Swallow the angst and sing

I'm cooked. Spent. Done. Toast. I got up at 5 a.m. to run 10 this morning. Then showered and shuffled everyone to church, then lunch, then the playground, then the pool, then dinner, then the park, all in an effort to make the day fun for the kids while giving Dad some time to catch up on work. The boy was so jacked up, exploring the outer edges of obnoxiousness as only a seven year old can do. They simply couldn't be quiet to save my sanity.

Sometimes it's just too much noise, shouting, bickering, whining. Too much turning everything into a soccer ball, too many shoes that need finding. It's wet towels and tangled hair and stubbed toes and time outs and talking back.

I wish I could breathe it all in without swallowing so much angst. The impatient words rise in my throat like an ugly belch. I let them rip and feel far more regret than relief.

::

I scribbled the above last night while I was sitting at the park at the end of the day. It's morning now, and in this light, I can look back on the same scenes and see beautiful things. I seem to have slept off the irritation. Calli sits at my feet, straining her ears to hear the geese. (She's always on high alert after breakfast.) The kids are in bed; the coffee's in hand.

With sleep comes perspective; with perspective, gratitude. Once again, gratitude becomes the balm, the antacid, the way to swallow the angst and sing.

Read more...

The Dance (Just Write)

I stretch out my hand, ask him to dance, the boy in the green button down shirt and khaki pants. He has on his "fancy shoes", the ones he asked me to buy so he could dress more like his daddy. I am half expecting him to decline again, to say he's too busy playing with his best buddy Max, or that he'd rather continue the search for wedding cake.

But he says yes, nods his buzzed head and flashes his crooked grin, his two front teeth no longer missing, but not quite halfway in.  I scrunch down a bit, feeling too tall in my strappy wedge heels, and he stands as high as his 48 inches and fancy shoes will allow. We dance like mismatched old timers, dipping our joined hands dramatically. I spin him in, then out, and back we go to making exaggerated motions with our outstretched arms. His intermittent giggling probably has something to do with the silly dancing faces I keep making while I mouth the words to "I've Had the Time of my Life."

And I can't stop smiling. My inner commentary begins: This is what it feels like to be completely happy. You must remember this forever. You have to write about this so you remember it forever. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how perfect this is?

Yes. Of course I know. I know it from the top of my frizzy, rained-out red hair to the red painted tips of my toes. I feel myself floating up, looking down in that weird filmmaker/ narrator way where I see the whole scene in my head, the scene where I am dancing with my son and having the time of my life. 

Read more...

Out-twinkling the angels (Just Write)

Dani, you never met my Grandma, your Nana's mama. You were still growing in my belly when we hugged her last in the shadeless Palm Desert heat. But really, it's not accurate to say we hugged Grandma. Rather, she hugged us. She could squeeze so much love into a single embrace. There wasn't anything frail about her.

She wasn't the sort of grandma who went to the salon each week to set her hair. She was the feisty sort, the one who never wore a skirt, not even to church. (But you'd love her anyway, Dani, I know you would.) I'll picture her forever in a mid-80s puffed-sleeved sweat suit, her black hair ever short in tight wiry curls. She wore freckled skin, just like you and me; and her eyes could out-twinkle Santa's.

She knew what it meant to love people exactly where they were, without demands. She didn't make them move an inch to meet her, no probationary period required. She lived with her arms wide open, reckless with compassion. I've only recently come to understand how much courage it takes to live the way she did--to give the benefit of the doubt so freely, to throw every chip in every time, to love "all in". But I doubt she would've called it courage. She would have tossed up her hands and shook her grinning head side to side and quipped, "I guess your grandma's just crazy that way!"

Speaking of crazy, I should tell you about the time she took my mom, my sister and me to Yosemite. I can't remember how old I was, maybe 10? Anyway, it was snowing up a storm that day, and there was talk of closing the park. But we were halfway from Fresno to the park entrance before we got the warning, and she wasn't the sort to turn back on account of a little precipitation. When the sign popped up requiring chains for further travel, Grandma simply put on the chains, and on we went. We made it into the park just before they closed the roads into the valley. I clutched the inside of the car door and held my breath in fear as we slid and skidded down that steep, switchback of a road. I can't imagine how she even saw the road in front of her with the snow so thick in the air.

