B. Brooks Blog

Rules

2011-04-19T19:52:00.004-04:00

One of Mark Twain's curmudgeonly snippets of wisdom says "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." From this sort of outlook, I have developed an avoidance for most things that are extremely popular. Books that everyone is reading, the movie that the cute people discuss in the break room, the TV show that people rearrange their schedules to see - are usually ignored.

Certainly there are instances when I regret it. Recently, I picked up my copy of Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen) and began to read it. I came all too quickly to the end, asking myself "Why did I wait so long to read this book?" While I asked, I knew that it was because it was one of those books, the bestseller books, which can be life changing or merely attractive.

Several people have asked me over the past few years if I have read Jodi Picoult's book, House Rules. That is all it takes for me to mentally wave a book aside. At the same time, I had read Picoult's Plain Truth and regard her work with a wary respect. Something about that novel suggested mainstream, lightweight fiction but packed an unexpected punch in its starkly honest characterization.

At work one day, I had asked about the many charitable endeavors embraced by the organization, and asked if a Walk Now event for Autism Speaks might be considered for support. I mentioned that my boys and I usually do the Walk and the director with whom I was speaking offered to lend me House Rules, which is about a woman and her son with Aspergers Syndrome and her son without it.

So far I have read two chapters with more pain than enjoyment. The second chapter, written from the perspective of the younger, neurotypical brother is the one where I left off, that I picked up last night when I went to the Y. My boys had been home for the day on spring break and immediately after I got home began to squabble over an online video game. The younger son, who has Aspergers, slapped at his brother. The elder, more than twice the size of his younger brother, pushed him so that he fell off his seat. The younger then picked up the remainder of his milk and threw it on his older brother, who for reasons unknown had both of the comforters from their beds wrapped around him.

Writing it now, it sounds like a small thing. Taken in the context of a long day at work, in which I had forgotten to take my own antidepressant before work and had just taken it when I got home; the younger son (with Aspergers) had avoided taking his meds; the house is in a greater state of deshabille than usual, as I am ripping out the living and dining rooms, and the ongoing financial pressures of being a single mom... I was ready to ship the kids off somewhere. Their dad's is not an option.

So, I get to the Y with one of the boys, and climb on the Arc Trainer, more than usually ready to berate myself for having gained weight again this year. And I read:

But I'm not allowed to say my life would be easier without [my brother who
has Aspergers] around. I'm not even allowed to think it. It's
another one of those unwritten house rules.

And I think of my two boys and I wonder what are the unwritten house rules that they have learned. While I am wondering, I look up and see that the older son who is very overweight is on a treadmill and he is rolling over the sides of his Converse high tops. He needs better sneakers for working out. I remember working in the pediatric doctor's office a few years ago, and there being a boy who hung himself in his bedroom when he was sent away from the dinner table for some misbehavior (I have often wondered, I don't know why, if the boy had undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome). I think about the need to have them in some kind of structured environment after school, and the fact that I can't afford it. I can't afford sneakers for the son on the treadmill but will have to find a way. I don't know what the future will hold for my son who has Asperger's. I don't want to think about my own future, with a broken marriage to a drug addict with pre-existing mental illness of one form or another.

With some effort, I was able to subdue the anxiety attack and the incipient weeping, grateful that the gasping for breath was perfectly normal for the arc trainer workout. The new rules that I have for myself don't include a prohibition on crying, but limits on it. Crying never changed anything, and looking for sympathy is addictive, and pathetic.

The boys are watching TV right now. New rules, or new practices in this house are going to include more household chores that they can do to contribute to keeping the household going and to use some of their energy. I will keep reading House Rules for now, hoping that before long I will come to the redemptive qualities that sustained me through the violence of Water for Elephants. If they don't surface, I will put it aside.

Rumi

2010-08-14T16:09:00.005-04:00

Last summer, a friend who was moving lent me (and eventually told me to keep) his copy of The Essential Rumi. I was interested enough to figure I would read it one day. There's a pattern in my relationship with books: I acquire or become aware of one, and let it sit. One day it occurs to me to read the book.

The longest time between purchase and reading, so far, is about 10 years. I had bought Beat Not the Bones, by Charlotte Jay, from the Quality Paperback Book club. It had the combined lure of being a mystery, and being about an anthrolopologist. My first attempt found it too dry, and it survived four home moves in a box before I rediscovered it. And loved it.

Wise, interesting friends have posted snippets of Rumi, on Twitter and on other sites that I frequent. Finally, today, I pulled the book off the shelf and began to read. As is so often the case, the book came into my hand precisely when I was ready for it. Rumi wrote on "the howling necessity" and finally I understand, this tendency to do what needs to be done but to bitch and moan the whole way (as a very loving friend has put it).

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

This year, the past few years, I have been on a journey of loving. Committed to one form of love, in which I have worked at a friendship with my exhusband, for the benefit of our children and for his growth as well as my own. I have loved someone else, too, who is not part of my life - loved enough to be willing to learn to love myself better. I have changed because of this love, regardless of its outcome, so it is real. That simple statement comes of many months of struggling with blaming myself for things not going as I'd hoped, living with the tendency I've had all my life to mock myself for imagining something good would come. I am come through that darkness to a place where I can see how much I have grown.

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming
through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don't try to end it.
Be your note.
I'll show you how it's enough.
[Rumi, from "Each Note"]

It happens far too often to be a coincidence, that a book I finally read is exactly on topic for the personal journey I have been taking. I don't know if some phrase from the cover blurb hides out in the subconscious and prompts the mind at just the right time, or if it is a prompting of the Holy Spirit (reading Marianne Williamson's reflections on A Course in Miracles has given me a much higher comfort level with speaking of the Spirit). The Tao puts it simply, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

E.M. Forster wrote, "I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves." Rumi seems to have taken my paths much further, but comes back along them through his writing, to renew my hope and to point me to joy.

Brilliance

2010-08-13T12:21:00.004-04:00

Thanks to Twitter's #haikuwordgame, I wrote a poem today. It's the first in quite some time. Energies seem to have been going to the daily grind, securing a new job (starts in ten days), doing the work of another group in the series at Women in Transition. The words for the word game today are brilliance, night and fragile. I attempted a haiku, then tried gogyohka and finally realized that the combination of words called up something I have finally processed through to its end and needed more room.

Writing through something is always healing. Maybe for a time I didn't want to be healed, I just clung stubbornly to a vision I had. In sharing this draft, I am also posting to this blog for the first time in five months. I would say that I'm ashamed, but I am not. Post-divorce changes, work, parenting and exploring writing in different forms all take time and energy. I commit, however, to posting regularly or to making the decision to close this blog.

Here is the draft (work property of the author):

Brilliant

At last, one night I spilled it all,
and your lips speaking what I spoke
and that kiss, they shocked me.
The brilliance stopped my breath.

You were aware of that, the sudden
suck of air and the fierce joy as you
paused, listening. And I wonder if it was
my intense response that turned you.

The months that followed have
served their own shock, your silence
a ban that speaks shame
into my mouth, where lips met, where

tongue greeted your gentle, testing
tongue, where a sigh took voice
as it rose. Maybe it was too much.
Maybe too much of me repels.

Months of self-delusion have turned me
from myself, as I found one memory
more real than the silence, less fragile
than your arm's grip of my hips. At last

I am able to remember myself without
an assumption of you. Less jubilant
but centered. No memory matters
more than this moment.

Clarity

2010-03-14T13:33:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I think that the past year plus a few months, since a separated from my exhusband, have been a long period of letting the dust settle. I picture it more like mud settling in water, slowly allowing the water to become transparent. "Slowly" is the part I hate. All my life I have been able to grasp concepts quickly, and anything I have to absorb or process slowly makes me crazy (crazier?).

I have used the time to ... well, in large part just recover. It took time to stop thinking a thousand thoughts a minute, trying to make sense of insanity, trying to keep up with everyone's needs. It took time to realize that the only person whose thoughts and judgements need to concern me are my own. In short, it took time to catch my breath and be able to think again.

For a long time, I have known that I want to work on this house, to get it organized and begin to work on painting and other projects. It is hard to imagine that it has taken so long to be able to step back and see what needs to be done and how much of it I can do. It was therapeutic to start working in the old, incredibly dingy bathroom. The day I told my ex that I was filing for divorce, my sister came over to help me start pulling down the weird half-wall covering under the wallpaper. It was a long project, but when I was most unable to think, it was a tangible process assuring me that things really were changing.

Months later, I purchased with new bedding for my room. That was important. A friend has helped me start cleaning. Next will be paint: a job that was looming over me, inconceivable. It seemed there was a sudden break, that I could pick up paint booklets and start to look at color samples on the walls.

The frustrating thing has been accepting that nothing I could do or can do would speed the process. Stamping my foot, trying to be ahead of where I am, tackling projects that I wasn't yet able to see clearly - all just muddied the waters over again. I have gone through small jobs in spurts, like really cleaning out my room then not doing anything for weeks or months (anything apart from daily survival - work, feeding and clothing the kids, getting them to school, still participating in an abuse survivors group, etc.).

Wisdom has been learning to know when to just let it be, and not telling myself or believing anyone else who seemed to think I should be doing more. No one else has had to be me and do the things I need to do. The waters are so clear now, finally calm. I can envision the next things to do in the house and make a plan. I am getting both kids the different supports they need, and myself, too. I have recognized that what I really want to do at this point is not go to graduate school for writing (though maybe at some time in the future), it is to train to do life coaching. I am not certain how I can get that plan funded but at the moment, I am content with the clarity of my vision. Once I can see it, I know that sooner or later I can make it happen.

What Do I Know?

2010-02-22T13:23:00.003-05:00

Most of the writing that I have been doing lately has been on Twitter. It is amazing how much you can find yourself saying, in chunks of 140 characters (or less), especially when you are supposed to be processing invoices for employee benefits. Oops.

Someone had reTweeted information about The Coffee Klatch, a morning chat among moms of kids with special needs. Each day there is a specific topic, most often with a guest expert. Recent topics have included managing playdates for kids with special needs, nutrition for our kids and for ourselves, and relaxation techniques. I started hanging around for the chat, picking up some great experience from amazing women. There have been several topics that relate to raising kids with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, such as my son’s Asperger’s Syndrome, and I have found myself speaking up in the group.

Still, I usually expect to lurk. It surprises me when I have something to contribute. For example, when Lori Lite was recently the guest, the discussion focused on calming strategies for our kids. Many kids, not just with ASD, have issues with getting to sleep or staying asleep, or both. I mentioned that one thing that helps my Peanut is the use of a weighted blanket, and I was asked to explain a little about that. Kids on the spectrum often have some form of Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD (which still makes me think of Power Rangers, though my kids have been past Power Rangers for a few years).

My son is one who craves very high amounts of sensory input. When he is especially sensory-seeking, he tends to fidget so that he bumps into people or thumps his chair around, sometimes deliberately crashing into the floor – not to hurt himself but for the constant input from objects around him. At bedtime, he likes to curl up against my side but also likes the sensation of being covered with some weight. If you are one of those people who must have some sort of cover on you to sleep, no matter how warm the weather, imagine taking that need up several notches.

In the discussion, I summarized weighted gear as therapy for kids with sensory differences, and listed the website where I found good products at reasonable prices (http://saltoftheearthweightedgear.com/). And people found it helpful. Which is amazing. Amazing because this is what I want to do. Share what I have learned through writing about my experience, not as a pedantic expert but as a fellow traveler. I just didn’t think I knew enough about anything. So it is at once humbling and exalting to realize that there are things that I can write about, somewhat knowledgeably. I may know more than I had thought.

In writing what I know, I keep wanting to right more about the journey I've taken through an abusive marriage. To do that, I am in the process of setting up a new, more anonymous blog at Wordpress (so it doesn't link to the profile on this site). When it is ready, I will find a way to let you know where to find it. Thanks for reading.

Pertinent Links:

Lori Lite, creator of Stress Free Kids. @StressFreeKids on Twitter. Also http://www.youtube.com/StressFreeKids.

@TheCoffeeKlatch on Twitter. There is also a Facebook page, which includes useful links related to the topics of discussion.

http://www.sensorysmarts.com/ Website based on one of my favorite books on the subject, Raising a Sensory Smart Child by Lindsay Biel and Nancy Peske. The foreword to the most recent edition is written by Dr. Temple Grandin.

http://www.sensoryprocessingdisorder.com/ SPD was previously referred to as Sensory Integration Disorder.

Special Mom Talk: http://www.specialmomtalk.com/ and@specialmomtalk on Twitter

Station - a poem. Finally.

2010-02-12T12:56:00.001-05:00

Station

I.
Pitted blue glass windows
line the church aisles.
Centered in each window
a square panel depicts
one Station of the Cross:
gilt figures on black slate.

Sundays after Mass, her
Grandmother walked through
the Stations, rosary
looped over her hands,
the skin silk-smooth, loose
on the bones. The kids
would all wait in the car,
impatient for the ritual’s end.

One station: Jesus carries His Cross.
Another, He falls the first time.
He meets His mother. A murmur
accompanied the beads’ clicking.

II.
On Fridays in Lent the upper
grades attended observance
of the Stations together.
The censer would swing gently
on its chain. Wisps of incense rose
with the priest’s thin voice:
eloi, eloi, lama sabachtani

Someone might faint
or pretend to in
the close hungry afternoon.

The priest and the altar boy attendants
moved on to the next one: Jesus dies.
He is laid in the tomb.

Between panels, the light streams in.

III.
She tries again to repent

wonders whether peace
would come if she made
confession, if she knelt down on
marble at the communion rail
or shed penitent’s tears.
She waits in the shadow of
the great crucifix above her.

She would pray: Jesus
how You suffered,
make me good.
With thorns or a whip
or with nails
make me forget
this longing.

Balancing

2010-02-08T12:49:00.001-05:00

It is so ingrained in me that gratitude is the solution to feeling crappy that in response to my really depressing post about depression, I have to think of things for which I am grateful.

1) I work with some really cool women, including my boss who will cut me a little slack when I am struggling.
2) The Bloggess, who makes me laugh.
3) Her commenters, who keep the laugh going.
4) My kids who are smart, funny, loving and generally awesome.
5) Shoveling snow with the sun shining. It’s weird but I like it.
6) A couple of good friends who are real and who let me be real, and who even love me for this.
7) Mystery novels like Beverly Connor’s Dressed to Die (Lindsay Chamberlain series): I can’t get interested in stories like usual, but the detection process occupies my attention and gives me a reprieve from feeling crappy.
8) I have writing as an outlet.
9) I remind myself of this when nothing else is going right: I AM divorced. I did make that happen. I dealt with unhealthy dynamics and changed my life.
10) Things really aren’t as bad as they seem to me right now.

It's Ba-ack...

2010-02-08T12:11:00.004-05:00

Damn. Today I realized that I am having a bout of depression. The clues have been there for several days: I get through the most necessary tasks like feeding the kids, washing enough dishes and clothing to keep everyone fed and dressed and I get to work. Apart from those basics, I spend most of my time in bed. I’m not sleeping, not crying, not usually reading, just lying there. Sometimes I am daydreaming. Mostly, I’m hoping to work up enough energy to do the next thing. When I do something else, like shoveling snow in the sunshine, I do feel better while I am doing it but then it is back to inertia.

This year I have learned that another clue, or symptom to watch for, is how I think of myself. I mean, to listen for the tone of the mind-chatter, the way we address ourselves fairly unconsciously through the day. This week it’s become mean and ugly (“of course I left that glass by the edge, so it would fall over. How stupid can I get?”), where I have worked to keep it fairly kind or at least neutral most of the time. It sounds like a string of verbal self-abuse, and when I recognize it, I cringe. It is both a symptom of a depression and an irritant though it was not a cause. The antidote for me is to remember my counselor asking, “if this were your best friend telling you she feels this way, what would you say to her?” Then I have to extend that loving, accepting attitude toward myself.

I hate feeling this way. I hate that I can be doing dishes or folding clothes and suddenly have tears streaming down my face. I am determined not to let the kids see it, because there has been enough upheaval, enough depression in their lives already. I hate feeling no interest, no energy, no point to doing anything. I hate experiencing life this way. But I realized that I’ve been automatically resisting it, as if I can pretend it’s not happening and it will go away, or as if by telling myself that I’m pathetic, I will snap out of it.

One morning last week I was walking in the hallway to the elevator at work when my heel slipped on the slick floor. My hands being full, I had the presence of mind to just let myself fall, so I landed pretty evenly on my rear and my left leg. I had realized that I was going to fall and that jerking around was just going to make it more jarring. In a similar way I had to identify the depression and that it might just help to accept it. Years of experience helps. It is like trying to tell yourself you’re not really getting sick with a bad cold or a flu: to a point, the positive outlook might help work through it, if it’s not a bad case. If it is bad, though, sooner or later the only thing for it is to accept it and treat it.

If I let on that I am having depression symptoms, there are people who will ask, “Are you taking your meds?” Yes, I am taking my meds. “Do you think you need different meds?” Not at this point, no. Believe it or not, sometimes an episode of depression is an appropriate response to significant stress. Significant stress for me right now includes going to a new group in which I process the specific emotional and sexual abuse of my (former) marriage. It includes having apparently imagined a connection with someone, a friend, who is not interested in me and whom I have alienated, and the shame and loss I feel over that, though it has been a year. It includes an autumn in which my younger son who has Asperger’s Syndrome, was struggling more and more with schoolwork and with appropriate behavior at school until he was getting sent home by mid-day a couple of days a week, and needed a partial hospitalization program (on an anti-depressant himself, he is doing much better now, thank God). It includes the day-to-day maintaining boundaries with the ex-husband so our children can enjoy a relationship with him, as well as getting kids to school on time, working, parenting, homework and household stuff. It includes living hand-to-mouth, as most people are doing these days. It includes my older son’s weight issues, which have progressed to insulin resistance and may be diagnosed as Type II diabetes. It includes finding a neighbor of eight years has used deception to go into my home, into my bedroom and to take things that belong to me and then lied to my face about it, because she apparently has developed a drug problem. It is as though the only things I can see are the many areas of my life that scream "Fail!" It takes intention and practice to remember there are things I am doing well, I just can't see them at the moment.

I am not asking for pity. This is just part of my journey and right now it is hard. If it doesn’t lift in a week or so, then I need to see a doctor. In the meantime, the only way out is through. I get up every day in spite of feeling weighed down. I go through the motions even though it feels like there’s no point to trying. I remember that it will pass. I try to have patience when I can’t focus on details, and when I can’t do everything that others expect from me. I am not doing things well because I barely feel up to doing them at all, like trying to function with the flu.

Most important at this time, I choose carefully the people with whom I reveal the feelings of helplessness. Sometimes the people who most want to offer a hand are hoping you will keep holding on and pull them through their own mess.

The up side of depression is that it I usually write more, in part because I don’t have the energy for the things that often distract me from writing. Housework? Who cares? Visiting people? In this frame of mind? It is awful to see the downer effect I can have on others. It is better to write. In fact I worry about upping medication because if I never feel like this at all I am afraid I will lose touch with part of myself, and it is the part that creates the most. There has to be a balance of controlling symptoms so I can function with allowing for some difficulty so I can be who I am.

The best friends to have around when I have an episode of depression are the ones who acknowledge it with a little compassion and let it be. These are the friends who accept me, with and without the weepies. Even on the bad days there are moments that I can laugh. I go to The Bloggess regularly to see what she has to say because she is always hysterical. Then I send a link or copy an excerpt in an email to my office friends to make them laugh, too. Somehow I can make funny comments in my emails, but not on the site. That’s something to work on once I’m feeling better.

The people who are hardest to have around, though I know they mean well, are the ones who say in so many words “cheer up.” They don’t realize that it is already difficult not to hate myself when I feel so lazy and worthless, or that I am trying to breathe through an impending panic attack because I just can’t handle picking up the papers I dropped on the floor. I can’t will away a depression any more than one could will away a migraine or high blood pressure. Some people just won’t believe that until they’ve had the experience themselves. On occasion I feel the urge (to use an expression of The Bloggess) to stab them in the face. Ok, not really. There isn’t enough energy for that, and then I would just feel worse. But thinking it almost made me laugh.

