peevish mama

Doctor Dash and I have developed an informal way of sharing written media with each other. Basically, if there’s a novel or an article one of us reads that the other might enjoy, we stick it on the other person’s nightstand. A few days ago he shuffled the May 18 New Yorker over and directed me to this article by Jonah Lehrer about self control. The article describes a set of studies out of Stanford in the late 1960’s where young children were put into a room with a marshmallow and told that if they didn’t eat it for 15 minutes, they would get two marshmallows. They had a bell to ring if the temptation became too great and they wanted to call the proctor back in to ask for the marshmallow before the fifteen minutes was up. Most of the kids either ate the marshmallow without calling the proctor or stared at the marshmallow for a few seconds and rang the bell. Only thirty percent of the kids found a way to wait out the fifteen minutes. 

The article goes on the explain how the ability to delay gratification is an excellent predictor of academic success later in life – more so than I.Q. Walter Mischel, the researcher, argues that “intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework.” What is interesting is that the ability to wait is a skill more than a natural talent, and the crux of it is the “strategic allocation of attention.” The kids who could wait for the marshmallow didn’t want it less, they didn’t have more will power, they simply knew how to distract themselves. They looked away from the marshmallow, thought about something else, and outsmarted the “hot stimulus.” They figured out “how to make the situation work for them.” When the kids were taught some mental tricks, like pretending the marshmallows were clouds, they all improved their self control.

So of course I’m reading this article with a growing sense of alarm, wondering how my own children would fare at this experiment. When Saint James was a baby I was so besotted with him, so guilt ridden about working, so eager to make him happy and comfortable, that I remember actually running to get him stuff. If I heard him in his crib, I was in there in a flash, lest he experience even a second of anxiety. Obviously, times have changed, as I mindfully try to cultivate a culture of benign neglect in our household. But, really truly, have they changed that much?

Just now, when I sat down on the couch with the laptop to start writing, my icepack on my knee, my coffee beside me, Devil Baby emerged from the basement to demand a snack. I tried to put her off, I tried to remind her that she ate breakfast ten minutes ago, but she is relentless and I am weak. I sighed, whipped the faux fur throw off my legs and stomped to the kitchen to cut up an apple and send her on her way. Saint James never had to wait because I was a fruitcake eager beaver new mother. Devil Baby never has to wait because I’m a fruitcake worn out nub of a mother. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I basically walk around with grease cans in my holsters, quick on the draw because I can’t bear the whining. She comes at me, her round face set in a determined grimace, her little mouth moving in repetitive syllables and I crumble like a house of cards. She’s a giant, bossy force of nature so I pick my battles wisely: 1. battles that are early in the morning before I get too tired from other battles, 2. battles that involve imminent physical peril, 3. battles with witnesses. Any other battles, you’ll pretty much see me getting creamed all over the field by Devil Baby.

So when Mischel queries of parents: Have they established rituals that force the child to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage the child to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile? I simply cringe and add this to my long list of things to “work on.” Or maybe I just fold this into my new slacker mama schtick – I’ll peel up one cucumber slice from my eye long enough to squint out my new mantra: good things come to those who wait, children.  

I think I’ve finally done it. I think I’m finally all out of words. I’m off my crutches and the process of climbing out of my head and back into my enfeebled body has left me tongue tied. Like a kid who used up his alloted amount of tokens within the first twenty minutes at Chucky E. Cheese, I feel slightly bereft, slightly sheepish after my greedy, glutinous spew. During my six weeks on crutches, this blog was my lifeline – it was the only thing I could DO, produce, create.

I am surprised to find myself with absolutely nothing. Nothing. Left. To. Say.

When my world shrunk down to my house, my car and anywhere I could painstakingly get to on my crutches, my mind started racing. I felt chafed by my confinement and the words in my head were my only way to run. Now I can go anywhere and I have circled the wagons tight. I have redrawn my circumference within a few feet of my knee. I focus on watching my step, smoothing out my gait, lifting my way to a normal looking quadricep, taking this knee of mine across the finish line. Also in this little circle are my family and the small stuff of life that needs my attention. The angst, the anxiousness, the twitching antenae, the mental chatter, the monkey mind that drive this blog and usually drive me, seem to have quieted. Peculiar.

Nothing about this experience has been as expected. I thought I would go wild when I got off my crutches. I thought I would be euphoric and bristling with energy. But I find myself strangely quiet. Relieved. Cautious. Sated by the simple blessing of being on my own two feet.

There are 142 crutch steps from the physical therapy office to my car. Not that many. Like a girl with a heavy bag of pennies, I am underwhelmed once I count them out. It is a disappointingly paltry number which belies my pounding heart. But 142 crutch steps take enough time for plenty. Enough time to break a sweat. Enough time to be passed by an old woman with a cane. Enough time to receive a kind smile from John Denver. I know JD is dead. But this was him. Denim, little glasses, bowl-cut of straw. I am not sure why, but he smiled at me today. And I almost lost count.