We passed one car hanging off the side of a cliff, another wedged into the side of the mountain. When we finally (miraculously) reached the valley, we nearly fell out of the car in relief. We walked a few steps in the direction of Half Dome, stretched our arms wide, threw our heads back and looked at the sky in every direction, watched as Mother Nature sewed the thickest, most spotless quilt of snow a mountain range could wear. Never have I felt a stronger sense of awe and wonder than in that moment, on that day when Grandma and I stood in that silent valley and looked up.

For 88 years Grandma lived this way, undaunted by treacherous roads, unhindered by convention, always looking up. She died this morning, "born into glory", as we crazy Christians like to say. And I'll tell you, Dani, these are the days when I'm never so glad to believe in heaven. I picture Grandma there now--still in her 1985 jogging suit--laughing her belly laugh, hugging anyone who comes within three feet of her, out-twinkling the angels.

Read more...

For the moms who fake it until they make it

This one's for the moms who fake it until they make it.

The moms who trudge, not race, when the six year old cries out at 2:00 a.m. He can't sleep, needs a drink of water, and now he's scared. Will she cuddle? Just for a minute. And only that. Because sometimes even just a minute in the middle of the night feels like too much.

The moms who only grudgingly say yes, you can "help" when the four year old wants to empty the dishwasher and mix the pizza dough. The moms who don't delight when the flour spills everywhere, the measurements are off, and the forks rest where the spoons should be.

The moms who linger at the lunch table long enough to supervise the carrots' disappearance, then sneak off to the computer to read or write for five minutes. Just five minutes! Is that too much to ask?  Apparently it is.

This is for the moms who fiercely love--but don't always like--their children.

For those who know what a gift it is to spend time, to soak in the early years, but don't always like the way that gift is wrapped--in dirty diapers and dishes, in isolated hours of simultaneously feeling like the loneliest girl on the planet and wanting just one moment of peace to herself.

This is for the moms who fake it until they make it.

You aren't alone.

You can be a good mother and not swoon every five seconds at the way your baby's head smells.

You can be a good mother and still jump at the first opportunity to run away for a few hours.

You can be a good mother and still be supremely annoyed when the toddler tosses squash from the highchair, the preschooler whines about the sandwich you served, and the second grader takes an-ever-loving day to grab his backpack and put on his coat.

You might not always feel that "mother's high", that surge of love, the what-I-wouldn't-do-for-these-children goosebumps. You might want to scream (frequently). You might want to hide (often). And you might want to give up entirely. 

But what separates you from a bad mother and makes you a good one is that you don't. You don't give up. You don't let how you feel at any particular moment dictate how you act (at least not every time). You muster up patience. You dig for perspective. And you keep on trying.

You keep on loving, feeding, bathing, hugging, training, cuddling, listening, even when--no, especially when--you don't feel like it. So that when those rare mother's high moments come, when those goosebumps finally rest on your arms--you know you've made it.

You've made it through those long and thorny valleys in between the mountain-top moments of motherhood. And if you can make it there, my friend, you can make it anywhere.


Happy Mother's Day to the moms who fake it until they make it. This one's for you.
::
Since new content seems to be eluding me, I'm reposting one of the favorites from the archives.

Read more...

If a cowbell rings on Jupiter (Listening: 5 for 5)

We were listening to Fiest on
the way to soccer practice (by
his request--because her voice reminds
him of a certain second grade
girl--and he swears it's "nothing
mushy"--but a mama knows a
first crush when she sees it).
And I asked whether he heard
the piano in the song, and
I said he could play like
that someday if he kept practicing.

He said yes, he heard it,
and he heard the cowbell too.
Then he made what was meant
to be a cowbell sound. And
I only stopped laughing about the
cowbell long enough to tell him
you can never have enough cowbell.
(The fact cowbell has been introduced
in music class is just one
more reason to love his teacher.)

Later on, I listened to her,
the girl who doesn't go to
"big school" yet, reciting her older
brother's solar system report in its entirety.
"Lo, one of Jupiter's four largest
moons, has active volcanoes on it.
Jupiter rotates much faster than earth.
A day on Jupiter only lasts
nine hours and fifty five minutes."

So if a cowbell rings on
Jupiter, does it make a sound?

I admit I don't always listen.
I zone, tune out to them
and into my own little world.
But today I was listening. And
I heard enough to keep me
smiling, to keep me singing, to
keep me sighing the thankful sighs.

