 6:00 or 7:00 the next morning. He would wake partially to nurse several times in the night, but there was no midnight rocking or pacing the rug with him at 4:00 a.m. He was a sleeper in the great tradition of his mother! On his six-month birthday, I felt sure that his sleeping patterns would only deepen, and we had it made.

Now...Well, I call him my Wild Bandicoot at night. I wake every morning not sure if I have caught the flu, or whether exhaustion has just caused a total failure of my sinuses. From the time we lay him in bed in the evening, Noah kicks his legs until they are on top of the blankets, pulls at his socks until he gets them off so he can stuff them in his mouth, then he arches his back and inches his way up the bed until his head is pressed against the wall and I'm sure he's going to compress his spine. I get up on one elbow, lift him up which is no small feat because he is now 25 pounds, move him down, feed him, and cover him. Over the next hour the same things happen again. Blankets off, kick, squirm, and up, up, up he goes. The same thing the next hour, and the next, and the next. It's alright in the light of day to write about it, it's really pretty funny, but at night when all my reason is gone and I get that queasy "I'm supposed to be sleeping" feeling, it's discouraging.

It's more than that. It's enraging. Interestingly, all of the motherly reading materials that have come my way recently have been hilarious accounts of the rage usually unspoken by mothers. It's been freeing to read, in the way watching every episode of "Sex and the City" on DVD was freeing. For those of you who haven't seen this now-over HBO television series, it involved four women who loved hard and lived to talk about it. Or was it lived hard and loved to talk about it? In any event, for this girl who has never had a girlfriend with whom I shared those kinds of secrets or experiences with, it was a watershed. In a similar way, reading about mothers who harbor dark desires to throw their children in the woods when they do that thing they always do, is a refreshing invitation to get real.

I don't do anger well. I like the way I think about anger - as an emotion that usually hides some deeper vulnerability. Isn't that nice? Sweet, really. But I am not nearly as sweet as that sounds. For example, I haven't said lately during these long nights, "It's late. I'm so tired. I don't have the patience to be the mother I wish I could be right now. I need someone to take care of me like I'm taking care of this baby. Gosh this is so hard for me." It doesn't happen like that, a touching sharing of deeper vulnerability. Instead, I really try to say nothing but of course something comes out and it's usually a hissed, "This is ridiculous. This is crazy." And then I throw the covers back in a melodramatic gesture of how put out I feel, and I move Noah down, feed him, cover him, and off we go again. It's not good. It's anger.

The A-word. I have never had good practice saying "I am angry." After 37 years, while I can surely recognize it, I have not yet turned toward it and befriended it. And what better time than the present, to take this part of me by the hand, or by the throat, and drag it close to my face so I can get a good look at it? A few nights ago Matthew and I were in bed, and Noah was lying between us playing with one of his bedtime toys. Matthew and I were talking about something, and I don't even remember what it was now, but I started to get angry and get that tone in my voice, and Matthew said he didn't want to talk about it any more because he was sure that Noah could tell I was angry. That silenced me, and I knew then and there it was time for some real change to take place. The tone went away, and in a calm voice I said that I didn't want Noah growing up thinking that it isn't okay to get angry and to show anger. As long as it is respectful. No hissing allowed. Even as I said the words, it was as though they had an echo, or they were getting cut into a stone tablet or something. This was my lesson to learn, this was my own painful new tooth.

Things

2007-02-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

I am a person who tends to see, and sometimes create, connections between things. An object or experience often takes on symbolic meaning for me. What surprised me today is the stubbornness with which I cling to the thing even when I think I've let that meaning go. Even more surprising is that I can appreciate new meaning.

My husband and I have been cleaning out the basement. However, a clean basement is not the goal in itself. Rather, we have been looking for things to sell. For the past eighteen months, we have been on a financial journey together and last month we hit a milestone. With the help of financial guru Dave Ramsey, we went debt-free except for our mortgage. That's a big "except," but we celebrate that we are out from under my student loan, four credit cards, and a bank loan for my husband's Harley-Davidson. One of the ways we achieved this was to sell some of our things. We have said good-bye to an old bicycle, some leftover wood flooring, a bamboo papasan chair, and a pair of winter boots, among other things. It has been easy to relieve ourselves of all of this stuff, largely because we thought these things either had something wrong with them or were somehow used up.

