peevish mama

I just spent the morning carrying my laptop from room to room as I made pancakes, got the kids ready for school and tried to clean up for the painter. Do yourself a favor and watch or listen to Bruce Springteen’s keynote speech at SXSW when you can stay in one place. Make some meatballs and enjoy an hour of the funny and self-deprecating Boss dishing music history, anecdotes, jokes and adolescent angst all interspersed with a little illustrative singing and guitar. Bruce is a silver-tongued wordsmith and his drippy hot descriptions of doo-wop alone, are worth the listen. Hard work, grit and caring too much are what have made him a titan. But he sure doesn’t act like one. He’s easy and cool. BY FAR the most riveting hour of video I’ve seen all year. What a guy.

This article in the NYTimes was a good reminder to put my money where my mouth is, and force the chore issue in our house. I’ve been semi-decent at teaching my kids to “help themselves” mostly because I’m a worn out husk of a mother most days. I have long abandoned the notion that turning myself inside out to help with every little thing makes me a better mother.

Yes, I am lazy, but I do also believe we aren’t doing our kids any favors by rushing to help them at every turn. I still make their school lunches, but I haven’t put frozen waffles in the toaster for months. I’ll still pour the milk in the cereal for Devil Baby, but only if the carton is too full for her to do it herself. I only tie skates and cleats for the youngest. Unless it’s dangerously cold, I don’t even nag about wearing a coat anymore.

But I realize that teaching them to help themselves is actually a separate thing from teaching them to help me – and I’m failing miserably at the latter. Right now I’m staring at a muddy yard covered in the white fluff of a disemboweled stuffed lamb that Foxy went to town on. I sent the girls out to deal with it yesterday and frankly, they did a terrible job. Finger pointing, and so and so not doing her share ended up in exactly nada. They came into the house in a swirl of muddy shoes and loud recriminations and I let it drop. Because it was easier.

Earlier in the day, I had found myself picking up handfuls of disintegrating dog crap out of the garden because Saint James didn’t do it on the last cold day when I told him to. He had picked up a fair amount, but again, the complaints about it being stuck in the snow and impossible to pick up got him off. And it it got me elbow-deep in warm, wet dog shit. Was it easier than listening to Saint James gag and whine? Arguably.

How can I expect them to do anything for me if I don’t even make them finish the things I have specifically asked them to do for me? As the article points out, parents have no one to blame but themselves for this. I cannot expect that my kids would have any clue of what needs to be done around here, and even if they did, that they’d have any sense of responsibility to pitch in, if I’m not putting this into play in a more consistent way. Helping to set and clear the table just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Watch out, kids! Mama’s got a bee in her bonnet.

How could I not? Doctor Dash and I travelled to the ‘Lou for a quick 24 hour get-away to see Radiohead and dip our toes into the lives of our dear friends, Dolly and Soul Daddy. Radiohead is one of Dash’s favorite bands, and so, by virtue of exposure, proximity, osmosis and all the rest, one of mine too. He’s the one who spearheaded this adventure, however, and for that, I am grateful.

Not only did we get to have our minds blown by one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, for realz, we got to do it as two little anonymous people in St. Louis, swallowed up in collective adoration of the band with their very cool, happy, energetic fans. And not only that – this complicated, heady, loud, bad-ass show was sandwiched between lots of beers and laughs and nibbles with Dolly and Soul Daddy. We got to love up their kids, peer around their cute house, perch at their kitchen island and listen to their tunes, while they kept us fed, hydrated, giggling and on-schedule for the show. It was a blast – as lightening quick of a frolic as is humanly possible, with as many words stuffed into 24 hours as humanly possible, but so very satisfying for every little corner of my heart. The shimmer lingers on. (As you can imagine, I was swooning during the entire show, but I swooned particularly deeply when they played this song. I love it so.)

Oh, my friends, prepare for the prick of tears under the bridge of your noses.

This project by Lauren Fleishman is so beautiful. In Love Ever After, she documents Brooklyn couples who have been married more than 50 years. It’s the sweetest thing. The one that kills me is the little old man who says: Now I’m going on 88. My wife is 85 and I’m only wishing for another 5-6 years of life. That’s all we want.

I wonder – if you have lived a life so full of love, is it possible you are satisfied, filled up, complete, when you reach the end? Wahhhhhhh.