I can’t control this but I will get through it. The caveat is that sometimes depression doesn’t go away and the person suffering it can’t see it very clearly. Someone who is showing signs of depression for longer than two weeks or who feels like it would be easier to die is someone who needs help: talk to the person and to a mental health professional if you think it is necessary. I hope I am never that person, but I could be. Today I just want this episode to be over. Preferably right now, but I can work with ‘soon.’

Snow Day

2010-02-06T20:42:00.002-05:00

Although it is the weekend, so there is no school to get cancelled, there is still something magical about all this snow. It was a good morning to sleep in. The accumulation outside reminded me of winters in the house where I grew up in Bucks County, PA. With this much snow, all eight of us would be expected (whatever our ages) to suit up and help Dad with the driveway. It is only as an adult that I realized not everyone had an enormous box of winter boots to root through to find a pair that fit. I cannot imagine how all the hats and gloves were tracked, since I can hardly keep track of the things belonging to my two boys.

Here the shoveling is not nearly such a job as we had as kids: I have a row house in Philly with a dozen or so steps and my patch of sidewalk. Really, it is just enough to stretch and get some air. Even better, a neighbor from across the street and two of his friends pitched in. Apart from that I have napped, done laundry and roasted a chicken for the kids' dinner, with which I will make soup and chicken salad tomorrow. All very homey things that I feel good doing.

The rest day, as the boys and I call it, was badly needed. I realized by the end of the week that I was on overload: Thursday and Friday I used my lunch time to close my office door, turn out the light and lie flat on the floor just to let my thoughts go. It's the recent burglary in my house and subsequent dealing with the police, my son's health, hormones and memories associated with the time of year, all sapping energy and demanding my attention. Too much! Too much! my head is telling me. It takes so much stillness for me to process things, time that would appear to be wasted when there is so much that needs doing. The house is a frightening mess, with which I can only cope in tiny steps. I seem to do everything in tiny steps.

With all the things needing my attention, the writing slips down the priority list again, until it is noticeably affecting my emotional health. I have accepted that I need to be writing to be well. There is so much I am afraid to say, or more afraid that I can't say well. Then I read some of what others are doing, for example one of the blogs on yesterday's Five Star Friday: Leap and the Net Will Appear.

There is so much to shared by just telling the truth about our lives. Even when I think I am sharing, I realize I am still, after months and even after a year, taking deep breath first. A long deep breath, and sometimes I open my mouth and nothing comes out yet or I say something unimportant and unrelated to what I want to say. I might say it's a snow day and I remember snow days from my childhood. I might say I'm struggling with a few things. Soon, after taking these tiny steps, I will be able to tell the story that is determined to find its way out into the world.

A Place at the Table

2010-01-17T19:48:00.004-05:00

Yesterday on TV I saw a movie based on the book Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. I haven't thought about Heidi in years, but it was, of course, one of the favorite books of my childhood. Here was a girl with whom I could identify, happy wandering outside with one friend, the mountains and the animals. There was the requisite (for a fairytale) rich relative, the cross child whose heart is won over by Heidi's pure heart, and of course the daunting Grandfather who is won over before long.

Naturally, I settled in to watch it. I don't remember this from the book, and I don't know if it was there or simply added for the film (1968, with Jean Simmons, Maximilian Schell and Michael Redgrave), but Heidi says that all she wants is her own place. She wants there to be a place at the table that everyone knows is hers, and would say "that's Heidi's place." This is where the tears started.

It's becoming clear to me that I never saw myself as having my own place, my own life. I saw myself always as a sort of addendum. When I was younger, I blamed this on my parents for a while, as we tend to do. Now I suspect some of it was just my personality, some of it was being the baby sister of several older siblings, so I rode along to their games, their practices, their lessons, their field trips... it was just an idea that I formed and absorbed. In some ways I am more comfortable in the background, observing, getting the whole story, but I saw myself as being part of the background. There's no blame, it was just an inaccurate interpretation.

Now, each time that I take a step toward claiming my space, there's the most uncomfortable kickback. It's taking responsibility for my life, getting to know myself and what I want, which I had for so long thought would be unspeakably selfish, and just not ME (but who is ME?). I pick out something for the house just because I like it, and feel an involuntary guilt reaction. I stand my ground, establishing my boundaries in relationships and have at times felt dizzy from the strangeness of it. But it's getting easier.

Even with my children, I realized that when I set out dinner, I clear enough untidiness from the table to set their places, but go back and forth from the kitchen and I usually don't sit down at all. I have had no space, because I never make one for myself. If I don't, even my kids won't see that I have one. It's time to make that change, to clear the whole table and sit down. My life is in this home, with my children, and that's my place and the foundation for every place I make for myself.

The Right Thing

2010-01-17T19:21:00.003-05:00

Once a very dear friend told me that what she loves about me is that I always do the right thing. I make no claims to this statement being accurate, but that is what she says. And she goes on, "You may bitch and moan the whole way, but you do the right thing." [emphasis hers] Not especially flattering, in that light, but she is fairly accurate about the bitching and moaning. Sometimes I would go so far as to say kicking and screaming.

This came to mind today because I was thinking of the plans I've made to go out next weekend, spending the night with a girlfriend so I don't have to worry about getting home at a reasonable hour for mom-responsibilities. At this point in time, my ex doesn't have an established place of his own and doesn't take the kids overnight, ever. This is not a terrible thing, but every now and then it is nice to have the whole night off. So a younger, also single friend suggested I come out with her and stay over at her place. Awesome.

It's been a tremendous year, as you will know if you've read previous posts, which might be viewed as my outlet for the bitching and moaning. I feel rebellious, sick of everything, and earned a couple of shocked looks from friends at church when I suggested I might be up for almost anything when I get out next week. Of course, I know that by next week my usual sense will return and it will be much calmer than what I'm picturing now. Damn. Having kids, for whom I am responsible (and I take that seriously), makes it difficult to go out spontaneously when the urge strikes. That's probably a good thing.

I'm as likely as anyone else to be mistaken, to be biased by my own fears and desires into a distorted view of what's best. Occasionally I defy conscience on purpose (the mood I'm in now), but never get far before it's just too painful. Note that I'm not going into specifics, because what I know is not the best thing for me is a judgement based on me, my life and where I am in this life at this moment; I am not out to argue for what's moral or not for anyone else.

My story is that I'm stepping up to yet another level of moving past the past. I am never satisfied with the pace at which I am progressing, and certainly not that the efforts I make are recreating the life that I want. Like any thwarted child, I am ready to stamp my foot, and yell "then I don't care! I'll just...." whatever ... drink, shop, hook up. The thought is cathartic. But I did finally outgrow that. Oh, yeah. With or without the kids, I'm responsible for this life.

Fail

2010-01-09T20:29:00.007-05:00

Okay, so I realize it wasn't really a poem, "Super," which was my last post. It may be part of a poem, or just a crafted sentence to slip into a story some day. It was an awareness that had crept up on me and I had to write it down.

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. -Samuel McChord Crothers

I hope that's not all I was doing. I don't think so; poetry comes more naturally to me than most other writing. But I haven't written creatively in a while, no new poems or stories and it worries me. Granted, I have been in a sort of emotional cocoon. I am almost constantly in motion, from work to getting the kids to school, though I don't seem to accomplish much. The Christmas tree still needs to be undecorated, the ornaments put away for next year and the tree put out to recycling.

Honestly? I'm afraid to stop. For more than a year, I have been hard at work at changing the way I think (no victims live here anymore!), changing my relationships, changing my life. Having experienced at least periods of major depression for most of life, controlled now by meds, I have the fear that if I am still for too long, I won't even be able to get out of bed. There have been times when I was close, but never quite that bad. I can't have that, now, not with kids who depend on me.

I don't believe I'm close to that, not quite. Only, I'm so tired. All I really want is to regroup, but life keeps going, so I have to keep going, too. Maybe that's exactly what keeps the complete paralysis at bay.

...one got used to it - to being everlastingly tightened up to face things, you see.
- Harriet Vane Wimsey, in Busman's Honeymoon (Dorothy L. Sayers)

The point to everything has been to create a life to live, not merely to bear. I think I'm getting there. In the meantime, I realized I never post poems or stories, or fragments of them. It was time to make that change; better to post things that aren't so good and get better than to hold off and never get there.

Super

2010-01-08T12:15:00.002-05:00

After the eleven or
twelve years together,
the end exposed a power
each had used
to hold on so long:
she to imagine
and he to pretend.

-draft-
the second shortest poem I've ever written,
work property of the author

"I Wish You Were Still Married"

2010-01-01T19:22:00.005-05:00

Today, as I dabbed on a little makeup in the bathroom and my 9-year-old Peanut sat in the tub, he pointed out to me that his dad loves me. "I wish you were still married," he told me.

"Why do you wish that?" I asked, as neutrally as possible.

"Because he doesn't live with us anymore, and we used to do stuff together and it was fun." Peanut started. Really? I thought, is that how you remember it? By the last year we were together, it seemed to me that when Dad was off the couch and not stoned on pain meds, we were arguing. Or, I was taking the kids out to do things on my own. Granted, my own recollection might be biased, just like the Peanut's is biased, just in the opposite direction.

"Besides," he added, "you told him about the divorce on a Sunday. You could have at least waited until Monday or something."

"Why would that be better?" I asked him.

"Because it was in church, where people get married."

Wow. That is a touch of irony that had not occurred to me, and I am surprised that Peanut thought of it. I explained that at church, where I had told my exhusband I wanted the divorce, the pastor and other people were there to offer friendship and support to him. Clearly I was not the person to offer anything.

What I did not tell our son is that at the time, given the mood swings and tension that were commonplace, I deliberately chose church as the setting, as a safe place. I anticipated yelling, probably throwing things, possibly even striking. I didn't really expect it to go that badly, but was prepared for the possibility. It was better all around to talk somewhere with people around, though we used the library for some privacy.

It caught me off guard when Peanut brought it up today. I hope I succeeded in acknowledging his feelings as valid and important. It was more difficult than I had ever imagined, not spelling out why the marriage ended, why I used a public place to protect myself from the yelling, belittling, dramatic outbursts that had become common. Let it be hard for him to understand, I thought, rather than understand too much. My life is healing, and the Peanut needs time for his idea of life and of family to recover.

Breather

2009-12-29T19:06:00.004-05:00

My mom would say, I think, that I have the post-holiday letdown. I saw the earliest symptoms of it in my older son on Christmas morning: all the gifts were opened and he was happy, even grateful, but feeling a little down at the same time. In his case, he started getting jealous of some attention the younger brother was getting from their dad.

Likewise, I have had a good Christmas in so many ways. Both of the boys had parts in the church tableau. My ex-husband and I have been getting along, and he was here on Christmas day to open gifts with the kids and have breakfast. That made a big difference to the boys, especially the younger one. Later I dropped him off at his place and took the kids to my mom's for a relatively small family gathering of twelve for dinner (the full family gathering, more like 26 people, didn't happen until Sunday). Great visiting with my brothers and sisters, especially my brother and sister-in-law in from Michigan, and my nephew Luke down from New York City.

Gifts also were great. I have a secondhand laptop on which to really take the writing somewhere. Assorted journals and music, a beautiful set of a necklace and earring from my boys, a CD... I was not raised with the idea that the holiday is about big gifts, or gifts that somehow make life worthwhile, and I am easily pleased with fun things that I like.

So, why do I feel so crushingly alone and without direction? I know it's a feeling and that things are not likely to be so bleak in reality but wow, I'm feeling low. I always think that if I understand it, it will be easier to get past it. The jury's still out on the accuracy of that belief. Apart from winding down from the drive to provide a magical Christmas for the children, there was a tremendous amount of energy expended in the past 14 months to separate and divorce and even to establish a working relationship with my exhusband. Here I am divorced, which I really wanted, but now what? I haven't even been writing. Am I any better off than I was a year ago? The answer is yes, of course, but the momentum has petered out and there's little to struggle against. I'm accustomed to struggling, so it feels strange.

It also feels strange to choose what's going to get my commitment and energy. For years there has been pretty constant chaos. Now there's the very necessary drives of work and the children's needs, and when those take all the energy I have, I feel like a loser, not committed enough to my goals. But, that's just reality, that sometimes the kids and survival are going to be all I can manage, and if I can do that and pull Christmas together, hey that's just fine.

So, maybe Mom would be right. It's a letdown, which is really a chance to catch my breath and regroup.

A Private Hurt

2009-12-08T13:45:00.004-05:00

In the past few days, I’ve watched a little more TV than usual. Either the swine flu is in my house, or every one of the lesser viruses that are circulating vigorously in the unseasonably mild weather have attacked us. There was the seemingly neverending cough, which is a particular treat for my older son and me who have asthma. Naturally those symptoms developed into sinus infections. That’s finally clearing up but yesterday morning, the poor Bunny was up at 3:30 with the first of several bouts of vomiting. Meanwhile, all I want to do is stay in bed, head under the covers, and sleep.

After sleeping as much as possible on Sunday, I was looking for something worth watching. There wasn’t much to qualify, but I found myself watching a documentary on BBC America: “Perfect Private Parts” (www.bbcamerica.com/content/367/index.jsp, available for purchase from iTunes). Now, if there was one part of my body that I had not worried was somehow inadequate, well, it would be the private part.

According to the program, more and more women, even young women in their teens, are opting for cosmetic surgery for the vagina and surrounding area. I’m still trying to process that. We are so open about the media’s effect on our self-images: the eating disorders, preoccupation with imperfect features and skin, holding ourselves up to a distorted and impossible standard of beauty, botox and plastic surgery for the face (that was another show in the next hour). But, really, the vagina? Good Lord, to what are women comparing themselves? I am no fan of porn but I’ve seen a little and nothing there ever led me to believe that there’s a particular aesthetic to achieve or that some women have something over the rest. There's the choice of whether or how much to shave, but that's about it.

The example that was easiest for me to understand was that some young Muslim women seek hymen reattachment before marriage, literally fearing that they would be killed or at least disowned by their families if it is discovered that they are not virgins. While I find it barbaric, it is the reality of their lives and doing what they can to protect themselves makes sense. The results are less permanent and rather less tragic than female genital mutilation, but the reasons for subjecting oneself to the procedure are generally the same: to maintain connection to the community in which one lives and on which one is to some degree dependent.

Other women were unhappy with the natural state of affairs, such as having longer, “flappy” labia. In some cases, the partner or the medical practitioner for the woman laughed at her. Some were concerned about the perceived effects of childbirth. Personally, I had not noticed any big change of that kind after having my two kids, but now I admit to wondering if there’s something I missed. At present I’m single again and there’s no one to ask, ‘hey, is everything normal down there?’ and I’m not sure I would want to ask. (It was a mantra of my mother’s that if you can’t accept no for an answer, then you shouldn’t ask.)

One woman was considering some sort of surgery to improve things, but attended a women’s center which actually coaches women through taking a look at themselves and accepting who they are and what they look like. It seemed strange to me, but really, in what other context can a woman learn that there’s nothing wrong with how she looks? She decided against the surgery.

I'm reminded of one time, when I was 18 and at my personal thinnest, a guy who worked in the same store at the mall that I did told me I was looking great but "now you just need to lose your ass." That was in my head for years, until a man said to me "he didn't know what he was talking about." Too big for some is perfect for others. The point is that none of us looks like a model, and if there is such a thing as a perfect private part, probably nobody has it or if she does, she has other personal imperfections she can obsess over.

The end result is that I’m a little sadder after seeing the piece, but glad to be informed. It is appalling, the lengths to which we’ll go in torturing ourselves with comparisons to some artificial ideal. Without naming the problem, though, there is no way to combat it, no way to know that we need to teach our children and each other that all the different varieties of normal are good.

Change, in a Year

2009-11-19T10:45:00.003-05:00

One year ago I was looking at apartments.

I was not quite paralyzed at the thought of moving, but dreaded it. I had told my then-husband that by the end of the month of November, one of us was moving out. That was a clear statement with a deadline, something I had finally learned to use in communication. I knew I could not force him to leave. As difficult as it would be, if he did not go I would go. Somehow, I would come up with a deposit and rent money, so he could either leave or take on the expenses of our house.

He was stunned, though there were enough indicators that the split was inevitable. We both had a gift for living in denial of anything we couldn't or didn't want to see.

He was hurt, understandably, and angry. He said he would be the one to move. Based on a history in which either of us might say “I’ll do this” but might or might not actually do it, I looked at apartments and started to bring home boxes from work. He started to gather his things, and found a place he could stay. The entire time, he told me later, he expected me to back down and to allow things to slip back into the status quo. It had happened so many times, with other boundaries I had set. Watching him go through the shock, I was tempted more than once to take it back but I just could not, could not go on with our life the way it had been.

By December 1, he had moved out. At that point, I am not sure which one of us was more surprised. I had expected a lot more drama, and was continuously braced for bigger arguments than we had; I was even prepared for physical violence, but it never happened. Learning to be clear about what I want and about how I communicate it was a big part of that.

I had no picture of how divorce goes, and found it very difficult to navigate without a mental map. Especially as a younger sibling in a large family, I have too often relied on “how everyone else has done it.” School, college, getting a job – these were all a matter of course, of what everyone else had done before me. The downside is that I did not learn earlier how to consider options and make choices according to my own strengths and goals.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. -- Helen Keller

No one else in my immediate family has been divorced, so the entire process was foreign, and frightening, to me. The dissolution of the marriage was more or less de facto by the time I embarked on the mechanics of separating our residences and eventually filing the paperwork with an attorney. At every step I almost expected to fail, to be unable to effect the changes I wanted. With every argument, I felt stuck in the same dysfunctional pattern in which we had been relating to each other. I wondered if the past three years of counseling had done nothing for me, but my counselor at Women in Transition reminded me that change can be like making a slow ascent up a mountain: you don't realize you've made progress until you reach a point where you can turn and look back and see how high you have climbed.

It's been one year. I am divorced, and have taken back my birth name. The kids are all right, not without some issues, but all right. Their dad hangs out with them at least two or three times a week, and we are getting along. We agreed to get along well enough to do the best job possible in raising the boys, and we are sticking to it. Working out a new relationship has been awkward and uncomfortable, but it seems like we will make it.

Goals for myself right now revolve around achieving some financial stability, writing and more writing. Everything was recently put on hold while my younger son has gone through a period of crisis, but I have long accepted that other goals come after the goal of being the best mom I can be for my kids. Who knows where I might be a year from now?

Where, O Where Have I Been?

2009-11-09T15:26:00.003-05:00

I am wondering myself where I have been. I have not been blogging, although I started on a series of poems. I have been caught up in a tumult, but has it really been enough to keep me from writing for so long?

There's been an escalation to the difficulty that my third grader has in school. This is the Peanut, my son who has Asperger's Syndrome. It seems that the year began a bit bumpy, though I wasn't getting much feedback in the beginning. There was a new TSS ("wraparound") whose schedule availability didn't meet the Peanut's needs, which was for help in the afternoons. Then there was a different, new TSS, whose schedule was better, but Peanut was still struggling to get through his assignments for various reasons: the writing content is more challenging than last year and he has become very particular about his penmanship; the room is noisy and distracting; there was a period of a couple of weeks when I think we all had bad colds and he was just too sleepy. That's about where I left off.

We were excited and happy to find, when the 2nd TSS staff of the year wasn't working out, the fabulous "Mr. Mike" of last year, whose loss was a source of grief to my little guy, was coming back for the afternoons. Then we were all - myself, the teachers and administrators and the behavioral specialist - concerned when things didn't get much better, then continued to get worse.

In the second half of October, I was called at work at least 4 different days to come pick up the child from school because there was just no helping him to regroup. In addition, he has been out of school for 5 days (again, just since October 15). We went to the Developmental Pediatrics specialist at the Children's Hospital and tried increasing his very low dose of ADHD meds, thinking it was probably about time to do so. Peanut became more anxious and showed OCD symptoms. We lowered the dose again. He missed three days of school. I took him to the pediatrician and had bloodwork done, to rule out possible causes of the fatigue, like anemia or mono (he was a champ for the blood draw & and I took him to Friendly's for a milkshake). That same afternoon, I took him to a psychiatrist at the human services agency which provides the wraparound services, as there had been a cancellation allowing us to get in quickly.

I sent Peanut back to school one day last week, only to have to pick him up early again as he was in a complete meltdown. When I arrived at school, he was lying under a chair in the principal's office and growling at her when she tried to talk to him. Every time, it is so clear that he himself is suffering, that he does not want to find it so difficult to cope, that he is even afraid of himself.

