peevish mama

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?