still a hold upon us

I remember the ultrasound when I found out my youngest child was a boy. Mixed in with the joy of seeing his tiny feet, the quick birdlike heartbeat, the tender curve of skull and comically unmistakable flagpole, was worry. Worry that I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy, how to connect with him. I’d grown up with a sister, and even though we spent our days in “tomboyish” pursuits, climbing trees and building forts, boys still remained inhabitants of that strange land of belching contests, football, and standing up to pee.

Of course, when he was born I was immediately and absolutely smitten, the worry fading away like milk stains in the wash. That I doubted my own capacity to connect with my child seemed absurd, laughable. Even managing his, uh, equipment seemed as natural as being the caretaker of my daughter’s. He grew, and my love and delight grew with him. As it does.

Along the way, a few things did give me pause, like the complete lack of boy outfits without giant appliquéd footballs or trains on them, or his early obsession with anything wheeled, or that whole standing up to pee situation. And even though I’d been careful to provide my daughter with trucks alongside her teacups, and a baby doll as well as Bob the Builder for my son, they both clearly exhibited the classic gendered predilections most kids do.

(I realize I’ve got stereotypes knocking around like ninepins here, and you’ll have to forgive me, but they seem unfortunately germane to even the most earnest and high-minded discussions of gender, probably because the issue of gender behavior is still so hotly debated we tiptoe around it with clumsy, politically correct generalizations and disclaimers. Strike!)

(Anyway, I am going somewhere with all this, so bear with me a minute more.)

Even his recent and sudden fascination with all things, uh, fundamental (gas, toileting, sounds, smells — you get the picture) was tolerable, predictable, even amusing, in its way, though his sister had never been held in such thrall. Long, ghastly tootlings followed by “the pumpkin did it!” are not without their innocent charms.

But the newest infatuation has me utterly thrown for a loop: guns. (And here I go running headlong into another pit of gnashing stereotypes, so let me just preface it with a stated respect for our nation’s tradition of bearing arms, how guns have figured in protection and peacekeeping, recognition of the role they play in hunting for food, and the fact that many gun owners are responsible, reasonable and upstanding members of society. That said, I have a hard time with a three year old playing “gun” when he doesn’t have the cognitive skills to really understand what they can do, the finality of them, the violence, the cruel intent with which they are too often used.)

So when he came home from preschool making that little pshew pshew sound, finger and thumb cocked as he took aim first at his sister, then at me, a little part of my parental confidence came unhinged. “Imma shoot the bad guys,” he said, in his wee, squeaky voice, blinking his long-lashed, angelic eyes in all seriousness. “You be bad guy, Mama, and I shoot you.”

“No,” I said, summoning my utmost breezy calm and nonchalance so as not to immediately set off his OOOOH NOT ALLOWED MUST COVET alarm, “we don’t shoot people.”

And thus it began.

I remember my friends with older boys lamenting the gun thing, my relief at not having to deal with it yet, as they agonized over household items turned into pistols, lunches sculpted into revolvers. Surrender to the “it’s what boys just do” meme, or stand firm. No guns in the house? Toy guns? Water pistols? Nerf armories? No pointing at people? Animals? Stuffed animals?

There are lines to be drawn, the question is where. At what point is gun play acceptable, even healthy, and at what point is it damaging or merely inappropriate? At what age should a child be made to understand what a gun really is, what it can do? Should my distaste and even horror be obvious, or squashed down so my disapproval doesn’t make guns even more alluring?

To me, 3 years is simply too young. But I can’t control what he learns from his friends (whose preferences manage to filter through the preschool’s no-fighting, no-superheroes, no-guns, pinko peacenik guidelines) or what he imagines or dreams about. I can only teach him to be responsible in his play, find movies and books and activities that are non-shootout related, and hope this fascination will eventually be replaced with something less fraught. Maybe card counting.

For now, I muddle through. I feign boredom at the mere idea of a gun, remind not to shoot at people or animals, uphold the ban on toy guns. I say guns hurt people, we don’t want to hurt anybody. I listen to my son’s assertions that he will protect me, and reply we protect ourselves with words, with smarts, with peace.

I agonize and lament and read the child psychologists. I wring my hands and wish it weren’t this way. I watch him play, shooting wrong and right into the nebulous, grey world around him, attempting to make sense of things, to find order and control in the uncertainty.