Then we dug deeper into the piles, and I saw the neatly stacked boxes of law school textbooks that have been sitting there quietly since I moved into this house after Matthew and I got married. I have carried these boxes with me from apartment to apartment for ten years. In reality, these books have gone from storage unit to basement to garage to basement, as I have never wanted to live with them out in the open in my home or in my office. They were an important reminder of who I was once, and of something big I felt I had done by going to law school. I knew now that it was a perfect time to finally part with them, because I don't need that particular reminder that I am someone anymore. So I decided to sell them. I placed an ad in Uncle Henry's, our local swap and sell magazine. The first week, no calls. I lowered the price and ran the ad again. This week, I got the call. I felt so excited to free up space downstairs, and to get the books off their slow path to moldy destruction. I was going to set the albatross free, and myself too in the process!

I brought the books upstairs to load into my car, and then it happened. I decided to take a quick look through the boxes one last time. Instantly, they protested, "But you loved Criminal Law - that's what made you go to law school!" "What if you need me when you write your own will!" "You've always wanted to go into mediation and you'll be sorry you kicked me to the curb!" The chatter was loud and took me by surprise. I felt a small panic, because I'd already agreed on a price with the buyer, I knew I didn't want the books, but I suddenly felt I had to keep them - what was going on? If I cared so much about them, why have I always relegated them to the basement? I closed the boxes and stacked them by the basement steps, neither here nor there.

I let the books sit a day, and then went back down the stairs. I looked at each one of them and asked them to help me with my confusion - to tell me why they were so special and why I should still care. They individually made their arguments, and I quickly noticed they all started with "You might..." and "What if..." all except for one. This was a bound packet of course materials created by my most admired professor, Professor Gregory.

Professor Gregory was the one whose thought process was like the system of roads in Washington, DC. Take a wrong turn and you could end up on a dangerous street, a place where no one should go alone. His classes were the reason I persevered through law school. He held a class rapt, some students out of fear or confusion, but not me. I was excited, thrilled by intellectual discovery, which always came as a surprise in his classroom. He walked with us in that he acted the part of the student himself, wild with humor and dry wit and the mannerisms of someone living centuries ago. I loved him and felt he was kindred. He loved the law and all of its strange ways, and he made me unafraid to try and tame the beast too. We stayed in touch after I graduated, and when the news of his death came a few years later, I cried for the loss to the planet of this special man. I did not attend his memorial service, but instead prayed and thanked him when I went to Mass that week.

Flipping through the collection of his materials, I said outloud, "They aren't making books like this any more." They aren't making people like him either. The other old textbooks now showed themselves to be ballast, a layer of nothingness around this thing that is still worth keeping. And it's coming upstairs with me.

Taxes

2007-02-05T10:04:00.000-05:00

Hundreds of small, white slips
some faded, some new
document all the wrong details of my life.

I've shopped at the worst stores -
the ones that pay pennies
to sell all the plastic things.
Each time I went in the automatic doors
for a bargain
my dear values stayed outside
breathing quietly on the glass,
waiting.

It's easy to ask

"What are the choices?"

and harder to make the right ones.

Big Oil lurks in my lip balm

and Chinese factory workers

hum at me through the reeds

in the basket on the basement steps.

Evil came in disguise

as all my favorite things

and I bought it,

so cheaply I almost thought

I was the one with the upper hand.

The Wee Hours

2007-02-03T07:18:00.000-05:00

My husband sleeps on
while Noah and I lie awake
listening to the eager plow drive by.
Lights and rumbling in the dark
draw my young son's eyes to the window
then to me,
asking.
"It's snowing," I whisper,
"Let's get up and see."
I point up while I say this,
and he smiles.

Downstairs
I pat my hip
and ask if he needs a diaper.
He smiles again.
This time it's just a diaper
and not a whole new set of pajamas.

In the wee hours
Noah plays on the patchwork
on the floor
with a ball and a tambourine.
I feed the cat
then sit nearby - writing, watching, listening.
He breathes through his mouth,
the plow makes another pass,
and Noah grows.

Early Worries about Later Relationships

2007-02-01T18:02:00.000-05:00

So as a new mother, one of the dawning uncomfortable realizations I have had is this: while my son now smiles infectiously at me when he wakes up from a nap and I am there, or when I walk into a room and he looks up from his toys and sees me, at some foreseeable point in his life his skin may actually crawl when he is in the same room with me. I most likely will embarrass him if not outright offend him. Can this really be true?

