There is magic in packing a mold with wet sand, turning it upside down, and watching that mushy stuff come out clean and straight-edged, solid as a building until some small hand smashes it.
This week I've felt that way: at one moment in the sun with firm edges, a defined shape; in the next, a mound of sand, soft and scattered, then again pulled back into a mold to stand again because I must -- because I have to handle the situation in front of me, because the cabinets are a mess and I'm the one who has to tell the guy refinishing them, because the basement floods and someone must meet the gutter man to talk about rerouting the water flow, because all the vanities are the wrong size and have to be exchanged again, because... And I stand until once again it's all too much to hold and --smoosh-- until I can be gathered again.
This morning I slushed. Ben and Silas left for a weekend in the mountains (Camp Thor, designed by my brother), which left Eden and me here. My to-do list was pressing -- to run a zillion errands for the house, unpack, clean plaster dust, to make time with just Eden special, to organize a pool party in the 104 degree weather -- I find I'm creating a lot of pressure for myself these days... It took me until about 1:00, when I realized the kitchen guy was NOT there or coming and that Eden, more than doing any of the activities I kept mentioning, just wanted to sit close enough to touch. So, in the 100+ degree day, we did what she wanted: we sat on the porch swing and felt the hot breathy air move against our faces, back and forth, as we leaned against each other. Slowly, I began to release my agendas and swing.
The rest of the day was calmer -- we painted at the kitchen table, we sludged through the hot air to buy blueberries at the market for our first pie-day-friday-movie-night, we swam, and played "Brave" which, without knowing anything about the movie plot just meant I was a little black bear and she was "Brave," a name which inspired her to dive for the first time!
It's hard to loosen the self-pressure. Transition to DC has changed from deeply emotional to physical -- a house to unpack, work to get done, errands to run, a baby to grow, two kids running around, a list for summer play, and then all the other things I'd like to do: make art, read, go on dates, build friendships, write, find a church, drive to the beach etc.
Over the years, my mom has had words and phrases she's gotten hooked on and repeated like mantras -- pointed reminders of what is at the heart of things. For a long time, her word was "allow" -- to allow a situation to be what it is, to allow another to react as she will, to allow your feelings without judging them, to allow yourself to be in transition, to allow yourself no energy to build the friendships you'd like, to plan the party you want, to drive to the beach for the day -- to allow.
Today Eden was my wisest teacher, pulling me once again from sand to shape, down on the floor to watch her pacing, her disregard for every task beyond the marker in her hand, wanting simply for me to meet her there and allow the moment to be just that.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
The Impending Delivery & Box Car Children
At 8AM, pulling up to the hardware store for a quick pre-camp shop, my phone rang. It was the movers. Just wanted to confirm tomorrow morning delivery, he said. By tomorrow do you mean Saturday? No, Thursday, tomorrow. Tomorrow: the day when two plumbers will still be hacking holes in the plaster walls and wielding 10' long slender pipes down the hallway. Tomorrow, the day when the handyman is attaching the kitchen cabinet doors and finishing the pantry he's building. Tomorrow: the day when the air in the house will still be clouded by dust. Tomorrow: the day before we planned to scrub all of the floors on our hands and knees. Yes, that day is the one and only day we can come, tomorrow.
Today I wondered, at 26 weeks pregnant, if I might be going into labor because of a constant aching through my abdomen and back that began before the scrubbing and painting. No labor, thankfully, but that was the backdrop of the day. At dinner tonight, my mom asked what had kept me so steady today (apparently I met the slew of unexpected calls, including one this evening sounding alarm that the new pipes are too close to an electrical cable and should be redone, with more composure than normal). I said it was probably thinking about Ben, who has a lot heaped on his plate these days, but later I realized it was also the Box Car Children (if I must admit it).