But I never wish he was someone else, a tea-swilling, tutu-rocking girl. I think back to those first ultrasound images, and that initial worry. Here is my first major disconnect, and I realize I am grateful to see now that it in no way compromises my love for him, my fierce adoration, that unbreakable cord. The gun compulsion may be somewhat opaque to me, but the boy, he is not. I’ll hang my hat on that certainty, and the hope that this, like all things, shall pass.

thinky thots thursday

It’s been a while, but returning now in all their, uh, effervescent splendor, thinky thots from my offspring:

“I didn’t fart! It was the pumpkin.”

“Scuse me. There’s a ghost in my butt.”

“Everybody poops. Even Spiderman.”

“Is that a bra for your butt?”

“Hey, sweetheart rhymes with eat fart!”

And, slightly off-topic but refreshingly so:

“Hey. Pretend I’m a woodchip…”

dread crew meme: stories that stick

I couldn’t resist playing along, partly because I desperately want to win a signed copy of The Dread Crew: Pirates of the Backwoods and partly because I just can’t refuse any sort of forum for blathering on about my favorite literary whatnots. So, without further ado:

1. I’m going on an epic journey. I’ll choose D’Artagnan as my companion, the Golden Compass as my tool, and that time-bending contraption from Contact as my vehicle.

2. I’ll escape to the insides of Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” because the character and perspective possess all the comforts and concepts of modernity, but the layers of the past she peels back, and the deep forests and deeper secrets of old-world Eastern Europe are so deliciously dark and compelling.

3. I’d bring Austen’s Mr. Darcy into my current life. Not because I don’t love my husband, but because I lurve Mr. Darcy, and have for a long time, even before Colin Firth played him in the BBC film. Something about his stoic, curmudgeonly exterior hiding the honorable, passionate heart just gets me by the throat.

4. “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell is my go-to book of all time.

5. As a child, I probably envied Lucy from the Narnia books more than anyone.

6. As a child, I probably most feared Sauron and his Ringwraiths.

7. Every time I read Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” I see something in it that I haven’t before.

8. It is imperative that Tana French’s “The Likeness” be made into a movie. If they cast Anne Hathaway as Cassie I will be pissed. I would be appeased, however, if they cast Alan Rickman as Frank Mackey.

9. Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is a book that should never be made into a film.

10. After all these years, the clown scene in Poltergeist still gives me the queebes.

11. After all these years, the “my god, it’s full of stars” scene in 2001: A Space Oddessy still gives me a thrill.

12. If I could corner Wallace Stegner, here’s what I say to him in one minute or less about his book “Angle of Repose”: Thank you for showing me how landscape has narrative, how beauty can exist in the broken edges of things, how precarious we all are and how grief and loss possess secret gifts, can open us again. Thank you for being at once an exemplary study of writing and a teacher of the heart.

13. The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is “Moon in a Dewdrop” by Dogen. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to sit zazen again.

as true as taxes

One always hears about the calm before the storm, but our personal little disaster seems to have happened in reverse order. As described in my last post, I had a panic attack (followed by several others) at the thought of impending financial doom, replete with gasping, shriveling up on the kitchen floor in the throes of despair, etc. My father always said I had a flair for theatrics. It’s just when they come unbidden, unwelcome, that I consider it less a flair than an affliction.

Anyway, three days after that post, it happened. My husband was laid off. I had a brief email: “It’s done. Packing up my things now.” A few hours of staring blankly at my computer screen, numbness spreading out from my chest to my extremities, a statue of acquiescence. Then a brief release of tears, a choked phone call to immediate family who had been on standby prayer status.

When my husband arrived home later in the day, after apologies from his boss, a grim yet matter-of-fact meeting with HR, and the walk of shame, box in arms, down the halls of downcast gazes and out into the biting air of new possibility, he was invigorated by relief. Because he’d felt, literally, incarcerated there, trapped by steady paychecks into the tasteless and bland corporate horror of what we snidely termed creative mediocrity.

And for a person who usually skirts the borders of OCD behavior when it comes to finances, he is remarkably relaxed in the face of things. Things which include loans come due, stiff COBRA payments, negligible severance pay, and a job market already saturated with equally qualified seekers and a pitiably short supply of open positions.

Yet. While I know this is just the beginning of what will possibly be a long slog towards solvency, here, in the newness of it, his joy in freedom is palpable and contagious. We sit, back to back, madly typing cover letters and pitches and portfolios, editing and interrupting each other as we race deliriously, furiously towards an imagined future of fulfilling and engaging employment.