::

Well, I managed to show up for four out of five in Momalom's 5 for 5 week. That's four more posts than I probably would have written otherwise. And it was kindof, sortof, okay alot of fun. So apparently this will not be the week I give up blogging.

Today I'm also linking up to Six Word Fridays, hence the attempt above to fit what I had to say into six word lines.

So rest easy, Fancy Poetry People.
The above is not, in fact,
an egregious butchering of your fine
art form. It is just me
babbling on in six word intervals.




What are you hearing these days? What sounds, words, songs make you sigh the thankful sighs?

Read more...

On buzz cuts and unforgettable Maine

He'd been growing his hair--straight up--for six months. (See Exhibit A)

Exhibit A

When I took him to get it trimmed last night, he surprised me by announcing he wanted to buzz it again. "Are you sure?" I asked, trying to conceal my delight at the prospect of eliminating his ever-losing battle against bed head.

"Yeah," he explained as the stylist grabbed the clippers, "because I was looking at my old pictures, and I saw how I used to look, and well, it just reminds me of summer in Maine."

It took all of five minutes, and while we looked at the piles of hair on the floor, I asked him whether he felt four pounds lighter. "Oh no. Probably twenty pounds lighter. That's my guess."

"Well, I think it makes you look younger, more like my baby boy."

He swung upon the door and turned to hold it for me and his sister. "Yeah, I practically feel like I'm five again."

::

It doesn't take much, not for my boy, not for me, to be reminded of summer in Maine. The trigger might be a buzz cut, an old picture, or a cool breeze carrying the faintest scent of saltwater. If you ask me, it's unforgettable. But we hold on to plenty of pictures, just in case.

Linking up again with Momalom for 5 for 5. Today's topic: Pictures.

Read more...

Cocoon (Just Write & 5 for 5)

My girl came home from school today with a praying mantis cocoon. I'm told they're good for the earth, eating the "yucky bugs" and all that, but they creep me out to no end. When her brother got off the bus, she greeted him with a bouquet of dandelions, grabbed his hand and ran with him to the shrub where she'd stashed the cocoon.

I heard her say, "When the baby p'aying mantis's are born-ded, they will grow and we can say hi to them EVERY day. So, will you help me think of girl names and boy names for them?"

"Sure," he said.
And then, "Hey Mom, what's for snack?"

::

I wish I could outrun the melancholy, but I can't seem to shake it, not even with a five mile tempo run. Sometimes I wish I could go back, just for a day or two, to being young and idealistic instead of old and jaded. I wish there was room somewhere in a mom-sized cocoon for me to grow into something new and useful and amazing, and just in time for summer.

::

Just Writing with Heather, and using my Words with Momalom's 5 for 5.

Read more...

Around the corner: Confessions of a Changeaholic

"There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner."
-G. K. Chesterton

I scribbled it wide and diagonal across the entire college-ruled page, all caps, all exclamation.

I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT OF HERE!!!! 

It was 20 years ago, and "here" meant a little town not too far from where I live today. I didn't know then what hid around the corner, only that it would surely be better and much further west.  In the twenty years following graduation, it seems only the end of the "I can't wait to..." line has changed.

I can't wait...

to graduate.
to get a "real" job.
to get married.
to have our own place.
for him to get into med school.
for him to get through med school.
for deployment to end.
to start a family.
to quit the "real" (but too stressful) job.
to have a second baby.
to get a bigger place, with a garage this time.
to get through residency.
to get through residency. (That's not a typo. He really did residency twice--on purpose. Because we're seven shades of crazy.)

I am very, very articulate when it comes to lecturing myself about being "all in and all there" in each stage life brings. I am very, very inept when it comes to actually doing it.

And what's scarier is when I read that old journal, the one from two decades past, once I get beyond the cringe-worthy stuff, I am writing about all the same themes. I am giving myself all the same lectures. I am battling the same loneliness, melancholy, disappointment with life, disappointment with people, lofty ideals versus jaded reality, and (drum roll please) the infatuation with what might be around the corner.  I believe we grown ups call this restlessness if we're being kind, discontentment if we're being honest.

We've been in Ohio for 21 months, and we have 16 months left. (Oh lookie there, someone's counting!) And dammit if I'm already thinking about what's next, that blasted corner holding all the possibilities, all the mystique, the key to endless happiness. This magical turn where promise and hope pool, right on the brink of change, it gets me every time. I constantly fight the temptation to wish my life away, to strain so hard to see what's next that I'm blinded to what's in front of me.