I'd never read those books until Silas brought them home from a used book fair a few months ago. They are slow, especially the earlier ones, packed with domestic details and a mystery so slight it could be called a question. But Silas loves them, and laughs out loud at six year old Benny, so we read them, lots of them. The thing about the Box Car children is that they're incredibly hard workers, cheery workers, team workers. They don't complain. And being that they are all each other has, they are each other's encouragers. It's pretty Ra Ra! but somehow, rather than coming off heavy-handed, they're kind of endearing.
This afternoon, after I'd painted tall grasses on the wall of Silas's nook, prepped the floor (as plaster dust and chunks of concrete literally rocketed out of the raw hole in the ceiling above me) where the refrigerator will go tomorrow, and taken Eden to her physical where she got four shots, it was time to wash all the floors in the house, and I did not want to. My body was not happy. Eden, the bravest person I've ever seen get shots, was kind of limping. Silas was hungry (a new perpetual state). But the furniture was on the way, the floors were filthy, and my sister Kaia Joye was game to help (bless you) -- I had no option.
Despite the plumbers' lofty goals to be finished yesterday, they are not yet finished, which means when we started, half a vanity and two toilet tanks were sitting on a drop cloth in Silas's room (where a bunk bed needs to go tomorrow morning), and the water in the house was turned off. As I hunted for buckets in my parents' garage and filled them at the kitchen sink, the boxcar children hovered in the back of my mind -- they would think this was an adventure. As we drove the sloshing pails over to the new house and wiped rags in arcs over all the floors of the house, I again found them hovering in my peripheral, so excited (in nearly every book) to work hard and set up "house." And despite their cheesiness factor, they did steer my attitude a bit as I washed floors with Kaia Joye, who laughed when I kicked over her huge arnold palmer and watched it waterfall down the stairs; Silas, who left the house a few times to ring the doorbell and wave his hand through the mail slot; and Eden, who talked incessantly and scrubbed with great seriousness.
So tonight, the floors are clean and ready for the movers, at least ready until tomorrow morning when five or six men with at least three different agendas will converge at the house and disorder will reign again. And then, like Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny, we'll have to set up house again...
Today I wondered, at 26 weeks pregnant, if I might be going into labor because of a constant aching through my abdomen and back that began before the scrubbing and painting. No labor, thankfully, but that was the backdrop of the day. At dinner tonight, my mom asked what had kept me so steady today (apparently I met the slew of unexpected calls, including one this evening sounding alarm that the new pipes are too close to an electrical cable and should be redone, with more composure than normal). I said it was probably thinking about Ben, who has a lot heaped on his plate these days, but later I realized it was also the Box Car Children (if I must admit it).
I'd never read those books until Silas brought them home from a used book fair a few months ago. They are slow, especially the earlier ones, packed with domestic details and a mystery so slight it could be called a question. But Silas loves them, and laughs out loud at six year old Benny, so we read them, lots of them. The thing about the Box Car children is that they're incredibly hard workers, cheery workers, team workers. They don't complain. And being that they are all each other has, they are each other's encouragers. It's pretty Ra Ra! but somehow, rather than coming off heavy-handed, they're kind of endearing.
This afternoon, after I'd painted tall grasses on the wall of Silas's nook, prepped the floor (as plaster dust and chunks of concrete literally rocketed out of the raw hole in the ceiling above me) where the refrigerator will go tomorrow, and taken Eden to her physical where she got four shots, it was time to wash all the floors in the house, and I did not want to. My body was not happy. Eden, the bravest person I've ever seen get shots, was kind of limping. Silas was hungry (a new perpetual state). But the furniture was on the way, the floors were filthy, and my sister Kaia Joye was game to help (bless you) -- I had no option.