More than this outward enthusiasm, though, I’m basking in our inward knitting together. Immediate, in-room consolation and commiseration when a pitch is shot down or a hoped-for position is filled. Neck rubs through the agony of rewriting a resume for the eleventy billionth time. Snacks. Coffee runs. Through it all, the talking, the exchange, the connection. More than we’ve had in years.

And more family time. He comes on school pickups, does dropoffs by himself. Plays with the kids while I cook, or vice versa. Helps with the nightmare of end-of-day meltdowns and grumpy morning get-out-the-door tedium. Accepts poop duty with equal parts resignation and fortitude. Is more patient with them than I am.

Of course, there are the downsides. He criticizes the way I do laundry. (Who DOES that? Are we not grateful for clean clothes and linens?) He looks over my shoulder and asks what I’m typing, or worse, reads it. (Which is why this post has not appeared until now, because I literally couldn’t write it with him hovering. It’s only because he’s been on a call all morning that I got this done at all.) He asks what am I planning for dinner, probably my all-time most detested question ever. (Don’t . Ask.)

But still, this new normal is proving to be entirely different than what I had anticipated. I look out my kitchen window and see the wide windy sky, and what comes is not tears, but trust. That what is blown our way is meant for us, that strength comes with hardship, and resourcefulness is adversity’s reward. I feel receptive to the idea that things may actually work out, before we lose our house or can’t put food on the table. I feel driven by possibility, not by fear. For now, I feel we have passed through the worst of the storm, and calm will surely follow.

breathe upon the changing dust

The last few weeks I’ve been doing a pretty decent job of pretending my world isn’t about to become unglued. I’ve been patient and loving with the kids, focused on getting work done, trying really hard not to snap at my husband, to stay upbeat and positive and encouraging to those around me (and let’s face it, this seems to be a bad month for just about everyone).

I haven’t been thinking about the fact that we’re fairly certain my husband will be laid off soon, or that neither he nor I are getting any traction in our job searches. I haven’t been thinking about all the things falling apart in and on our house we can’t afford to fix, or the insurance payments we’re late on or the tuition bills we’re committed to or the fact that I can’t buy the kids a simple ice cream even when I really want to and they really deserve one. I matter-of-factly found out what we could expect in terms of unemployment benefits, and calmly noted that it wouldn’t even cover our mortgage payments let alone other expenses.

But yesterday it all came crashing down. The worry, the wondering, the work . . . it all caught up with me and I had an Oh Fuck attack of epic proportions. I stood looking out the kitchen window, watching the clouds billow with pent-up rain, and suddenly these words appeared unbidden in my mind: “At least there is beauty.” And I thought of everything we stood to lose: our house, our community, our self-sufficiency. And then I was sobbing, and gasping, and my heart began to race and I shook and shivered and looked at the phone, wondering if I should dial 911.

So this is what v-fib feels like, I thought stupidly, as my heart fluttered away like a 20-foot prank balloon, out of the reach of various agencies of reason and rescue. I sat down hard on the kitchen floor, my feet juddering out from under me and my hands clenching and curling back on my wrists in some kind of sickening flipper-baby gesture. A high-pitched whistling filled my ears and I wondered, dully, if it was the carbon monoxide alarm.

And then I realized it was me. I was hyperventilating, or wheezing, or performing some other kind of problematic air-sucking attempt, and that whistling sound was me not getting enough oxygen. Everything turned sort of white and foggy around the edges. I rolled over onto my side, pressing my cheek against the cool floor, feeling both ridiculous and overwhelmingly, terrifyingly alone.

I forced myself to try and regulate my breathing. It’s all in my mind, I told myself, hoping I’d be comforted by the realization it wasn’t, in fact, my body having a Spontaneous Death Event. I crawled to the computer, and twittered that I was having a panic attack.

I don’t know why I didn’t call my husband, or my mom, or my best friend. But I do know, that in less than 140 characters, one woman I’ve never actually met was able to tell me that she understood, and she cared, and she wanted to help:

I don’t know if it was ultimately her suggestion (a good one) that helped, or just that simple act of connection, but within minutes I was able to breathe again without whistling, and drink some water, and back away from the bizarre psycho-somatic ledge I had gotten myself stuck on.