Yesterday this idea became downright shockingly real to me as my husband and I took a walk down the street we live on and talked about our own relationships with our parents. "Interesting" might be a good public way to describe them. At times very supportive and loving, at other times somewhat estranged, often very electric on one end of the continuum or other. I said to Matthew, "Surely not everyone has such eventful relationships with their parents, surely there are people who enjoy a relationship that tends more toward the middle?" He first said that he thought that is rare. When I started to argue with him, he laughed and asked me to "Name some people, no in fact name just one person [who has a relatively smooth time relating to their parents]." I fell silent as I quickly inventoried my friends and co-workers. A heavier silence fell on me like a large tree limb when I couldn't think of anyone. Not one person.

I recovered quickly and tried to walk the perimeter of the issue and create an exception for us. "Maybe that's because most people have their children when they are younger, in their 20s, so they don't really know themselves all that well, so when kids come along everyone in the picture is growing up and into themselves at the same time? Maybe because we are older new parents we have more identity stability and can let our child's identity be his own? Not get so enmeshed?" Even as I floated this, I realized it was against probability. Not get enmeshed in your children's lives? And we're just all done growing our identities at 37 and 41 years of age, are we?

In the first few months that Noah was with us, it hit me hard one day that he would not remember these days. These blissful first months of his life. We have not been sleep-deprived, and he has not been colicky. He has not been sick, not even with a runny nose. It's been absolutely joyous. My journal chronicles the fun of bathtime, the long days of napping and nursing, laughing back and forth at each other, him discovering his hands, babbling, learning baby sign language, and just last week getting his toes into his mouth for the first time. These six months have been the best of my life, and yet these times are not shared memories that Noah and I will reminisce about together when he is older. This reality is harsh.

I said to Matthew last night with no small amount of despair in my voice, "I didn't really start getting angry at my mother until I was in my 30s, so maybe by the time Noah has problems with me I'll be dead." My husband is very patient with me, and said nothing.

This morning, the sun rose and I woke thinking of a close friend who has a good relationship with her parents. I've known them all for many years, and they have not had any negatively dramatic episodes to the best of my knowledge. They live nearby each other, and talk or get together regularly. This made me feel much better, because with one example there must be others. Of course there is hope for me.

I also suddenly remembered that my dear son is not the only one changing and growing around here. Someone said to me last spring that the nine months of pregnancy are not just for making a baby, they're also for making the parents. And these first months of Noah's life have not just been full of his firsts, they are mine as well. So for now, I am this kind of mother to him, raising this young creature who would certainly perish in short order if I did not care for all of his needs - feeding, clothing, diapering, holding. And while his body grows I can see and appreciate that trust and security is also blossoming inside him. Later, I will still be the person who did these things for him. In addition, I will most likely be someone new - including, hopefully, the mother he will need then. I can only hope that I will show up in those moments, for him and for myself, like I am now.

Introduction

2007-01-31T10:23:00.000-05:00

In the midst of this - a new year just begun, a baby now six months old whom I have never been away from, a marriage about to turn two years old, finishing an eighth year working as a domestic violence educator, a nearly-written screenplay gathering dust in my computer bag - I need a new voice. My familiar identity seems to have deflated and is lying on the floor of the closet like an old prom dress that I still like to have around, even though it doesn't fit by a long shot.

My dreams the past two weeks aren't making sense. One night, baby Noah is in the hospital and the snotty nurse won't allow me access to information about the medicine he is getting, the next night Brad Pitt has come to dinner with his new infant and we are talking straight-faced about Brad's facial structure while my husband Matthew cooks.

My old familiar loveys - my journals, poetry notebooks, phone calls with my best friend - aren't keeping me in touch with my essential self. Words, that I love so much, are piling up in my head, untapped. When people ask me how I'm doing, I know that they are interested in how my dear baby is doing. Even if they are interested in how I'm doing, I answer similarly each time "Great! I love being a mother. Noah is wonderful." Huh??? It's all true, but something has clearly gone missing.

When I began law school 13 years ago, I kept a small sign on my computer in a cheap plastic stand-up frame that said "poet lawyerette." A constant reminder of my bi-polar identities at the time. Back when I was still considering law school, my father sent me a cartoon from The New Yorker which showed a bohemian-looking woman and man sitting in a restaurant talking, and the woman was leaning forward saying "Yeah, law school is really inspiring my art!" I've never forgotten it.

Now, ten years past graduation, I am in a marriage I never thought I would be so lucky to be a part of. I have a beautiful, healthy baby who seems a true Eighth Wonder. I am working for slightly more than beans educating community members, police, and anyone else who will listen, about domestic violence and how to create social change around this unbelievable topic. And what I really want to be is a writer.