I promised myself I wouldn’t post again until I could post about something other than my knee, but sadly, I’ve got nothing. My knee still rules. I am its simpering bitch. I pamper it, strengthen it, bend it, medicate it, hydrate it, coddle it. Curse it behind its back.

Here in Minnesota we are breathing in the first of spring – with great inhalations of relief, we are greedy for the smell of green – sweet, sweet chlorophyll. This week has been but a string of days that feel like sun-kissed gifts from Mother Nature. I have taken to sitting in my adirondack chair in front of my house in the afternoons. I feel like a proper invalid from the olden days taking my fresh air, my sun, my constitutionals – minus the white blanket, the buxom nurse and the Swiss Alps in the foreground. I am a feeble convalescent – outside of everything – nothing more than a passive bystander as an orgy of bipedal existence flaunts itself in front of my eyes.

I sit in my chair, my crutches glinting in the grass beside me, and I watch Devil Baby ride her tricycle on the sidewalk. We amuse ourselves by creating elaborate dinners, with her riding her tricycle to the little tree to get each ingredient. Yesterday she went to the “lake” and caught some fish, which I cleaned and breaded and fried in a cast iron skillet. Then she raced off to the little tree to buy blueberries. Then back to get spinach, carrots, cream for the berries, sea salt, a baguette. She is a tireless food shopper. It’s a game – part charades, part pretend, part fetch.

As she pedals away, her little blue rain boots pushing like mechanical pistons, I slip into one of my infamous calamitizations – my reveries of doom. I imagine a rusty van stopping and someone jumping out to pluck my Devil Baby off her red tricycle. What would I do? Normally, I envision leaping out of my chair and running like the bionic woman until I catch the van – my reflexes so cat-like that they wouldn’t have gotten far. I lunge and grab hold of the side of the van, working my arms into an open window while the culprit tries to shake me off, thwacking my legs against the side of the van like a rag doll. I rip off the rear view mirror and bludgeon the driver in the face until he swerves, swearing and crying, and hits a tree. I am thrown from the van, but I jump up and grab Devil Baby from the floor of the back seat, collapsing into the grass. I cradle her, a trickle of blood snaking down my temple, as the camera zooms out and the music swells. Cue the distant sirens.

But now, NOW, I’m on crutches and I won’t be able to leap out of my chair and put the smack down. Now, I must rely on my wits, my keen eyesight. I, who couldn’t tell you the make of most of my friends’ cars if you offered me a million dollars, will have to get my shit together and start to identify all those amorphous sedans and suvs with the precision of a trained detective. 1997 Buick Lesabre. Sage-mist metalic. The brake rotors are shot, passenger side wiper stuck at 30 degrees, I will rattle off through gritted teeth. Crucial, above all, I must memorize the license plate number. Gotta get those plates. Suddenly, it feels irresponsible to be sitting outside alone with Devil Baby and no cell phone. So exposed, helpless. I know every second is critical.

Tick. Tick.

I decide to practice.

Devil Baby is buying a peach pie at the little tree. A maroon minivan snakes by, a bit too slowly for my taste. Downright predatory. Soccer ball decal in the window. Check. I squint into the sun and – Mother Mary – I can’t make out the license plate! I can’t even read it, let alone memorize it, let alone make a lightening quick phone call to alert the authorities so they put out an APB and smack a tail on that van faster than you can say crazy.

So I put my head back and close my eyes, the sun thumbing dancing sparks against my eyelids. I take a deep breath and wait for my peach pie.

Do you remember in the Sopranos when Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri’s wife died suddenly and he couldn’t bring himself to eat her baked ziti from the freezer for months and months? It was all he had left of her – something that had been made by her hands. Tony’s sister, Janice, was tying to move in on Bobby and she forced him to eat the baked ziti – defrosting and deshrining Bobby’s dead wife in one fell swoop. Over the past several weeks I’ve been doing quite a bit of cooking and freezing so we have real food to eat when I’m on crutches. Don’t think I’m not thinking about this scene every time I slap a label on a piece of tupperware. 

You know when you do something and think something’s going to happen and then it happens? Like when you put a glass of milk too close to the edge of the table and you know it’s going to fall, but you blow off your signal and then two seconds later it gets knocked over? Right now I’m in a suspended state of those two seconds because soon, very soon, I will open the cabinet and a wooden box of tea will fall off of its wobbly and precarious perch, and it will hit me in the nose.

What do I do?

Minnesota winters are nothing if not body-annihilating. Who remembers that all those parts below the neck even exist after months upon months of bitter cold? These days my body is just something I skitter around in, crouched against the slashing wind, turned in on myself like a fetus. I am as modest as a nun, cloaked in wool, denim and goose down, murmuring whispered prayers for summer, for warmth. Only yoga and sex remind me that hey, the body – it’s not nothing. 

So a trip to Florida at the apex of this cruelest of winters is a bit jarring to someone of my delicate sensibilities to say the least.  Suddenly, there I am in a bathing suit again, my long forgotten toes pale, squinting and disoriented from the shock of being freed from their SmartWool sock prison. I settle into a lounge chair and stare down my femurs. Hello legs. Long time no see. Mmmm. Sun on skin. No words.

