All I Can Say

#106: Sweet autonomy

Vacation is over, and spring has meanwhile arrived here in Maine. We had one hell of a Nor’easter during our absence, with power outages, trees down — the worst damage I have seen since the ice storm of, what was it? ‘98? We fortunately avoided all of that, and came home to buds on trees. Teeny tiny miraculous green buds that pack the power to make me so incredibly happy. The lawn furniture comes out this weekend, which is also Opening Day for Little League, at which N will be singing the national anthem and G will be sitting with his team feeling either embarrassed or proud — possibly a mixture of both. Also this weekend, N turns 11, and will host a sleepover with a large number of 10-11 year old girls (after two, any number of 10-11 year old girls is effectively a large number). And this, my friends, will conclude the children’s birthdays for the year of our lord 2007. Sigh-o-relief.

Over vacation I read two excellent books. The first quick read I finished on the plane: Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. This was given to me by my mother-in-law and was, I had thought, a bit advanced for me in terms of its target age. Not so. Ms. Ephron’s doctor told her that the neck “starts to go” at age 43 — and I will be reaching this enchanting age of neck decline in just a few months. (Thus I was especially cautious of the sun this past week.) This book is quite funny and, encompassing much more than aging necks, is also full of Truth.

The other book I read, and which I was distraught over finishing, is The Brambles by Eliza Minot. It infuriated me, quite frankly, that this young writer is as talented as she is. Her interpretation of motherhood is absolutely brilliant, line after line. It was like fireworks, almost, all the little sparks she kept igniting. She really got me where I live.

Sitting by the pool with only half an eye on my kids (running on deck, jumping, diving, doing handstands, annoying each other) it struck me that I am on the other side of those years of having to do everything they do. It used to be that if they wanted to swim, I had to get wet. If they wanted to make a sandcastle, it was just as much my project, too. If they wanted to nap, or eat, or wander, I was always right there, along for the ride. There were a number of couples at the hotel vacationing (likely for the first time) with their squishy little babies, and I observed them in the pool cooing and oohing. The mom and the dad would pass the baby back and forth, two sets of eyes and two sets of hands available at all times. No wonder babies thrive as they do with this extreme level of attention paid to their every bobble and gurgle. And no wonder children react in all the schizophrenic ways they do to its slow and inevitable withdrawl.

I watched and could remember doing all the same things: swirling baby N or baby G in the pool; sitting on the chaise and awkwardly holding baby N or baby G in my arms, trying to keep the sun off her/his pristine, butterball body; trying desperately to get baby N or baby G to nap in the stroller under the umbrella so that I could finally relax for an hour or so. When my kids were babies, there was a well-known vacation proviso that I haven’t thought of in years: Same routine, different scenery.

But all that’s in my rearview mirror. Now I’m a mooch (mother of older children, I say with tremendous irony), and I identified keenly with the other mooches around the pool. We were all a bit checked out, a bit vacant. At first, it looked like unhappiness. But then I recognized it was something else that we’d all earned through many years of catering to the constant, fluctuating desires and demands of our children: autonomy. I cannot lie to you. It was pretty sweet.

#105: Escape

Did I mention that I was headed to Florida — a place I don't even like all that much? I am, by way of Connecticut. We won't actually be in Florida until Tuesday, but we are bombing this popsicle stand (haven't used that cliche in many, many years) today, before the impending Nor'easter arrives with its snow and rain (if we're lucky) and misery. [Those poor, poor Boston marathoners.] I am determined, a la Four Agreements, not take the weather personally. It is not punishing me; it's just doing its thing. And so I will do mine, which is to escape.

But if I return to white on the ground, I'll, I'll...

...deal with that if it happens.

Have a good week, internets.

#104: The snow that takes the snow

I found these photos from last summer in my archives, and they just made me want to weep. I am always desperate at this point in April, and this year it’s worse than usual. I swear, the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro are receding faster than the snows of my back yard. And we are supposed to receive another dumping today of 4-6”, and still more on Sunday. My usual attitude when I hear these reports is one of firm denial, because the weather is so hyped around here, and the media typically overstates what’s expected to happen. People love to get all in a tizzy about a storm, but I just put my head down and try to ignore it. However, a week ago we got walloped — it was every bit as severe as predicted, and worse probably, with tree limbs splitting everywhere under the weight of a foot of wet snow. So I just know they are going to nail this prediction, too.