This summary doesn't touch on the panic I was beginning to feel. Possible clinical depression in my child? School just says "come and get him" without having a single referral or suggestion - it was the behavioral specialist who went to her supervisor and got some leads for me. At the same time, I suddenly had the clarity of hindsight, that in his interactions with his brother, Peanut has been getting increasingly sensitive and angry. And in the summer, he was so sad at the end of his week at camp, and when Mr. Mike took a different assignment away from him. I should have known sooner. That crippling thought that moms use to punish ourselves.

But there's no time for that. Tomorrow, again at the suggestion of the BSE, I am taking my almost-9-year-old son for an assessment, that will get him into a partial hospitalization program at a psychiatric facility. The key things we are watching are his anxiety levels and possible depression. It is painful to see in him the manifestation of something very like depression: it is something I have had for most of my life, so I recognize that sense of helplessness and hopelessness, the lack of energy to cope with the smallest setbacks, like stubbing his toe. Then again, he seems to be himself at his weekly drum lesson, so I make certain we don't miss it, as Peanut needs every positive experience possible right now.

There will be school work to catch up on, but we can't worry about anything until we can get him to be himself again. Over this past weekend, he was so upset, so resistant to calming down that I seriously contemplated taking him to an ER. It is fortunate that his dad was able to help him. I took the older brother out for a much needed break - he, too, is showing the strain of his brother's tantrums - and one-on-one time with his mom. The evening was much better.

Not writing has been the result of riding out this storm, also not being certain I have any right to publicize my child's problems. But, I always think to myself, there must be other parents out there who are seeing something they have never seen and for which they have no idea what to do. If we can share it, won't that help others?

Instead of blogging, I have had a steady report going out via email to concerned family and friends. I've asked everyone I know who has any kind of experience with the issues for their suggestions. Fortunately, I work for a human services agency so I have some good resources. I've advised school of doctor's appointments and doctors' offices of what's going on at school, and advised work of the time I need to take off. I am grateful for the days my sister has been able to spend with the Peanut, plus spending a little time with Bunny, the older child, who feels cheated of the time and attention that his brother is getting, for what appears to be mere bad behavior.

Okay, I guess I know where I have been, even if it has been a blur. In the midst of all of this, I am working with my exhusband to keep him informed and to share the need for child care while still being vigilant over the new boundaries in our relationship. I am too tired to think; somehow I am still getting enough work done at the office to keep my job. I am not sure how, but I am doing it.

The Painted Veil (John Curran film, 2006)

2009-10-21T17:07:00.004-04:00

Watching TV is spontaneous for me. When I am really tired, or feel justified in taking time to do nothing, I turn it on and scroll through the guide to see if there is anything worth watching. The result is that I often see bits and pieces of movies rather than being able to enjoy them in their entireties.

Recently, I looked to see what was airing and found that The Painted Veil with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts had just started. I have seen most of it at least three times, but I have always missed the beginning. Naturally, I thought I would see what I had missed. I love the time period, its fashions for women, the contrast with the earlier Victorian lifestyle, the instability of the British empire at that time. I love the cinematography, the misted Chinese landscape, and I love the story.

The film is based on the book by W. Somerset Maugham. Before seeing it, I had heard of Maugham and knew that I loved the occasional quotation that I would find attributed to him (“Writing is the supreme solace.” – on the masthead, here) but had never read any of his stories. After I first saw TPV, I ordered my first collection of Maugham’s short stories from my bookswap. I have been ever since an admirer of his work.

For each subsequent viewing of the movie, I have told myself that I will turn it off when I get to the part that I know will break my heart. The strategy works very well for watching Titanic: once the water gets up to the ankles it’s time to go, before the children are being put to bed, before the old couple lies down with their hands entwined to wait, before the life boats are boarded. Rose and Jack can continue their romance behind the scenes without the ending.

Every time I see The Painted Veil, I get to that moment, when Waddington (Toby Jones) calls to Mrs. Fane (Naomi Watts), “It’s your husband.” Every time, I am seduced by the story into watching more, watching what can happen when love overcomes human failings and transforms us. Then it is too late. Someone invariably walks in on me, nose stopped up completely and eyes red and running with their excess of saline. This frightens the my younger son; the older one shrugs and asks, again, “why do you watch this movie? It always makes you cry.”

I have given up trying to explain that I watch it for the same reason Kitty Fane picks up the roses in the florist's shop, though, as she points out, they’re hardly worth the expense: “They will only be dead in a week.” The beauty is worth the cost, for the roses, for the Fanes and for the story.

So Who Needs Mental Health?

2009-10-19T12:47:00.003-04:00

When I had started this blog, I had anticipated writing about the realities of facing facts about a marriage that had long outlived its potential, and deciding to separate and divorce, including the personal struggles involved. The upside of the journey has been reconnecting with the things I love, like writing. Somewhere along the line, I started getting sidetracked.

One thing was that the man I was divorcing was reading the blog. I had attached a “visit my blog” tagline to my outgoing email, without anticipating that outcome. There’s no law against him reading my blog, but a discussion ensued about fair and unfair representation. The experience left me even more sensitive about what I’m blogging than I had been already. I had never set out to “bash” anyone in such a public forum, but felt like I needed to censor myself. I have had the same fears about the repercussions for being completely honest that I had before the separation and divorce. Obviously, I am determined to get past that.

In addition to considering the ex-husband’s potential reactions, I have gone through another loss, one which I still can’t share. If I can’t evaluate with any objectivity what’s appropriate to share from an experience because I am too close to it, then it is too soon to try. After a few months, it is still too difficult. It’s a situation that touches all the issues I have been working out in recent years, learning when I can trust myself; knowing that I am enough, regardless of what happens with other people; trusting that I am more than my mistakes – even if I have botched something important to me, I am not hopeless; there’s even the wild and crazy hope that at some point, there will be more joy in this life, that the sum of my choices isn’t an endless treadmill.

Flops are part of life's menu and I'm never a girl to miss out on a course. -- Rosalind Russell

While processing all of the above, I have been making the effort to cultivate my joy, in writing, in spending time with good friends and with my family, in feeding my creative spirit with plays and live music and art. Lately, I feel more and more that there is no time in my life to do anything other than to work and to parent. My second child, the one who has Asperger’s Syndrome, is having a particularly hard time getting adjusted this school year. This morning I had to go pick him up from school. That’s the second time in a week. Part of me thinks it’s time to buckle down and just commit for a while to work and to focus on my kids, and not even think about anything else. But I have tried that tunneled vision of living, and know that it’s a fairly direct path to a breakdown.

Through the past year, what I see again and again is that I have learned, finally, what doesn’t work. Denial and self-delusion, beating myself up, consenting to be a hostage to someone else’s expectations… those are all the old ways that don’t work.

It’s good to know what doesn’t work. That’s good information. But it is so difficult to be facing each day, still needing to learn the things that do work. At the same time, some days I am so raw I feel like I am walking around with the top layers of skin flayed. Every day that comes to an end without a fatal puncture to the thin skin I’ve got left seems like a miracle, or a sham. Maybe I am losing it, have lost it, but no one’s caught on.

One thing I know is that over the past few weeks, I have not been blogging, nor have I been doing much other writing. For the most part I have felt nothing but tired. There’s not much to say about that. Underneath the tired has been a lot of stuff I would rather not put out there, the sadness and a daily effort to reclaim hope. But not writing brings me inevitably to feeling completely out of control.

Today, after leaving to pick up my son from school, I have to scurry through a few hours of work before leaving early to take him to an appointment at the Children’s Hospital. It’s a scheduled appointment to reevaluate meds for him, in the effort to help him get back on track at school. It is already an insane sort of day. Despite the time crunch, I had to write. If I didn’t, I would not be able to focus on anything at all. Before I can work, I need to write. That’s one of the things that will work, if I can just remember it, every day.

I would like to learn, or to remember, how to live. -- Annie Dillard

Anticipation and Mental Health

2009-10-06T14:24:00.004-04:00

My friend Lu often says that everyone needs to have something to look forward to doing. Whether it’s a monthly girls’ night out (which I have to start scheduling) or a vacation, being able to look ahead to something we enjoy will get us through the tedium of daily living.

Last spring, around the time that I was filing for divorce, I made sure I planned some fun things to keep myself busy. I went for an overnight visit to see one of my college roommates and take in a night of good music, planned to see Hamlet in town, signed up for a poetry writing workshop in the spring and bought tickets for a summer music festival. To some extent, I was planning distractions, to keep me in motion during the process of divorce and to keep me from brooding on my losses. It did make a difference to have my sights constantly set on something that was not too far away and that promised to be fun.

Lately, even when I’ve had something on the calendar, I haven’t quite been able to feel that sense of anticipated joy. Sometimes I have been just too busy to think ahead, or social outings still feel like they’re too much effort. There is a significant portion of life, especially a mom’s life, that seems to be dedicated to overcoming inertia. Just getting us all up in the morning was wearing me out. The separation and divorce left me mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Mental health, like dandruff, crops up when you least expect it. - Robin Worthington

I’m beginning to come around. I enjoyed talking with other parents at the school’s “Welcome Back BBQ” on Friday. While typically overwhelming, spending time with several of my siblings and our various children on Saturday was good, too (as we celebrated my mom’s 72nd birthday). I even took my boys from mom’s house to a Green Living Festival at a farm near where I grew up. The kids went through the Corn Maze, and I got to sit and enjoy a performance by Hoots and Hellmouth. (It is only in the past few years that I have remembered how much I love music, and have realized how much I enjoy seeing and hearing it performed live.)

In less than two weeks, I have plans to go out with one of my girlfriends to see the Avett Brothers perform at the Electric Factory. I have a great babysitter confirmed for the evening. I am usually pretty happy to spend short bits of free time with my notebook under a tree or in a coffee shop, but there is something exciting about definite plans to get out once in a while, to do something different. I find that it is key to purchase tickets in advance, which is a promise to myself that I really will expend the effort to engage a babysitter and really will go out.

The Lantern Theater Company is performing one of Moliere’s plays this winter, and the Screwtape Letters in the spring, and in May, the Opera Company of Philadelphia will offer La Traviata and I have at least one friend who is willing to see opera with me. Funding my cultural excursions is always an issue, but I hope to take in at least two of these shows. The kids and I may be receiving tickets to see Oliver! as a Christmas gift, adding the joy of sharing the arts with my boys.

In the long term, I have my sights set on a Master's in Fine Arts for writing. I am looking at a few different low-residency programs, brainstorming on child care options for the 7-10 day residencies that occur twice in the academic year. Financial Aid will be a huge factor, as will deciding whether to pursue a focus on poetry or fiction or creative non-fiction, or some combination. The nearer occasions of fun, as long as I keep working in between them, will keep carrying me closer to the days when I am actually preparing for the future goals, when (I hope) I will be amazed to get there, already.

Functional, Just

2009-09-27T20:49:00.005-04:00

This week's consisted primarily of struggling to keep going despite the whole household being afflicted with a particularly virulent cold. The boys and I stayed home Wednesday, but are really still just getting over it. Still, we were all up and out the door before 6 yesterday morning, off to check in other volunteers for Walk Now for Autism Speaks Philadelphia. The Walk event is one of our favorite things that the boys and I do together every year. We've spent the rest of the weekend recovering, though, with naps and nebulizers and lots of loafing.

There's not really much else to tell. Congested lungs make my brain work very sluggishly. Just getting in to work and accomplishing a few tasks there pretty much sapped my abilities. Still, during my son's guitar lesson, I started reading Bel Canto (by Ann Patchett). Over the past several weeks, apart from Reviving Ophelia and snatches of poetry, I had been reading (I blush to admit) the first four books of the Marked series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. The books were passed on to me, and I can enjoy the hell out of light reading. Then I have to remind myself that my brain will go mushy if I don't read things that are written with an eye to beauty and excellence. Also I might forget the sheer joy of really good writing.

My friends tell me I am doing okay. With this cold, I haven't had any energy to spare to worry about whether I am doing okay or not. It's been all getting the kids cared for and getting them to school, getting to work, and sleeping. I have been sleeping and just lying down so much, I continue to be surprised that I can still sleep more. I am starting to use some of the time to just think and work on mapping out plans.

Wow. I could put my head down and fall asleep on the keyboard. I've already promised to avoid depressing posts; I promise no more of these exceedingly dull posts, either!

A man can tolerate anything except a succession of ordinary days. -- Goethe

Starting Over

2009-09-21T09:04:00.003-04:00

Wow. Okay, no more of the really depressing posts that I've been putting out lately. Good thing I restrained myself yesterday. Either I really am, at this point, a miserable and misanthropic reactionist or there has been a small army of idiocy-spouting men around me like a cloud of pesty flies. Add that to the head cold and the fact, which I eventually realized, that I forgot to take meds yesterday morning and it is no surprise that by yesterday afternoon I was a complete basket case.

A hot shower, getting up and about, taking the meds and splurging on pizza for dinner started to turn things around. Papa Johns also, I think, mistakenly gave me an extra free pizza with my free pizza coupon, which made it even better (I did have the delivery guy check, though, or I would feel like I had stolen it. Guilt on top of depression is very bad. I'm sensitive to guilt).

My older son and I have this stinky cold. He was planning to stay home from school today, but it wasn't happening. Not after all the prep I did to be sure I got the kids to school on time (and I did). Also he just likes to stay home, so I have to push him. I like to stay home, too, but this is real life. I follow my mom's premise, which is that if a kid is really sick, he will be able to convince you of it or he's going to school. I can remember finally getting her to check my temperature once in third grade, with my school uniform on, to find that I had a fever of 103. That was the first time I'd ever had the flu. Yuck.

Anyway, please bear with me. I suppose though that the only one who thought I'd get through the major life changes and disappointments without days like these, was me. Silly Barb. But I'm still pushing through to the other side.

We don't have to live great lives. We just have to understand and survive the ones we've got. --Andre Dubus, Voices from the Moon

Exposure

2009-09-20T07:20:00.005-04:00

After posting last night, I was thinking that it's no wonder I don't have a loyal troop of readers. Yesterday's writing was not insightfully witty or funny or comforting, or even well written. I wondered if I should have posted at all. When we met for lunch this week, one of my friends cringed at the idea of having one's thoughts posted on the Internet, especially when a few years down the road those thoughts might change significantly. But, I pointed out, if I write at all, that is something I have to accept.

When I find that someone else has expressed things that I feel myself, it is both comforting and encouraging. Wow, I think, I am not completely crazy after all, or if I am, I am no more crazy than a lot of other people. I can live with that.

By your stumbling the world is perfected. -- Sri Aurobindo

My friend Suzy has told me, with regard to divorce and rebuilding life, "after this everything else will seem easy." There are times when I repeat that to myself like a mantra. I have faith that it is true, I just haven't reached the "after" part yet. I am still in it. If I write about divorce five or ten years from now, I won't remember it as it really happened. The recounting would sound like a smooth progression of discovering this and realizing that and voila, life got better. Reality is much messier.

The rebuilding is really renovating; it's like having your only bathroom torn up in stages. It is not so fun or convenient to have the room's interiors exposed and only partly functional while you still have to make use of it. Without a thorough overhaul, the faucet will still drip and the inner walls will continue to rot and mold. Likewise, if I'm realizing that somewhere along the line I picked up the idea that sex is something that happens to you, or that it is okay to be put down then those false premises have to come to the surface. Then they can be taken apart and replaced with parts that work. In the meantime, things are going to be a bit messy for me. The only alternative is to keep having the same experience, the same relationship that I have had in the past, and I would really prefer not to do that.

What is uncomfortable to me right now is how much I unintentionally expose about myself when I am writing stories. I am even more transparent when writing fiction than when I am blogging. At least I have some control when I write here. I have sufficient courage to spell out the things I am ready to share, but at the moment, not quite enough to risk more exposure than that.

Alone

2009-09-19T20:16:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was not an easy day. I don't want to say it was a bad day. I am employed, my kids are safe and healthy. The basics are good. Despite continuously tweaking our morning schedule, though, I got the boys to school a few minutes late, which has been a frequent problem for us since the middle of last year (ok, and off and on since they started school, to be honest). I had an email from school that I was wanted to come in to discuss the latenesses (to which my internal response was that they can bite me). I later had a phone call from my son's teacher, to tell me he had run off from the class twice during the day. This would be the child with Asperger's Syndrome, and he didn't run off into the woods, thank God, but had to be tracked down and coaxed back into the group, which is behavior not popular with teachers. I get that.

With the various factors I am juggling, I still feel like I have, or should have, "BAD MOM" tattooed across my forehead. I felt that at the very least, some of the school staff probably think so. Does it count that I really am trying? That yes, life has been much too chaotic and unpredictable for my kids but I'm working on it? It just doesn't change overnight. Honestly, the fact that I've been working and getting the kids to school without interruption for the past few years is the best I can do. It will keep getting better. That is the plan.

I came home feeling pretty low. After dinner, while I sat outside with a couple of different neighbors and a friend of theirs, the guys started joking about porn. Ok, whatever. But one of them began to joke about some website having, or about the idea of one having features like "Blonde, Busty and Bruised," or "Latina and Low Self-Esteem." My internal response to that is WTF? I said nothing, but came in after a moment.

On the one hand, I would hate to have every stupid thing I've said while drinking held against me. I would have no friends left, especially after college. On the other hand, ignoring comments like that, for the sake of not making waves and of being liked by people I considered friends, is just one of the ways that I have compromised myself for years. And for any woman who has ever been in a relationship that was abusive in some way, comments like that put the speaker into the camp with Them. Worse, I felt in that moment all the shame of every past abuse, like recovery is one more delusion.

a few soft words have sent many a woman to her back with her
thighs flung open & eager / a few more / will find us standin up &
speakin in our own tongue to whomever we goddamn please.
--Ntozake Shange, "wow yr just like a man"

Honestly, I don't know if the intent had been to make a joke about the people to whom internet porn is targeted, or what. I was just stunned. Also I was surprised by how low it brought me. I cried, and tried to reason out why I felt so lost. I am barely functional at work, failing to do enough for the kids and I came home wanting to regroup with friends, and that too was a failure. I tried thinking of the expression that when you come to the point where all you've got is God, you have everything you need. I'm not feeling it. I'm not saying it isn't true but so far I am not feeling it.

The worst part is that this man has, I am certain, no idea how insulted I was that he made the comment in front of me, or how much it hurt. I don't think I could successfully explain it to him either. If there can be such a gap between a woman's perception and a man's, can we (women) ever be in relationship with them (men)? I am not even thinking about romantic relationships, but simple coexistence. For the moment, it seems hopeless to me. As I process the experience, though, I hope that changes. I know I am hypersensitive right now to just about everything, but I am also resolved not to tell myself that abuse and disrespect don't matter, not anymore. I am not sure how to be true to that without becoming strident or hysterical, but I will work it out.

Doing it Longer

2009-09-17T12:37:00.002-04:00

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F.P. Jones

When my first child was six or seven months old, I can remember one afternoon of trying to get him to sleep for his nap. That little snugglebunny was never a good sleeper, though in all other ways an excellent baby. I would try everything, shifting him from my shoulder to my cradled arms to laying him on his belly over my forearms and still he continued to wiggle and fuss. On this occasion, I was closer than I had ever been to shaking him. I was trying to relax, knowing that my tension wasn’t going to help him to relax. My eyes were stinging with tears I was too frustrated to cry. I kept swinging him gently from side to side while I tried to calm myself down.

After a few more minutes, I realized the Bunny (still his family nickname, ten years later) had fallen asleep. Oh! I thought. What had seemed to work, and proved afterward to work more often than anything else, was that I had continued the same thing but longer. The changing from this position to that, from the swing to my arms, had been preventing him from fussing through his distraction to the point where he could sleep.

That memory surfaced recently, as I have been considering changing jobs. I don’t love the job I have now, though in this economy I am grateful that I have a fairly secure job. I work with terrific people, and the company exists to provide services to people with disabilities, so I can be proud of that. The work itself is far from what I’d like to be doing, and a better salary would be a great thing.

