The First Day

Prelude: Lydia is now a high school student. :)

Over the years, various friends have made very kindly observations about Pete's and my parenting style, and our family unit being cohesive and happy. I'm always appreciative, but I don't always feel I merit it. So I thought I would share a moment in my mothering continuum that highlights my imperfections.

With Lydia's first day of high school looming, I began asking questions of her a couple of weeks ago...about style choices, comfort level, growing up. As I had done with Zoë before her, I bought Lydia Teen Vogue and Seventeen so that she could see some of this year's fashions. A Maine island is not exactly the locus for up-to-the-minute teen styles, and besides, when I was her age, I was obsessed with knowing what was popular. I didn't necessarily emulate those things (mostly because I couldn't afford it), but I just.needed.to.know.

Freshman year of high school was also my moment to begin using makeup. Horrific, not-right-for-my-skin-color make-up (viva los 70s). Those of you who know me well, know that the Makeup Era for me was exceptionally short-lived.

I offer these reminiscences about me because they highlight my mom choices. So, back to that: I bought the mags. Lydie read them over, or so she said. I asked if she'd seen anything she liked, or that she might want to buy in a similar style next time we shopped.

"Nooo, not really," said my 14-year-old daughter.

Urgh! I thought to myself. Usually Lyd loves spending time with me, talking about stuff we both like. She's not in any kind of rebellion stage here. She just plain was not interested.

Fascinatingly, Zoë is now living back at home and serving as a secondary mom voice. She's different from me, and has her own completely personalized sense of style. Apparently, colors-matching is a huge must-do for Z. She has critiqued Lyd quite a bit lately for not matching—and, bizarrely, for wearing basketball shorts instead of cargo or cloth shorts. (This is definitely in the WTH realm for me, but they're sisters, so I let them work it out between themselves.) But take note: neither girl will a) wear makeup or b) show skin. They're adamant. And sometimes teenage Nessa is totally baffled.

Okay, here's where I turn into a kinda villainess. One of my least-appealing maternal hallmarks is my strident voice. I get impatient and I do not typically yell or demand, but I do cut right to the chase and expect back-and-forth conversation. My children, accustomed to a pretty serene and laissez-faire home environment, sort of freak out when I go for the sharp-focus on an issue. Who blames them, I guess. But maybe it's a Queens holdover for me. And in this instance, when I've spent two weeks dropping hints about first-day-of-school attire, and I get a distinct lack of action back for my troubles, and it's the night before the first day...I'm gonna go strident.

Thus, last night when we got home, I asked Lydia if she had done her laundry and selected an outfit for school. "Yep, I did the laundry," she answered.

The outfit, I pressed. What did she choose?

"Oh, I dunno, just...jeans and a T-shirt, I guess."

I drew a resigned breath. Then I launched into a strident (told you!) explanation of.... First impressions. And big changes in one's life. And opportunities to maybe change one's image a little bit when one moves from a class of 15 kids to a class of, say, 70-ish. People judge a little more in high school, I lectured on. And you don't want to be wearing, say, a T-shirt that might look childish, or something that just doesn't look right. Because teenagers remember stuff like that.

[I am not pleased with myself for this stream-of-rapidfire-consciousness that I released last night. But look, I had one hour to take her shopping if she didn't have something that would fit her, and given her growth curve, that was a distinct possibility.]

"So please go upstairs and choose something," I ended it.

First, she came down with a long-sleeved shirt of Zoë's. An entirely inoffensive item, but a little heavier than the weather requires. I'm sure I looked crestfallen, because here I'd just blathered about style and change and reinvention, and she delivered ehh. But I didn't say ehh...I merely explained that the shirt she'd chosen was too warm and maybe too plain and--

This was where she began to weep a little. "What? What is it?" I asked.

"I-I don't want to disappoint you! You-you said not childish!" she sniffled.

[Commence my self-hatred. Sigh.]

So, I re-stated everything, softer and less accusatory. And sent her back upstairs, hoping I sounded kinder, to try again.

A few rummagy minutes later, she came down with a red Snoopy tee and a pair of Zoë-handmedown jeans. Hmmm. Zoë, I should add, was sitting across from me in the living room, making acerbic comments—which I enjoyed, truly: her participation, and her relative maturity. She added the occasional observation about the way MDI High School rolls, which greatly helps me—I don't have a clue. 

Collectively, we tried to figure out if a Snoopy tee was right for MDIHS. I asked Lydia if she liked what she had chosen, was comfortable with it. Yes, she said.

What can I say, a former New Yorker who thinks people should dress up for the first day? Nothing, clearly. In fact, acerbic Zoë mentioned something about how I'd encouraged her to dress up for the first day, only for naught, since no other Island kid had evidently gotten my urbanite memo.

I share this vignette because Lydia chose her own way despite my strident leanings. And I am so, so proud whenever that happens. Moreover, she reported after school today that two different girls had complimented her on the sweatshirt she decided to add this morning: Zoë's Totoro character. So that made me doubly proud: my girl rocks handmedowns by choice and gets props for it.

The moral: she knows what's right for her. She's smarter at that, in fact, than I am. Which is, ultimately, my best parental goal. I'm just sorry that sometimes I don't reach it with my best self forward.

A poem from my NYC foray

Scribbled with a golf pencil amidst the restless, peopled din of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's main entry hall, as I sat on a time-smoothed wooden bench and pondered my churning emotions. This poem so demanded to emerge that I had to buy an appointment book at the museum shop (on clearance!) just to get the blank paper for it. (An appointment book full of NYC artwork, bien sûr.)

Metropolitan Life

New York makes me stride,
pound pavement with purpose,
inhale deeply of fume and grey,
see what is not here in a startling overlay:
people who guided, places that shaped,
conversations that mattered, touches that linger.
I am at once teenager and remainder.
I have to be here. I want to be here.
I must create. I keen just to be.
Sidewalks unending...tonal layered sunset
only the beginning...
lights will not sleep. Silver transit perpetually
lurches. Emotions sharpen.
Dear God, I finally know what Mom lived.
The invigorating snap of everyday,
the intoxicating promise of better,
a now of swirling senses
limned with a bright edge.
A deeper, richer home.
An intentional life:

the sweet, brute unknown.

NBR 1/7/12


1/7/12: Self-portrait at the Temple of Dendur, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Absence

"Happy My Day," you say to your kids upon waking up on this bright May Sunday. But despite the successful laugh line, you know it's not true. This day is hers, and she's not here.