Why do we care so much about the weather? Once we progress into another season, I can never remember what kind of summer we had, or if it was a lousy spring or a rainy fall. I have a hard time remembering last week. But I am just withering right now from the lack of warmth and light, and from the snow that has stayed long past its welcome. It is in my way.

And making matters worse, I have been suffering from a nasty sinus cold all week. Can’t sleep at night. All sniffly-sneezy during the day. I should have known better than to write in a recent post that I rarely get sick. The minute you say something like that you are basically giving your immune system the day off. It seems that the gift of good health is never to be mentioned out loud. Won't do that again.

Now true, in a couple of days I will be sitting pretty in Florida, but that isn't helping me cope with current conditions outside my window. The light is flat and it’s absolutely raw. And yet, I look at the pictures above, and I know that all that potential is latent there in the soil, under the blanket of snow, and it will have its day, too.

One of my favorite characters in fiction is Quebec Bill Bonhomme, a man of “indefatigable optimism” from the novel Disappearances by Howard Frank Mosher. The setting is Kingdom County, Vermont, as far north as you can get this side of the Canadian border. The narrator and main character is Quebec Bill’s son, and he describes his father this way:

“It made no difference to him if it was the middle of May and snowing hard with six inches of new snow in the dooryard. He would squint up through the driving flakes and say to me, ‘Wild Bill, this is the snow that takes the snow. This is the poor man’s fertilizer.’ And then he would predict the earliest spring on record.”

I just love him.

#103: Two agreements

I suppose I can do better than show you some pictures of snow melting — although for a few days there, I really thought I could not do any better than that. I am leaving for Florida in a few days, so I'm afraid this study of the spring thaw will end before the snow is completely gone. Aren’t you relieved?

I have been reading The Four Agreements. Slowly. This little book, by Miguel Ruiz, requires time for digestion. Last week I ruminated over the first agreement, and this week I am concentrating on the second.

The first agreement is Be impeccable with your word. On the surface, this seems obvious, and maybe even easy to do: say what you mean, and keep your promises. But Ruiz has more in mind here, because by “your word” he means your unique power to interact with the world. To be impeccable with your word goes beyond just saying what you mean. I’ve been thinking about it, and for me, to be impeccable with my word means these things:

Be authentic
Be original
Be honest
Be fair
Be kind
Be sincere
Don’t exaggerate
Don’t dramatize
Don’t gossip
Don’t criticize
Don’t judge
Don’t hate

Ruiz talks about how we use our words to poison others, to create drama, to make ourselves feel less alone in our pain and fear. But if I could stick to these twelve rules, each of them so straightforward by themselves, I could eliminate all the negative impulses within me. I have strived to be this way, but I haven’t always been able to resist the pull of the negative. It’s very powerful.

The second agreement is Don’t take anything personally. Years ago I established this imperative for myself, but I can’t say that I live by it. I tend to take things far too personally, which is a reflection of just how self-centered I really am. To think that everything is about me is an entirely selfish worldview. Ruiz insists that nothing is ever about me, and I think he’s right. We all live in our own bubbles.

I know a woman who appears to have two temperatures: lukewarm and cold. When I first met her, she was lukewarm. Now whenever I run into her, she’s completely cold. Naturally I thought she hated me, that I had done or said something to offend her, but I had no idea what it could be. As time passed, I came to the realization that her disposition toward me had nothing to do with me at all. It was her attitude toward the world. And that made me have empathy for her, instead of hating her for hating me. I feel sad that she is living her life this way.

I know another woman who is always on the go. Whenever I run into her, she is so glad to see me, but always in a big hurry. She uses her children as a wedge, turning her attention away from me to chase after them, creating situations that need her immediate attention. For a long time I found our encounters unbelievably frustrating, because I wanted more, but it seemed as though she couldn’t wait to get away from me. She always had an exit strategy, an escape plan, and I eventually realized that this was not about me, either. It wasn’t me, specifically, that she was trying to avoid; it was intimacy. I started to see her in a tragic light too. She is so afraid of rejection, that she spends her days escaping every possibility of human interaction.

I understand this fear, the fear of being found out that I’m not what I project myself to be on the surface — that I’m less than perfect. At times in my life I have felt like a complete fraud. But that was me hating myself, agreeing with all the little negative messages I could tune into. Ruiz calls this hell. But his philosophy, so beautifully explained, offers a way out.

Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. I am working with these two for now. More on this later.