The day continued, balloon boy news unfolding as a convenient distraction, demands of children focusing my attention on the basic rituals: food, bath, books, bed. I cleaned up. I talked calmly with my husband about work, money, options. I read, played solitaire, went to bed. I watched, from my pillow, the stars moving on their unseen paths. I slept.

And then, today, I see a baby blown off the platform directly in front of an oncoming train (hat tip to Sundry for tweeting the coronary-inducing link this morning), see the mother wildly flailing to catch it, nearly hit by the train herself, and I feel it, that heart-slam, that silence as the world stops, the bottom falling out. I wonder if this is my new normal, walking that edge between fineness and catastrophic fear, at any moment blown by the winds of chance into paralyzing panic.

But, like that baby, everything I love is still here. I need to remember this. Even if we lose the job, the house, whatever: everything I love is with me, now. Security is imagined. At any moment it could float away or be flattened by a train or bombed into oblivion. And for many people, it has. For many people, that crushing, unspeakable loss is lived with every day. I ache for them, because it is a horror they can’t fight their way out of, a loneliness that will never end.

I breathe, and watch the clouds, and think, At least there is beauty. I cry because we can’t all see it. And I cry because I can.

the last dream of my soul

Most of the time you’re a good sleeper, curled around your stuffed dog, your hair damp with dreams and your cheek pressed against pillow, a Boticellian vision of rosy, rounded innocence. Some nights you call out for me, and when I arrive you’re sitting up, tangled in blankets and whimpering confusedly, lost in the unfamiliar darkness and unsure of how to find your way back to somnolence.

A sip of water, a kiss, a whispered word of comfort, or perhaps even the simple smell of me, of Mama, is enough to let you relax your hold on wakefulness and slip again into the quiet sea of sleep. I stay a minute, listening to your breathing settle, luxuriating in the sweet and quiet, a stolen snapshot of you I can carry close against the clatter and clamor of daylight and its attendant chaos.

But last night was different. Last night I heard you sobbing, a wordless, wrenching lament that proved immune to my attempts at comforting you. I sat and rocked you as you cried and cried with a bottomless sorrow, eyes flooded with tears, not seeing me or even knowing I held you. What did you dream that wounded you so? What were you mourning, what love was so lost to you that you were broken on its absence? What grief could possibly possess the heart of a boy only three years old?

I may discount your daily woes as the frivolous flotsam of childhood, and regard your tantrums and joys as transient as the weather; after all, the emotional tides of children are best withstood by letting them course past and then laughing with relief in their wake. Phases of development wax and wane like the moon, and our only job is to open our arms wide enough to allow our tiny shape-shifters room to grow while still encircling them with love.

And yet. Your sheer desolation last night, your solitary anguish, even though you’ve forgotten it all today . . . I can’t not remember it, and wonder: who are you? What complicated internal terrain are you crossing, and where will it lead? Will you know my love will follow you, wherever you go? Will it matter?

these pages must show

Thirty days hath September, which means today’s post is my last for NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. As an experiment in pain thresholds, it has been fascinating. As a useful tool for thoughtful daily blogging, however, it has been an unmitigated disaster.

The writer’s life is filled with admonitions and advice, the most common of the latter being “write every day”. This is thought to both instill discipline and allow a safe space for the regular honing of skills. It is important to note that in no way is this daily accrual of written pages expected to be published, kept, or even revised — no, the expectation is “just write” for pure exercise of craft, and if perhaps it survives in subsequent drafts, well that is just icing, really.

And that is the thing with blogging, isn’t it? Certainly the “save as draft” function is useful to many of us, and often availed for one reason or another, but with the “Publish” button so near at hand, and the accelerated, transitory nature of the medium, thoughtful revising is rarely a factor. Certainly it hasn’t been for me, at least not this month.

There are a couple of pieces I’m pleased with, not for their quality of writing but for their initial introspective honesty and the responses they garnered from readers. My post about yelling, for example, happened in a burst of shame but elicited a few insightful and reassuring comments and emails that I truly appreciated. My post about wanting another helped me admit and clarify to myself some conflicting feelings of longing for a third child, and sparked a deep discussion with my husband.

But there are many, many posts that are just filler, just me meeting the daily quota in the minutes between real-life obligations that can’t be shirked or pushed aside. Things like feeding my kids, picking them up on time, getting them to doctor appointments. Buying food, meeting deadlines for paid work. So I’d scratch a few words into the computer and hit Publish, cringing at the lameness but forgetting it in the next minute as I rushed off to carry on with the real business of living.