The photo of Mom you put up on Facebook took your breath away, in fact. The familiarity. That facial expression, her blend of humor, pride, and a little bit of on-guard. Because you were not easy to guide, and you and she were emotionally dissimilar--a practical soloist versus a blindly gregarious optimist. But as your adulthood finally took hold, you frequently supplied things the other lacked (usually by telephone, but that was the negotiated landscape).

Her eyes are looking right out at you in this scanned Kodak moment. It's the moment, a signature capture commemorating her triumph that, somehow, you did not flunk out of the prestigious college she had prayed, yearned, demanded you would attend. You're a dazed mess, because graduation was held on a humid, stormy day inside a gym on campus. (You had never been in that gym, ever, before the day you graduated in it. Which is a hilarious little digression. And the hangover. Oh, the hangover.)

Your path and hers diverged so completely after this day. You stayed behind in that town, that state, and she returned to her New York City existence--the loner in a sea of people, sounds, and visual arrays. She liked it that way, like a cork bobbed on a wavy, ceaseless sea. Punch in her numbers on the first telephone you ever owned (brown, with that big dumbbell handle you could cradle under your neck for efficient multi-tasking) and she would be there, always. You could see her in your mind's eye where she sat. You couldn't bear her aloneness, yet you couldn't fix it. And her maternal voice would flip on as soon as you had a crisis. Maybe you couldn't fix things for her, but she frequently did so for you.

On My Day, you get up and dress for a social outing with your family. Maine's still damply chilly despite the new springtime, so it's sweater and jeans time. Your afterthought, after the jewelry and the combed hair, is one of her scarves. There can be no greater symbol, really, of Mom's New York existence than these filmy, silky, satiny relics of her work life. Saks Fifth Avenue, B. Altman, Bloomingdale's, Bergdorf's--her colleagues bought clothing there, but Mom could only afford scarves. Almost all of her scarves, which you've inherited, are prints and colors that you would never ever select. And there's something 1970s about them that feels unreachable. But when you twist them, roll them, and knot them loosely around your neck, they become a little more you. And tucked underneath a sweater collar, they are subtle.

It's on you now, today's scarf. Some kind of comic-book burst of color, you don't even know what's pictured. But here's your My Day present: it smells exactly like her. Six years this month that she left this earth, and her scarves still bear her scent as though you just opened the drawer in her bedroom and stole something for a night out in Manhattan.

And as you write this piece, your youngest comes into your office and hands you an essay, trilling "Happy Mother's Day!" Unbelievably unique prose, and an overwhelmingly optimistic sentiment expressed in the piece, which is called--not making this up--"The Energy Given From Others." It is Your Day, it is Her Day, and it's His Day too. Revel in your fortunes, and hold your mother close.

The Hands

They were the hands of a worker. A laundress, maybe, or a housekeeper. She always lamented how short and ruddy her fingers were, as she pushed on the emerald and opal rings that she loved to wear. Her knuckles were formidable, and the gold bands had to be slid over them just so. The rest of Maryann's skin was palest white with scatterings of Irish freckles, but her hands were reddened.

Facing a long row of white piano keys split by shadow lines and minor black rectangles, Maryann's hands became muscular, precise tools. She had a finger spread that spanned an octave without strain. Her left hand brought bass chords to life in accurate sync with the melody. And she was able to inject softness, nuance, and emotion along with the emphasis. Her hands were made to speak; they were servants to the spirit of jazz music. She realized this before she was 10 years old, in fact: the tunes of popular American song were destined to pour through her hands as entertainment for others. No need for sheet music; she could hear it and reproduce it. Maryann surrendered to that knowledge, transporting herself to a place of balance and peace whenever she played. Her life beyond the smooth wood box of a piano was often dissonant, as though she repeatedly and suddenly became a stranger in the face of everyday events...but the piano was her harbor.

She would gladly have forfeited attending smalltown parties in her youth, but there was an expectation that she would play for the gatherings, and Maryann was very good at living up to her responsibilities. Small talk made her uneasy, and although she had lifelong female friends who always included her in their fun, Maryann could never shake the feeling of being apart. The call to "Play something for us, Maryann!" was a relief even as it was a nuisance (because the partygoers would inevitably tell her what to play, demandingly, and then only half-listen as their small talk and smoking raved on). In the Northern Lights Class of 1950 yearbook, they nicknamed her "Paderewski".

Her graduation gift from her parents was an extravagance that befitted her nickname: a baby grand piano. Dark sepia wood, with lighter swirls of grain...beyond furniture, it was practically a planet in her parents' modest living room. An anchor in the harbor, you might say. An enticement, even...a plea for this golden only child not to leave.

It didn't work. She departed easily, plunging into the swelter of New York City summer. Maryann's hands ventured to nightclubs on Manhattan's fabled 52nd Street, where larger and even noisier crowds listened as the redhead coaxed the standards to swing and emote. Places like the Hickory House and the Embers, whose names evoked steak and smoke. By day, she was a radio station page, to pay her rent at the YWCA. Her nights glittered and simmered. Maryann found a community of fellow-travelers in the city...players from nowherevilles all over the world, for whom a musical instrument was equally effortless and all-consuming. Their lingua franca was their coolness, their ability to instinctively bend music so that it became something more shining than its original form.

She began dating a fellow-traveler named Bob Burns, late of the storied US Navy Band, a drummer whose conflicts and demons made Maryann's moments of social estrangement seem tame. He burned to play like she did (surname pun ruefully acknowledged), but there were gaps in his groove. Maybe his methodical intellect blocked him from giving over to the art. Bob ached to possess Maryann as his wife, perhaps to absorb some of her light, but ultimately, he snuffed it out with mundane duties. It was the 1950s, and Maryann was well aware of what she was expected to do: make this man a home, give birth to children. Wear an apron and have dinner ready. Their early married life in an urban apartment was not so dull, if the black-and-white photos are to be believed. But Maryann was certainly not sitting in at nightclubs on Wednesdays at midnight, and Bob had become a university student on the GI Bill...living out his own version of what-was-expected.

Bob and Maryann's jazz world must always be viewed through the amber glow of alcohol. It may well have enabled their muses to emerge fully flowered, without inhibitions, but as their marriage encompassed parenthood and salaries, it robbed them of any sense of settled contentment. Bob became bitterly angry, his tirades insensible. When infidelity was added to his list of domestic sins, Maryann scooped up her young children, returned north to her small town of birth, and left New York to him. The baby grand had awaited her in its living room berth, and it slowly reawakened her soul.