In this case, I am remembering the experiences of having the same frustrations in the past, and changing from one desk job to another. None of them got me much closer to doing what I really want to do, which is primarily to write. Public speaking and even some form of counseling or life coaching might be great along with it, but the real thing is to write. Changing jobs might bring in a little more money but would most of all distract me from writing for some time. I have enough experience to recognize a pattern before I make the same mistake again. It hasn’t been a mistake in the past, really, just part of the experience that helps me to know now what is not going to work.

Right now I need to fuss through the uncomfortable period of writing and working my paid job. There’s not a lot of time, and I feel somewhat guilty for the (paid) time I spend at work that I am actually writing. But if I keep doing what I’m doing, and keep looking for ways to do it better – through classes, writers group, continuing to blog though I find it embarrassing and, of course, lots of reading – instead of changing everything else around me, eventually I am going to get where I want to be. Which would be writing.

Oh.

Revived

2009-09-17T10:14:00.007-04:00

I remember when there were shelves full of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Mary Pipher). The title caught my eye, with its suggested image of a different story for Shakespeare's tragic character. The subtitle spoke to me, as well, and I am sure that at some point I read the blurb on the book’s cover. I was twenty-five, not drinking for a time, newly diagnosed with (and medicated for) chronic clinical depression.

I did not buy the book. I was spending carefully on books of poetry and fiction that I enjoyed. Now I recognize that I felt a desperate determination that I would not need to read it. It’s okay, I got it, I was telling myself. I’m not quite Ophelia, not quite dead, not quite beaten yet. I can figure out the paradoxical requirements that our society has for young women, and I can do it own my own. The work also smacked of feminism, that label that makes most of us cringe, whether we admit to it or not.

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a prostitute or a door mat. – Rebecca West

Last week, I requested Reviving Ophelia through my bookswap (http://www.paperbackswap.com/). In the discoveries and the rebuilding in my life now, I hoped that the book would take me a little further in identifying and correcting inaccurate judgements about my life.

The book arrived yesterday, and I’ve begun to read. It is, of course, my story, as much as it is the story of so many women today. Confronted with impossible demands to meet in being acceptable in our culture (don't obsess about looks, but look good; be smart but not too smart; be sexy but not a slut...), we grew confused and angry or confused and depressed, or all the above. Choices were invariably made that compounded the confusion.

The key for me at the moment is the space to forgive myself. I was intelligent enough and intuitive enough to recognize that it was impossible to be all the things I felt were required, but I did not know how to sort out the options and to choose for myself. I am still just doing that now, at thirty-nine. So many of us are, though, and tragically, so many more are still just deadened to feeling anything, in trying to be everything.

Regrouping after divorce involves slowly sifting backward, reclaiming my true self from years of trying to be someone else. That goes back much further than the time when I got married because I was already confused then. Reviving Ophelia provides a context in which I can process the confusion, then continue to move forward but this time as the subject of my own life, as Pipher writes, not the object of someone else's.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. -- Edwin Schlossberg

Divorce and Timing

2009-09-15T11:41:00.004-04:00

I think I am ready to stop the daily emails that I have been getting from divorcecare.org. They are an excellent resource, but I’m not sure that they are a good fit. First, they seem to target those who did not make the choice to split, who were surprised by it, not the (I’m inferring) godless filers. Second, while there is a good amount, even a surprising amount, of pain for the one who made the choice, I am finding that I have already worked through so much of the grief, the disillusionment, and the need to face reality in order to effect change. I thought in the beginning of counseling, two to three years ago, that the process might allow the reality of the relationship to change, to become something better. Then, I accepted that it wasn’t going to happen, hence the divorce.

That hurt isn’t over, but it is resolving. When the guilt issues surface I can cope, even at times like the other night, when my eight year old son woke up crying, having just dreamt that I told him that I don’t love him anymore, and just “gave him away to some other people.” I reminded myself that before the split, the kids were asking other tough questions about the dynamics in our household, so nothing would have been easy for them. I accept responsibility for the consequences of my choice, but that’s not the same as sliding downward into guilt and shame.

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.—Martha Beck, Leaving the Saints

Some of the good advice that Divorce Care offers would have been good for me a year ago, but I wasn’t certain about divorcing then. Once I committed to the decision, I was bolting out of the gate with my usual excess of enthusiasm for a difficult decision made. It would have been good to know more then, about the inherent danger of exploring another emotional interest too soon – there’s too much going on to process; everything hurts more, and it takes longer to recover.

Overall, though, I’m doing pretty damned well, all things considered. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed, but I get up. I am frightened that I’ll fail as a single parent, as an aspiring writer, as a human being. But the fear doesn’t stop me. There are rare but amazing moments when I feel my rhythm, have a sense of momentum that pushes me through the worst slumps. For the first time in years, I am able to visualize things improving, even steadily improving. Hallelujah, I have goals! And I have hope that I'll achieve them.

Music and Latte, and Nicole Zell

2009-09-11T14:55:00.003-04:00

Last month, Jenn and I met some other friends at the Steel City Coffee House in Phoenixville, PA (the Steel City and the town are fantastic). We went to see the Dave Spencer Trio, which we enjoyed though I found it confusing that the Trio appears to be a duo, Dave and Eli. Eli is a very creative percussionist, and fun to watch.

I don’t write more about music because I am so aware of my own ignorance. I would like to write more about getting out to hear music and about the way it affects people. It’s new to me, the getting out for live music, and I love it, I mean really love it. In the earliest years with my kids, I forgot almost everything that I loved except them. It’s a fairly common mommy syndrome. Following that, there was the insanity of my ex-husband’s illness and the difficulties that had always been involved in my marriage.

Then, a few years ago, some new friends asked, “Well, what kind of music do you like?” And I couldn’t remember. It was awful, suddenly confronting how far I had gotten from myself. So, I found my old CD’s and tapes. I went out to see the friends’ bands play. I was singing with the choir at my church. I listen to music differently, now. I challenge the kids to name the instruments we hear when we’re listening to the radio, and I listen more carefully myself.

At that Steel City Coffee House show, the opener was a young woman named Nicole Zell, who is all of fourteen years old. She is amazing. Nicole sang some of her own songs, as well as covering songs by well-known artists including Tracy Chapman. Her fingers looked thin and frail but play guitar with agility. The passion in her performance was surprising, though maybe it shouldn't have been. In our teens we lack experience, not passion.

I was only one of several women who were struck by this young woman who knows her gifts and is encouraged in them. Only one of several women who envied that, not with a bitter envy but one that wants to see young women like Nicole flourish and even encourage more young women, only wishing we had dared so much, so young. At one point Nicole's dad accompanied her on bass guitar, and I wondered if she realized how fortunate she is to have that in her life.

See, I don’t really know how to write about music. There would be more about the music itself, if I had written right after the show but I was kind of struck dumb. At the end of the night, I’d met Nicole’s eyes a couple times and wanted to tell her “Hey, you are amazing,” but I just couldn’t do it.

Later, I was sipping my excellent latte and was annoyed by one talkative show-goer who was a distraction. It was mortifying to realize that a few months back at a different venue, I had been that guy, only worse. I am a much better listener drinking latte than wine, I’ve realized. Plus I am getting out a little more often, so it doesn’t feel so much like an escape, like I will never get out again. It is easier to relax, to just listen, taking it all in.

Still Losing Sleep

2009-09-11T08:59:00.003-04:00

Ah, yes, "Sleep - worth all the rest..." Last night's interrupted sleep was due not to obsessive thinking, or even passionate fantasies, but to loose window screens. They rattled and banged in the wind and rain. If he could be aware of my inattentiveness to these details, my dad would roll over in his grave.

So I am thinking of Dad, and how easy it was as a kid to take for granted all the attention he put into the details. Yes, he took it to the extreme, and he could be cranky and irritable. But he maintained the house and yard and fed, clothed and educated eight children. Yes, eight. The first four went to private colleges, too. Once I moved out on my own (and paid my own bills, just for me) I began to appreciate him a little more. Fortunately, he was still living and I could tell him that. Then I had a child and really began to understand the responsibility. As my boys get older, I am sure I will continue to have new insights into both my parents' hard work and love.

No, I will not be writing about 9/11. I don't have the words to do justice to the subject.

Other things are swirling around in my tired brain, though, so I imagine this will be a multi-post day.

Insomnia

2009-09-09T10:33:00.004-04:00

For the second day in a row, I woke up at three this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep until after four. There’s an adage that a hungry man is an angry man; the parallel would be that a sleepless Barb is a miserable Barb. Just ask my kids.

I’m not sure what it is, but in the past year I have had other stretches of doing the same thing. I wake up, thinking I will just roll over and go back to sleep as usual. Nope. I try the happy daydreaming that used to soothe me to sleep, but no, that makes me start thinking and I am lost. The thinking becomes processing, or just obsessing.

One of my friends suggested that someone else is thinking of me and some connection pulls me to consciousness, but how likely is that? It’s definitely not that I have had enough sleep. It concerns me because as a pattern it can be another symptom of clinical depression, and I don’t need to think about having to reevaluate meds right now. Really it is just making it harder to get up and get the kids to school on time. In fact, worrying about being able to do that is probably the source of the problem, in a vicious circle. I worry about being a slacker mom, and we are definitely not yet back on the school day schedule.

I Have Lived and I Have Loved
Author Unknown (Recorded on Love and Desire, an Anthology of
Poems, Dove Books on Tape)

I have lived and I have loved;
I have waked and I have slept;
I have sung and I have danced;
I have smiled and I have wept;
I have won and I have wasted treasure;

I have had my fill of pleasure;
And all these things were weariness,
And some of them were dreariness.
And all these things - but two things
Were emptiness and pain:
And Love - it was the best of them;
And Sleep - worth all the rest of them.

Happy?

2009-09-08T20:21:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, I went to the annual Labor Day Barbecue that friends of mine have. The first thing Meg said when she saw me is "You look happy!" I hadn't seen her since the same barbecue last year (it didn't seem like a whole year went by). In the meantime, she referred me to a friend of hers who handled my divorce.

It is strange to hear, not for the first time, that I seem happier. Sure, I am aware that I am under less stress in many ways, but most of the time I seem to be just treading water and feeling a whole lot of pain. Have I lost touch with what happiness is, and expect too much? Or are there degrees of happiness, like freedom, and I'm getting there, just not all at once?

But even when I am at a loss to define
the essence of freedom
I know full well the meaning
of captivity.
-- Adam Zagajewski (translated by Anthony Graham)

Destinations

2009-09-08T20:06:00.003-04:00

I was looking through one of my journals for the Carolyn Heilbrun quote, because I can't stand to misquote someone. I came across one of the first excerpts of poetry that I'd copied down:

How far is it?
How far is it now?
The gigantic gorilla interiors
Of the wheels move, they appal me -
[...]
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will -
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know is destinations.
-- from "Getting There," by Sylvia Plath

At the time, I really didn't even understand it, I felt it. The rhythm and the words got under the surface of me and made things move. I am glad I developed the habit of writing things down that have that effect; I begin to get it now, fixed to the arcs of wheels, knowing there are destinations I would not have chosen for myself, but for which I am bound.

Incidentally, I think if I can ever use the word "inexorable" in a poem successfully, I will have arrived at one destination, at least.

Carolyn Heilbrun Quote

2009-09-08T20:03:00.002-04:00

The quote I mentioned a couple posts ago comes from:

And, above all other prohibitions, what has been forbidden to women is anger, together with the open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life (which inevitably means accepting some degree of power and control over other lives). -- Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life

Chocolate Cake

2009-09-04T10:05:00.001-04:00

One of the best unofficial perks of my job is the cake for birthdays. It’s not just getting a cake, as in any cake from a grocery store’s bakery. Cake in general doesn’t impress me. As an avid chocolate lover I find chocolate cake disappointing. And I am very particular about frosting. That light, whipped-cream tasting stuff is not, in my opinion, worth the calories.

Frosting, or icing (the Phillyism is icening), should be like my mom used to make it. She would use a stick of butter and some milk, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract. I don’t know if there were any other ingredients, unless you wanted chocolate icing: then cocoa powder was added, and probably more sugar until it tasted right. There was an enormous mixing bowl that attached to a base built right into the counter top. Was that the norm for houses built around 1965?

This department only gets cake from a specific Pennsylvania Dutch bakery in the Lansdale PA area. I am not going to say where, or everyone will want to go and get the chocolate cake and then there will be none left for us. Or it will cost more. They might even start selling it on the Internet. It would become an overnight boom and before long the quality would go down, making it ordinary, disappointing cake.

Okay, wait, I’m projecting. OUR chocolate cake is really, really chocolatey. An eight-inch (diameter) cake feels like it weighs five pounds (that would make the Internet thing slightly less practical). And it has real buttercream frosting, similar to the Mom-made kind I remember. My mom’s background is Pennsylvania Dutch as well as Irish, so that makes sense.

Today would be such a good day for cake. A Happy Friday cake. A the-bastards-haven’t-beaten-us-yet cake. Just-for-the-hell-of-it cake. End of summer? Labor Day weekend? School starts in a few days? Or just an unbirthday cake, for all those non-birthdays in the year.

Losses

2009-09-03T10:55:00.004-04:00

"You are always going to love me, right? No matter what." My eight year old son asks me this almost every night before he can go to sleep. He has always asked, possibly because he has some special needs and is to some degree aware that he is not always met with acceptance and love in the world. Maybe it is only my imagination that he asks more often, now that his dad and I are not together.

The email I had from divorcecare.org today was about the losses of divorce, big and small, the ones expected and the ones that surprise us. My kids' confidence in the unbreakable nature of family love is a big loss. For them, primarily, we make every effort to have both parents in their lives as much as possible, to put aside our own resentments and bitterness. It will be a long time before they can understand why this divorce has happened, why they have experienced such a big loss.

I haven't uncovered an answer to supply at the end of the post, which is always the neater way to write. I chose divorce and brought this loss into the lives of my two boys. In Writing a Woman's Life, Carolyn Heilbrun observes that so often women struggle with accepting responsibility for their lives, a responsibility which includes having impact on the lives of others. One friend of mine is struggling with the question of whether to end her marriage, too, and her only difficulty at this point is that question of the impact on the children. It's a real question, I am not downplaying it.

I could not stay in my marriage any more; I am not going to justify that here. Here, where I am now, the question is how do I best help my children to grow and be healthy with their parents apart. I know that now they are not as confident in family or in me, specifically, as they were before. That is a loss.

Euonymus in a Poem

2009-09-02T14:51:00.004-04:00

Her father's euonymus shines as we talk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six o'clock news and a lime juice and gin.
-- from "A Subaltern's Love Song" by John Betjeman

Waiting

2009-09-02T13:28:00.004-04:00

Escaping from the office for a walk, I see that the line of bushes on the far side of the parking lot are becoming tinged with red. I wonder how anything so green can also be partly red as the colors are complements, opposites on a color wheel; they don't mix at all. But they share space on individual leaves on these bushes which will be scarlet in another month. I remember how gorgeous they have been in the past three years and imagine them as they will be again. The blue of the late summer sky with the deep greens and hints of changing color make me wish I knew how to paint. I wish the same thing every year at about this time.

I know the variety is called euonymous, or burning bush. Two years ago I was so captivated by the color and its dramatic effect at the end of the day, that I went to a friend with landscaping experience just to ask him if he knew the name of the bush. He probably thought I was merely flirting, which I may have been, but I remembered the name. Some day I will have a euonymous bush so it will light up my yard like a flame in the autumn, though I will try to forget the failure of the flirting. For now I will watch the color of the bushes change, imagining the swinging from one side of a wheel to the other. I am waiting for autumn, and waiting to forget.

Confession

2009-09-01T09:39:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I quoted unfashionably from the Bible. In college I'd taken a course on the Bible as Literature, but didn't do very well in it, in part because at that time I was not able to separate the writing from the religious aspects of it with which I was raised. I am Christian, and I'm certainly not embarrassed about God but would be very embarrassed to be associated with a great number of people who call themselves Christian.

I remember finding it a little shocking that one of the songs on a Bible Song tape I used to play with the kids included the chorus, "Everybody talking about heaven ain't going there." It plays through my head though, when I am around certain self-proclaimed Christians who attempt to enlighten everyone around them. That makes about as much sense to me as going to another country and quoting the Constitution to its citizens. The general response would be a blank look that clearly asks "And...?"

There are people in the Church who realize this isn't Christlike behavior. I once heard Paul Sheppard teach on the idea that people are out there in the world trying to correct people according to biblical lights who are not believers in them. It doesn't make sense and is frankly offensive. Gandhi once said that after reading the Bible, he would have considered becoming Christian "if I didn't know so many Christians." I don't want to be one of those.

One of the problems I observe in promoting a dogmatic Christian religion to the world is that the promoters aren't even free to love because they are too busy trying to determine whether the people who need it, deserve it. It becomes much simpler when we remember all of us need it, while none of us really deserve it. I don't mean that I think we are all worthless, but only that we all have in us the pettiness, spite and even violence that are part of human nature. We all deserve love from each other, or don't deserve it, pretty equally.

Tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn. --Madeleine L'Engle

I have no skill with Christian Apologetics. I can't argue anyone into faith in God, let alone God as I understand Him. I am no better able to understand or explain how electricity is generated and shared through power lines. The inability doesn't stop me from using electricity, though. I don't pretend to be a model follower of my God, but I have a relationship with God as I understand Him that underlies everything in my life. I respect every other person's search to know God, a higher power, the Source of light and of life - under whatever name - according to your own experience, trusting that truth will be revealed according to its own purpose and not mine.

Do you need proof of God? Does one light a torch to see the sun? --Chinese proverb

Clean Up

2009-08-31T09:25:00.004-04:00

A big thank you, once again, to Ms. Michaela Majoun at XPN for playing a song I needed to hear (I didn't even need to ask, but then, you really can never go wrong with Melody Gardot, in my opinion). I wasn't in the car 5 minutes this morning before "Who Will Comfort Me?" comforted me. I had been thinking of the song over the weekend, but it's not one I have (yet) in my collection so I wasn't able to play it.

Saturday I cleaned out another big chunk of mess from my room. Yes, still working on the one ROOM. How did I let so much mess accumulate, I have been wondering, in my house and in my life? The answer is by exercising an overdeveloped talent for avoidance and denial. I just don't see how much junk comes in and starts piling up. So, I tackle the clean up in pieces because it is overwhelming. After I do some of it, there's a long break before I do more. In that time, I am exhausted, and feel that I can't face taking on the next piece.

I realized too that fear holds me back from working through the whole job. When my room, for example, is emptied of the clothes I will never wear again, the things that belonged to a marriage that is over, the superfluous knickknacks, will I have excavated simplicity and beauty? Or will it just be empty? I am terrified, and I mean that quite literally, almost shaking, that when I get rid of the mess of my life there will be nothing left.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. -- Eric Heffer

Without the struggle I am used to having, what is my purpose? The fear is that I will find that at bottom I am without purpose, and that I am essentially incompetent at life. No wonder I have been sliding back into escapism lately. That's a big fear. But any fear, like a demon, starts losing its power once it is named. Even Jesus asked first, of a particularly troublesome demon "What is your name?" before He drove it out (Luke 8:30). I don't have much success with overcoming fear or any other proverbial demon, without specifically identifying it first.

Meanwhile the work is to remember who I am and what my work is, underneath the accumulated confusion and mess. Despite the fear, my faith is that I will find something good about this life.

Change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not. --Ruth P. Freedman

Meaning?

2009-08-27T10:17:00.003-04:00

A dream is an unopened letter to yourself. -- the Talmud

I am feeling a little off today, that kind of off that usually means I've got a touch of some virus, but I'm not really sick. But I had a really hard time getting up this morning. I kept falling back to sleep until finally I started having wacky dreams about trying to wake up. One dream was that our friend Howie had somehow let himself in and was sleeping on the bedroom floor 'cuz he'd had too much to drink to get home, as if this would be perfectly acceptable.

What finally got me out of bed, though, was that I dreamt about waking up hearing what sounded like the Avett Brothers themselves singing in my house, variations on a line from one of their songs, "I'll never be the same again." It was only a dream, though. How disappointing. I've never met the Avett Brothers, but their music creates this sense of knowing them, and I am sure it would be very cool, at any rate, to have them visit. I would have cooked breakfast and everything. The kids would have flipped with joy, as they, too, are fans.

Instead I am at work, getting ready to review the health insurance rosters. Sigh. And I'm wondering what frightening subconsious reality presents itself in dreams about itinerant musicians and drunk friends.

