Then and Now

My baby is five today. At 7:22 (her exact birth time...freakishly coincidental), I opened my eyes and was transported back to the hospital where she was born. While a cliche, in some moments it feels like lifetimes ago, yet in others it happened only yesterday. But here she is, several feet tall and mouthy and funny and a little person in her own right. She reads chapter books and uses multi-syllabic words and can entertain herself for hours without needing much from me at all. And I love it. This age of her burgeoning personality and strength of her moral character. This age when after witnessing an injustice on the playground, she goes to the little boy who is crying and comforts him with a few words and a gentle hug. This age when she questions everything and still believes I have the answers. It's a heady time for a mom. It is.

For me, celebrating this milestone with her is fraught with emotion. Most of the images ingrained in my mind of her first few days are shadowed with the fatigue that permeated my every pore. I was so exhausted and hormonal, the days passed in a blur. One, however, sticks out clearly. I was in bed, still in the hospital, and holding her close. I looked at her soft little head and the tears welled in my eyes. As they dripped down my cheeks, I looked at my mom who was sitting across the room and said, "if anyone ever tries to hurt her, I'll kill him". Even today -right now as I write this - the protectiveness that overcame me in that moment still makes me cry. And I'd still kill anyone who tries to hurt her.

Beyond these memories and emotions, thought, lie others that are accentuated with question marks and nuance. Five years ago I never expected to be here - a single mother once again responsible for ...well, everything. Or maybe in some deep part of me I did. I don't know anymore. In many ways, I don't recognize the woman I was then. And in other ways, there are parts of me who nostalgically wish I were still more like her. Still willing to live a simpler life. Still willing to demand less of myself and others. Still willing to fall asleep (or awake at 3 am) without writing a list of unachieved goals. But I'm not. I'm someone else now. A more authentic self. A stronger self. A more interesting self. And I'm learning to recognize her. To like her - so in another five years when my daughter is ten, I'm not looking back trying to figure out who I am but instead looking forward...or even better - standing still in wonder at how fulfilled my life is.

It's Festival Season!

One of the reasons (and there are many) I love Chicago so much in the summer is its range of summer festivals. Go here and here to see festival guides.

Me? Mother of the year?

Ok - this is cute. A friend of mine had this video made for me by Momsrising.org. I love it!

Randomness on a Tuesday

I proctored exams for my kids today, and I thought it would be fun to write down the thoughts that crossed my mind while doing so. As you can see, my eloquence wandered along with my attention.

It's the isolation that invades my mind. Like an insidious inky substance, the darkness spreads over the light. At midnight and again at 3, I lie awake. Empty. Lonely. The sheets are chilled; the body heat of one can only spread so far.

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I went a bit crazy, I think, when we parted. Undercurrents of anxiety, ripples of confusion, the incessant seeking of a truth I still don't see- a truth I can only feel. I feel it in the same way a victim senses danger before a crime occurs. I reached out, sometimes blindly - sometimes not. Always hoping, needing, wanting to be heard. to be seen.

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I've written of synchronicity. Does it only manifest as a mirage? Or can it withstand the tearing of daily being? Can a coupling that holds the comfort of home sustain itself despite reality's dissonance?

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My child. She who is mine yet not mine because no child of the Universe ever belongs to another. My love - the purest embodiment of love I know. She is energy and wicked sharp and good and soft and all heart. That she has a life now of which I'm only half aware leaves me aimless. Her images, her world seem too young to belong solely to her. Like a phantom limb, I sense her everyday. Every minute.

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Red cowboy boots should be required footwear with school uniforms.

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Brain sex: better than physical sex?

Home. Community.

"We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place
half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time
to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with
passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of
hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will
celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can
be free."-Starhawk

Home. Where is it? What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Is it fluid like ancient rivers that flow for centuries, or is it unchanged, firmly entrenched in the crevices of our memories? These are the questions I've been pondering (again) as I weeded through the stuff of the past ten years of my life, discarded what I could, and moved what I felt worth keeping into a new place. So. much. stuff. And all of it attached to images, smells, feelings that surprised me with their intensity and intimacy and emotionality - and yes, their pain, too.

So many nights recently I've sat in front of a cabinet or open drawers and sifted through the forgotten contents inside. I read letters from my great-aunts full of old school advice (have sex every day; freshen up and put on makeup every night...um...ahem) and wishing me luck and happiness with my marriage and in my life. Like my baby were still wearing it, I unearthed and cradled the outfit she wore home from the hospital; the booties and tiny hat caught the tears sliding down my cheeks. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped the wedding photos in plastic and packed them away - unwilling to spend any time trying to recognize the people in them, trying to remember what they were thinking. what they were hoping. I gave away vases, silver platters, wine glasses, and cake knives engraved with our names. Wearily, I packed china and crystal and linens and all of the other fine things young brides desire but never quite getting around to using (except my grandma's china: months ago, I decided I was going to use it as my day-to-day set and enjoy it, damnit!). Annoyed, I waded through the endless clothes and the mounds of toys. So. much. stuff. Then lovingly, there were the books. Absently, the cd's. Mindlessly, the files. I tossed bags and bags and bags of trash, and I gave away a pile to the Salvation Army so large it almost filled my empty living room. And then I looked around at the vastness. The beautiful place I called home - my favorite space in which I've lived thus far in my life - and for just a moment, I wanted to surrender. To throw my hands up and tell whomever it is in the Universe listening in times like these, "I can't do this."

But I didn't.

Instead, my little one and I are safely ensconced in our new place, which being the home of one of my best friends and her girls, isn't new at all. We are starting to build our own little community, our own little female circle where as said in the quote above, "there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats". There will be arms to hold me when I falter, and my own will be open to catch them when they do. I'm thinking this new life, this next phase - it will be home.

Will I Get There?

I love this poem, A Woman Alone, by Denise Levertov. She makes solitude sound so seductive; I wonder if I'll ever get to this place.

A Woman Alone

When she cannot be sure
which of two lovers it was with whom she felt
this or that moment of pleasure, of something fiery
streaking from head to heels, the way the white
flame of a cascade streaks a mountainside
seen from a car across a valley, the car
changing gear, skirting a precipice,
climbing . . .
When she can sit or walk for hours after a movie
talking earnestly and with bursts of laughter
with friends, without worrying
that it's late, dinner at midnight, her time
spent without counting the change . . .
When half her bed is covered with books
and no one is kept awake by the reading light
and she disconnects the phone, to sleep till noon . . .
Then
self-pity dries up, a joy
untainted by guilt lifts her.
She has fears, but not about loneliness;
fears about how to deal with the aging
of her body—how to deal
with photographs and the mirror. She feels
so much younger and more beautiful
than the looks. At her happiest
—or even in the midst of
some less than joyful hour, sweating
patiently through a heatwave in the city
or hearing the sparrows at daybreak, dully gray,
toneless, the sound of fatigue—
a kind of sober euphoria makes her believe
in her future as an old woman, a wanderer
seamed and brown,
little luxuries of the middle of life all gone,
watching cities and rivers, people and mountains,
without being watched; not grim nor sad,
an old winedrinking woman, who knows
the old roads, grass-grown, and laughs to herself . . .
She knows it can't be:
that's Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby from The Water Babies,
no one can walk the world any more,
a world of fumes and decibels.
But she thinks maybe
she could get to be tough and wise, some way,
anyway. Now at least
she is past the time of mourning,
now she can say without shame or deceit,
O blessed Solitude.



h/t to Mata of Time's Fool for the reminder of this poem in her National Poetry Month postings.

Giggling

If you want to, go to Postcards From Yo Momma. So funny...