I have staccato memories of early childhood which linger far more vividly than most people's. My mother's elusive persona, her tether to a piano while my grandparents guided me through toddlerhood...it's all right at the fringes of my psyche, shards of places and events. Eventually, our family returned triumphantly to New York City, as Maryann got the gig of a lifetime: playing piano every night onstage in a hit Broadway show, Cabaret. Every night, some older woman--my nana, a babysitter--tucked me in while Maryann performed and brought home the bacon. I never minded her absence, but I jealously guarded her presence whenever I got it.

I stlll recall preschool afternoons when she would fill our apartment living room with the sound of the Steinway upright she'd purchased for herself. I stood to the right of her bench, eye-level to the keys, wanting to be as close as possible. I could stand there all day, watching the blur and pause of her hands. The music, I remember, was surprisingly louder from that vantage point, resonating through the wood. The wood itself had a scent, a deep sweetness. I knew, without being told, that my mother was phenomenally talented; that the songs she played were just as good as the jazz LPs in rotation on the stereo in that same room: Count Basie, Marian McPartland, Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver. Maryann's mantra to her children differed from other mothers'; it was "Sssssh. Sssssh. Listen."

As Maryann's hands ranged over the keys, larger-than-life in that proximity, I was inevitably seized with a temptation: to strike a key with my childish index finger. I wanted to be swept up into the music, become part of it, not just her bystander. I could never deny the urge, and soon my hand would approach; my finger would choose a key. Most of the time the note was a lemon against whatever song she was playing. I knew that, could hear the note's high-pitched awfulness...but I would plink it again and again, listening to how it stood out, alone on a rich tapestry of beauty. Maryann did not stop me.

Among my genealogical treasures are the receipts for her baby grand and her Steinway, fluttering pink reminders of her time, her sound, what made her free.

I Expected

I'm at work on a winter Saturday, which means I'm basically alone and idle. Additionally, this means that I am Web-surfing like a fiend. I just had a sojourn at people.com where I stumbled onto a photo gallery of pregnant stars, starlets, and unknown star-spouses. (The title hook: "Who's Next to Deliver?") Click the mouse: new photo, another sideways-view of a magnificently rounded womb belonging to a beaming celeb (very few of whom seem to have gained the kind of poundage I did at that juncture).

Prior to the People pregnancy parade, I'd been at cnn.com reading up on the famed octuplets lady of California (who now finds herself a single mother of 14, living at her parents' house. My mind boggles.) That article prompted me to check the Duggars' website--in case you haven't heard of them, their 18th was born in December, in a televised special. They rushed that birth show to broadcast, and I'd noticed that Michelle Duggar--the indefatigable mumma, whose spirit and serenity I admire--seemed in physical distress during and after the C-section that brought her and Jim their ninth daughter. I've been wondering if all is well, but their website lacks updates since that time.

Soooo, motherhood's on my brain again. Specifically, the contrast between starlet pregnancies (conceived in households of too much plenty, with mumma's tummy concealed in designer cling, and baby's togs similarly priced out-of-reach) and the regular-Jane pregnancies of the rest of us. People does a disservice, perhaps. Pregnancy is hard work. Sometimes dangerous, and possibly even ill-advised. Don't even start me about the economic repercussions.

Issues of pregnancy still feel immediate and urgent to me for a reason: I got pregnant in September. I know, what are the odds, right? Just launched an all-consuming business, with four kids (one of whom we had just sent off to college), and seriously, I'm 44 years old. Saturated with changes already. Nevertheless, just after Zoë left home, some teasing symptoms arrived, unmistakable and strong. I am pretty much an expert when it comes to the subtle shifts and signs that nudge my brain into counting back and wondering if something might have, um, happened.

When I saw that diagnostic second pink line on the test stick--assertive and sure--I was impressed that my middle-aged physiology could piece together the logic of pregnancy, assembling the hormones and rallying the troops, as it were. Truly, I'd been convinced I was deep into perimenopause, well beyond the fertility gate. But along with the amazement, I was wrapped in a muted bewilderment, a veil of disbelief that did not clear up until mid-November. That was when the OB--a kindly, encouraging man--wielded an ultrasound wand and showed us on a flickering black-and-white screen that my egg--see the sac, there?--was not actually viable. The sac was a tiny, empty space...a vestige. Not a surprising circumstance for a woman of my age and in the early weeks, so my response was, basically, "Mmmm, uh-huh. Yes, I see. Yes. Um, thank you."

In between the pink line and the vestige, I will admit that I had plunged into this experience far more enthusiastically than I'd expected (and, truthfully, more than I knew was prudent). My pregnancy seemed to repudiate the recent losses I've suffered--namely, Mom and my best friend, D.J. I felt triumphant to have unwittingly generated a new life with Pete, exactly nineteen years after we had done so with Zoë. It was like an oh-ho! to (and from) the universe. Moreover, now that my genealogical family tree is completely filled in--with a passel of ancestors who bore children in their forties, I might add--I felt like my lost loved ones were alongside me, awaiting news.

Physically, I recognized the shifts instantly, and basked in them. Craved cereal and oatmeal and milk, saw my figure boosted (ahem), indulged my tiredness as much as possible, and started changing out the tight jeans on my shelf for the ultra-comfort ones. Queasiness and digestive sluggishness plagued me, but I could live with that ::: braaaaap ::: . Been there, done that plenty. I adjusted my sleeping position for heartburn and started silent communications with the fetus inside, willing it to be strong, welcoming it to my inner world.

Before I saw the OB in November, I'd been impatiently 'net-searching on a stream of keywords: midlife, pregnancy, perimenopause, spotting, progesterone, levels, 5 weeks. Let me tell you, the Web is jammed with voices of moms experiencing every possible symptom and the accompanying waves of emotion and fear. They pose vexing, plaintive questions and other moms find their messages somehow, answer them, or share similar experiences in fellowship and comfort. I never posted anywhere or interacted with anyone, but it helped me immeasurably to visit those cyber rooms and eavesdrop on scores of conversations. I learned a lot about what can go wrong with a middle-aged pregnancy, and about the daily hurdles that many women surmount to bring a new life into the world. 

I knew full well that a 44-year-old pregnancy was practically miraculous, so feeling it coming to an end was a little less poignant than it might have been if I wasn't so blindsided in the first place. Of course, I already have four sweet children--with four birth stories to match. And I never had such doubts shadowing me during any of those pregnancies. This time, I couldn't throw off the black cloak of worry--until I miscarried.

It took awhile after the OB's diagnosis for the actual miscarriage to happen. I'd been spotting pretty much the whole time, but our childbearing machinery must be hardwired to hold on for success against all odds...it was blunted to the signals of non-viability for much longer than I would have anticipated. But I was equally fascinated by the unceremonious reversal of those familiar symptoms that caused me to reach for the home pregnancy test in the first place. One day you're subconsciously guarding a bump as you squeeze between a chair and a bookshelf; the next day your jeans fit better than they did before, and so does your bra. Just: over. 