Out of the Mouths

2009-08-26T09:43:00.004-04:00

I make an effort to ease this divorce transition for my two kids. The process has really been a long one; as I've mentioned, a couple years of counseling and lifecoaching helped me get to the point of just doing it this year. The legal process took only 4 months, but the personal process took a few years. The boys have only been aware of it for the past eight months or so, when my exhusband and I separated.

One day recently, I picked up the boys from day camp. I think that afternoon they were watching "The Parent Trap" or a similar movie, and my younger son almost greeted me with the question, "Mom, you're not going to have to marry some other guy some day, are you?" So funny, the way he put it, as though there is a rule I will have to follow.

I explained that I certainly don't have to be married again (I am still in the phase of shuddering when I think of taking that kind of risk again), but it is possible that some day in the future I might consider it. Relying on the reading I've done, about reassuring kids that nothing else will change drastically in the near future, I explained that for now I'm enjoying being just the 3 of us, and spending time with my girlfriends. I pointed out how much I've been getting together with my friend Jenn, who is also in the divorce process.

At this point we were in the van. My older son asked from the far back seat, "You're not gay, are you, mom?" I almost laughed out loud. I'm glad he's open minded enough to wonder, it's just that it was so far from the reassurance of stability that I was trying to convey. This son, in particular, rather likes an audience (I don't know where he gets it from...) and I think he was disappointed. THAT would have been something interesting to tell his friends. But, no, Bunny, that's not what I meant.

The kids are always full of surprises, and the more I try to anticipate their needs, the more they seem to be on a different track entirely. They probably think the same of me - when they think they have me figured out, I go and do something unexpected. I think our relationship together is plenty to engage me, for now.

The Point?

2009-08-25T21:07:00.005-04:00

Sometimes when I read over a post, I wonder why I am writing at all. The words ramble around a topic or two, or three, and there is clearly a wariness about revealing too much. It is too hard to forget, sometimes, about people that I know may be reading. What will they think? Is this offensive? What kind of backlash will there be? I'm a turtle, poking my head out and taking one tentative step forward.

On the other hand, some posts are still rambling but are pretty darned close to the way I actually think. That can frighten me. I am not so much worried about exposing myself, but about alienating myself from my friends by exposing too much of them in the process.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal. -- Elia Kazan

I suppose there are worse venues for developing discernment. You are all guinea pigs, really. Feel free to comment if you have any wisdom to offer on the subject. But, really, thanks for being here.

Good Stuff

2009-08-25T20:23:00.002-04:00

It was a good weekend, with a minimum of drama. Drama refers to all sorts of upheaval, whether it's an argument with my exhusband, or the refrigerator dying or illness or accidents that land people close to me in the hospital. Nope, it was hot but good, with lots of resting on Saturday. I thought I should write a little before the usual struggles resume wreaking havoc, so I have an upbeat post for a change.

On Sunday I met an old friend that I haven't seen for years and it was perfectly comfortable. We both love books and art, and observing people. That is plenty for passing an afternoon together companionably. Also we ate lunch (eating is always good) and shopped a bit in New Hope, PA. In Farley's Bookshop, I found "Quotable Notables" notecards and quotes on stickers, from great writers.

I just pulled that package out and here is a sample from the Jane Austen stickers: "Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love." Well, actually, that has a lot to do with reconnecting with old friends and making more time to get out with the girls. But that would be one of those things I'd rather "not touch because they are too near."

In the nearly ten years since we'd seen each other, V. and I have both lost our dads. Our moms cope with it differently; hers seems to be the more greatly impacted. Also V. only has one brother and he lives in England, so she feels more of the responsibility for her mom. Even when she has issues with her health, when my mom needs help it gets spread out over several siblings. V. bought a new house. I had a second child, moved at least twice, and am now divorced.

Our identities shift with some of these changes. I remember when I had my first baby, being wheeled through the back corridors of Christiana Hospital in Delaware, trying to grasp the fact that literally overnight I had become the mother of a child. It was too big to absorb quickly; only the familiar curve of the tiny bottom that had been under my hand for several weeks convinced me that I had anything to do with the appearance of this new person.

Now I am a divorced mom. Every now and then, I pause and wait for that to hit me like a brick wall. Divorce would be pretty high up on the list of things I always thought I wouldn't survive. But, nope, as Bob Dylan is singing these days, "it's all good." Working through a couple years of counseling seems to have paid off. I know how I got here, why I made my choices and I am doing just fine.

As a woman, my country is the whole world. -- Virginia Woolf

No Surrendering

2009-08-20T19:31:00.006-04:00

Sometimes you have one of those days that you are just glad, finally glad to have end. Unfortunately, sometimes the next day goes pretty much the same. There have been several like that in a row. This morning my new fridge, which had finally arrived on Tuesday, wasn't cold. Out went 2 more containers of ice cream, waffles... the few other things that had gone in (I'm thankful I hadn't yet done a real grocery trip).

Having gone a week and a half without a real fridge, I've already outspent the budget on takeout & convenience items, and I don't get paid till tomorrow. What the hell else is going to go wrong? I've wondered. I tried to have gratitude for other things. I'm really glad I'm not that guy that was out on a roof for the second morning in a row, using a blowtorch on a hot August morning (I got to go to my nice air conditioned office instead). While I am over budget, I do keep "emergency" money in the checking account, so none of us will starve.

Then I was almost hit on the way to work because a guy was texting while he was driving. Jerk. Yes, you with the North Carolina plate XXE 5295. I was pissed off enough to take note.

Still, I have these great friends who listen to me grumble (definitely more grumbling than whining today). I try to keep it light, even entertaining, but it was still grumbling.

As always, I am bearable one moment, unbearable the next. -- Goethe

Work itself was worth grumbling about. I'm in one of those slumps where I can sit and look at the stuff that's late and almost cannot force myself to work through it. Then I had a little prodding from our Controller. That helped. I kept thinking that I have made some progress in working toward what I really want to be when I grow up, but real change still seems so far away.
Taking the small steps eventually leads somewhere, though. Back in February, just for fun, I bought a pendant that has the antique illustration of Alice putting on her crown (you can see it at http://www.goreydetails.com/. Also got a fabulous t-shirt with the Gorey drawing of a girl, which reads "So many books, so little time). I'll just keep going till I get to be a Queen.

Now our Mr. Softee guy insisted on giving me a mango melon ice, when I bought some for the kids. That was the nicest thing to happen to me all day.

Progression

2009-08-18T20:30:00.006-04:00

One of the unpleasant things about today was just the sense of generalized internal pain - I said to someone that it was like having an emotional flu. Everything just hurt and it seems that anything one can do to dull it is unhealthy. I almost miss the days when I would come home and have a few glasses of wine, and block it all out. The point now seems to be that it's necessary, if I'm going to come through things the way I want to, to let things hurt until they get better. It sucks. Every trivial frustration is hard manage in that frame of mind.

Some of it goes back to pulling out the notebook (after too long a lapse, I admit) and getting to the real stuff, the stuff that hurts. I'm not looking forward to getting back into it, to shaping the experience into something with form and purpose. I can hardly bear to go through it - who could possibly want to read it? It's the real stuff, though, that makes a story, or a poem. And the stuff I hate to look at, is a lot like the stuff nobody wants to deal with themselves. It always a discovery and a comfort to find that we are all going through the same kinds of stuff. If we could remember that, I bet we'd spend a lot less time and energy trying to hide it.

Every true poem or painting, every measure of true music is paid for with life, with suffering and blood. -- Herman Hesse

With the writing, I've also noticed that I'm progressing from just hurting to feeling angry. It's not any more comfortable, but it does seem to be moving toward resolution.

Storm's Brewing

2009-08-18T20:15:00.003-04:00

Today was a lo-o-ong day, and I was glad to get closer to the end of it. Our local park was going to show the movie Bolt so I told the kids we'd go. They were appalled to find that I intended for us to walk the 7 blocks or so, but they had been in the house all day with far too little activity. Besides, I am that kind of cruel, sadistic mom. So, we stopped at our 7-11 for Slurpees and snacks but when we got to the playground, we ran into some neighbors who told us the movie had just been cancelled due to the expected rain.

First, I was grateful that my kids are a couple of years past the piercing wails of "But I wanted to see the MOO-OOO-VIE!" I had been more interested in getting us all a little exercise and fresh air, honestly, and just spending some time with them. It is so easy to get wrapped up in everything I'm processing, and forget how much they need attention from me and other adults through this divorce experience.

Dark storm clouds were marching toward us as we walked, and the wind was kicking up. The boys were worried about the storm breaking on us, but I love a good storm. We did get home before the rain hit but I wouldn't have minded getting wet. It was so hot on the way up to the park, the air not moving at all. Now it's windy and noticeably cooler. A good dousing would have felt great, with no where to go but home to change into dry clothes (preferably pj's) and a movie from our recordings (we've picked Shrek 3, and the kids are bearing with me blogging at the same time).

And all the crap that was weighing on my mind is lifting a little, too. Thank goodness, Sears finally delivered the new refrigerator.

Where were we?

2009-08-17T10:44:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago, when the boys were away at camp, one of my friends came over to hang out. We sat on my sofa and were talking about the mystery of all the time that went into our relationships, into the mirage that nothing was wrong. "Where was I all those years?" she has asked herself, and to some degree, I have wondered the same thing.

There was a time a couple of years back, when I was so frustrated with trying to do the right thing, to be a good wife, to figure out what else I needed to do better to make things work. It was impossible, and I had reached the point of being angry. Angry with myself, and angry with God, because I felt compelled to keep trying to make the marriage commitment work but God was not helping. At least that's what I felt at the time.

My friend Barb pointed me then to the words of Joel "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten." (Joel 2:25). There's so much poetry in the Old Testament; I suspect sometimes that it was first my love of the the language that drew me into Scripture. Notice it's not only labor and sustenance that have been consumed, but the years, the incalculable quantity of life that was taken.

Yesterday there were actually moments when I stopped to be conscious of being in the present, without daydreaming or worrying, and it didn't hurt. It was amazing. Today, the pain is back in full force but it's okay. There will be more of those moments, I am sure of it. Somehow I have joy at the same time that I am aware of hurting. Last night I took the advice of my counselor, Hero, and "wrote from the pain," something that we usually avoid by instinct. When we do it, though, write or paint or make music, whatever the channel is for us, from a place that we want to avoid, that is completely the right choice. It is the source of my hope for redemption of the years that were lost, not just starting over with nothing, but turning the loss itself to a purpose.

Pain is filtered in a poem until it becomes in the end, finally, pleasure.
-- Mark Strand

Writing Calls

2009-08-16T10:32:00.005-04:00

I want to offer an apology for last night's blog. When I sat down and started typing, I completely lost my train of thought. So many different hurts and discoveries were bubbling to the surface, and while I don't mind exposing myself to some degree, it was too much and too fast to be able to process and decide what was worth sharing. The result seemed to me to be like the pointless rambling of an annoying drunk.

For several weeks, I have been so occupied in clawing my way through each day (yes, at times it really has felt that way, like scaling a bald rock face) that I have neglected writing, which is counterproductive. It bottles up in me until it hurts more than anything else, and I ask myself, why do I DO this? I should know better by now.

Then I sit down, as I did Friday at lunch, with my notebook and a pen, and start to scratch the surface. What results is something like being responsible for a toddler, and realizing suddenly that the child should have been fed a couple of hours ago, so now he's hungry, tired, and miserable, and it is necessary to work on each of those things separately but at once.

Poems are coming at me from every direction, and story ideas, and impressions that I need to get down, because they will have a purpose in something, some time. Meanwhile, I still need to clean enough that there's a clear path for the fridge to be delivered today, and I am taking the kids to swim with my mom this afternoon - things I'd rather forget, and go hole up somewhere with my notebook. Damn! Real life & writing, at odds again. Who said that "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia" -? I'll have to look it up and report back. [note: I checked. It was E.L. Doctorow]

Give me a pen, that I may become somebody in the future.
-- Sudanese song, quoted in "The Sudan," Vanity Fair
magazine, July 1993

Correction, in quoting M. Atwood

2009-08-16T10:24:00.004-04:00

I'd misquoted Margaret Atwood in a recent post. This passage is the last paragraph of Ch. 33 in her novel, Alias Grace.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind [...]. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

The trick I need to master, is in going from confusion to confusion (there has been very little but that for several years), to be able to tell one story while in the middle of another one.

Incidentally, when reading Margaret Atwood I find every paragraph, sometimes each individual sentence to be a discovery. I have realized that I'm holding my breath, waiting to see what the next page will bring not in terms of the story but in terms of how she reveals it. It was how she wrote, for example, Oryx and Crake, that I loved, though I found the story creepy and disturbing. It gave me nightmares about climate change, before it became a topic in the media.

Sleeping through heat & hurt

2009-08-15T20:06:00.004-04:00

It's stinkin' hot today, and all I've wanted to do is sleep. There are probably several reasons for that: I had a couple of glasses of wine last night with a friend, it's been an emotional couple of days, it IS hot, and certain stages in the usual hormonal patterns involve a need for lots and lots of sleep, for me, anyway...

However, I took the kids to the Y for a swim team reunion barbecue, and got some exercise. After that I was tempted to nap some more, but that's just getting ridiculous. Took a walk to Acme to get a few things to make dinner (the new fridge comes tomorrow, hallelujah - this dorm size fridge is just not cutting it for us), and have fed the kids like a good mom.

I'd signed up for a daily devotional email from divorcecare.org. When I started getting them, I thought they were speaking to a stage of divorcing that I'm long past, but in the past week I've found them to be pretty much on target. So on target sometimes, that I think the writer should piss off, for having touched on some sore spots. Dr. Jim Talley has addressed the way that a divorce, in every case, involves stripping away the familiar. Whatever else you're feeling, there's that pain of not having familiar structure and routine. I had that. There's so many ways we can try to elude that pain - alcohol, starting new relationships before we're ready, whatever. I've found that I might not even know how much I'm trying to escape, until somebody pulls the plug on one of those numbing experiences. Sleep is probably the most innocuous escape for me.

fragment: Ntozake Shange

2009-08-14T22:28:00.002-04:00

why dontcha c'mon & live my life for me/since the
poems aint' enuf / go on & live my life for me / i didn't want
certain
moments at all / i'd give 'em to anybody
-- Ntozake Shange, "on becoming successful"

Tumbling

2009-08-14T22:08:00.003-04:00

"Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall
think nothing of tumbling downstairs!" -- Lewis Carroll

I just noticed that I quoted Alice in the last post, also. Not infrequently, I feel like Alice, among strange people in a world with rules that make sense less often than they don't. I had put that quote in my little collection book when I took a tumble down stairs, which put me in the hospital for a week and half, with a permanently dysfunctional and disfigured ankle (it used to be amusing when the hardware set off metal detectors in airports).

Today was a tumbling sort of day. It started very low. I felt all the vulnerability of the changes in my life, and its losses, longing for comfort from almost any quarter that would make itself available. I've struggled too long, though, not to keep pressing forward. I forced myself to focus on work, while I was at work, and took myself out to lunch with my notebook, which I've treated like an unappreciated lover lately.

After lunch, I returned a call from my attorney, to find that the divorce is now final. I am glad, I know I am glad. It marks a milestone in several years of struggle, introspection, counseling and work. How sad, though, the years that have gone by, and the ways that I lost touch with myself. I'm shaking it off, mentally. There's been more growth because of those years. And, I remind myself, if nothing else, the experience gives me more to write about.

There's so much to write, to catch up. I noticed that I misquoted Margaret Atwood in a recent post, and will correct that soon in a post of its own ("A story isn't a story at all..."). I have the book, Alias Grace, somewhere in the house. I've pulled so much out in order to sort through it, getting rid of some things and organizing the rest: there's a symmetry between my physical world and my internal reality.

Thanks to you who read what I write. I've noticed some of you following me on Twitter. I will soon figure out how to post my Twitter info here, though I'm not yet very good at tweets (I'm brookbarb on Twitter, if that helps). For now, it's time to get the kids to bed. I'm looking ahead to a weekend that should be much less hectic than the past few have been.

A Ramble

2009-08-07T22:06:00.004-04:00

I'm just in from a Girls' Nite/ Happy Hour. It's a pretty good happy hour, these days, to keep me out till ten (not like the old days, when that would be nothing). Fun, too, to bring together women friends from different corners of life - work, church, family - to mark a milestone of a new beginning. It was fun; I think the friends were surprised that I could sing along to a couple of the songs played by the Irish music band at the first bar. How often do I get to exercise that dubious talent?

Still, I was beginning to look forward to getting home, to write a bit and put on my own music, which right now is Shemekia Copeland's Never Going Back CD. "There's nothing like staying at home for real comfort," as Jane Austen wrote, however facetiously, in Emma. Best of all is a balance: getting out for a while, but being glad to get home and finding that once again home is a place of peace, because for a long time it just wasn't.

I don't find that "I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself" (Samuel Johnson), in fact I enjoy my own company at least as much as most other people's. It was a good crew tonight, though, and good laughs.

I will be glad to pick up my boys from camp tomorrow, to hear about all their fun week and to bring them home for their own peace. The balance is that I've also enjoyed having the house to myself, getting some work done and some rest, too. It's a different world when I get up in the morning and am responsible for no one but myself, but even that reminds me that it is good to have children who steady me with a sense of purpose. There are times when no other purpose is as clear as the need to be there for the kids. My life has creative purpose; I'm just not always sure what it is or how to get to the next point. The kids keep me from stalling out while I'm figuring out what to do next beyond surviving.

It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it.
-- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Thanks, friends, all of you. Sometimes it is good just to be puzzled together.

Rollercoasting

2009-08-04T21:38:00.005-04:00

Your love is like a roller coaster, baby, baby...

I almost attributed that line to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That's not who did the song originally but I am so tired, I just can't think of the name of the original artist. Maybe if I keep typing it will come to me.

The song, anyway, was on the radio the other morning; yes, you guessed it, Michaela Majoun played it on WXPN as part of a 9 am select-a-set. It reminded me of Cindy Kephart,a woman I'd worked with in Wilmington, DE. Cindy had a very polished look and could work a scarf like nobody's business. She told me two things that I still remember, no three things: First, this was actually the lastest bit: Epidurals are our friends. Very good so far (I discovered that was true later). Second, she had told me that there will be days when all we can do is show up at work and that's just got to be accepted. Third, she said that you find out by the time you're thirty that life is like a roller coaster. When all else fails throw your arms in the air and yell "wheee!"

It was interesting to hear that from her, as she always seemed to have things pretty much under control. Of course, that may have had a lot to do with my perspective at the time - younger (early to mid-twenties) trying to figure out and keep up with the corporate world, identifying and exorcising some of my personal demons and still wondering what I was going to do with my life.

Things are certainly rolling up and down. Good news today was that my mom's visit to the oncologist did not lead to a schedule of chemotherapy. Mom has had two bouts with uterine cancer and now has nodules on a lung. Not so good. The onc said, though, that they are small (we knew that) and that they are not fast-growing, so he'd like to wait 6 weeks for some additional test results. So, not out of the water but not in crisis mode yet, either.

Whew. Relief. But a letdown, all that tension of bracing for the news. I'm thankful. We've all expressed our appreciation, too, that being so many siblings means we are an instant network of support. My brother the pharmaceutical rep specializes in oncology meds, so he went with mom to the appointment, understanding more of the disease and the treatments than the rest of us. Thanks, Mike.

I realized today that waiting for your official divorce decree to arrive in the mail is a lot like looking in the paper every day for an obituary for someone that you already know has died. Fait accompli, but you're just hanging on for it. Still, there's the stuff that's done and the stuff I still have to do - literally stuff - to pack up and to throw out (I'm working on all that while the kids are away at camp), and my friend Sue tells me I need to take time to heal, to just EXHALE. Hmm.

And then? Well, that's on the other side of this climb up the hill, the part where I can throw my hands in the air and yell, "whee..."

The fear of freedom is strong within us.
-- Germaine Greer

Contact!

2009-08-03T21:25:00.004-04:00

Forces have conspired to keep me from blogging. The computer at home suffered the loss of its monitor. The kids tell me, don't worry, Santa can bring you a laptop for Christmas. I am not counting on Santa, but hope that by that time I can manage a Mini, at least.