Sunny Florida. But where there is sun, there are old people. Old people in bathing suits.  And in my state of mild body shock, I stare in horror from behind my sunglasses at the parade of fleshly decay and decomposition shuffling around in front of me. All manner of withering appendages and muscular atrophy, spinal curvature and bowleggedness, skin taught and shiny over healed incisions, varicosities branching over the backs of legs like ant trails, skin mottled with liver spots, sun spots, age spots, and flesh – dry and sagging or plump and cellulitic – like topographical maps of difficult and foreboding terrain.  Knuckles and ankles swell, nails thicken and yellow, shoulders yearn to touch each other. The ravages of time. 

It is no small mercy that, for the most part, we do not see ourselves as we walk through this world. 

We are not our bodies. We feel like teenagers and yet the mirror tells us otherwise. But watching all these dear old people floating on noodles and moving their legs in the water, creakily bending over to remove white tennis shoes after walks on the beach, leaning on shopping carts picking precious few items off the shelves, sleeping in the sun with hats or yellowed paperbacks over their faces, I can’t help but think: we are not our bodies – but what are we if NOT our bodies? 

Until such time as I evolve way past where I am right now spiritually, I am struck to the core by how very tethered we are to our bodies. It feels painful and unfair. This is what we’ve got. When this is gone, so will we be. What choice do we have then, but to be kind to our bodies, enjoy them, and hope that they won’t betray us too soon?

When I’m old I will read books constantly. Sometimes I will reread books from my teens, my twenties, my thirties. Suspended in story, wrapped in words, I will find escape from my old age. I will walk and swim as much as possible – hopefully do some yoga. I will talk to anyone who will talk to me. Maybe I’ll get a little dog. I will eat olives and ice cream and ridiculously marbled steaks and fries dipped in mayonnaise and watermelon. I will drink loads of white wine – sometimes gin and tonics if I’m in the mood for a good laugh or a good cry.  

But mostly, I will lounge in the sun. Sun on skin. Warm bones. I will bake my old body in the sun because I won’t care about wrinkles anymore.

And my skin will get as brown as bark.

Uncle. I miss this blog. The little hiatus I’ve taken in order to move the blog has been no good. For starters, there has been a marked spike in my cussin’, notwithstanding my resolution, because I have nowhere to write shit fuck shit ass ho mother fucker piece of shit asswipe fucker jackass dick ass mother fucking mother fucker ass face. It has left me sitting in my hands, feeling helpless and dubious that moving the blog is actually going to work. While Rip Van Techno stokes his mojo to get me set up, I sit around and cheese myself out. And curse.

I’ve had all sorts of time to determine that there is really no point to this, that I am totally full of shit, that my writing voice is annoying and nasally, that I’m a show-off, that my flagrant exploitation of ellipses underscores what a lazy, careless, charmless writer I really am. Gag me with a spoon. Why bother? Why? Why? Trite drivel. Honeyed clichés. And is there, God help me, is there ever any smugness? I HATE smug. It’s really the only thing I hate. And I worry. Was I ever smug? Even for a few seconds? Maybe? Oh God. That’s it. No more. Spare us. Please. Beg. Total shite.

And then Red Vogue sends me an email. A tentacle from across the creek. She tells me she misses my blog. Oh jeez. Really? And then Crackerjack gives me a huge pep talk last night at the bar, only she doesn’t even know it’s a pep talk – I just chug my beer and hear it as a pep talk because I’m such a pathetic desperado. She misses my blog. Really? Oh sweetness, thank you. Because, the truth is, I miss it too.

I had forgotten why I started. I had lost sight of the founding principles. Aim low, sweet chariot – coming for to carry me home . . .

This was supposed to be for me. Not you. It was supposed to be a risk. Not safe. It was supposed to be an experiment. Not a success. It was supposed to be vulnerable and raw. Not polished and perfect. It was supposed to make me write. Not stew and doubt. It was supposed to bring me peace. Not notoriety. I never intended to make you read. I never intended to make this good. I had forgotten that this is nothing. This is a lark. This is a low stakes game – a no stakes game. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a little exercise wheel for my brain. Shallow, silly. A crunchy nothing shell with a creamy something center.

I’m not bombarding you with carrier pigeons clutching my folded up musings. I’m not sending clowns or strippers to read you my thoughts. You come here. Of your own free will. To my messy house. There’s shit everywhere. If you’re willing to pick your way through the garbage, you’re welcome to take a seat on the couch – put your feet up. Move all those toys. I love that you’re here. I cannot express how much. Thank you. I love you. And if it ever gets annoying – if I ever cheese you out – just let yourself out the back.

Yesterday I happened upon the Kite Festival at Lake Harriet. It was about four o’clock, blazingly sunny, bracingly cold, and the sight of an endless blue sky full of colorful kites took my breath away. Apparently, I am incapable of enjoying anything but vicariously, through the eyes of my family. Within seconds I was on my cell to Doctor Dash: Can you bundle up the kids and get down here? This is so cool! And bring the camera . . .