I miscarried without complications. I went into an odd mini-labor at dinnertime, a few days before Thanksgiving. I found myself restless and irritable, and even a shower did not warm my clammy skin. And then I had a few stark contractions, which felt very strange: reminiscent of earlier pregnancies, and yet totally alien. One of the labor pains made me grip a chair as I stood in the kitchen. In hindsight, why was I so surprised? Well, the answer to that is simple: I had no idea what to expect. All the reading, all the worrying...I just didn't know. The OB had no advice for me, because it's different for every woman.

About an hour into the mini-labor, I delivered my non-viable egg intact, as well as the tiny placenta, then provided those to my doc for analysis. (The pathologist deliberated over some possible complications suggested by the samples...finally, a few weeks ago, those issues were ruled out. More Web-cramming, followed by a bigtime whew!)

As December began, I walked around emotionally numb for awhile, and then as the holidays cranked up, pulled myself into now. For awhile, my usual tears about Mom's unfair absence (typically prompted by music, which squeezes me in a vise of nostalgia and regret) mingled with spasms of mourning for a tiny almost-life, and for a cascade of emotions that I never expected to have again.

Today's Web deliberations signaled to me that I haven't lost that insistent inner voice that was really pretty excited about another child, another new experience. All the rounded stomachs I saw online made me keen, a little, with wishing and hoping. (Call it uterus envy.) But the realist in me read each of those celeb captions from a distance, and paused at the mom's ages. Read them, absorbed them. They are each younger than I am. 

I don't envy them their youth; I am happy with the stage I've reached. But I feel a funny tug, knowing that for a little window of time, I stepped back into their realm of fertility. Perimenopause has not overspread me yet. Regardless, as Peter said to me with evident relief as we drove away from the OB's office, "We're not going to do that again."

His cloak of worry had been cast aside, too.

Accelerant

I have a lot of friends with kids. Sibs with kids, too. Only here's the thing: Peter and I were pretty much the first among us to have a child. So I feel compelled to share with you all that I am currently in the throes of what feels like a solar wind (you know, that phenom of waves that engulf the Earth and cause Northern lights?) Like, a momentary swirl of energy that seems to be changing everything. And in my case, accelerating it.

I have a son who is taller than me. He's grown 6 inches in 6 months, blink and you'll miss it. I just flipped through a bunch of photos I had posted on Facebook, and in none of them is he taller than me (or his older sister, for that matter). Suddenly, now: young man. Will shares a bunk bed with the thankfully-still-small Des, and when I go in to check on Des before I go to bed...there's this hulking guy whose feet don't fit in the lower bunk! Ack! Oh. Right.

Then there's this college business. I know, I wrote about this before. I've written a lot about Zoe this year. But from the slow, tortuous agony of getting applications in and visiting campuses and whatnot, I find myself the mom of a young woman ready to go to the next stage. She's not chomping at the bit, nor is she packing yet (she's my daughter, after all). But I tell you she is ready. Composed, whole, and so prepared to immerse herself in art-making and learning. This summer, she's juggling two jobs. In light of my own work-juggling life, this means we are the proverbial passing ships. I'm shaking my head because, again, it's as though a wand had been waved. Swoosh! Presto-chango.

And about those two youngers who are perpetually called youngers? Lydia is getting astonishingly tall and self-confident. She is comfortable with herself. I find myself wondering now whether that is the quality that sent all of her care providers into a she-needs-to-be-tested mode. She's just not like any of her peers. Never was, never will be. And as she ages, she inhabits that knowledge beautifully. There's awkwardness about her, don't get me wrong. But I am filled with pride at her emergence.

Desmond is still my "huggy!" guy. Unlike the others, his growth spurts have been modest (although size 6 pants are waaay in the past now). When he hugs me, he's still at my waist. His tangle of curls is right at the level of my hand to tousle it. He loves it when I do that. Still, stay tuned. The potential energy in him is vast. :)

I am changing, too. (That's the understatement of the year.) It roils me and thrills me. But as with the Northern lights, my bursts of color and creating feel as though they are out of my direct control...they're happening because they must. Also, to complete the family-unit analysis, none of my life changes can occur without the complaint-free adaptations of Peter. He is demonstrating grace and quiet support that I have seen many, many times: with my grandfather; in the labor room; during Mom's illness (and before it became obvious); pretty much every day, dealing with an absorbed, spacey, enthusiastic, broody wife. Peter = rock. I learned that in CCD, and it's still the truth.

Manifesto

Page one: I am a mom. I look at any one of my children and my heart immediately fills with warmth and reaching, nurturance and ridiculous pride. This particular page has been written four times, in the whirling effort of labor and delivery. It was forged under fluorescent hospital lights, where a tone of worry and protectiveness was overlaid. It drives me like no other compulsion. On a weeknight, weary from the working world, it pushes me to stand at the stove, and when my children eat with gusto, this page’s work is momentarily done. It is the hunter-gatherer seeking affordable clothing that will be just cool enough.

Page two: I am an authority figure. More to the point: I’m like a football coach. In my head at all times is a game plan for each child (maybe not with all those x’s and o’s and arrows—though it would be cool if their lives were diagrammable like that). Strategy, rationale, the urgent need for success: all of these are in my mind with every parental mandate I deliver. And I’m not an easy coach, I know that. Sometimes my dictates seem far too frequent and pitched for my liking: I mean, fussing over fourth-grade homework assignments? Page three (see below) really does not want to care whether a kid achieves dominance over tricky mathematical word problems. Lord knows I never did. But it’s all part of the plan, isn’t it? What gates must my child go through before s/he can be deemed whole, successful, ready for adulthood? Which scouts does s/he need to impress? Which linebacker might take my child down? (See, this is where the football analogy may crumble, because I can’t say for sure if linebackers are those massive tackle-delivering guys, or what.)

 

Page three: I am a friend. Each one of my children’s faces inspires automatic, companionable devotion. I pine for their happiness and their satisfaction, and above all—because this is a guiding principle for me—I want them to seek joy and eschew strife. I love spending time with them as a friend would—you know, at the beauty salon with a daughter; at a museum with a dinosaur-loving son; on a train with every one of them (because we’re all train geeks). I love that we laugh at the same goofy things. I love that my iPod reflects their musical tastes as well as mine, and that there’s more overlap there than I ever imagined possible. I will offer advice as a friend whenever and however asked. I believe that each one of them knows this, but I understand that not always can they take me up on it. So in a sense, this friendship has vulnerabilities and potential pitfalls, because rejection is entirely possible. I am not deterred.