But this isn't the way to live, is it? Of course not. And do I really want to waste this year wondering about the next? Not on my life.  So I'll add just one more thing to my I can't wait list: I can't wait until I finally figure this living in the moment thing out.



::
Well look at that, last week I decided to give up blogging, and this week I'm participating in a write-five-posts-in-one-week challenge. As Walt would say, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." (And I would add to that profundity that really, I'm just fickle and indecisive. But the "containing multitudes" crap sounded so much fancier.)

Read more...

Holy Moments

Yes of course it would happen this way. First I say I've lost enthusiasm for writing here and I might never be back. Then not 24 hours later I go to hear Anne Lamott speak, and in her self deprecating way she finds that middle ground of being wondrously inspiring without being even the slightest bit annoying or sing-songy. What really got me was when she shared how her son Sam is so thankful for the book she wrote about his first year of life--that he appreciates the capturing of those "holy moments" in between all the screw ups and mess and disappointments and drudgery.

And now everywhere I look I'm finding more of those holy moments. And more than ever I want to write about them. I want to write about them for these treasured little people who grow exponentially before my eyes, who inhabit these holy moments.

::

Right now, under the kitchen table I see a yellow balloon, a sparkly pink pom-pom, and a scrap of flame-colored paper that used to be attached to a space shuttle made of toilet paper rolls. Out on the dandelion-dotted lawn I see my children riding bikes, weaving through the trees as they pretend to fight the "monkey army."

Today I found myself playing Sorry at 8:00 in the morning. I told my girl we could play a "quick game", but I'd forgotten how impossible it is to throw a game of Sorry. I made all the wrong moves and still, she won by just a few spaces and it took an ever loving 20 minutes. While we played, she told me what titles she would choose for the books she'll write "just like Laura." The first one is "Ohio on the Prairie." The second, "Maine is the Funnest." And finally, "I Love my Parents." That last one is going to be a must read. (And yes, I'm writing this holy moment down if only for the sake of reminding her 10 years from now that she admitted to loving me oh so much.)

Just now, the aforementioned Sorry game winner came in whining about how she has too many things to clean up outside and how her brother won't help. I redirected her to clean up one thing at a time, and she continued to whine. I gave her a choice between cleaning up or going to lay down on her bed. She continued to whine. I moved toward her to "help" her go to her room, and she decided very quickly to go back outside to clean up. As soon as she shut the door, she screamed her angriest, most demonish scream for all the neighbors to hear. I probably won't count that one as a holy moment. (And there goes all hope of her ever finishing the "I Love my Parents" book.)

But putting the appearance of Crabby McScreamerton aside, the past few days have been full of these small, blink-and-miss-it moments, these sacred glimpses that manage somehow to loom monstrously large in the equation of beauty outshines mess. It's a miracle, isn't it, how the ugliness and drudgery and colossal failure diminish in the face of flat-out love?

Holy moments appear even at the pizza place, when it's just me and my girl

Read more...

I'm just not that into this

Things I have enthusiasm for right now:

• reading books
• writing on paper
• running
• zumba
• dark chocolate peanut M&Ms
• guitar lessons
• mojitos
• Pandora channel custom mix: Of Monsters & Men, Vampire Weekend, Rogue Wave
• algebra (did you see that pig that just flew by?)
• making random lists, commas and double dashes

Things I have no enthusiasm for right now:

• reading blogs
• writing online
• flossing
• politics
• bathing the dog
• anything by Bon Iver
• yoga (I've tried, I really have; but it still feels like a chore I do only to stay injury free so I can run.)
• keeping the house clean
• proper punctuation

I left the family off ether list because it goes without saying they are my entire world and can't fit on a list of any kind. And because the things I do for the love of them could wind up on both lists-- like watching seven year olds play soccer (into) or watching seven year olds play soccer in the pouring rain (not into). Or like seeing their massive Lego creations (into) or stepping on remnants of aforementioned Lego creations (not into). You get the idea.

So I have no idea whether I will be gone from here for a while or for good. Or maybe I'll be back tomorrow. (That would be a classic Jo move--to announce I don't feel like blogging anymore and then start blogging prolifically.)

So, what are you into right now? Or not into?

Dollar store easter crap: No enthusiasm
Little boy wearing dollar store easter crap: So very much enthusiasm

Read more...