Instead of my customary loop around the lake, I made a beeline for the kites right across the middle. I crunched across the snow, digging the white desert-like expanse . . . I felt under the influence of something . . . beauty, chance, cold, sun, music, whimsy. Who flies kites in the middle of winter? En masse? Overcome, I busted out a few fierce warriors when I got to the middle, my face to the sun.

Fucking ya! I wanted to yell.

I kept walking, utterly transfixed by the kites. There was a huge dragon, a turquoise fish, an enormous striped parabola, an eagle, and countless little kites all with long streaming tails, undulating in the wind. I was listening to Lambchop, and if you’ve listened to Lambchop you’ll understand when I say the kites looked like elated spermatazoa, woozily swimming their way toward a golden shining egg . . . the sun.

Fucking ya! I wanted to yell.

And since apparently I also can’t enjoy anything without my crazy monkey mind plucking the experience right out of the air, tucking it under its hairy arm and running around in frenetic circles . . . I thought: What if one of these kites suddenly hit a rogue current that caused it to plummet and spear me in the cranium? I put my hood up. The headline in the Southwest Pages would read: Mother of Three Killed in Freak Accident at Lake Harriet Kite Festival. There would be all sorts of heartfelt testimony by kite enthusiasts, evincing their deepest sympathies . . . but affirming that kite flying is really one of the safest sports there is. Meager consolation for me, however. And my surviving brood.

I eventually hooked up with Doctor Dash and the kids, but by that time the kite flyers were all pulling down their kites with frostbitten fingers. I was only able to get one picture and it certainly doesn’t capture the magic of a mere twenty minutes prior. I was disappointed that they missed it. We tramped to the car to, me feeling cold, morose, plagued by death.

My first mistake was calling Dash. Why didn’t I just indulge in a little unexpected beauty on my own? Why didn’t I just let myself do that? My second mistake was letting myself get jostled out of the moment by my ridiculous mental peregrinations. Can’t I do anything . . . experience anything without thinking?

Why do I do this? This catastrophizing? This calamatizing? I know I have an active imagination, but this is such an incredible waste of mental energy. Even I, of the relentless inner chatter, realize that. Tomorrow I’m getting some wisdom teeth pulled. I have been putting this off for nine years. I know it has been nine years because I was pregnant with Saint James when I first heard that I needed my wisdom teeth pulled (which wisdom teeth are, incidentally, not bothering anyone, except, apparently every dentist that lays eyes on them). Enough different dentists have told me to get this done that I have finally been convinced that this isn’t just some evil plot to hoodwink me out of my pearlies and my benjamins. This is happening at ten a.m. tomorrow and I am certain I will choke on a piece of gauze and that will be it for me. (Not funny, this has happened . . . to a teenage boy, making it even more tragic, if that’s possible.) I am not looking forward to being sedated and having my mouth mutilated by a man with hairy arms holding medieval torture implements. I suppose I should forgive myself if my thoughts are awash in black right now . . . Just please, no . . . no . . . accidents . . .

Quite frankly, if I had to choose, I’d rather go by way of a well-placed kite to the skull.

I’ve been feeling like I’m walking around wearing one of those huge Russian fur hats, but instead of luxurious warm mink, it’s made of vague, heavy worries.  Part of it is reading Hot, Flat and Crowded, part of it is that you’d have to live under a rock not to appreciate just how tenuous and awful everything seems right now.  

On the other hand, it’s Christmas, and while I know that this is a really tough time of year for a lot of people, I feel really  blessed.  I have three healthy children who still believe in Santa, so it is hard not to be swept along in the magic.  Along with the trappings and stress, there are also some things that are truly simple pleasures – like gingerbread houses and Christmas lights.  Today I opened my front door to get the mail (which I love this time of year) and the afternoon sun shining through the glass door had so warmed our wreath that I was enveloped in the smells of a virgin pine forest.  Proustian Christmas synapses were firing every where.  

And so with the heavy fur shapka on my head, I sometimes feel like I’m getting whiplash from the happy and the sad - the lovely and the dreadful.  Think of the poor Walmart employee who was trampled by overzealous holiday shoppers – that singular event, which I try not to think about, typifies the dark and horrible edges of this time of year – the base, careless and deeply selfish contours of the human soul.  

This morning was the dress rehearsal for Saint James’ and Supergirl’s Christmas concert.  I kept waffling back and forth as to whether I would go.  Maybe I should try to exercise or run some errands instead. Maybe my kids don’t need their stalker/mother beaming at them from the pews every time they turn their heads.   I’ll be seeing the whole thing tonight anyway and I certainly have a shitload to do. But in the end, I went.  I went because it’s Christmas.  I went because, in the grand scheme of things, how many more of these concerts do I really have?  I went because life is short and you never know what lies around the corner.  I went because I heard the kindergartners were going to be wearing angels’ wings.  I went because I needed to be still in a pew more than I needed yet another trip to Target.  I went and I’m so glad I did.