Despite the plumbers' lofty goals to be finished yesterday, they are not yet finished, which means when we started, half a vanity and two toilet tanks were sitting on a drop cloth in Silas's room (where a bunk bed needs to go tomorrow morning), and the water in the house was turned off. As I hunted for buckets in my parents' garage and filled them at the kitchen sink, the boxcar children hovered in the back of my mind -- they would think this was an adventure. As we drove the sloshing pails over to the new house and wiped rags in arcs over all the floors of the house, I again found them hovering in my peripheral, so excited (in nearly every book) to work hard and set up "house." And despite their cheesiness factor, they did steer my attitude a bit as I washed floors with Kaia Joye, who laughed when I kicked over her huge arnold palmer and watched it waterfall down the stairs; Silas, who left the house a few times to ring the doorbell and wave his hand through the mail slot; and Eden, who talked incessantly and scrubbed with great seriousness.
So tonight, the floors are clean and ready for the movers, at least ready until tomorrow morning when five or six men with at least three different agendas will converge at the house and disorder will reign again. And then, like Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny, we'll have to set up house again...
Monday, June 18, 2012
The Adults Here
We have tipped past the halfway point of June, blown
from Mother’s Day through the last days of school, and on past Father’s
Day. I am sitting in our new house
on a little ledge in Eden’s room, where people must have sat on and off for the
last 64 years. It’s a tall step,
really, that leads to a cupboard in her wall, but it invites
one to sit. From this little bench-for-one, I can look out the window at the Magnolia tree, the black
sheen of the wet street, and the bright grass drinking in the rain.
My voice sounds loud and echoes when I speak here. We have not moved in yet; the house stands empty as slowly these walls become a more familiar space. I'm here to wait for a plumber who will rescue the walls from springing with pinhole leaks.
For twelve years of marriage we have neatly dodged the full-blown home-owning responsibilities -- renting, owning a condo, renting again. But now here we are. Some days (especially the rainy ones and days when five people traipse through the house jotting notes and giving estimates) it is mildly terrifying to realize that we are the adults here!
Right now, a sump pump buzzes on and off at the bottom of
this house in a make-shift hole someone once drilled in the driveway. A few plumbers last week glanced at it on their way in, and said it's in the wrong place, will freeze up in winter, is squirrel-y at best. Yes... Ben put it in... It's an attempt to stave off the rainwater that rose in the basement during the last storm and left a muddy pond over the concrete floor. We found the water (or really, I should say Ben did) and for the next few days I talked about going over with Eden and a mop. But I didn't. I couldn't, actually, begin to imagine how to make that much water and mud disappear from inside the house. I found, though, that saying decisive, helpful things to myself like, I think I'll get a mop and go over there today, or proactively finding a bucket to bring, made me feel a little better until Ben and my brother Max went with a shop vac (so the mop wouldn't have done much good anyway) and sucked it all up.
And so now, with an air of certainty and confidence, I am off to
meet the plumber (who, I might add, just pulled up with a big sidekick in a little beat up teal car, in slouchy clothes with no trace of a company name on anything) to tell him all that I know about the scabbed galvanized pipes hiding behind the walls and what, in my experience, I think should be done...
Sunday, May 13, 2012
On mothers, and my mother in particular
I just finished Joan Didion's book Where I Was From, a book discussing the complexities and contradictions of California identity, the development of Orange County and a nearby community in Long Beach, and her own family's history of wagon-crossing the country. What I didn't expect was for the final section to become personal, settling on the loss of her mother. Didion says, "It would be a while before I realized that 'me' is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me now, where will I be from."
Her questions hung on me like wet crepe paper as if I were hearing that mothers can die the first time. Ben's mother died nearly two years ago. Several of my friends -- most of them male -- have lost mothers. I watched, from afar in many ways, both my parents lose their mothers. But somehow, I haven't really entertained the thought of losing my mother. It's unlikely that I wouldn't have imagined my way into Didion's questions given how quickly I imagine the worst and the vivid morbidity of those imaginings. But I haven't, or hadn't until this week.