 

Page four: I am a writer. I watch the lives of four young people take shape, emerge, shift and grow, and as with everything else I encounter (literally), I am constantly taking notes. These people fascinate me. I know the genetic legacies they’re carrying—the personalities and appearances that resonate up from previous generations—and I’m just watching it all unreel with amazement and interest. The previous pages all lean on this page, though. They demand that I attempt to intervene and help lead these four stories. And with tearful intensity, they desire a happy ending for each. I wish they understood that once I sit down to write, I have no idea what will happen to my characters.

 

Page five is the person I was before these children were born. Before I met their father, even. It’s less a page than it is a film of places, people, times, and motivations that are quaint and nostalgic, now. The ill-starred fashion choices! The bumbling attempts at romance! The conversations with people I don’t see anymore! In a number of cases, in fact, those people are dead now, and I’m left to change and adapt. Thus, all of the above pages now lack the backup of some of my closest advisers and loved ones. I am forced to draw from reserves of strength that, in my youth, I had no reason to believe I would have.

 

All of this reflection has been prompted by a rejection letter from a college to my treasured oldest daughter. Every page of my being is challenged and affronted by this turn of events. Even more so, because the college decision and its implications for my daughter’s future—well, it’s not my game. It’s hers. I have to sigh and hope and believe (and I'm experienced in all of these). But there are tears in my eyes, regardless.

Proud

Yesterday was one of the proudest days of my life, both maternally and personally. Let me explain....

This weekend, I am a con mom. I've traveled to Boston with Zoe as she makes her debut at the Artists Alley of Anime Boston (http://www.animeboston.com/)--a huge annual gathering of the tribes (i.e., tens of thousands of costumed, role-playing aficionados of Japanese manga and anime, 98% teenaged). Artists Alley is a selling-place for amateur artists, and Zoe has been working for months on her wares...posters, buttons, postcards, all featuring her art. Yesterday morning the piece de resistance arrived here from the printer's: Mahou Shounen, an actual 20-pp booklet (she calls it a mini-manga) with her own original story, characters, and inventive, accomplished artwork. The moment that we huddled together over the box and extracted the first book is engraved on my memory. (I meant to keep that first copy, but later on I showed it to another con mom in the hotel elevator and she bought it on the spot!) So we finally have a published person in our family. Self-published, in this case, but that doesn't detract at all from the achievement therein...and in fact, it allowed us a great deal of quality control and editorial say-so. I'm so proud of my artist-girl!

Originally, we were planning to send Zoe down here solo. This past week, though, it became abundantly clear that mountains of details and the heft of her baggage were going to defeat that idea. Hence, my (expensive but necessary) presence in Boston. While we are plunked right in the middle of the city's tastiest retail district, I really wasn't looking forward to a weekend of H&M envy (you know, that wistful cruising through stores whose merchandise is priced above my head and sewn below my size?) A little pre-trip websurfing, though, reassured me that I would have another option: the New England Historic Genealogical Society is a few blocks away from here.

So I spent yesterday afternoon in my element, idly paging through dusty books in search of nuggets. To access this library, it's most cost-effective to join the Society, so I signed up onsite for an annual membership. (Speaking of proud, this means I'm now a member of two noteworthy genea-orgs...the other being the Association of Professional Genealogists. Ooh, I quiver just writing that!)

I perused books and basked in the researchiness of it all, then came back to the hotel. After awhile, I logged onto the NEHGS' website to look over their databases, which the membership coordinator had mentioned to me earlier. Turns out that therein lurked the final pieces of my most resistant genea-puzzle: the early marriage days of my great-grandparents, Blanche Guillotte and William Paquin. Peter has brought me to so many town halls and archives trying to recapture the stories of their lives...but this was a "brick wall" with shame and discord for mortar, so breaking through it has been near-impossible. Their daughter, my Auntie Winnie, sat with me for an interview 10 years ago (which I blessedly have on tape), but she remembered little of the father who'd abandoned them, and the mother who did the same by tossing her five kids into orphanages when money got tight. Winnie gave me surreal half-tales, and I've spent the ensuing decade giving bones to that flesh, slowly but determinedly.

The NEHGS database brought me closure, as I finally, finally found Blanche and William's marriage record (under William's alias, William J. Benson), and then, amazingly, the birth record of their first child, a stillborn son, two months after the wedding day. Winnie remembered hearing about that son and even visiting his grave as a little girl, but she knew nothing about when or where he was born. Well, the "when" is actually a key part of the story, for he was obviously conceived out of wedlock, and he was born and died, tragically, on Christmas Day 1908.

What bitterness and grief did that engender? How did such a horrible loss on a usually joyous holiday mark Blanche and William for life? And did it feel, deep down, as though their union might be cursed? because from that point on, the stories I've heard suggest that it was.

In a brief blog setting, I can't begin to tell you the sadnesses I've discovered on both sides of my dad's family. Untimely deaths, poverty, alcoholism, thwarted dreams, loveless marriages. But I can tell you that I have been driven, urged, pushed to seek and find. I realized fairly early into this that no one else in my family was going to be able to find the facts and stitch the quilt. I don't mean that to be self-aggrandizing; it's just that for most of my life leading up to these discoveries, I've been unwittingly assembling a series of skill sets that I now can deploy to find the answers. Somewhere inside me, I know now that that those answers want to be found. Last night's puzzle pieces convinced me of that. The ancestors speak, many genealogists say. They guide us. What I would add is: They want us to know them and understand them. To tell their stories. Their sadnesses and life lessons must never be for naught.

I am proud to know them.

Mothering

Motherhood is on my mind. Perhaps a ludicrous statement coming from a mother of four...but mostly, my mothering is instinctive, without forethought or deep reflection. Well, I'm deep-reflecting because my dear friends Doug and Bridget have just welcomed little Jak-Jak into the world, and coincidentally, I spent hours yesterday flipping through stacks and stacks of old photos. (Remember those? Those slippery rectangular paper moments, shiny in the light, that require some sort of clear-paged album to gather them into a chronology?)

To flip through photos in this house means to revive babyhood for four distinctive personalities. You end up looking at these baldy little people; only their eyes and the occasional familiar facial expression belie who they became later. But of course, beyond that, I'm emotionally yanked there for each picture: The sleep-deprivation. The joy of their first communication (each of our kids first said ahhhh-gooooo before anything else). The ceaseless teething. The napping-on-my-shoulder. All the feedings (cumulatively, I breastfed for nearly 6 years).