Say what you will about Catholic schools, but they sure do know how to put on a Christmas concert.  The children sing in high silvery voices, their chins raised to catch those slippery upper register notes . . . and it is nothing short of lovely.  They sing of mangers and wisemen, drummer boys and angels . . . the boy child bringing hope, love, peace and JOY!  They sing in German and Spanish . . . there are recorders, french horns, bells and violins . . . and not a mention of presents or toys or Santa Claus with all the price tags sticking out of his back pocket.  Crackerjack and Renaissance Man’s son played a beautiful violin solo with so much more soul than I thought possible from a smiley nine year old.  And I swear there was a part where the third graders started humming and it sounded just like Charlie Brown’s Christmas. 

I sat, and I listened.  I beamed and waved at my kids.  I let the dear sweet voices of the children wash over me. And for a few glowing moments, I felt that all was right in the world.

So I’m reading a book and it’s rocking my world.  Not necessarily in a good way.  It’s making me stressed and anxious – it leaves me fretting and wringing my hands.  My mantra:  we are so fucked – so so so so fucked.

I’m reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and if all of our problems were embodied by a wild boar erratically and voraciously wreaking havoc in our backyard, then Friedman deftly succeeds in cornering, subduing, slaughtering, trussing, dressing, and turning the beast into bite size pieces of wild boar sausage.  In short, he tackles the morass of issues our planet is facing right now and breaks it down in a really compelling, common sensical, and terrifying way.  Sometimes I turn to Dash, wild eyed with panic, my nails white from clutching the book so tightly and he calmly urges me to read on. “The second half is all about the solutions,” he intones, his eyes like slits – a Yoda in my bed.  Solutions?  SOLUTIONS? WHAT SOLUTIONS?  WE’RE SO FUCKED!  SO SO SO SO FUCKED!!!

Basically, Friedman posits that our planet is becoming hot(global warming), flat (because of globalization, technology and the internet, more and more people are able to rise out of poverty, see how “the other half” lives, strive for and attain a middle class lifestyle), and crowded (rising birthrates and life expectancies).  This trifecta of stressors is taking a huge, soon to be irreversible toll on our physical and political planet because of the paradigm that we Americans established for how to live and thrive on this earth: one that is based on the consumption of massive amounts of fossil fuels.  Friedman writes: “In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorships, and accelerating climate change.”  Ay, mamasita!

As always, the devil is in the details and he is able to illustrate each of these problems with such life and color that one is left chilled to the bone.  The tentacles of this energy crisis not only wrap around issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity and global politics – but women’s rights, education, healthcare.  Friedman isn’t an alarmist, though.  This isn’t simply shrill hysteria and hyperbole.  His arguments wouldn’t resonate as much as they do if he wasn’t able to build his case, piece by piece, in the cool (for now) light of day.  I haven’t gotten to the solutions yet, but I suppose there is some small comfort in understanding the scope and details of the problem.  The way it is far better to know it’s a wild boar in your backyard than to just hear mysterious and grotesque squealing and grunting in the night, waking up to wreckage and destruction.  It doesn’t make it any better.  You still have a big problem.  But at least you know what it is.  

Friedman asserts that America needs to take the lead in creating the technologies, the ethics and the systems to mitigate the fact that our world is becoming hot, flat and crowded and lead the way to a cleaner and more sustainable way of living and growing.  It’s the least we can do, considering we are largely responsible for our current predicament.  It would hardly be fair for us to turn to China and India and tell them not to do what we just did.  And it would go a long way toward making us one of the popular kids again.

There is so much information in this book.  It is so important and I so want to understand and get it right.  Aside from: 1.we’re so fucked and 2. at least I know how and why we are so fucked, I am left with my hands clutched at my heart, praying for the one man whose slender shoulders will bear the brunt of this call for change.  It’s beyond words, and I wish it wasn’t so, but you are it, Barack.  It all depends on you.

I won’t even get into the missed opportunities for change and betterment that slipped by in the weeks and months after September 11.  It’s all part if the very intricate jigsaw puzzle set forth in this book.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It is horrifying and fascinating.  It should be required reading for high school seniors – and the rest of us.  Give it to someone for Christmas, then borrow it back.  You won’t be sorry.  Or maybe you will.

As of late, I’ve noticed that the insides of my two front teeth are feeling a little, well, chipped . . . micro-chipped, like tiny slivers of enamel have simply fallen off, leaving them feeling a little rough and impossible to ignore with my tongue.  Of course, because I worry, I worried.  Is it my electric toothbrush, supposedly so forgiving for my gum tissue but perhaps too punishing for my enamel?  Is it my toothpaste? My gum?  Yes, probably my gum!  Trident whitening.  Truth is, my teeth are white enough – I just like Trident and the push-through foil packets. Maybe I need a substitute?  Yes, new gum, definitely.  And then the other day as I’m driving along in my minivan, I reach for my pint glass of ice water and it suddenly hits me.  Ever since I forsook plastic, I’ve been bringing glass glasses of water in the car and every time I go over a bump . . . shit, does it take a genius? 