The morning after I finished Didion's book, Annemarie sent me a blog entry that was meant to be comforting -- regardless of how insufficient you feel after perusing pinterest or reading others' blogs, when it comes down to it, your children just want you: your smell, your texture, your arms, your voice -- but there was a middle paragraph about the author's mother, at 70, being hit with dementia. The blogger says, "What I really meant was, 'I miss being able to talk to you, Mom. I miss lying on the grass while my children make a hopscotch and savoring our long phone conversations. I miss you remembering all those secrets I used to tell you. I miss you asking me if I'm okay. I miss seeing you read books and hearing you sing while you do the dishes and having you drive out to my house without getting lost. I miss you remembering how much I need you.'" Echoing Didion, she names the joint-memory and side-by-side living that is lost when a mother is lost.
Today, on Mothers' Day, I am on my bed (bed retreats, you know) reading Kelly Corrigan's Middle Place about "that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. One day you're cheering your daughter through a swimming lesson or giving her a pat for crossing the monkey bars or reminding her to say 'please,' and the next, you're bragging to your parents about your newest trick -- a sweet potato recipe, a raise at work, a fix for your ant problem. It's a giant Venn diagram where you are the only member of both sets." (29). And isn't that it? Until this week, I've been basking in the middle place of unshakably being both mother and daughter.
Her questions hung on me like wet crepe paper as if I were hearing that mothers can die the first time. Ben's mother died nearly two years ago. Several of my friends -- most of them male -- have lost mothers. I watched, from afar in many ways, both my parents lose their mothers. But somehow, I haven't really entertained the thought of losing my mother. It's unlikely that I wouldn't have imagined my way into Didion's questions given how quickly I imagine the worst and the vivid morbidity of those imaginings. But I haven't, or hadn't until this week.
The morning after I finished Didion's book, Annemarie sent me a blog entry that was meant to be comforting -- regardless of how insufficient you feel after perusing pinterest or reading others' blogs, when it comes down to it, your children just want you: your smell, your texture, your arms, your voice -- but there was a middle paragraph about the author's mother, at 70, being hit with dementia. The blogger says, "What I really meant was, 'I miss being able to talk to you, Mom. I miss lying on the grass while my children make a hopscotch and savoring our long phone conversations. I miss you remembering all those secrets I used to tell you. I miss you asking me if I'm okay. I miss seeing you read books and hearing you sing while you do the dishes and having you drive out to my house without getting lost. I miss you remembering how much I need you.'" Echoing Didion, she names the joint-memory and side-by-side living that is lost when a mother is lost.
Today, on Mothers' Day, I am on my bed (bed retreats, you know) reading Kelly Corrigan's Middle Place about "that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. One day you're cheering your daughter through a swimming lesson or giving her a pat for crossing the monkey bars or reminding her to say 'please,' and the next, you're bragging to your parents about your newest trick -- a sweet potato recipe, a raise at work, a fix for your ant problem. It's a giant Venn diagram where you are the only member of both sets." (29). And isn't that it? Until this week, I've been basking in the middle place of unshakably being both mother and daughter.
Living here in my parents' house for the last six weeks of transition, I have soaked in the company of a mother, my mother. We can push each other's buttons, certainly, get impatient and contradict each other, yes. My unresolved insecurities about identity and self can trigger in her presence when my 3 year old, 14 year old, and 35 year old selves collide -- all so fully known by us both. And our wiring is different, our approaches to daily tasks, to planning trips, to how we feel our way through the world, but what's mattered these last six weeks has not been our differences.
What I've felt, and probably wouldn't have articulated without these three writers, is that through these weeks, my mom has known. She has known when my eyes shine glassy mid-conversation, and I turn the other way and change the subject. She has known to send a text at 8:50 after I dropped Silas off at school and am silently crying driving Eden to preschool. She's met me on the floor of the pantry -- the "situation room" since my parents build this house when I was 16-- and let me pour my fears out there. She's seen my eyes ringed with tiredness and has wooed the children away with stories of foxes and you tube videos of fanciful instruments. She's known what it's meant when I've bought a bag of meyer lemons from the store, when avocados and mangos relentlessly appear on our joint grocery list, when I sink inside myself and don't surface for a while.