I wouldn’t be able to pick a favorite Stevie Wonder song, but this one makes me want to groooooove. Looooooove. Happy Monday, people. All I do, is think about you.

Dessa wrote an insightful, smart op-ed piece in the Strib a few days ago, and though I’ve long known that she’s wise beyond her years, I have to admit I was chastened and a little humbled to read what she wrote.

Dessa takes on misogyny in rap – she challenges the pervasive attitude that disrespect to women is part of the genre and that if you don’t like it, you aren’t hip hop. She’s measured and reasonable, by her own admittance no girl scout in the profanity department, and she knows of what she speaks. She’s a rapper.

Reading, I realized that I have been way too cavalier about some of the music I let into my house and my excuses are vast.

1. My kids can’t really hear the lyrics and if they do, they don’t understand. This is ceasing to be the case, at a breathtaking clip. I know this.

2. The songs are “tall tales” – hyperbolic work that’s not meant to be taken seriously. Some of this stuff is so over the top, so gross, it’s funny. I’m not a prude (about words), I swear like a trucker, I appreciate a clever turn of phrase, a naughty line. Is this any different than some of the stuff Martin Amis writes? Charles Bukowski? Bret Eason Ellis? Norman Mailer? (This list really could be never-ending.) Just because you write it, does it mean you mean it? What of fiction in music? Well, arguably, if your audience is young and impressionable, it doesn’t matter if you really mean it. And in hip hop, it’s not really presented as fiction. Or is it?

3. The women being objectified aren’t real women – they’re somehow made-up women, hip-hop mannequins. So vastly different is their experience from mine, I was missing our basic glaring commonality: that we’re women. And more importantly, that my daughters will some day be women. And debasing any woman, debases all women.

4. The beats are just so good. That’s how they get me. Every. Time.

So am I going to stop listening to hip hop? No. Will I make my kids stop listening? No. Will I be more thoughtful about it? Yes. Will I point them in the direction of better, truer, hip hop – songs with stories and heart? I have and I will continue to do so. That’s easy, with neighbors like Doomtree and Rhymesayers.

Thanks Dessa, for the reminder. Nothing like learning from your minors.

Tonight, crossing the tall bridge at Bryant with Foxy Brown, I glanced down and saw a couple standing on the bike path next to the creek. I looked away, then looked back. The girl flung her arm up in the air and I saw the flash of her phone as she yelled up to me: WE’RE ENGAGED! WOOOHOOO! You know the woohoo that I mean – that sound of exultation that’s unique to American girls, who grow up to be American women and never stop making that sound.

I stopped in my tracks, my mitten at my chest and gasped as the words registered. Engaged! One woohoo deserves another, and I let one fly. Woohoooo! It drifted down to them like a blessing. Congratulations, you guys! You made my night! I yelled as I walked on. Thank god I had decided to take that bridge. I grinned at the girl’s need to shout it from the rooftops – her tall man by her side, thanking me quietly, sheepishly.

And maybe it was the fresh air, or my new furry girl who I love so much, or the fact that I was on my old street, but I started to cry. A burst of tears I didn’t see coming, left as quickly as it came. They weren’t tears of sadness or tears of joy – they were tears of just so much. So much has happened since Dash and I got engaged in my little apartment at 37th and Bryant. The wedding, the babies, the fevers, the jobs, the moves, the birthdays. Life. So much. Life.

And this little couple, getting engaged on a warm leap year night by Minnehaha Creek. Little do they know. It’s just so much.

Hold me closer tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway.

Simply because, it’s simply the best. Lost my wits when the band played this on Saturday night at our school dance party in the gym. Thank goodness Dash was close at hand to contain me and spin me around a bit. God, I love this song. No one does it like Elton, though I must say John Frusciante does it pretty fucking well. A little Chili Peppers for fun. 

Poor, poor peevish, I feel like I’ve been neglecting you in favor of writing about soup and more insultingly, your sexier, flashier cousin Spectacular Bitch.

It’s going to take me a little while to figure out this writing gig. Traditionally, I have not been a big computer person. I never got sucked into the hours of surfing the web that gripped so many of us in the early nineties and never let go. At work, I’d call my mom or a friend or page through a fashion magazine if I needed a break. I never turned on the computer at night unless I needed to check the movie times. I was blissfully free and I didn’t even know it.