And another realization from this very evening: I have always always always coveted a huge, throaty, slippery, rich, honeyed singing voice.  A voice with soul and ache that sounds like it has murmured through thousands of cigarettes.  Always.  If I had my pick of Superhero talents, that would be it.**  So tonight I was out with my betties, Nanook of the North, Crackerjack and Birdie for a much needed airing, having a full-on rumpshaker of a good time watching our fave band New Congress.  (En passant, Bunkers, aside from its unfortunately cheesy name, is a fabulous bar on Thursday nights.  It’s big and dark and New Congress draws a really quirky and diverse crowd.  For some reason I can’t put my finger on, silliness and good times always find us when we go to Bunkers.)  So we’re dancing and drinking and watching the female back-up singer and a new girl who popped in for some really sexy, heavy rapping, and we’re remarking how both of these girls, being on the let’s say, curvaceous side, would really benefit from losing the jeans and tight t-shirts and slipping into sexy little wrap dresses – showing a little cleavage, showing a little leg – and then you’re rapping like a bad-ass mother fucker . . . ah, what’s not to love about that?!?!  But they’re in their twenties and Lord knows, it takes some years to figure it all out.  And then I’m telling Nanook, that I’d love to be able to sing and she’s telling me she’d love to be able to rap, and I’m watching these young buxom beauties belt it out and I’m struck by lightning.  The bosoms are actually responsible for the voice!!!  Am I the first person who has thought of this?  It totally makes sense – there’s more flesh, girth, cushion from which to reverberate.  Kind of why a base drum has so much more timbre and soul than a snare drum.  Think about it, can you think of a singer with a really good voice who’s skinny and flat as a board?  Well, PJ Harvey comes to mind . . . Joan Jett . . . but those aren’t the kind of voices I’m talking about.  I’m talking about HUGE voices.  Maybe I don’t want a voice so much as I want breasts.   

*Caveat Lector:  this entry is the product of post-New Congress two o’clock in the morning drunken musings. Only grammatical changes were subsequently made in the cool (painfully bright) light of day.

**Actually, geographical travel in the blink of an eye with the ability to take twenty people would be my ultimate first choice power – super deluxe hotel in Rio de Janiero for Carnivale, anyone?  Sunburnt country villa in the outskirts of Sevilla, Spain (con picina y cocinera), anyone?  Sunset-to-dawn rave in a Moroccan desert anyone?  Tree house eco-resort in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, anyone?  Rowdy Karaoke bar in Tokyo with the Japanese national baseball team anyone?  Deluxe white water rafting trip on the Snake River in Idaho, anyone?  Beautiful chalet in the Swiss Alps for New Years, anyone?  Horseback riding trek through Patagonia followed by a decadent weekend in Buenos Aires, anyone?  You see, this power would not be wasted on me.  Week-long Indian wedding of two huge Bollywood stars, anyone?  Don’t even tempt me to go on . . .

What exactly am I doing with this blog?  I feel as if I am just spewing words into the ether.  I suppose the black background doesn’t help matters.  Words plummeting into a black hole.  Also not helping is the fact that I have no way of knowing if anyone ever reads, except for a few of my sweet friends who, from time to time, reach out and let me know that they do.  I haven’t figured out how to put a comments button or an email-me button on this blog.  I haven’t figured out if I want to.  

The other day my neighbor, who has recently reentered the workforce after being home with her kids for many years, casually mentioned that she googled someone in preparation for a meeting.  I know this is common practice – I’m not that much of a yokel, but it struck a chord in me (a low melancholy one).  If someone googled me, there would be nothing.  Nothing.  I felt like nothing.  At least when I was working you would have pulled me up in Martindale-Hubbell, the lawyers’ directory, or on my firm’s web page.  

And have I googled myself to find out?  Good God, NO!  I am already teetering on the brink of despair and existential dread.  I would probably burst into tears at a response from Google like: Did you mean: Gabriela Sabatini?  Or worse yet, countless entries for another woman with my name, but with an alternate, interesting, exciting life . . . a foreign correspondent, a microbiologist, a ballerina, a large animal veterinarian, an avant-garde chef.  

If the Existentialists are right, and existence precedes essence, then my not existing in cyberspace leaves me feeling like a speck of dust, being buffeted around by the wind, visible to no one.   Peevish Mama exists, and I could easily type my name right here and set down a frail and tenuous root for myself, but that wouldn’t really solve anything.

If one’s essence is defined by one’s actions – how one navigates and acts in this world, then everything I do (and don’t do) in a day, cuts right to the core of who I am.  When I chose to stay at home with my children, I was ecstatic to step out of the rat race, to leave behind the machine, to extricate myself from the daily grind of law and commerce.  My children and my home felt like a haven from all of that stress and nonsense and I craved the comfort and the time and the leisure to simply exist in their presence without producing or accomplishing anything.  And to tell the truth, I worked long enough to know that I don’t miss it one bit.  I chose this life, eyes wide open, after ten years of law firm life.  