Though I often disregard it, assuming that my self-discoveries trump all outside observations, my mom has been paying more attention during much of my development than I have. There have been several times over the decades when she's named a little piece of me I hadn't put words to, and suddenly, I was illuminated, seen. When Eden was a baby, she verbalized what I'd only known by instinct: my home-love, how I create homes where I am, gather people I love together, insist when we're far that we overlap together in some repeating location that will grow familiar enough to equal a "home." And she's right, I love home.
Tonight driving home from a big family dinner, squeezed between Silas and Eden in the backseat of the car, all they wanted was for me to tell them stories about themselves -- of the nights they were born, of finding them at the kitchen table covered in syrup, or covered in lipstick or covered in Vaseline, of finding one of them stuck under a bed or sitting behind a chair playing with power cords -- and Silas belly-laughed listening in a way he seldom laughs at anything. They loved hearing their own stories.
For now, during this time of being home and homesick, my mom is, again, remembering for me and telling me my stories until I laugh.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
at the morning table
We have to leave for school in about twenty minutes -- this is our morning lull that we have every day, and yet still somehow our departure clamors with get-your-shoes-on-NOW, and we arrive without time to spare. I am working on that.
A tiny chickadee is nibbling at the feeder at the window. He's small enough to nest in my hand. The morning is sunny and cool -- still and crystal clear, the sun against smooth trunks of trees.
Last week we seemed to have crossed a bridge, or at least the kids did. After bringing his blankie to school for two days, Silas stopped tucking it in his bag, and there have been no more morning tears, not even on Monday. Relief.
Eden learned to swim in the last two weeks with Ben and has proved to be fearless, wide-eyed and smiling, even under water. I tense and become frantic every time she treads her little way to the wall -- the ferocity of mother instinct is almost psycho. Ben's been pretty patient.
As I sit here, wishing for a cup of coffee, the kids are playing downstairs and have been for nearly an hour. It's as if they've craved each other's company in the midst of all this transition.
The list of paperwork to-do's in my notebook for the house is getting a little long... Today we'll go visit the walls and rooms again, and for the first time, really, I will try to envision our furniture and family living there.
It is now shoe-putting-on minute, so off we go to usher in another day -- they keep coming. I'm already twenty weeks pregnant as of Tuesday, halfway there, and had my ultrasound yesterday. At one angle, for just a moment, we could see a face that looked like a little baby's face with Silas's nose opening and closing her mouth.
A tiny chickadee is nibbling at the feeder at the window. He's small enough to nest in my hand. The morning is sunny and cool -- still and crystal clear, the sun against smooth trunks of trees.
Last week we seemed to have crossed a bridge, or at least the kids did. After bringing his blankie to school for two days, Silas stopped tucking it in his bag, and there have been no more morning tears, not even on Monday. Relief.
Eden learned to swim in the last two weeks with Ben and has proved to be fearless, wide-eyed and smiling, even under water. I tense and become frantic every time she treads her little way to the wall -- the ferocity of mother instinct is almost psycho. Ben's been pretty patient.
As I sit here, wishing for a cup of coffee, the kids are playing downstairs and have been for nearly an hour. It's as if they've craved each other's company in the midst of all this transition.
The list of paperwork to-do's in my notebook for the house is getting a little long... Today we'll go visit the walls and rooms again, and for the first time, really, I will try to envision our furniture and family living there.
It is now shoe-putting-on minute, so off we go to usher in another day -- they keep coming. I'm already twenty weeks pregnant as of Tuesday, halfway there, and had my ultrasound yesterday. At one angle, for just a moment, we could see a face that looked like a little baby's face with Silas's nose opening and closing her mouth.
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