I don’t know how people balance the studied seriousness of a craft like writing against their regular life. Perhaps if the time I carved out was regular (though, let’s face it, 4am is looking like the only viable option) and there was no immediate publication threat, it would be a richer experience with more useful — if long-term — results.

I’m not sorry I did it — like I said, it was an interesting experience and netted some valuable insights and connections. But I’d rather save my time and my posts for when I have something meaningful to write.

my secret heart

Last night, Shriekeur, in all his 3-year-old glory, was up every two minutes needing something. You know the drill: water, tissues, potty, nightlight, blanket, and so on. Quiet but insistent calls of “Mom? Mooooooooom” wafted into the living room just frequently enough to ensure I never quite sat down, despite my intention to watch House and figure out what the hell has been going on so far this season.

Finally, after about 40 minutes of this, I got cranky. As I thudded down the hall towards the bedroom, my grumpy stomping telegraphed my mood, and by the time I got there, this is what he said: “Mama? I have somefing to feel you better. Come here so I can give it to you.”

I knelt by his bed. “Closer, Mama.” I leaned in. A damp smack on my cheek and sweaty stranglehold around my neck. “There,” he said, satisfaction in his voice. “I feeled you better, right?”

“Yes, lovey,” I said, all choked up. “I feel much better, thank you.”

I’m SUCH a sucker. Sue me.

the leaves fall thick

Today in bullets:

• Project No Yelling is going quite well, I haven’t shouted at the kids at all so far and have even dialed back my Tone of Icy Death somewhat. Although my husband is probably finding me a little — well, ok, impossibly — smug. But really I’m not being self-righteous, just ecstatic that it is working. And when I say working, I mean not only am I not yelling, but somehow I’m not even getting pissed enough to yell. Something about it not being an option seems to be removing my frustration from the equation, at least before it gets a full head of steam going.

• Now that I’m actively looking for work I’m feeling like a total schlumpy failure. That recent five year gap in my professional history? Those twenty extra pounds I’m carrying? The bitten-off nails? The impossible school/daycare schedule that will only have a very minor impact on my ability to be on site in a prompt fashion on a daily basis? Doesn’t that all just scream GREAT HIRE!? Not that anyone has seen my fat or my fingernails, because of course I haven’t had a single response to the many resumes I’ve circulated. But still, it all contributes to the feeling of high inadequacy.

• Making friends. Sigh. Julia has a great piece in the current Redbook about making friends as a mumble-year-old and it has really got me thinking about the current state of my friendscape. My oldest, closest friend lives a few hours’ drive away and what with life and schedules we just don’t see each other as often as we’d like. I have a couple of friends from a past (work) life I see, but not terribly frequently. When my kid started at the local elementary school I met a couple of moms I really connected with and see pretty often, but those relationships are still relatively new and need some time to deepen. And now that the kid has switched schools there is a whole new social scene to mine, but I know that will take time as well. I guess I’m just feeling a lack, but there’s nothing to do except nurture the relationships I have and cast about for other like-minded souls, but in the here & now, well, I’m finding it a bit lonely.

• Today both kids are off from school, so on a whim I took them on a surprise outing to do fun and goofy things. As we were loading up, I noticed Shriekeur felt a little warm, but attributed that to the fact that he’d been running around the house pretending to be a lion-robot or something (honestly, who can keep up with another person’s imagination?) but then on the carousel he leaned glumly on the pole, offered a faint “yee-haw” and then promptly fell asleep on the way home. He’s now in my bed and I’m afraid to go check on him, seeing as the thermometer will likely start bleeping a red alert before I can even cross the threshold.

• The oven is broken. The soonest the service people can get here is exactly one day before our one-year warranty expires. So, I suppose if the oven is going to go on the fritz, this is the ideal time, excepting the large piece of salmon I’ve no idea how to deal with stove-side. And the pumpkin bread I’ve been dying to make. And the squash I wanted to roast. Sigh.

the rim on one’s nose

Today I had a day out, to myself, on my own, doing grown-up things. I’m so happily exhausted I can’t even describe it, other than to say as much of a cliché as it is, parents really, really, really need to take time for themselves once in a while, to refresh and recharge.

It can be hard on the knees, though. Just sayin’.