Of all my kids, the last child summons the most immediate set of memories. Perhaps that's an of-course thing, but I'd like to use that immediacy here to evoke what it feels like to be a mom. Because I don't often write about it (see above...instinctive.) And because I love my motherhood, every day.

In hindsight, I guess it’s good that I wasn’t fixating on Desmond as my last baby when he was an infant. Because, truly, that thought never entered my mind--and I’m glad, because it might have distracted me from the heady, commonplace joy of mothering him. That rush when I lifted him up under the arms, and his hands and arms reached and circled upwards automatically, so that he could embrace my neck and hold on with chubby hands. That mutual move, of course, leads directly to the baby’s head being right near your face, so you can breathe deeply and take in the intoxicating scent of his softsoft skin, the halo-fuzz of his baby hair right against your nose. Meanwhile, his angled legs and toes in footie pants bounce and kick against your stomach gently. One of your hands is clutching stretchy terry that covers a clowny, plastic-diapered bum. The other feels his shoulder blades, the hollow of his back. You are all protection at this moment: a tiger with a gushing full heart.

When you look at his face, he has the tiniest mouth you’ve ever imagined: an ooh shape that you must supply with milk--and in these early days, the next meal always seems to come sooner than you were expecting it, which keeps you dizzily unhinged from routine and reality. After three breastfed babies, my fourth presented some unique issues. Let’s just say that my feeding vessels were extraordinarily out of size-sync with his wee hungry mouth. Thus, feeding Desmond was a daily ritual of initial searing pain and calming-down gradually; multiple times a day, for four months straight, until I healed and toughened.

Never once did it occur to me to connect the pain of feeding Des to him, personally; nor to give up this wacky breastfeeding idea and go for the instant, mutual gratification of bottles. Never once. It may be that, buried deep in my subconscious, I did know that this was the last hurrah for my feeding capacity--which had served everyone so well for a decade that I wanted to let the glands do what they did best, like a thoroughbred. Plus I adored the flow of communication--that’s truly what it is, silent communication, an exchange of needs and warmth--that occurred between me and this baby.

Des adored it, too. Clearly, any early challenges with his feeding did not affect him. In fact, he refused to have anything to do with any other mode of feeding than me, for almost a full year. Never did a bottle make it past his clenched lips; he wouldn’t consider it. And then, even as solids and sippy-cups dribbled into his life, I remained his go-to for two more years. Sure, it dwindled to just morning and night. No, he never asked for it by name in public, ever, or hoisted my shirt or pointed. But I knew when he needed it...and somehow, he knew I still needed it, too.

At intervals, seeking to be practical, I took "weaning vacations" of 3-5 days’ duration (and if I thought my feeding vessels were sizable before, those vacations swelled them into boulders). Since I went on actual trips--the only way I could break the feeding patterns--those ended up being my first adventurous forays away from home and family in four years. Felt great to tentatively reclaim my identity, but a low buzz of distraction persisted throughout each trip. As soon as I returned home, set down the luggage, and hugged everyone else, Des and I would sit down into the nursing posture (because, according to the clever books, this was the ah-ha moment that I would say, “Sorry, honey, Mumma’s milk is all gone"). I’d brace myself for that inevitability--his disappointment, my apology and the hug that would follow it. Then Desmond's head would cradle against the inside of my elbow, and--shazam!--what?!--a meal would be there again! defying any engineered attempts to alter the timing of weaning.

A few months later, Des’ nursing ended without any fanfare at all. No efforts on my part. Just: done. I believe it was a Monday night, just before bed. He wriggled in my lap in his blanket sleeper, newly turned three, and his eyes looked up and confronted me. He did not angle his head to nurse. He smirked a tiny bit with that familiar mouth. Yup, I get the message, Des. And no boulders afterward, either. So we were both done. Painlessly.

I can never fathom where the years went, between the suspended-in-time early months of Des’ life, and the backpack-toting blond wonderment who clambers onto the bus every morning. But when his gray-blue eyes assess me--when we’re talking or reading or getting pajamas on, and our eyes meet--it’s all there. The connection. The gratitude. And things that don't change, in the midst of childhood growth spurts and inevitable transitions: boy to bigger boy.

Ravel

I stole this picture of my mom. And many more like it...I confess. Of course, "stole" is in the past tense, because once Maryann had passed away, I inherited all of her memorabilia. But this one I extracted from her New York apartment before she died, spiriting it back to my home base in the Maine woods so that I could scan it very large, and absorb it. Mom wasn't fond of my obsession with the leavings of her life--I memorized her high-school yearbook as a little girl, I pored over letters and Christmas cards she'd saved, and I burned the chronology of how she looked year-to-year into my mind. I know she thought I was odd for wanting to know so much, and for craving nostalgia from her that did not exist. One of the greatest arguments we ever had, actually, was sparked by my interest in family pictures. She raged at me that I must be crazy wanting to have all those faces up on my walls at home. (Don't worry, her counterpoint never swayed me for a second. It wasn't the first time that our opinions had been so diametrically opposed--no, I had invested decades in doing the opposite of whatever she would.)

 

This photo lived in her professional scrapbook: an imposing, black-covered, slippery-paged tome that was filled with press clips, telegrams from Broadway openings, 8x10 glossies, and other showbiz detritus. Undeniably, my mother was the least glitzy performer ever. Just look at her up there: she dressed beautifully, I'm not saying that, but look at her posture and her expression...and her nimble, blurred-in-motion hands. It's all about the music. Maryann did not get into playing piano for fame, fortune, or even attention. I'm not sure she even got into it because she wanted to. I believe she began to play piano because she was compelled by a powerful, overwhelming blend of innate talent and deep-seated alienation from the people around her. That doesn't differentiate her from other musicians, I'll grant you--but it sure as hell sets her apart from most people's mothers.

What did she hear in the music that she created? And what of the music that others performed, which she owned in recorded form and treasured? I wish I could ask her, but even if I did, she'd shrug off the question or give me a filmy half-answer. Mom was not a music librarian or completist (that was my rubric), but when she loved a performance, you can bet you'd be hearing it over and over in her household. Fats Waller. Count Basie. Oscar Peterson. Jimmy Smith. Ella Fitzgerald. Peggy Lee. Her chronology, her nostalgia was aural, rarely visual or verbal.

Another thing that set my mom apart from other mothers was her propensity for keeping me awake late. Jazz musicians are nighthawks; thus, much of the musical education she imparted to me was shared long after my peers were tucked in with a teddy. We went to Broadway shows, my dressy patent-leather shoes sliding on red carpets and giving me blisters as we searched for our seats. Sometimes we went to clubs or smoky restaurants to hear one of Mom's old friends play.