Worse than that, though: the Watchguard service at the office is blocking all blogs and forums. Too awful, but true. We'll see how long that lasts, as I know some people are being prevented from doing actual work, and the logic in the code is far from reliable. It won't allow access to an msn article on "Finding Your Soulmate" for references to "Lingerie & Swimwear" but seems to have no problem at all with full articles on Yahoo! about... well, the Girl's Guide to certain sex practices. I was, of course, only testing the restrictions...

Meanwhile, the kids are off to a week of sleepaway camp! It is hard not to show my excitement when I'm packing them up, as they take it very personally. But I can take all the time in the world to get this computer running and access the web by dialup, reset the security features for cookies so I can blog... because I don't have parenting duties! How exciting.

How to catch up? or to start over? I had quickly written a bit a few weeks ago on poetry for fun, which drove me to find my copy of Ntozake Shange's Nappy Edges.

poetry is unavoidable connection/
some people get married/others join the Church
i carry notebooks so i can tell us what happened
-- "inquiry"

If, as Adrienne Rich wrote, "the moment of change is the only poem," it is hard to find the poetry in the changes of this life. I have been reading Brenda Sheaffer's book Is it Love? Or is it Addiction? Through it I am seeing an intellectual map for everything I have been learning viscerally over several years - getting the Smart Notes version. But the change has been more along the lines of tectonic plates shifting than moments of change. That observation may evolve with some distance in perspective.

When you're in the middle of it, a story is not a story at all but a blind wreckage [...] It only becomes a story when you tell it to someone, to yourself or to another person. -- Margaret Atwood, in Alias Grace

I am only beginning to feel that I've climbed free of the wreckage. With time and with distance I will be able to come back, come to "explore the wreck." I will come "to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail." (Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck")

Return from the Beach

2009-07-20T12:11:00.005-04:00

I am returned from a week at the beach! It was a beautiful week, and for the first couple of days I thought repeatedly of Edna St. Vincent Millay, "I am too long away from water. I have a need for water near." The adjustment to beach living was gradual; the mind is so accustomed to all the schedules and demands of the day that it kept asking "what am I supposed to be doing?"

Even with the two boys with me (my first vacation as a single parent - but I had plenty of support from family) there was time for daydreaming, for reading a couple months' worth of magazines, for writing several times a day and for taking naps. In the midst of the other 27 people on this family vacation there was still time just to be alone, and to process all the change, the loss and the new beginnings that have comprised my life this year.

It was lovely to sit on the beach, to watch the kids of all ages playing. There were dolphins, startlingly close to shore one day. A pair of pelicans flew by. Most days the weather was absolutely perfect, and I have a tan! This is remarkable because I never tan; for me it is a good one. It won't last - I told my neighbor "don't blink or you'll miss it" because it will fade quickly. He said, "ahh, one of those Irish tans - they usually come off in the shower." Too true, sadly.

The brain is sluggish, having accustomed itself to warm sand, the rhythm of the surf and lazy beach conversations. Apart from Millay, I was thinking of the opening pages of Fortune's Rocks, describing Olympia's arrival on the shore after a long Boston winter. I couldn't quite recall the words, but the purely sensual experience that Anita Shreve captures in her prose:

Her feet, as she makes slow progress, create slight and scandalous indentations in the sand. Her dress, which is a peach silk, turns, when she steps into the water, a translucent sepia. The air is hot, but the water on her skin is frigid; the contrast makes her shiver.

It is time to get back to work, but it was a joy to have the break. It becomes apparent how much you've relaxed when you come back to real life and balk at having to consider all the things that usually occupy the mind, instead of ignoring it all to go sit in the sun.

Poems for Fun

2009-07-10T14:53:00.004-04:00

Last year I was reading Best American Poetry 2005 and discovered "Hate Poem" by Julie Sheenan. I don't know that it will ever be a classic, but I absolutely love it. I keep a printed copy on my desk at work. You can find the whole thing at www.loc.gov/poetry/180/127.html, though it is slightly different from the version that appeared in BAP. When I'm furious with the incompetence or indifference of a colleague, I meditate on a line from this poem, such as "A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious symbol of how I hate you". I shared it with a friend at work who is not a poetry fan but is open-minded enough to have taken a look. We laugh over it when something gets our goat at work or at home. The poem succeeds in riding that crest of petulance of the nth degree, where it is exactly how you feel and yet you know you are being ridiculous.

So maybe I haven't yet convinced my friend to love poetry in general, but she has at least commented that she had no idea the poetry can be so real, so current and fun. I started telling her about one of Ntozake Shange's poems from her 1978 collection, Nappy Edges but that one was a little too racy for the office. Maybe when we're out having a drink sometime...

I hadn't thought I would write at all today. A panic attack seemed imminent this morning as I looked at everything that needs to get done NOW. I asked some friends to pray for me, and have been calm and even steadily working through the piles. A few minutes for a quick post suddenly seemed doable, and thought I would make a plug for poetry in general. It's a fairly private passion; it is daunting to try sharing something that is part of your most basic energy only to watch people's eyes glaze over. It's not for everybody and I know that, but it is amazing when someone else taps into a little bit of the excitement. Every now and then I will share a poem or fragment of a poem that might be a pleasant surprise to non-lovers of poetry.

Preparing

2009-07-09T11:20:00.004-04:00

The surly mood has dissipated. It waned into weepiness yesterday afternoon, and a good night's sleep seemed to help it all just go away. Now I am frantically trying to get things done before vacation, both at work and at home. Work is tying up the last of the open enrollment paperwork that is spread all over my office and running some of the billing reports.

I took the van for an overdue oil change this morning and, as I expected, the brakes need changing, too. Sigh. Fortunately, I was holding some money aside for anything that needed to be done for the van. I will be glad to know it's done before making the drive down to the beach.

So, I got a ride from the mechanic to a bus stop and caught the bus in. I have a friend from work dropping me off to the shop this afternoon and my sister agreed to pick up the boys from day camp... so those bases are covered! I still need to get a prescription filled, replace the boys' lost & broken goggles for swimming, get to the grocery store and PACK. It will all get done somehow, and it will be so worth it.

The family email exchange is picking up speed as we all get ready. My brothers are bringing guitars and music. I love when people sit around after dinner, play and sing and just relax. I hope they are open to my kids wanting to learn a little - one of our next door neighbors played with my kids a couple of times. He was playing blues guitar & singing, while the older son played a recorder (and actually kept up with the key changes without help) and Peanut "drummed" with a pen on a glass. It doesn't sound impressive, but they really kept up and it was a joy to see them being part of the music.

Also one of my brothers is bringing a glove for the older son (who really needs a nickname here - we call him Bunny at home but he will hardly want to be posted that way), who is interested in playing baseball. We want to test out his level of interest before investing in a good glove, and this is a perfect opportunity. He is fortunate to have aunts and uncles who are more sports oriented than I am, or he might never learn the basics of the various games. Someone started organizing the kids for soccer and baseball at lunch recess at school this year, which piqued his interest.

In the midst of all this, we signed the final round of papers for the divorce last night. I am glad it is done, but sad that things are what they are. It is good, actually, to be so busy as there is less time to brood about that and about other things. Speaking of busy, I have to get back to work!

Surliness

2009-07-08T11:42:00.006-04:00

I'm surly today. What a great word - it sounds like it feels. I love words like that, and love them in other languages, too. When my host brother from Ecuador, Carlos once visited my home for a week, my dad was in rare form: picture Archie Bunker, only crankier. Carlos said the word for my dad in Spanish would be cascarabias. The exact translation wasn't necessary, though I imagine that it is close to cantankerous or just plain cranky. Maybe cascarabias suits me today, too.

I wasn't going to post but in the usual morning avoidance of getting started on work (all the more overwhelming because I'm getting ready to be out on vacation next week), I took a peek at schmutzie.com. That woman cracks me up. I lightened up enough to think I'll get past the surliness, eventually.

This morning I exercised restraint when I wanted to verbally flay my ten year old (haven't yet thought of a good nickname to use for him in posting). I was already running late - before getting up I dreamt that I was going to a doctor to ask why I can't get up in the mornings - when I dropped the boys off at day camp. A few minutes later, the kid called my cell to say he'd left his backpack in the van. This is the same kid who'd deliberately punched his little brother in the back earlier in the morning, and pretty much started the day with a visible chip on his shoulder. I turned around and drove back with the bag. By the look on his face, I would say he knew he had pushed me to the limit for one morning.

The urge to viciousness scares me. Usually, it's associated with certain regular hormonal changes which is probably the case today. I could have been completely nuts - I felt like flinging the final papers to be signed for our divorce at the ex, just to lash out at someone. Nice, huh? I can only say I'm glad that I very rarely give in to that degree of meanness.

It is tempting, but I can't agree with Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes, saying "Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." I am trying to redirect myself instead. The Mozart concerto on the radio helped, a little. Email greetings from friends help some, too, especially the ones that remind me of some of the serious stuff others are going through. It's good to get the focus off myself. A good laugh always helps a lot. When all else fails, there's bad language:

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. --Mark Twain

And then, there's always writing.

Banana Boats, Baseball and Camp

2009-07-07T10:35:00.007-04:00

This morning's small gift of joy was the Banana Boat Song on the radio, when I was driving in to work. The first time I heard the song was when Harry Belafonte guest starred on the Muppet Show (I know, I'm dating myself). There's the well-known and well-worn "De-O" but when I hear it now, what stands out is the smoothness of Mr. Belafonte's voice and the almost spiritual background chorus ("daylight come and me wan' go home..."). With a little more knowledge than I used to have of choral singing, I can pick out bits that I love: the bass voices that converge and make the dashboard vibrate, and the different notes making up a chord. But I still picture muppets on the end of the boat.

Last night I enjoyed a rare opportunity to attend a Phillies game. I had a pair of tickets for a corporate suite, and took a friend who could explain subtler points of the sport that I would have missed. What a game! The Phillies skunked the Reds 22-1, a game that was easy even for a novice to watch and enjoy, especially sitting just above the Phillies dugout. In the past, the few times I'd been to a game generally involved the nosebleed seats. It's not nearly the same, and I have just enough fear of heights to have thought a lot then about different possibilities for falling. Still, I have a very vivid childhood memory of Mike Schmidt hitting a grand slam in Veterans Stadium!

So, those are two good things in the present that also triggered memories of past joys. I wonder how I might describe the way experiences converge, like music does, to my children. I have spent most of the past several days coaching my Peanut through the grief involved with the end of a week at an amazing camp for kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders. He struggles to accept or to forget or to move around the thought that he won't see those friends again for a whole year. Kids with Asperger's typically focus on the negative and tend to perseverate (remain excessively focused) on an idea, both of which have come into play and made it difficult for him to cope. I'm working on coaching him through it and trying to organize some sort of reunion picnic for the campers at the end of this summer - something positive and a much easier wait time.

It is so hard to let good things end, and I relate to his insistence that he just can't stand it. Some day the memory of camp, the memory of (hopefully) reuniting with his fellow campers and of returning to the camp will all be part of a comprehensive camp experience. He is so fortunate to have had the opportunity to go (I don't remind him of this when he is crying because he wants to go back, knowing it won't help). I remind him that every day it gets a little easier to keep going, and try to teach him to trust that there can be more of a good thing, even if you can't see it right now. And, somehow, the past and the present will come together to amplify the joy.

You don't look back along memory but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing ever goes away. -- Margaret Atwood

Letting Go

2009-07-02T14:33:00.006-04:00

The heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
-- Stanly Kunitz, "The Testing Tree"

I found this quote on the frontispiece to the Marvelous Adventures of Edward Tulane, a book I bought for my kids last year. Like many of the best children's books it is a good read for adults, too. I won't spoil it by telling the story, but I recommend reading it. The author, Kate DiCamilo, also wrote the Tale of Despereaux.

It is a story of growing through loss, not only growing but becoming at home with the idea of loss. Elizabeth Bishop was not merely ironic when she wrote that "the art of losing isn't hard to master." It is our natural inclination to fight against loss, clinging desperately to what we have and know.

Often, it isn't the loss itself that overpowers us but the fear that comes with it, the fear that nothing else will ever be so good as what we have right now or what we planned to have, or the fear that somehow I as a human being am lacking and will experience nothing but continual losses. In learning to be my own best friend, I realized that I can let go and be all right. Sure, I still struggle against it, and sometimes life needs to take a circumstance or a person from my path because I am not that good at letting go (yet; I am getting better).

I can weather even grief so sharp that there are moments when all I can think is "Breathe in. Breathe out." My picture of the future is gone and I am not sure yet how to make the new picture. Somehow, I had developed an aberrative coping mechanism, that if I was hard enough on myself either things would get better faster or wouldn't hurt so much. So, I got very, very good at being hard on myself. "No wonder things have gone this way... if I wasn't so stupid... it will never get better." I am not sure how the belief developed -it may be too easy to say that it was in my upbringing. I notice, for example, that my son who has Asperger's has an inborn perfectionism which frequently makes him painfully hard on himself. It matters less how it developed than what can done about it now.

In the relationship I have with myself now, derogatory thoughts make no sense. The good news is that I don't even have to stop myself from "going there." New thought patterns aren't yet in place (that's why I just manage to remind myself to breathe), but the destructive ones are just gone. Without the savage self-injury the real hurt is bearable. Not fun but bearable, and clean. I can feel it and keep breathing, and even have genuine joy in the day.

Incidentally, I found that Kunitz is a poet I like. You never know what you can learn from children's books.

10 Days and Counting

2009-07-01T09:50:00.006-04:00

In ten days, I will be heading to Bethany
Beach, DE with my boys for a family
vacation. We will be in the house pictured to the right, with several of my siblings and their kids. The rest of the sibs and my mom will be in a house next door (total for both houses, over the course of the week: 28 people). The vacations would never happen for the boys & me without the generosity of my mom.

The planning - the email exchanges with my sisters, about rooming preferences and schedules and the lists -is almost as much fun as the actual trip for me! So far, the room assignments are pretty well ironed out. There is a schedule for kitchen clean up duty, separate from the cooking schedule which allows for a couple free nights to eat out. We've decided that my 11-year old niece will be the best suited at overseeing the clean up; she was amazing on the last group vac!

This morning I had an email reply from Pam, my older niece. We will be collaborating on a dinner, along with her boyfriend who makes the amazing Italian tomato sauce. The rest of the menu and shopping needs to finalized, but it is looking like a great meal.

Now that we're getting closer to the actual date, it is getting exciting! One brother and his wife will come down from Michigan, and their son from NYC. The rest of us are fairly local, the farthest being in Maryland. Sure, it is a lot of people to have all together for a whole week, but we do pretty well with respecting each other's privacy and things. The spread of ages make it fun: there is approximately a 15 year difference between my oldest brother and my one younger brother, between the younger brother and the oldest niece, and between the oldest and youngest of the nieces & nephews. There's a whole range of interests, careers and life experiences and friendships that broach those differences.

There'll be great dinners together, impromptu music played after dinner, sun and the ocean and walks with the kids to the ice cream shop. I can pretty much count on NOT going to the ER this time, which is an improvement over previous years (I'm crossing my fingers that no injuries or serious illnesses make a liar out of me). AND no ten-hour drive like when we went to the Outer Banks. Sure, there will be some irritations, but nothing that can't be managed. In a crowd this big it is easy to move in and out of smaller circles, and maintain an equilibrium.

Summer Time

2009-06-30T10:48:00.003-04:00

In this part of the country, most of June consisted of cool days with lots of rain. LOTS of rain. Suddenly, it started to feel like summer and we're all looking at each other and saying "July 4th is THIS week?!" No one seems to be ready for it.

Sunday afternoon was a perfect summer day. My mom still holds a membership to the swim club where she took all of us as kids, in Bucks County, PA. Picture the mom with eight kids, bringing the playpen and a packed lunch. We were there Sunday with one of my brothers and one of my boys, soaking up the sun.

Some things never change. The kids still master that gait, something like a trot, which is as close as you can get to a run without having a whistle blown at you (though kids don't get "benched" as much as when I was little). It is still a necessary maneuver for a kid to pull herself halfway up from the water, putting a knee up on the ledge and pushing off with exactly the right pressure to get out of the pool without shredding the skin on the concrete. Every so often, the train whistles and charges through a corridor of trees nearby, and close to dinner time you can smell the charcoal getting hot on the grills. It was good just to be, and have the time to enjoy it.

A Bad Day and Small Mercies

2009-06-29T09:36:00.007-04:00

I could argue that the worst kind of bad day is one when you are not only hurting, not only wanting to kick yourself for being an idiot, but you have in the process made yourself a burden to your friends. Sometimes it takes a friend to give you the proverbial kick in the pants, and the good ones will probably feel as bad for the kick as you do for having needed one.

And say my glory was, that I had such friends. - W.B. Yeats

Having that kind of day Saturday, I had the good fortune to have the kids out of the house for the night. Instead of wallowing in despair, I was strangely goded into action. I finally cleaned out and packed up the things left in the bedroom and bathroom by my exhusband. As I worked, I thought I would see what was on TV (I don't watch as much TV as recent posts might suggest). Just as I turned it on, TCM was about to broadcast Notorious.

This is the 1946 Notorious, with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and the first film that Hitchcock both directed and produced. Movies don't get any better. You have to see Bergman telling Grant, "you can't beat a love song for a good laugh." The movie coming on at just the right moment, for me, is what I call a small mercy. It doesn't solve any problems, but it is like the universe (what I call God, but you may not) puts a hand on your shoulder and says you're ok, you're not alone. Even if you have been far from perfect.

Need a Change

2009-06-24T09:38:00.005-04:00

I'm struggling to keep my head above water lately, and it occurrs to me that I might want to think about lighter reading material. I have been trying to pinpoint what it is that I love about mysteries. There's the fact that the good guys may take some losses, but they always win in the end. The real draw, though, is in the revelations of human nature through the investigation and in people's reactions to it. Also, living people are constantly changing and unpredictable. In the case of the mystery, at least one person has stopped changing. What you find out will hold true to the end.

I picked up the other day a copy of Elizabeth George's thriller, With No One as Witness, for a dollar. It has been several years since I read one of her books, which are always tightly written. This one is a great read, but the quote on the frontispiece should have been my first clue that it might be darker than is good for me right now:

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. --Friedrich Nietzsche

With a serial killer that targets adolescent boys, the book was certainly dark. I also read it right after watching an episode of Bones (mystery, romance AND a forensic anthropologist - a bonus for this former student of cultural anthropology) in which the victim was a young boy. The combination is enough to get any mom down, especially a mom of boys. I had also read last week, one of Kathy Reichs's mysteries (on which the series Bones is based), Grave Secrets. So, lots of sick, dangerous people, dead people and decomposition. Hmmm.

I'm not likely to give up on mysteries. My bookswap has another one in the mail to me, now as a matter of fact: one of Beverly Connor's books with another forensic anthropologist, Diane Fallon solving the crimes. But I think I will take a break, and reread some Jane Austen, maybe watch Notting Hill for the twentieth time. Maybe I should just sit down and build Legos with the kids, or take them out on a hike.

It's easy enough to change what I'm reading, or seeing on TV. What I long to do now, in the midst of everything, is start everything over - move, get away from all the reminders of what has gone wrong, what I have done wrong and the hopes I had for things to go right. That's not so easy, or even possible, as we have to live with who we are and what we've lost. Even the mysteries, once everything is sorted out in the end, have to acknowledge that.

Not in the Clear

2009-06-23T09:30:00.006-04:00

It seems that the lifting of spirits yesterday was more of a reprieve than recovery. Without getting into the nitty gritty of managing clinical depression, it is not always easy to know when you are merely evincing the current stressors of life, and when you need to ask if it's more serious. The big clues are how long the funk lasts (more than 2 weeks?) and how much impact it is having on day to day life.

Adrienne Rich wrote that "Marriage is lonelier than solitude." It certainly can be that, but it doesn't compare with the loneliness of ending a marriage, however necessary or right or hard-won was the decision to come to the ending. Explaining to the children, maintaining composure with the soon-to-be-ex, knowing that friends are watching for any sign that you are not okay and that everyone else is watching for clues to the "real scoop," is exhausting. I feel like every mistake I've made along the way is broadcasting itself in every word I use, and my weaknesses are public knowledge. There is no comfort, only putting one foot in front of the other each day.