How times have changed. I’m juggling just a few different writing projects, but I find myself on-line, or at least on-laptop for WAY more time than I’m used to. And it doesn’t feel good in my body. I feel cloudy, groggy and all around nasty. I don’t like sitting still. I don’t like staring at a screen. I don’t like feeling gross.

I suppose I should have thought about this before I started writing. But here’s the thing. I love to write. I love this little community of readers. And peevish mama is very, very special to me.

With your patient and willing ear, you helped me create a habit of writing things down. This is a place where I can stash my thoughts and the shiny pebbles that I happened to find scattered around in my real or virtual life. It’s a place where I can work through the highs and lows of parenting a young family and of being this very strange age that looks like adulthood but feels like adolescence.

I’ve hit rough patches and lean patches and cuckoo-in-my head patches with peevish mama before, and I was able to write myself through. Maybe I can do it one more time.

So hang with me while I figure myself out. Yet again.

I’m writing a series for my friends at Simple Good and Tasty featuring four soups in four weeks. Soupapalooza, baby. Check it out. This week is a delectable Squash Soup with Coconut and Ginger. In addition to an easy and toothsome recipe, you’ll learn why I tend to become obsessed with soup at the beginning of a new year.

I’m feeling as scattered as chicken feed. I’m woozy and hungover from a weekend away with my increasingly rowdy book club. I’ve got something up my sleeve that I’m getting ready to spring on the world. I don’t seem to have time for anything these days. And I’m kind of in love with this lanky red head. She’s a cerebral fashionista and that’s not even what she really does with her life. Cool chick. And in addition to the aforementioned, I’m saaaaaad we got shut out of tix for her April show. Sniff. OK, back to scattered life. Maybe after listening one more time.  

Thank you to Nanook who sent me this blog post by Glennon Melton, a mommy blogger who blogs for the Huffington Post. She takes a stand against the carpe diem ethos we live in. She holds up a stop sign to all those well meaning people who tell us to enjoy every minute with our children, that it all goes so fast. But my favorite thing about this post is that she reminds us of chronos time and kairos time.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain, back from the époque of Birkenstocks, flannel shirts and Liberal Arts, I felt a little shudder of recognition. The ancient Greeks had two words for time and the distinction between the two is just so beautiful and true. Chronos time is chronological time, schleppy time, regular, minute-by-minute make the lunches, find the mittens, check the backpacks, drive to soccer time. Kairos time describes those moments outside of time, or in between time, when time stands still, something special happens and we see it – really see it.

We can’t live in kairos time all the time – that’s our lot as humans. But the striving for it, well, I think that’s our lot too. And our blessing. Sometimes we are bowled over by the kairos moments because they are huge and life changing. Take the first time you see your baby. Time stands still and every fiber of your being is attuned to that moment. Your focus is absolute, unwavering and yet effortless. But what about the quiet, small, maybe even imperceptible moments? Perhaps, by holding these two concepts of time lightly in my palms as I go about my day, it’ll help me to make sure I don’t miss those sneaky kairos moments that could so easily slouch by hooded by annoyance, inattention or concentration. Perhaps, the more limber we can be by moving between the two types of time, the more we will see with our hearts. And maybe it isn’t even about seeing the kairos moments, but about recognizing them when they happen.

This morning in chronos time:

7:30-9:30 I worked the concession stand for the school basketball teams. Friendly chatter with the other mom, busy hands making popcorn, coffee, setting out the chips and candy and Gatorade. Sneaking sips of my own coffee to try to shake off the tiredness. Dash arrives with the rest of the brood in time for Saint James’ game and I join them on the bleachers barely noticing that Supergirl has taken a seat behind the concessions table, ready to sell.

This morning in kairos time:

I glance out of the gym toward the concessions table and Supergirl is sitting with her hands on the box of money. She is wearing a fox hat, Carondelet tie-dye shirt, green jeans and snow boots. The second shift of concession workers has arrived and as some mother whom I don’t know is taking her coat off in the kitchen, Supergirl, with her hand still on the money box, quite literally, gives her the total stink eye. You see, my girl has always loved commerce. Ever since she was tiny, there was nothing more exciting to her than using real money to buy a real item. Shifts be damned – there was no way anyone was going to take her seat. I chuckled to myself, turned back to the game, and slipped back into chronos time with barely the flutter of an eye.

 Resplendent in yellow, I love Nina singing Ain’t Got No – I’ve Got Life. This version is almost downright kicky, a perfect dose of sunshine and self-love for this Martin Luther King Day. And that dress? I want it. Enjoy. She’s incredible, isn’t she?