Even at home, she would wake me from a sound sleep and implore me to come into the living room to hear something. "You have to hear this, Nessa," she would say. "Listen. Do you hear it?" While her career had largely been forged in jazz, the music she woke me up for was invariably classical. I can still revive my feelings of grumpiness as I shuffled into the dimmed living room, wincing at whatever lamplight there was. "Do I have to?" I would whine, but she ignored me. Respighi, Stravinsky, Ravel...swirls of intoxicating, cascading, now-dissonant, now-resolved orchestral pieces. Romantic--I should say so, to the extreme. Completely contrary to my mother's everyday demeanor of distant practicality. As I snuggled alongside her on the sofa, leaning in a desperately sleeplike posture, she would regale me with stories of the composer's visions whilst writing the piece. She would also describe the revilement of contemporary audiences when some of these pieces debuted. How these composers were misunderstood, untouchable, way ahead of their time.

I remember Daphnis et Chloe most vividly. I never could catch the gist of the romance Ravel was depicting in this piece, no matter how many times Mom explained it. Instead, while I sat there, I was tugged by two distinct emotions: admiration for my mother's full-hearted bliss as she experienced this lush recorded music, and embarrassment that she was so ridiculously fond of it. The music seemed somehow maudlin and unseemly to my kiddie mind. I wanted to feel the swoops in the pit of my stomach as the crescendoes rose and burst, but this extravagant expression of prewar beauty was beyond my ken.

I wonder now if my parents had listened to these classical pieces early in their own romance, before things turned sour and negative. Tucked onto her single-mother sofa, was she revisiting snowy Montreal, the cosmopolitan isolation booth of a city that hosted their few happy years as young marrieds? Was that why her classical listening sessions were dampened by tears, always?

I can't play an instrument. In fact, I resisted Mom's attempts to teach me piano rudiments because I felt above those single-note lessons. She, in turn, steadfastly refused to flip past the first pages in the book, to see if I was somehow more gifted than the average student. I needed a solid foundation before I could start really playing, she insisted. I needed to know which keys were matched to which fingers.

Wasn't gonna happen. I'm too much of a free-associating creative type to follow the marching ants of sheet music. But I did inherit one shining thing: all of my memories are swathed in music. I find artists who speak to my sensibilities, and I return to them again and again. The past is brought vividly back as I listen, and every chance I get, I will see those performers in a live venue.

Yeah, sometimes I cry, too. I apologize to my embarrassed 6-year-old self whenever that happens, but I tell myself: I'm powerless. I can't help it. Give in.

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." --Igor Stravinsky

One year ago

Exactly one year ago right this minute, I was in the Boston Greyhound station, impatiently waiting for my connecting bus to New York City. Frantically rushing to my mom's side, because after a few uncertain weeks of tests and questions, the doctors had finally honed in on ovarian cancer as the cause of Mom's illness. The oncologist was due to visit Mom the next morning at 6:30, and I had to be there. Science writer, daughter, friend, I had responsibilities. 

My bus deposited me at Port Authority at 4:30 a.m., and I snagged a taxi uptown, dragging a suitcase that was weighted with the uncertain length of my stay. Mom had already apprised the Lenox Hill security staff of my unusual arrival time, so in I went at 5:15, when the hospital was still and gray with dawn.

Thank God I got there when I did. Other than some annoying symptoms, Mom was fully herself. She'd been crossword-puzzling, watching the city from her windowside chair, chattering with her roommate about the other people on the floor, red hair as resplendent as it could be under the hospital circumstances.

She waited for me expectantly in her chair. I'll never forget the sight of her leaning towards the door, her face yearning. I was yearning too. As we hugged, her mother-scent enveloped me and I felt young in a heady moment. That was all too fleeting, because with the arrival of the oncologist, I became mastermind interpreter and keeper of the medical details...roles I held firmly, with fire in my eyes, until the day she died.
 

That day came too damned soon. The woman I first saw at Lenox Hill, while slightly impaired physically, was cognitively and emotionally my mother. However, once chemo treatments began, everything about Mom faded and paled...except for one thing: the keen, unbearable pain. Soon she would never sit in that windowside chair again. Soon she would require a walker to get from her bed to a commode. Soon she would not be able to get to the commode in time at all.
 

I did not intend for this entry to become a catalog of Mom's illness, because having lived it, I would just as soon erase it. An impossibility: I will bear the images, the memories, and the extreme emotions of those three months forever. But what I was trying to convey was the rapidity of my mother's decline. Bizarrely, in the midst of it, each day crawled, twisted, and distorted. However, with that year thankfully in the rearview, I now find myself stunned at how quickly Mom's sickness became a life-threatening wrestling match. And how stacked against us it all was--when I was in New York, that thought truly didn't sink in. I pushed every resource at the fight because I believed.

 

I am a fan of believing. In fact, despite the overarching, soul-threatening suckiness that was 2/05-2/06, I remain an optimist. Kind of my trademark, I guess. And it's exactly what Mom wanted from me: not only in the hospital, but throughout our entwined lives. Hard to convey what a profound realization that is for me. Makes me cry, surfacing it.

 

When this blog began to take shape, iTunes tossed this song at me. It says absolutely everything that I'm feeling on this unwanted anniversary (not to mention the wrenching minor-key accompaniment). 

 

Hello, how are you.
Have you been alright,
through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights?
That's what I'd say, I'd tell you everything,
if you'd pick up that telephone.

 

Hey, how you feelin'?
Are you still the same?
Don't you realize the things we did, we did
were all for real--not a dream,
I just can't believe
they've all faded out of view.

 

Doo wah, doobie doobie wah, doo wah doo lang
Blue days, black nights, doo wah doo lang
I look into the sky
(the love you need ain't gonna see you through)
And I wonder why
(the little things are finally coming true)

 

Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time, I'm living in twilight
Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time, I'm living in twilight

 

Okay, so no one's answering,
Well, can't you just let it ring a little longer, longer, longer....
I'll just sit tight, through shadows of the night,
Let it ring for evermore....

 

Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time, I'm living in twilight
Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time, I'm living in twilight

 

From 1982 on, my relationship with Mom was primarily conducted by phone, pretty much daily. We were each other's checkpoints. 

First Mom blog. My friends, this is a huge milestone for me. I miss her to the point of tears every day and had begun to fear I'd never get anything said. Muse, inspiration, whatever it is...now I know the words will come. The other thing that Mom always expected of me.

When you least expect it...

...grief.
 