But just because one chooses something, doesn’t mean it’s all roses and daisies.  (I fully admit to being a chronic malcontent – that’s sort of my baseline.  But in my defense, I do question, I do wonder, I do try to make some sense of it all and I do try to be mindful of my blessings.  I really do).  It’s just that sometimes, when the only witnesses to your day are babies, you start to feel invisible.  When your accomplishments are intangible and non-detectable on a day to day basis (e.g., happy, well adjusted kids) or edible (e.g., dinner), you start to feel inconsequential.  What do I have to show for this?  I feel like I’m part of a shadow society – like illegal aliens – no one really sees or acknowledges or cares about what I do everyday, yet what I do everyday is essential.  Believe me, I know the comparison ends there.

Few people will say it out loud, but raising kids is a grind and although there are moments of true loveliness that bubble through unexpectedly, most of it is rather monotonous and a bit of a struggle.  It is HARD to listen to a seven and five year old fight all day long.  It is HARD to say no to a two year old when she wants a third popsicle – a two year old who will simply scream “pocolo” over and over and over for however long it takes.  She’s got nowhere to go, nothing else to do.  She knows she has more time than me, so she gets comfortable, throws herself on the ground and from her supine position, yells at me until I cave.

If I had a comments box, someone might write to me in capital letters: THERE IS NO JOB MORE IMPORTANT THAN RAISING CHILDREN!!  I know that, and I agree (at least for myself).  There is no job more important to me, than raisingmy children.  And yet . . . and yet, I can’t help but wonder . . .

Is this blog is my existential howl?  My attempt to bear witness to myself?  Before I disappear?

This morning Supergirl walked down the stairs resplendent in charcoal grey, grinning from ear to ear.  It’s June.  It’s sunny.  It’s hot.  Tis the season for sundresses and tank tops.  But not for Supergirl.  She was happily swathed in grey knickers and a grey skull t-shirt that she swashbuckled away from Saint James the second he decided it was too small for him.  From the look on her face, she was pleased as punch with her ensemble, feeling tough and sassy, at ease and ready to rumble.  She rooted around in the hall closet for her skull Vans and voila, she was good to go.

We’ve entered new terrain, Supergirl and I.  The terrain of mother-daughter sartorial angst.  I am extremely laissez-faire when it comes to her clothes and have allowed her to slowly and systematically reject anything “girlish” in her wardrobe, to opt instead for a steady stream of shapeless t-shirts from various locales visited by both sets of her peripatetic grandparents and a seemingly endless supply of tie dye shirts.  As our neighbor, Salt and Pepper Polymath, pointed out, she has an impressive collection of Ireland t-shirts.  Not really.  It’s just that she pilfered Devil Baby’s and Saint James’ before they even realized they had been given a souvenir.  

Cute little Splendid tanks I got on sale last summer?  Nope.  Winsome white jersey sundress with Chinoiserie florals and drop waist – super comfy, super cool and as un-girlie as a sundress can be?  Nope.  Myriad skorts, sporty yet feminine?  Nope.  Nope.  Double Nope.  I could go on and on – I have cornered the market on comfortable, adorable, tomboy-appropriate clothes, and for a while, it was working.  But now she’s pushing further and I find myself pushing back.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a girlie girl.  I’m pretty low maintenance and although I love clothes and shoes and most of all BOOTS, I tend to end up in a bit of a uniform:  tanks, skirts and flipflops for summer; jeans, thermals and boots for winter.  But I’m all about mixing it up.  High, low.  Girlie, butch.  Dressy, casual.  Ornate, simplistic.  Comfortable, but never too comfortable.  Like any Mama worth her beans, I am willing to suffer (a little bit) for beauty.  

This past spring on Supergirl’s picture day, I experienced the first gusts of these foul winds of change.  I was not attempting to put her into a frock of any sort (like all the other girls at her poshy posh preschool), in fact, I don’t like fancy frilly frivolous frocks.  My girls don’t even wear Easter dresses on Easter!  I was simply trying to get her out of her cargo pants for one day, so she wouldn’t look so danger-grrrrl – so street urchin chic in her picture.  All hell broke loose when I tried to cajole her into wearing a cute t-shirt and a comfy black Hardtail skirt.  This skirt is genius.  It’s tough looking and then it kicks it up with some ruffles . . . but tough ruffles.  She looked like herself – funky and unfussy, but she didn’t see it that way and ended up in a full fledged head under the pillow heavy drama weep fest.  I felt terrible, but it had gone too far for me to cave in.  Something had happened over the winter, right under my nose but unbeknownst to me:  Supergirl had gone uncontrovertably, irrevokably, tomboy on me.  Which is a nice way of saying that she’s dressing really really butch.  

Honestly, I love that she spends 30% of her day upside down and the other 70% swinging, biking, or kicking a soccer ball.  I love that she never went princessy on me.  That she scoffed at Barbie commercials and muttered: “that’s so lame” out of the side of her mouth with the disdainful nonchalance of a fourteen year old boy.  