I love this lady. I aspire to be this lady. Bring on the pink Mary Janes and culottes. Last weekend My Little Spring Roll talked me into going to what is basically a spinning class at our yoga studio. I had seen this class on the schedule, but truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have tried it but for the dangling carrot of some time with my friend. As I huffed and puffed and giggled at her attempts to tilt her bike with her tiny little body, I thought to myself: how lucky am I? At this point in my life and where I live, I am absolutely surrounded by women who love to move, who love to try new things, who love to laugh and break a sweat. I’m a yoga girl, and usually a solo one at that, but lately I feel as if not a week goes by without a text or email from someone enticing me to go for a walk, go to a hip hop class, go snowboarding, go to a dog park, go dancing. (Oh, the dancing. Fountain of youth, right there). Lady Tabouli has even taken me for a steam with the Jewish old ladies a couple times. Divine! I’m friends with more than a few crazy triathlon gals, but they know not to come a knockin’.

As I grapple with what it means to be over forty, I can’t help but think about the state of my body. Not necessarily because of how it looks, but because of how it feels. Or how I want it to feel. Those days of college dieting and forcing myself to the gym are a distant memory and shit, good riddance. Now, I’m grateful to have the time, the means and mostly, the health to be able to move my ass. We exercise for ourselves, and for the selves we will be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years. We exercise to figure ourselves out, whether it be a piss-ass mood or an eternally tight shoulder. We exercise to find our bliss.

My friends, I’ve been trumpeting this for a while, but I’m officially putting it out there: I am all about the limber. Limber body = limber mind = limber heart. See an adventure with your eye, say yes with your mind, chase it with your body.

What are the chances Pinky Tuscadero up there isn’t one happy old biddy?

Much thanks to all you movers and shakers. You inspire me.

Where have I been people? I’ve been in Florida visiting my parents with the kids. I got to see Maestro de Bife before he goes to Australia for a year and got to meet his very sweet, very cool lady love. An extremely enthusiastic thumbs up from the peanut gallery on her! We had warm days and cool days, but the sun was always out and we got our injection of family and Vitamin D. Despite the long walks, the great meals, the beach with its constant source of peace and treasures, it was an odd week for me.

My heart kept flying back to Minneapolis. I would be squinting up into palm fronds dancing beneath a blazing blue sky, but my thoughts were with the people in the dark and muddy north. For starters, Dash and Foxy were at home, so there was that feeling of being slightly off kilter that comes from the family not being whole. Then there was the fact that Lady Tabouli and Lady Doctor Poodle’s mom died in the wee hours of the new year after a very long, hard battle with ovarian cancer. As I got to enjoy my mother, bustling around, doing the things she does, I wondered about my girls and how they were faring in Chicago at the end, but in some ways at the beginning, of a very hard journey. On top of that, I heard of Jack Jablonski’s spinal cord injury almost immediately after it happened through the Carondelet grapevine. A sophomore in high school, an alum of our little grade school, he was horrifically injured during a hockey game and will likely never walk again. It seems he may not even have use of his arms. It is heart breaking. It is a tragedy. There aren’t words for this. Again, thoughts of Jack’s parents, their utter agony, kept my thoughts pinned to Minneapolis. I still cannot stop thinking about this boy.

So for this belated Music Monday, a little something from home, from the place that preoccupied my mind when I was far away. Howler is a young band from the hood whom I had heard on the radio but was hugely surprised to see featured on Rolling Stone’s website. Go little dudes! They are darling and, in my opinion, quite good. A couple days before we went to Florida we had a small dance party with some families and after the tornado of goodness had passed, Saint James and I were lolling on the couch thinking about all the songs we wished we had played. It was late, we were tired, but there we lingered, luxuriating in the glow of the Christmas lights and the silently spinning disco ball. Can you find that song by those kids from our neighborhood? he asked, apropos of nothing. Ah, he had heard rumors. I grabbed the laptop and we watched it together, his head on my shoulder – a perfect ending to a perfect night.

Here’s a small reminder that at any one time, in any one place, there are myriad stories unfurling: endings, beginnings, heart break, triumphs and everything in between; a reminder that, for better or worse, the world just keeps on spinning. Enjoy. (And notice the basement of Java Jacks.)

It feels specious to say Happy New Year. But, what else is there left to say?