I concetrate on the small joys, like hearing The Psychedelic Furs on the radio when I drove home from work last night. I used to have all their albums, on cassette tape, of course, and they bring to mind the one period in high school when I was consciously happy. This morning, I got in the car and heard Johnny Cash singing "I Walk the Line." Sometimes it's the whimsy, the simple surprise of music not aired very often.

Of course, there are also the kids, offering and asking for hugs, and telling me about their day. My older son built a Lego house yesterday with a working elevator, simply looking through the available pieces (never mind that half of them are scattered across the basement floor). In three weeks, I will be at the beach with family (thanks to Mom). I just had an email that the Avett Brothers will play in Philly again, in October, so I might get to see them perform. And, there are the friends who email and call, reminding me that I may have to do the work alone, but that I am not alone, not really. And, when I am able to think clearly, there is hope that the future will be better than this.

A Good Hurt

2009-06-22T10:11:00.006-04:00

I've been stuck in a low spot for several days, and avoided blogging. I decided that nobody needed to be brought down with me. I'm back now; and it helps that the sun was shining on my way in to the office today. That didn't happen once last week.

When you are once sure what your real interest is, everything goes down before it like grass under a roller - all other interests, both your own and other people's.
--Miss DeVine, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Two extremely intelligent, well-educated women were talking in this scene about knowing what is one's "proper job." For some, it might be science or a craft, or art. For others, it can be another person. For many of us, we struggle to be sure we know what our proper job is, doubting even that we have a proper job. If we just stop and observe what we take the most care to do right, that will point us in the right direction. Where our genuine interest lies, we cannot, will not make do with meager effort, or with fudging the truth (Miss DeVine suggests it will be the one thing you cannot lie about).

This morning I had an email response from an online journal to which I had submitted two poems. Neither of the poems was accepted; I had in fact submitted rather sooner after writing them than I usually do. It normally takes months for me to draft a poem, work with it, leave it alone, revisit it, then go through the last two steps a few more times. The poetry editor took the time to write nearly a full page of editorial comment. While I am generally too easily discouraged by criticism, I found the editor's remarks to be stimulating, even on the rebound from a week of depression. I can't wait to get to work on the poems.

Writing is the thing for me, though for many years I doubted that. My need for encouragement and praise goes "down like grass under the roller" in the drive to write well. Writing the truth, in any context, will inevitably cause problems with the people in our lives, but I need to write my truth, not without respect for other people but without being controlled by their interests. More often than not, the result is some degree of isolation. The need to protect myself from exposure succumbed to the promise of writing better if I write openly in a blog. The costs of doing the job well are no deterrent when the job is the right one.

Work, an update, and another hero

2009-06-18T12:02:00.006-04:00

It seems crazy that once I started blogging in the mornings, my focus & productivity with work (the paid work, the work I'm supposed to be doing at work) shot way up. Good thing, too, as I'm knee-high in insurance changes for open enrollment. I am way ahead of where I was at this time last year.

Finally, I got the official word Tuesday that the MIA Mirena is actually right where it should be, according to the ultrasounds (had the standard and the trans-vag, yuck), so nothing more is needed on that front. Thank goodness! I couldn't afford one more copay.

Once I wrote, many posts ago, that I have a hard time answering the question, "who are your heroes?" I started thinking of people I admire all the time. One of them is Ms. Michaela Majoun, host of the morning program at WXPN, 88.5 Philadelphia. She also hosts Live from the Kelly Writers House, the Sustainability series and the Arts Crawl. Michaela has an amazing voice that is easy to listen to every morning. Based on her voice, my brother John once suggested Michaela for the voiceover for The Access Group's corporate promotional video a few years ago. I believe she got that job, too.

I am frequently struck by Michaela's graciousness in speaking with guests and co-workers, her general knowledge and her ability to be present and responsive in the moment. When she presents the Arts Crawl or any other report, I hear her passion for music and the arts in Philadelphia. I would love to have her ability to connect with what's going on in this city, and to keep track of what's happening in the music world.

I am a sucker for a pleasant voice, but the intelligence and warmth that she communicates so consistenly make Michaela Majoun a hero to me. Listen at 88.5 FM or http://www.xpn.org/.

Saying Goodbye

2009-06-15T10:43:00.006-04:00

It happened Friday, the last day of school for my boys, that the Peanut asked me "Will I ever see Mr. Mike again?" Mr. Mike is the TSS ("wraparound") who has worked with Peanut at school, almost every afternoon since November. I had written about this in an earlier post, that Mr. Mike had accepted a full-day assignment with another child, at a school much nearer to his home. It was a sound decision for him, but I anticipated a struggle for my son, who is having so many changes in his life, changes that he experiences as losses.

"Why? why?" he kept asking me, crying himself to sleep Friday night. He had asked "why couldn't I have him for just one more year? He was a best friend." Grief rides this little one hard.

We are so fortunate that the worker assigned to Peanut has been senstive, intelligent and positive. I am thankful we have had him at all. There was no way I was going to say that to my son in that moment, though. Nor was I going to tell him he can't get so upset when he has to say goodbye. Well-intentioned people said those things to me when I was a sensitive, hurting child. It doesn't help the hurt, and only tells the child there is something wrong with him or her, on top of hurting.

I told him it is hard to say goodbye to people. I told him we can ask Mr. Mike if he'd like to come have dinner with us once in a while. And I rubbed his back and let him cry. By the time he was asleep, I was crying, too. Loss is so personal with children, as if who they are dictates what happens in their lives. I can remember feeling that.

I had no experience other than love disappearing, however long that took. -- Nuala O'Faolain, Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman

There will be a new TSS for Peanut this summer, or in the fall. I pray for another person who will work well with him, and care about how he does. Over time, I hope my son learns to accept and move with the flow of people in our lives; there are people who will be with him for the long haul, and some people, who may be very special, that may only be part of life for a little while.

There have been in the past couple of years, people who have moved away, like the best friend from pre-K. His parents have separated, and now this person who has very much functioned as a personal coach and mentor will move on. I can't control what comes into Peanut's life next (I have heard from my Al-Anon friends that everyone we love "has a higher power, too, and I'm not it"), but I can allow him to express his grief, see that loss comes to all of us in different forms, but new relationships come, too. They are never the same, but they can be great in a different way.

Timing and Faith

2009-06-11T10:18:00.009-04:00

Yesterday, my friend Diane and I started the day with an inspiring exchange. I forwarded an email that I get, called New Every Morning (from http://www.pilgrimsrestbnb.com/), which always contains a Bible verse and another, related quote. Yesterday's quote was:

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on! hold fast! hold out! Patience is genius. -- Georges L.L. de Buffon

A therapist once told me "Sometimes God says yes, sometimes He says no. Sometimes He says, not yet." I hated that. I'm sure I've mentioned that I hate waiting. I tend to expect the negative, a trait that I see in my son - it is typical for kids who have Asperger's Syndrome. To wait with hope and expectation goes completely against the grain. It isn't just the waiting, it is holding on to the hope without continuous reinforcement, believing in that which is unseen.

Diane sent me a daily email from Joel Osteen, beginning with the verse: "And David turned away from Eliab..."(I Samuel 17:30, AMP; see http://www.joelosteen.com/). Mr. Osteen emphasized turning away from discouraging voices, as David did, when his brother Eliab pointed out the power of Goliath and the futility of fighting him. Yet, David did defeat Goliath. He won the battle - and the king's daughter and a lifetime free of paying taxes.

The messages were not on precisely the same topic, but both referred to perseverance and hope, and the importance of listening to our own inner voice, rather than the voices of the many who are not attuned to the direction of their own lives, let alone to the lives of others. In response to the Osteen message, I emailed back this quote:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. --Mark Twain

Those who discourage you (including yourself) speak from their own discouragement, or from an agenda that keeps you discouraged so that you don't achieve much or expect much. It is hard work to learn to hear your own inner voice, then to trust and to follow that voice despite that constant pressure to do what others are expecting. The theme carried right through a session of empowerment counseling with Hero last night. It is hard work, but the payoff stays with you.

On XPN this morning (my favorite, listener-supported radio station, 88.5 WXPN in Philadelphia), the musician Moby was interviewed for Michaela Majoun's series on Sustainability. Moby discussed Sustainability as a principle for a career in music. He stressed following your own individual passion and drive, rather than selling out for the momentary success (the On the Waterfront effect: think of Marlon Brando, muttering, "I could have been a contender").

Bruce Springsteen was cited as an example of a performer with a strong career for over 30 years - some things have been more successful than others, but Bruce continues to find success because he continues to work hard at doing what he loves. Moby admitted that he is not a fan of Springsteen's music itself, but respects and admires the man as a professional and as an artist. Ms. Majoun concluded by adding that Moby's advice is true for everyone, not only musicians: be ready to allow yourself to make mistakes, and stay true to what you love.

When ideas and incidents come together at the right time, like the various devotionals and the radio presentation this morning, it is more than a coincidence. It's serendipity. As a kid, I read the book The Cross and the Switchblade, in which the Reverend David Wilkerson would call serendipitous events "Holy Spirit timing."

However it happens, sometimes there is a confirmation of purpose in our lives or in our present struggle. There is a reason to keep on, and to keep the faith. The proof doesn't come when we want it, but when it comes. The last quote I'd thrown out to Diane was from the Tao te Ching of Lao-Tsu, "When spring comes the grass grows by itself." Some things can't be rushed (God may be saying "not yet"). We do the work and complain because we can't force the results, but when the timing - that timing we can trust and believe in - is right, the results come, almost without effort.

You can visit with my friend Diane: http://www.myspace.com/uniqueblonde

Go to 88.5 WXPN online at http://www.xpn.org/ to hear the Sustainability in Music commentary by Moby, and check out other great features, including the 2009 XPoneNtial Music Festival, July 24-26.

Learning Process

2009-06-09T16:11:00.010-04:00

Life is like playing a violin solo in public, and learning the instrument as one goes on. --Samuel Butler
This quote from Samuel Butler has been popping up in my mind, because it is exactly how I feel about blogging. I opened this blog nearly a year ago. A friend pointed out to me in February that I hadn't done anything with it. "I don't know WHAT to do with it," I complained. I think I was actually whining. Like most things in life, it has required that I jump in and figure it out as I go along. I hate that. I have issues with doing things wrong.
It seemed first of all monumentally egotistic to think anyone would want to read my rambling thoughts, and I didn't have a single, specific passion that I wanted to make my focus. Then I decided that, since no one was reading it anyway, I might as well just write and let it develop; then, if one particular thing kept coming up as a theme, I could always start over with a new blog on that subject. One result has been that the writing is getting better, slowly.
Reading other blogs has helped, since there are as many types of blogs out there as one could imagine (see Blogs I Follow on my profile page for some that I like). One I just discovered and love, is http://www.schmutzie.com/. Schmutzie was recently the "BlogHer of the Week," (see http://www.blogher.com/). She writes with a unique voice, and inspires me to trust my own voice to develop.
Now, I know there are a few people who read my posts. That's fun, but at the same time I feel rather like a nude art model, except the exposure is all from the neck up: I expose how I think. I feel the same way every time I read a poem in public, or email it to friends for comment. It is very, very much about exposure, which can be uncomfortable, but it is worth it when the result is a connection, when someone else completely takes in the experience, and shares in it for that moment, feeling it is his or her own experience that I have put into words.
I still wonder, with all the blogs that are out there, what place could mine have? If nothing else, it is my quiet space to develop the habit and craft of writing. Some friends who have read it come back to check for updates. One told me that he didn't understand a word I had written, but I think I have that effect on some people, even when I'm speaking to them. Best case scenario is that the writing itself keeps getting better, and that I have more of those, "a-HA!" moments, when I think, "this is something I can write about." Just maybe, I could someday be a BlogHer of the Week!

How exciting...writing to be used

2009-06-08T14:52:00.003-04:00

I just found out that Women in Transition, Inc. (http://www.womenintransitioninc.org/) will be using something I wrote, in a letter going out to about 4,000 people. The piece was about how I wound up seeking help from Women in Transition, and what it has done for me.

Women in Transition works to empower women, and especially helps women in abusive and/or controlling relationships, and/or in relationships that involve substance abuse. Their tagline is "Empowering Women to Change Their Lives since 1971." If you know of anyone who might benefit from talking with someone at WiT in Philadelphia, please direct her to the website or to the LifeLine 215-751-1111. In other cities, similar services can be located through the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, at http://www.ncadv.org/, or call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

If my writing is not yet actually generating pay for me, I am still excited to think that it might help an organization like this one! Best of all, by supporting WiT in a small way, I could be part of the services continuing so that another woman might benefit from them.

Ultrasound Tomorrow

2009-06-08T09:09:00.005-04:00

I am more anxious about this ultrasound tomorrow than I had thought I would be. More accurately, I am worried about what will need to happen after the ultrasound.

In March, at my annual exam, the Mirena IUD was recommended to me for two reasons: one, because it greatly reduces bleeding for most women, while the progesterone it releases is localized, rather than systemic, so it is not as likely to interfere with the antidepressant meds as the low-estrogen birth control pills I'd tried a few years ago. Those pills are also usually the newer versions, and expensive on my insurance (the monthly copay was $50). Two, now that I am divorcing, there is always the possibility that at some point I will want to know I have reliable birth control. Otherwise, experience so far suggests that I have a fertility level that is almost a stereotype for someone of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent.

The nurse practitioner had the Mirena herself, for over two years, and loved it. While the placement of the IUD was, well, not without discomfort as medical people use the word, it was very brief and certainly less difficult than pregnancy or childbirth. It also did its job right from the start. Some women bleed straight through the first month or two, or possibly more, but I didn't. Periods came on schedule and were much, much improved (what I imagine most women experience as a normal period), with just a little more cramping.

So, I was being proactive and responsible for my life; a goal for this year. Happily, I went to my scheduled followup last week. This is the norm, to ensure that the has not fallen out (I was pretty sure this wasn't a problem, having just had the second, improved period) or caused any negative symptoms. Problem: it couldn't be found. The strings, which have a texture like fishing wire, are left trailing from the cervix at placement, both to be able to confirm that the IUD is still there and for removal at a later date (it stays for 5 years unless you want it removed sooner). I had, in fact, not been able to find the strings myself, but was not greatly concerned because I had also had a hard time reaching them the month before (a monthly check is recommended).

The practitioner apologized as she readjusted the speculum a couple of times, using what she described as a sort of mascara-brush implement in an attempt to draw the strings down if they were there. Nothing. So now what? I asked. The ultrasound. Either the IUD is in place and everything is fine, only the strings somehow retracted all the way up into the uterus, or it's gone or it is still in the uterus but in some skewed position and will have to be removed. Given the uncomfortable attempts simply to locate it, I am not looking forward to that possibility, and it is possible that it would have to be removed in surgery.

To add to the physical concerns, this is my Open Enrollment period, and I have elected to switch from my HMO to a Health Savings Account, a decision I will quickly rescind if this whole issue isn't resolved, with or without the removal of the IUD, by the end of June. Also, I don't know whether insurance covers a replacement IUD if the first one needs to be removed. If surgery is needed, I have decided that while the doctor's in there, she can perform a tubal ligation, and whatever procedure (ablation, possibly) will help with the heavy bleeding issues.

The possibility of the thing being expelled on its own was something I'd read in the warnings. I don't know if I never saw a warning that the IUD might shift and be undetectable at an exam, or if I simply read it that the same way we breeze through the legal disclaimers on so many products these days; sure, there is always a slight chance of a bizarre reaction, just like there is a slight chance that I'll be hit by a car, but you can't function under that kind of fear. Now, of course, I have looked up the Mirena and potential side effects, to find things I don't want to contemplate.

Well, if all goes well tomorrow, there will be no need for further intervention. If the IUD is where it should be, I don't need any more followup now (I am willing to postpone thinking about how the eventual removal will happen; without the strings that will still be difficult). If not, there's the removal ahead, with the additional copays. Worrying won't help, I know that. I was simply not expecting so much difficulty. Still, I am hoping for the best.

What's Love Got to Do?

2009-06-07T16:07:00.010-04:00

There's a tacit assumption in our modern life that romantic interest must not be allowed to influence much outside its own sphere. Falling for someone at work is almost taboo, though it happens all the time. It is frowned on to put a relationship at the forefront of making any major decision - after all, the relationship could always go south. Of course, so could a job, but no one likes to consider that possibility. Even with current divorce rates and short-lived romances, a relationship stands a pretty good chance of outliving a job.

Lives are so compartmentalized, and even the desire to be significantly close to another person is downplayed, until there is no place for attachment to occur; the result is a lot of lonely people with no idea how to relate to someone within the very narrow context that has been allotted. Individual career and pursuits rule, but every day on msn.com and Yahoo!, there are articles on why being alone doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, what to eat or what not to eat on a first date, how to find someone with whom to go on a first date. There is no time, and certainly no energy left in which to find or to maintain relationship. We are reduced to an impotent longing that manifests itself in endless, inapplicable advice on what to do with your relationship, in a vacuum where the relationship cannot exist. We might as well write articles on how to enjoy the retirements that most of us will never be able to afford, without making major changes.

We work and work out, nurture the kids with whatever we have left, and take notes on how to act if we were ever to spend time with someone we will never actually meet because so many of us aren't even present in our own lives. In other words, "In a modern setting where even the satire is satirized, love becomes weakness, tears become a punch line, real laughter a vulnerability, marriage a surrender." (http://www.theavettbrothers.com/, a review of the Avett Brothers CD Emotionalism).

There is, of course, the other extreme, still very present among the species, of looking for one's soulmate around every corner and behind every latte counter. Expectations of a smoothly running relationship, perpetual bliss, perfect sex and perfect agreement make connection impossible, just as much as reducing relationship to an item on the chore list (equal to taking out the trash or cleaning the fridge). Still, the perfect romance is sought by many. Recently it was noted (msn.com, under Money) that the romance novel industry is booming in this economy. It's an escape, just like drinking and pornography. Love, some think, will make everything better.

"L'amour! These ladies come and dance and excite themselves and want love and think it is happiness. And they tell me about their sorrows - me - and they have no sorrows at all, only that they are silly and selfish and lazy. Their husbands are unfaithful and their lovers run away and what do they say? Do they say, I have two hands, two feet, all my faculties, I will make a life for myself? No, they say, Give me the cocaine, give me the cocktail, give me the thrill, give me my gigolo, give me l'amo-o-our. Like a mouton bleating in a field." --Antoine the gigolo in Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1932.

That passage can be haunting. We can use it, and certainly other statements like it, to dissuade ourselves from ever looking for a valid connection with another human being. We can say that romantic love is not important, which was not my intent. The need for love is real, as is hunger and the need for a purpose to one's work. Good meals don't answer for all the other needs in a fulfilled life; love alone can't do it either.

"But understand me, " said Antoine, who, like most Frenchmen, was fundamentally serious and domestic, "I do not say that love is not important." -- Ibid.

So, where is all this going? This semi-detached musing on looking for love, or avoiding love, or finding the difference between love that is important and love that is unimportant takes wing whenever I observe the inconsistency in current thinking. Go the eHarmony or Match.com! Find your perfect match! No, don't do that, you don't have time, and half of all marriages end in divorce, anyway.

It's no wonder we're confused. So far, the truest observation I think I've heard, is that important love often shows up when you're not looking for it. Even then, it may be impossible to work out, so it may not be the answer one sought. One might conclude, in the words of Ghalib, "No, I wasn't meant to love and be loved." Maybe it is easier to abandon hope. Or, take your two hands and two feet, and your faculties and make a life for yourself, and see what happens.

Kids... always a surprise

2009-06-07T15:49:00.004-04:00

My kids never stop surprising me. With all the angst I was feeling for my eight year old Peanut, it was my older son who was really struggling. My firstborn is ten years old and at the end of his fourth grade year. I've recently had a mom of three grown and nearly grown sons tell me that there is something about boys this age, especially in the spring... that the attitude I'm getting is common to this age & gender.

Friday afternoon, the attitude cropped up with yet another complaint about what I had asked him to do, in comparison with the job I'd given his younger brother. Firstborn got sent to his room, because I was livid. Eventually, we had a discussion, in which he shared some of what's really been bothering him - a very personal piece of information that his brother had shared & was now the source of a lot of teasing, and a general insecurity with how his world may change with the divorce.