Sure, part of me wants to yell (and did, in fact yell in a shamefully, hysterical falsetto): “you are so lucky you don’t have an Edina mom!  You are so lucky I don’t force you to wear dresses and ribbons everyday!”  Here’s the thing:  I feel like the leeway I give her to wear what she wants on a daily basis should be repaid with a reasonable degree of acquiescence when I do ask her to pull herself together in a different way.  Like on picture day.  

Or when our lovely neighbors, Red Vogue and Salt and Pepper Polymath, invited us over for dinner.  Supergirl is seriously like best friends with RV and SPP (together, the Onions, because the more you get to know them, the more there is to know, layers and layers of stories and talents, personality quirks and humor, easy, effortless kindness and deeply interesting loveliness.)  I simply wished to impart to Supergirl that it is common courtesy to make a bit of an effort when someone has been kind enough to welcome you into their home and cook for you with love.  That night was round two of our battle and I lost . . . big time.  Not only did she not wear a sundress (she was actually willing to miss out on root beer floats to prove her point), she went home and put on a pair of maple syrup stained mismatched boy pajamas half way through dinner.  Boy did she show me.  

And then I start to wonder: what is my problem with this?  Why do I care?  What does it say about me that this is even an issue?  Do I worry that how she dresses reflects on me?  Do I worry that this isn’t just a passing phase?  And what if it isn’t?  What’s wrong with dressing like a man?  Oh, who am I kidding????  A whole fucking hell of a lot!!!  Did I let this go too far?  Will she ever wear a skirt again?  And as with all my angst and worry, I quickly veer into crazy-talk quasi-prayer mode:  God, if she’s a lesbian, please let her be a lipstick lesbian so we can at least enjoy shopping together!!!

And then that little Frenchman with the butter soft leather kid gloves gives me a little slap slap slap and I come to my senses and realize this:  Supergirl is perfect the way she is and I would be infinitely more horrified if she wanted to teeter around in plastic platform Cinderella shoes.  She’s on the move and she runs with a pack of wild boys who have a few years on her.  She needs to be swift and cool to hang, or she will be left in the dust.  And so she has figured out what she needs for right now.  She plays up, she plays hard, and she plays to win.  If she needs armor for this, more power to her – at least she’s in the game. 

I just need to chill the hell out.

As for Devil Baby, you’ll be seeing her in nothing but skirts and sundresses every live long day until such time as she decides otherwise.  Maybe, just maybe, she’ll turn out to be my girlie girl.

                                                                                    Photo by Kathy Quirk Syvertsen

If one more person makes me clean my house, yell at my kids, yank them out the door and loom somewhere for an hour and then REJECTS this house that I love so much, I am seriously going to lose it.  How can all these people not see what we see?  We bought this house when it was blanketed in vomit-green shag carpet and floral wallpaper.  The kitchen was putrid – plush brown carpet flecked with crumbs from an old man’s lonely dinners, pheasant wallpaper and a big chandelier (if you can call it that) that looked like it came out of Bronco Bill’s Saloon and Whorehouse.  

But we saw.  The house spoke to us.  The land spoke to us.  This is a beautiful foursquare with the stark, simple lines of the prairie, the warm woodwork of the forest.  Its bones are strong – it feels organic yet sturdy.  There are old stories written in the grain of the wood.  The way it sits on this hill is quiet, noble and austere.  You look outside and it’s a wall of living green.  There are owls and foxes, woodpeckers and raccoons.  Minnehaha Creek dips into a deep gorge in front of our house and the trees shimmy and murmur as the water flows on by.  It’s beautiful.  It’s peaceful and bucolic.  The Parkway is like a spine to this city.  You hop on with your bike and you can go anywhere.  

And we’ve been so very happy here.  This is the home of our babies.  Every one of them learned to walk on these smooth wood floors.  This is where they rolled down our hill, ate popsicles on our steps, sat in our laps in Adirondack chairs as we cheered on the marathoners, the triathaloners, the Harley guys, the Vespa guys, the antique car guys out for a Sunday cruise on the parkway.  How many times did we watch the bats flick around in our piece of sky – the space  between our blue spruce and our basswood tree?   The spruce is growing like a teenage boy – when we moved in it was as tall as Doctor Dash, now it’s a towering giant, reaching at least eighteen feet toward heaven.

I’ve cried three times today.  I am so sad and so stressed.  I feel like a desperate impoverished woman pushing her daughter to sell herself.  Go house, please just go.  I love this house, but I need to sell this house.  It’s not about the cleaning anymore.  It’s about not having a home.  We can’t relax here.  We can’t cook big feasts and let the kids run around with cookies and yogurt.  We have no sanctuary, no haven.  My house is a shelter, yes, but it is work to be here.  We have nowhere to decompress and just be the messy, dirty, humans that we are.  I used to love to throw my kids in the bathtub with their muddy feet and hands, watching the water turn brown as evidence of their day of fun.  Now I just think about where I left the Clorox wipes, about cleaning that ring of grunge off the tub before I forget. 

I can’t stop crying.  I am going to flood Minnehaha Creek with my tears because I am truly losing my mind.