I was sitting in a work meeting this afternoon, when suddenly a poem took full shape in my psyche. Just like that. I scribbled it in the margins of my notes for the meeting (looking officious for a few moments, I'm sure). This poem says so much to me—I mean, its substance is what I have been feeling for months, but could not quite get my mind to say. Well, my mind found the words. And my heart felt them as soon as they arranged themselves.
 

Intensive Care

I touch the scarf
and I'm at your bedside
where I knitted it—
fluorescent, persistent
hospital light
machines that beep and flash
hours of uncertainty—
while flowing through my fingers
pure soft real wool
a strand to the outside world
forming warmth
in honor of
the warmth of you,
now lost

NBR 12/30/05

She's Leaving Home

I'm standing at the sink by the window, filling a pot for pasta. As the water swirls against its silver interior, I realize how shiny and new-looking it is—that's because it was my mom's. I immediately think how grateful I am to have it...and then I realize that Mom's pots were cleaner than mine because I left home, and she didn't cook so much after that. And then my brain perceives the song that's just started playing on our stereo: "Matte Kudasai," by King Crimson. Lyrics:

Stand by the windowpane,
Pain, like the rain that's falling.
She waits in the air, Matte Kudasai.
She sleeps in a chair, in her sad America.
When, when was the night so long,
Long, like the notes I'm sending.
She waits in the air, Matte Kudasai.
She sleeps in a chair, in her sad America.

This song is mournful, plaintive, meditative, just nails everything I was feeling at that moment. And even more so, in that King Crimson's Discipline album is a total relic of the year I left home for college. It was the music of that autumn, thumping out of every stereo in the co-ed fraternity I joined. And there again, the frat was my first real break from the tumultuous home life I'd known before. I found acceptance as just me, not New York City me. I actually forged a more comfortable identity because I had that place and those amazing friends to guide me. It was not a typical frat: we were largely brainiacs with a thick streak of partyer woven in. Many science geeks (who were really cool underneath that stereotype, and I bagged a few besides); a couple of disaffected jocks; at least half a dozen writers; a significant number of Mainers; people who could discourse for hours about the plight of Wile E. Coyote or what made James Joyce's Ulysses worth reading.

Astonishing how music yanks you right to a time, place, and set of feelings, whether you knew that journey was pending or not. In fact, Pete put the Crimson on before I started cooking, so I was unwitting. And BTW, if you're dismissive of the notion of prog-rock, if it seems stegasaurean and ponderous...well, it's a lot more rhythmic and emotionally accessible than it seems. I wouldn't have gotten through my teen years without it.

Turkey Grease

This was a week with much thanks to give. My father-in-law is recovering from major (mostly successful) heart surgery—and my mother-in-law is recovering too, in her way, from the shake-up of her partner's illness and reemergence. Meanwhile, Pete, the kids and I met our newest family member: 3-month-old Alex, son of Pete's older brother Dave. Then Pete and I saw a hottttt John Mayer Trio show at the Bowery Ballroom, two years to the very day since our first JM show at Madison Square Garden—and got to hang out with JoAnn, Jocelyn, and other friends old and new. We spent Turkey Day with my brother's family in NJ, and his m-i-l cooked a feast for the 7 kids and 8 adults in attendance (it even included octopus and ham!). I was immersed in city life for a few days, which is a great reminder of who I am fully (since I am of NY), as well as why I have embraced the northlands. I mean, America! All those lights ablaze at all hours! Multitude of vehicles, bigass stores and restaurants everywhere, crisscrossing routes all to get you from A to B, constant flow of people on the sidewalk! And Asian cuisine abounding, which I ate at every opportunity. (Fave restaurant name on this trip: Yum Mee.) Maine is radically not like that.

Still, America's a nice place to visit, and we all did, happily. 

 

BTW, hooray for hotels with floaty down pillows and duvets. Ahhhhhh. I don't even have those at home!
 

Came home tonight to relieved cats, crusty snow on the lawn, and a cranking furnace (another thing to be thankful for). Not to mention the excitement of getting back on the 'net after a week—where I found that one of my cousins had sent me precious scanned images of my mom as a girl, pics I'd never seen before. I received them on what would have been Mom's 73rd birthday.

And that was the other blessing about being in the city—I felt Mom's presence there, in the glittery, boxy buildings at night and walking the sidewalks of Herald Square in the wan sunshine. One night last week, actually, I dreamt I saw her again...I was incredulous, and she was nonplussed (classic Mom). We talked, I took her hand, and I really felt her clutching my hand in the dream. God, it felt good, familiar—reassuring.
 

Yes, thanks. And thanks again.

Thoughts After a Stressful Day

I don't know what I want. A new mother, swamped with responsibilities and saddled with work so that our family can keep its collective head above water, I just don't see where my wanting things makes sense.

 

Occasional whiffs of wants pass me almost constantly. They're tantalizing, and they make me ache and yearn, but they vaporize immediately. The baby fusses, or the phone rings, or the magazine I've been reading fitfully forces a different world-view on me...and those dreams, thoughts, ideas just float off, defeated.

 

And in retrospect, when I try to excavate the day's assemblage of wants for my husband (who probably fears for my sanity when he sees me lying in bed at impossible hours THINKING without resolution), the list I begin to renumerate sounds absurd and trite. I want to write books for a living. I want to have my own business instead of being at the mercy of a mercurial, imposing boss. I want to be home with my children where I belong. I want to continue to have the freedom to cook fabulous meals for my family (which I've been doing, as a balm, ever since my maternity leave began). I want to be the person I was once, who believed in herself, trusted in others, and wasn't afraid.

 

And that's really it: I'm afraid all the time. Bolluxed by fear and paralytic with uncertainty. Too many competing elements in my life; they overwhelm my inner urges and squelch them utterly.

 

Meanwhile, like clockwork, my breasts ebb and swell with my daughter's meals, and I continually anticipate those respites with relish. My kids, worn with the changes they're going through, try to make the bus every morning, tired and sluggish, infuriating their dad. Their dad, my husband, wants desperately for our household to return to a semblance of predictability: financially certainly, but also the basic functions of schedule and emotional stability (what we had of that, anyway). And our new family member, Lydia Frances, demands so little and gives so much to all of us. She is in no way the cause of the juncture I've come to. She is only part of its emotional urgency.

 

I can only sigh, reviewing this mental landscape in which I dwell. I don't imagine there's anything I can do to assuage the malcontent I feel. I can shrug it off quite frequently, buoyed by interactions with others, but it always returns, like an incoming tide encroaches on the sand. No amount of "spontaneous" consumerism can defray the feelings; no amount of talking it through can answer the questions. And nothing gets written. This last phrase is the neat, strong summary of what is wrong.