It seems that a character on TV has parents that divorced, and when the mom moved out of state, she took the boy with her, so my son has been fearing that one of us will do the same. In general, there is a blank where the future looked predictable with a mom, dad, and two boys (and our cat, Scamper) all in the house together.

All I could do, and continue to do, is assure my kids that one thing their dad and I are doing, is working very hard at putting them first, and making time for them to spend with each of us. Yes, there have been a couple of nasty arguments in the past few months, but not many. Regardless, the boys are important to both of us and we will make being there for them our first priority. I promised that I won't just move them out of state, away from their dad (however tempted I may sometimes be - I kept that comment to myself).

For now, it seems like the conversation just took the lid off a well of fear and some anger that needs to be talked out. I named some of our friends whose parents split, permanently or temporarily, who had already told me they would always be willing to talk about it. I shared the conversation with my ex, so we can both be ready with assurances that neither will deprive the kids of the other parent.

Whew. The shoe that falls is rarely the one we expect, is it?

Kids and Break Ups

2009-06-05T12:06:00.005-04:00

When I was a kid, my family had developed a very close friendship with the associate pastor at our church. Being a Catholic church, the associate was a youngish priest, assigned to our parish for an indeterminate, but not indefinite, number of years. Being Catholic, our family was a large one: I was the 7th of 8 children. There was a longer than usual gap between #6 and me (and my one younger sibling), so most of my brothers & sisters were a good bit older. To illustrate the relationship, one summer when several siblings were returning from college, my little brother asked Mom, "Is Father Charlie one of our brothers and sisters, too?"

Father Charlie (who played guitar, and scandalously smoked outside after Mass, and had let me sit on his lap for my first Confession) eventually was reassigned, when I was probably eleven years old. The new parish was about an hour away. The leaving was bearable, but what I could not understand was that we never heard from him.

My mom once tried to explain it to me, while she looked out the window at our yard, saying that it was easier for him to cut ties with the people he loved in the old parish, as he established new relationships in his new one. She understood it better than I did; I had felt like he was family, and he dropped us. It hurt. Naturally, I did not have the perspective that my mom had.

This story occurred to me because today, my son's TSS (his "wraparound") will tell him that next week will be their last week together. The TSS accepted a full-day assignment for the coming year with another child, which will be a much easier commute for him. My son - we can call him Peanut - has worked well with this young man, has a certain level of trust with him and I worry about how he will perceive this ending and cope. Peanut has Asperger's Syndrome, and relies heavily on maintaining structures and schedules. He has already dealt with so much.

Last year, there was the temporary separation between my husband and myself. This year, we separated again and are in the process of divorce. The ex- is still local, still spends lots of time with the kids and tries, as I do, to get along for their sake. In between separations, one of our friends from next door also moved away, for his career, someone for whom both my boys had developed a strong affection. The kids ask periodically when he'll be back, to visit, or to stay (they keep hoping).

It is hard to know how to help Peanut, and his older brother, too, in processing loss. While I know that the Asperger's Syndrome makes it harder for my 8-year-old, I also know that life will always have a coming and going of relationships, with people, with places, and with things that had suggested some degree of permanence. The best I can do is to reinforce the structures and relationships that are not changing right now, and realize that Peanut will need to work through how he feels.

Recently, there was another young man, a therapist where Peanut goes for a Social Skills group, who had worked with him for a short while, then was out with a Worker's Comp injury for a few weeks. When the therapist came back, Peanut avoided him, finally yelling at him, "Stay away from me! I don't trust you anymore!" It was evident that Peanut needed to process feeling insecure, with the male relationships in his life.

It is not possible, nor really desirable, to prevent losses, even for a child with Asperger's, who will have a harder time than most with acceptance. I hope to share with him over time the perspective that everything continues to flow, that even the relationships that are over are still part of us, and that a change in a relationship, whether permanent or temporary, may be difficult but can still be good. When I was his age, I had already seen four older siblings going away to school, then coming home again for holidays and summers. It was difficult at first, but it was a good predictor of how things can go, throughout life. I can't create a false expectation that things won't change, however badly he may feel the need to believe that.

I imagine the best way to help the kids is to model healthy levels of sadness and acceptance for them. Some of the changes have been difficult for me, too, even the positive changes.

Tongue in Cheek

2009-06-04T16:07:00.005-04:00

In the department where I work, we have a cardboard pair of glasses labelled "Drama Queen," complete with fuzzy blue feathers. There is a tradition of passing them around, to whomever has the most drama in a given day or week (or month). Some winning scenarios have been: being bitten by a chipmunk that was "playing possum," requiring a series of rabies shots; 4 episodes in a week of having an ambulance come in the middle of the night, taking a family member to the ER; a spouse having a major back problem, prompting a week in the hospital; a second grader being suspended, requiring mom to leave work to pick him up. The types of drama vary greatly.

I find myself, when I am claiming the drama in my life, making it as funny as possible. This way, I am getting some attention for my troubles, but making people laugh so it is not as annoying as simply whining about life's problems. Maybe the coming full moon (this Sunday, June 7) is evincing itself in my life this week, or something: the Drama Queen glasses are clipped to my in bin.

One of my friends asked me if there is a poem to be found in my issues, so I quickly put something together just for laughs, and decided to post it for its entertainment value. I hope it gives you a chuckle. If you can relate, please, share your stories in a comment! I plan for future posts to become increasingly literary musings on life, people and the world, but enjoy this one for today. The only background info I need to add is that this IS Open Enrollment season, the busiest time of year for me, requiring lots of focus & work, so the worst possible time for problems to crop up. Of course.

A Week in the Life…

The fridge started whining. Then it stopped running.
The stink from the trash was actually stunning

to the senses. The appliance store
was sending a guy, but he asked for more

money than the office had said.
I called for Appliance Wizard instead.

They’d send someone, no problem, next day.
My ex would wait there, good thing, I’ll say

since one kid got sick. My bet
with sore throat and headache, was strep.

The fridge got fixed.
The kid was still sick

next day, but I gave him a pill
and sent him in, ill

‘cuz I had to see the GYN at 9
for follow up. Thought all was fine

but instead had a mystery.
There was no sign of my IUD.

It was MIA. No strings, not a hint
of where the damned thing went.

Did it fall out or just shift? Next round:
another office and copay, for an ultrasound.

Either it’s gone or in there but hiding
or it’s in there but sliding

Around. Then it’s surgery
and I say, cut tubes for me

in case the future holds fun
and romance. Enough! I’m done.

Author reserves copyright.

Undivorced?

2009-06-02T09:21:00.003-04:00

It is a strange, limbo sort of state to be in the process of a divorce. My husband is not yet an ex-, but he is not with me, either. People will start to ask me "how is your....." then stop, not knowing what term to use, then either get flustered or simply use his name. I must be close to the end of living in no-man's land, though, as I heard over the weekend, for the first time, "you'd really like our friend..." Not yet officially single, and my friends are looking to hook me up. Wow.

In my case, the process has been very short. I am the one who filed for the divorce, and he is not contesting. There is a perk to having no money or property, and no debt that wasn't charged off long ago in the crazy days, which is that we don't have to wrangle out financial issues with attorneys. We are both determined that we will spend time with our children and will avoid as much as humanly possible putting them in the middle of our differences. Our custody arrangement is that we have essentially agreed to agree, sharing time and promoting relationships with both parents.

Despite the legal ease, or relative ease, of this divorce, it has been a difficult process. The not-yet-ex has his own difficulties with the situation; interacting has been an emotional minefield. As certain as I am that this is what I must do, there are days when the sadness surprises me, for all the hopes for my marriage and my life that will never be realized. These days only surprise me because I have been processing this grief in therapy, in writing, and in talking with my friends, for the past few years.

Even on the days that are not sad, I lean on my friends as I continue construct a mental picture of what my life is now - I know what I am moving away from, but need to focus on what I am moving toward, or suddenly I am overwhelmed by the blankness ahead of me. The friends are never surprised that I need them, though they know I took my good time concluding that this is the right decision for me, and that I have no doubts. I am the one who is surprised. I have been working with an empowerment counselor who reminds me often that the work I have undertaken, to be responsible and accountable for my own life, "is very lonely work." It is lonely, in that no one can do it for me or even with me; it is my work. It is all the more necessary, then, to connect with all the people I can, who believe in me and who can see that future I am creating for myself and my kids.

So, in two short weeks it will be 90 days since the petition was filed. My attorney tells me the divorce should go through by the middle of July. It has seemed an endless period of time to wait. I have friends who have been not-yet-divorced, or "undivorced" as I started thinking, for up to 4 years. One friend tells me that she and her ex-husband had no property, no custody issues, that he did not contest, yet it was still two years before her divorce went through. Where did she find the patience to get through that?

I don't like these gray areas. I hate waiting. I am not married, but I am not single, either. It will be years before I'm single, actually, because my life includes my two children. I am becoming a single woman, though. The in-between time must be for that process, the becoming. It is the time when I get better at designing my life with intent and purpose, and making choices. I am glad my friends are so much a part of it.

Erica is Doing Better, but I'm Brain Dead

2009-05-22T14:56:00.004-04:00

Many of my friends have been praying with me for Erica L., the 18-month old daughter of friends. Erica had started with a cold and ended up in the hospital last week, with pneumonia. Both lungs collapsed and she has been on a respirator. Thank you to the prayer warriors who have been carrying this little girl (and parents Carl & Karen, and big sister Victoria, as well as all the medical staff) in their hearts since last week. She is improving, and is able to breathe on her own. There are few things as heart wrenching as a sick baby, and it is so hard to imagine going through that with one of your own. The family is 10 hours away from mine - I wish so much to be there, helping, and hugging each one.

While they have endured a real crisis, I have been on the road doing Open Enrollment meetings, offered for our 1300 benefits eligible staff. By the 4th or 5th day of explaining coverages and premiums (especially the outrageous premium hikes), the brain was beginning to slow down and suddenly it seemed to stop. People would ask questions for which I am sure I know the answers, but I just can't seem to recall them. The meetings are a fun change to the usual tasks, and I get to meet so many neat people, but I am glad Open Enrollment is over! Now we begin all the paperwork. Summer is a busy time in this HR department, especially when I need to keep up so that I can take a little vacation time with the kids.

Apparently, I am even more brain dead than I had thought; I can barely form coherent thoughts. This does not bode well for tomorrow's Poetry Workshop, for which I still have to produce some decent writing. Who knows, though? Sometimes exhaustion allows me to connect with the poems, without censoring, without editing them prematurely. Last week I presented three poems of Mary Oliver's. "Wild Geese" ("You do not have to be good./ You do not have to cross the desert on your knees for a hundred years...") and "The Journey" are two of my favorite poems. "The Journey" ends with these lines:

and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

(c) Mary Oliver

The poem terrified me when I read it last year. In it I recognized the journey I had already begun, mapping out a life different from any I had seen modelled or that I would have chosen for myself. Rescuing oneself never appears heroic in the way that rescuing someone else does; it is never something we aspire to do. It must be the part where you have to admit, if only to yourself, that you've let things get to a point where the rescue is needed. Then there's the hard truth that no one can do it for you. But it happens, little by little, as this poem says, and "the stars begin to burn through the sheets of clouds." Finally, I can begin to look forward to whatever may come next!

Other thoughts, along the same lines:

then the voice in my head said

WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE

OR LIVE IN CEASELESS

DIVIDED REVOLT AGAINST IT

WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE

---Frank Bidart, Stardust

Strange where our passions lead us,
flaggingly pursue us, forcing upon us
unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies.
-- Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons

Thinking in Video Metaphors

2009-05-12T10:01:00.004-04:00

I find that I am developing a disturbing tendency to think, to identify feelings and situations, in terms of scenes from movies. Like the Tamarians in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok" (whose sole form of language consisted in references to shared historical contexts), I connect a whole thought process and emotional context to a specific scene. It has its perks. If the person or people you are addressing are familiar with the scene, and infer from it all the information and emotion that you do, you communicate a LOT without having to say much. On the other hand, it could mean that my own ability to articulate experience has atrophied.

A favorite is the scene from classic Christmas special, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Who does not know exactly how he felt when Clarice told Rudolph she thinks he's cute, and he took off into the air, shouting nasally (his nose still had the black cover on it), "I'm cute! I'm cute! She thinks I'm cute!" It's flying even higher than Liza Doolittle after the ball, when she sang "I Could Have Danced All Night" (which I have been known to sing, to my friends' chagrin).

The Rudolph-flying scene is how I have described feeling when one of my poems was accepted for publication, when another was chosen to be used in a class discussion, and definitely, yes, definitely, when it suddenly seemed one dream might not be so hopeless after all.

In the past year, no, past couple of years, I have been working to get to the root of the big issues in my life, the choices I have made or failed to make, allowing problems to grow and feeling like a victim. It is a long slow process to become more aware and accountable, to actively choose your circumstances. The correlative scene is from the first Superman movie, after Lois is killed, when Superman begins to fly around the earth, and things slowly stop then reverse. Remember that? The sense of everything grinding to a halt, then slowly moving again but in a different direction. Life for some time has been the slowing down of chaos, a stasis and then a slow restart. My hope is that I am hovering now on the verge of moving in the right direction with a little more momentum, with a sense of time being restored.

Wishing for Something to Happen

2009-05-07T15:21:00.003-04:00

In the midst of preparing for this year's open enrollment meetings, which is a very big deal for an HR department that serves 1300 benefits-eligible employees, divorce, the usual school activities for my kids, church, extended family and friends, I find myself wishing something would happen. That sounds crazy, as if there isn't enough happening. Maybe that's just it. There is so much stuff, but nothing big, nothing fun. Yes, life goes that way. I know that. But it goes along that way for so long sometimes, and one just needs an event, a something. Goethe wrote that "a man can tolerate anything except a succession of ordinary days." That is what I'm talking about. Think Calvin, in Calvin & Hobbes, when he realizes how quickly summer vacation is passing: "I'm not having enough fun right now."

I am so weighted down with ordinary that I can accomplish nothing.

Agatha Christie opened her book Partners in Crime (the Tommy & Tuppence Beresford mysteries are my favorite Christie books):

Mrs. Thomas Beresford shifted her position on the divan and looked gloomily out of the window of the flat. The prospect was not an extended one, consisting solely of a small block of flats on the other side of the road. Mrs. Beresford sighed and then yawned.

"I wish," she said, "something would happen."

Mrs. Beresford's wish is granted, over a short stretch of time. Sometimes, mine is, but usually it is more of the same. The same isn't so bad, of course. Mrs. B (Tuppence to her friends) goes on to explain to her unsympathetic husband, "I'm used to my blessings, that's all." That is a good perspective to take. In my life, a good bit of turmoil has been resolving. I have been honored with the request of a good friend, to help her write her memoir, a memoir very much worth writing and reading. I am looking forward this weekend to a poetry writing workshop, and a gathering with family for Mother's Day. All good things, if not exciting.

I'm not even sure what would constitute the "exciting" sort of event I'm craving. There is a lurking suspicion that I need to keep working through the ordinary, and maybe then "something will happen," or maybe the craving will subside. I have learned that exciting developments won't come (getting something published, or even finished, to be considered for publication, for example) if I don't keep working. There's the possibility, of course, of getting fired if I'm not working, which would be exciting, but not quite what I want.

So, it's back to the invoices (the work I'm employed to do), the filing, making dinner and doing the dishes, laundry and getting the kids to bed, and the snatches of time to write and to read good books. I am thankful for those things, for the awesome kids, a life of growth, good friends and family, and for the work that goes to sustaining them. As long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other, it's okay if I'm still wishing for something to happen. It will probably be more fun if it comes as a surprise, anyway.

Find the gratitude in your life, and you'll find

joy standing right next to it.

--Melody Beattie, from her book Gratitude (purchase online at Hazelden.com)

Heroes

2009-04-22T09:44:00.003-04:00

I have been asked in numerous questionnaires to name someone I admire, or who is a role model to me. Usually, I have been stumped at the question. Then, twice in the last two days, I have found myself thinking, "she's my hero!"

Yesterday, I was doing some research on a website for people who have, or think they may have, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The site (www.helpforibs.com) is the work of Heather Van Vorous, who has had IBS for over thirty-five years. She used her own research and trial-and-error experience to write a book, Eating for IBS, and to launch the website, which includes message boards, forums, and a store for her Tummy Care products. The extensive information on the site was more helpful than everything else I found. Heather is my hero because, in taking responsibility to do research and develop products that she found helpful herself, she has made the results available to others, and is making a living (probably a good one - more power to her!) doing exactly what she chose to do anyway. That is the ideal life I want, and hope to live, in the future!

On yahoo.com today, one of the entertainment headlines referred to Katey Sagal, the mom from Married with Children, who is looking fabulous at age 55. Clicking on that took me to a picture of Ms. Sagal in a little black dress and heels, with gorgeous highlighted hair, at the TV Land Awards. Wow. She looks better than I do (at 38). I aspire to take care of my health, and now that my kids are getting a little older, to pay attention to how I look and feel. I may not look as good as Katey Sagal when I am 55, but I plan to look better at 40 than I did at 30, which was a bit on the dumpy side (being home with a toddler and an infant was a big part of that).

This train of thought reminds me of all the people who inspire me in big ways and small ones. There was my friend Earl, a beautifully kind, loving and spiritual person. Sadly, we lost Earl to ALS last year. Knowing him impacted people for their lifetimes, and inspired us to be more kind and loving ourselves. My mom inspired me; after raising eight children at home, she started going to college part-time, and over several years she earned her Associates Degree in Music, her Bachelor's in Psychology, and a Master's in Pastoral Counseling. There are my friends who work day jobs in contracting, landscaping or retail so they can do what they love (music), the rest of the time. They inspired me to get back to writing as much as I can, even if I can't quit my day job (yet). I follow their bands, The New Familiars (Charlotte, NC) and Downtown Harvest (Philadelphia, PA) and their successes continue to encourage me.

I have been blessed this year with an opportunity to work with a Life Coach, Anne Marie Buck (www.annemariebuck.com). She and Martha Beck, a lifecoaching/life design expert, have modeled new ways of looking at life and processing experience, so that I might live the life I want. Finally, a favorite hero is Hero, short for Heroilda, a counselor at Women in Transition, Inc., who has worked with me as a hero in the classic sense, a fellow warrior in defeating old ways of thinking that kept me stuck in an unsatisfactory life.

When we can identify our heroes, we identify our goals and the values that we want to shape our lives. Whether they are celebrities, mothers and fathers, friends, writers, musicians and artists, athletes, policemen, firefighters or scientists, role models help us to define what we admire, so that we can become the person we want to be. Who is your hero?

Autism Awareness & our son's diagnosis

2009-04-06T13:01:00.004-04:00

April is National Autism Awareness Month, and that may be why I have been thinking of the day I first heard the possibility that my son had Asperger's Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder that is sometimes described as having "a touch of autism." We had known from his late infancy that Jonah is stubborn, and I had begun to describe him as being like the little girl who had a little curl, in the nursery rhyme, "when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid!" There were times when he just refused to do what was expected of him, especially at church.

Some very insightful observations on the part of his pre-K teacher led me to go through ChildLink in Philadelphia, to see if there might be any reasons for his difficulties with conducting himself in some social settings. I never expected an actual diagnosis, and when the evaluation team was in perfect agreement that Jonah fit the description of a child with Asperger's, I was completely stunned. I had only heard of it once or twice in the pediatrician's office where I worked, and whenever it was mentioned by one of the other administrative staff, it was with pity or a shaking head.

It didn't help that my then-husband was in the emergency room with another episode of a chronic illness. I had to get home for my older son, who was coming home from school. I kept looking at Jonah, wondering what had happened. How did I not know? Is it because I took anti-depressants when I was pregnant and nursing?

Fortunately, it only took a day for me to look back in my rearview mirror at my little boy, and realize that he had not changed at all. He was just as loving, just as funny and happy, and stubborn, as he had been the week before. There was just more information about the things that challenge him, information that would not have been so available when I was a child. I am grateful for that, that I could go online and google Asperger's Syndrome, and find information that made it more real to me, and that helped me to find the right resources for us, especially other parents with children on the spectrum. If you have recently had a child diagnosed with Apserger's or another ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), I would encourage you to seek out other families who have been through it, and feel free to send me a message.