A foot of snow in April just leaves me speechless

April 5, 2007

April 6, 2007

April 7, 2007

April 8, 2007

April 9, 2007

April 10, 2007

April 11, 2007

April 12, 2007

April 13, 2007 (right back where we started)

#102: "G" is for growing up

Last night, at 10:17, my baby turned nine years old. He refused to allow that it was even really his birthday until the actual time on his birth certificate, and wanted to stay up to ring it in. We told him that since daylight savings started early this year, 9:17 would actually be the correct hour, which he bought. So I snuggled with him up in his loft waiting for 9:17 to arrive. He asked if I had been in “pain and torture” during his birth, and I told him that it really wasn’t so bad. From a distance of 9 years, and with absolute certainty that I won’t ever have to go through that again, I wasn’t lying. At 9:17, we both let out a little woo-hoo, I said happy birthday, and kissed him good night.

He was funny yesterday. Pensive — wistful even. He seemed to be conscious that he’s getting older. At school, he didn’t even mention that it was his birthday until the buses were being called at the end of the day, throwing his teacher into a tailspin. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I wanted to know. He said some of his friends knew, but then sort of forgot. “And it was funny to see Mrs. W. panicking about it.”

He did something else yesterday that made me see him in a new way, too. N was in a very sad mood when she got home from school. Part of it, I think, was that it was G’s birthday and she was feeling neglected. Mostly though it was just the moodiness of her age.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Everything!”
“Did something happen today to make you so upset?” I asked.
“I’m just stressed out,” she sniffled.
“About what?” I asked.
“Everything!”

This continued until I could no longer keep my end of it up. She threw a blanket over her head and went off to the living room to be by herself.

When G came home and appeared in the kitchen, I gestured to where N was slumped on the floor under her blanket and whispered that she was in a sad mood. G went over to her cautiously, knelt down next to her, and put his arms around her. I could see her body relax and she rested her head against him. They stayed like that for a minute. Then G lifted up the blanket and peeked under. N sat straight up, and I saw that she was surprised it had been G hugging her. She had thought it was me.
“Why down in the dumps?” he asked, in a funny, cartoon voice.
N shrugged her shoulders.
“Let’s play soccer,” G said. “You can be goalie.”

Which is what they did. And N was smiling and playful in no time. Her little brother helped her out of her funk. Now that he’s nine, I guess he can do that.

#101: Distraught at snack time

I am four years old and in nursery school. One morning my mother is getting a snack ready for my older sister, who is in the second grade at the elementary school, to take for recess. She is wrapping a Pop Tart up in clear cellophane, and I want my mother to wrap one up for me, too. My sister tells me that I don’t get recess at nursery school. My mother tells me that snack is provided by the school, and that I don’t need to bring my own. But I want a Pop Tart to take to school like my sister, and so my mother wraps up another Pop Tart for me, and I tuck it into my coat pocket. On the ride to school in the back of our friends’ VW bug, I keep sliding my hand over the smoothly wrapped rectangle.

When I get to school, I am excited about the secret in my pocket. We take off our coats and hang them on hooks in the coat room. I am bouncing up and down. I can't keep my secret any longer, and show my friend, who is also named Jennifer, what’s in my pocket. I tell her I will share with her later. Her eyes open wide. She loves Pop Tarts too.

After circle and story time and free play, the teachers begin to gather the children for snack, and I slip into the coat room for my treasure. But it isn’t there. It’s not in one pocket; it’s not in the other. I look on the floor to see if it has somehow fallen out, and I notice a crumpled ball of cellophane and some crumbs under my shoe. I begin to wail.

The back of my throat is throbbing as I picture my mother carefully wrapping the Pop Tart up for me. She did this lovingly, just for me, and now I can’t receive her gift. The teachers cannot at first understand what has upset me, and I am having a hard time explaining to them what happened. Eventually they sort it out, and one of the teachers speaks quietly to Jennifer, who is looking on, pale and silent.

Another teacher is trying to console me, and she reminds me that at this school we share snack with our friends, we don’t bring in our own. So I have done something wrong, too. When I am calm again, I sit on the floor among the other children, nibbling on Graham Crackers and drinking sweet apple juice.

The next school day, Jennifer pulls me aside in the middle of free play. She takes my hand and leads me to the coat room. She has brought something to share with me; it's a secret. She takes a Pop Tart out of her coat pocket and breaks it into two pieces. Jennifer is my friend. We are hiding from the others, eating the Pop Tart that we are not supposed to have. But it’s chocolate-filled, a kind my mother doesn’t buy, and I don’t really like it.