My Name is Mommy

40 Years, Come and Gone

Time is infuriating.  In someways I still feel like an 8-year-old- like fundamentally unchanged.  Yet, I know a great deal of time has passed in this life of mine.  Yes, yesterday was my birthday.  I do feel stronger, more confident, more self-reliant.  When I was a child I would lay awake at night as I tried to go to sleep, tears emerging because I loved my mother so much, I couldn't imagine if something horrible happened to her.  I remember fighting with my parents, running to my room sobbing and feeling like my heart was literally cracking in half.  That was a desperate kind of love.

I'm not sure I can describe the love I have for Vi and Ave.  It is the same in that I cannot imagine my world, my life, continuing without one or both of them.  It is not the same desperate, clingy love- but one of hope that they can fulfill their potential as human beings with the gifts they have been given.  It is also a difficult love because sometimes saving someone from making mistakes down the road requires a sort of hardness and vigilance, and guilt can become like a thousand splinters that you cannot get out.

And out of these forty years, even with difficulty, uncertainty and mstakes, somehow I feel the last 13 years have been the best- that my life did not truly begin until I held Viola in my arms for the first time.  It may sound strange but in that moment it was like the rubberband that connected me to my former life, my former self was irrevocably snapped and my real life began.

I do believe that our society should show recognition and respect of certain touchstones in our lives: graduations, promotions, success- even at the lowest level.  We need to sit vigil with those we love, we need to bury our dead.  And birthdays should be celebrated because birth, even one, inexorably alters this life for everyone, for the planet, for our friends and family.

And so often we do not do these things because really they are a sort tribute to change- and who really likes change?  Change leads us into the unknown and makes us think of things we do not want to think about.  What I thought about alot on my birthday was the fact that this may mark the end of the first half of my life- if I am lucky, or some other fraction.  Every year of my life marks another for Dean and the girls, as well.  That does not make me feel like celebrating because it brings me ever closer to the unknown.

It wrenches at my heart to think a time may come when I will not be here for my girls.  What hurts worse is that as they grow up, they also grow away, and I know how that works.  They will no longer need me like they do now.  They will see my imperfections.  They will have even more powerful loves that will leave me swinging by myself in the park.  They will not sit in the next swings, all of us leaning so far back that our hair grazes the ground, giggling, as our stomachs drop  and our feet stretch toward the blue skies

But it is important to celebrate birth, life and death because these things are a part of our humanity.  Marking time is important because we draw only so many breaths, our hearts have only so many beats and the clock is always ticking, whispering in its metronomic voice, "Do something, be someone... LIVE".

It frightens me how many minutes, hours, days I have spent in a meaningless fashion- as if I were a billionaire of time, thinking I need not make choices but just take it all and wrap it up.  Sometimes I wonder if it is truly too late to live without regret.

And it is funny- I do not worry about dying, even if it is cruel and painful.  Maybe I will want to BE there, feel it, know it when it happens, witness my human self blinking out for eternity.  What I fear is what I will miss.  I will not be here to comfort those I love.  I will miss out on some of their touchstones, as well.  I suppose I am too greedy, longing to see the entirity of the miracles of the lives around me.  Of course, that same greed wishes me to escape the grief of seeing eyes I have loved close their last.

There is also a vanity involved.  I used to think I was special, that I could change the world in great ways.  Maybe I still will, but right now I feel like I am bailing out my rowboat witha teaspoon.

So, yes, 40 birthdays- more than half of them spent side-by-side with Dean, 13 birthdays that mark another year of being called Mommy, decades of friends come, gone, lost, returned.  40 years of watching, wonder, awe, amazement and laughter- as well as tears and sadnesses, classrooms I can barely remember yet having learned so much.

Is there still time?  I guess I must keep hoping- after all, the tortoise did beat the hare.

I recall again sitting on the roof, looking out over Lake Washington, as a child (I did love to climb trees and climb out my window onto the roof of our two-story house).  That evening the sunset was brilliant.  It is like a postcard in my head except that I can feel the wind on my face, see the light ripple with the waves.  And what a sunset it was.  I felt overcome and undone.  I felt that it was a moment I could live in for eternity, perfection.

But now there have been sunsets and sunrises and rain and a clear blue sky with not a cloud in sight to subdue the noonetime sun.

Birthdays are good for remembering to appreciate these days, recognizing that what has been will never be again,  So, cheers, here is to another year of sunrises and snuggles and laughing, another year of singing in the car, of moments of grief and times of great, wonderful love.

I will end with this:

"You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.”  -Aberjahani

 

Fire! Fire!

So, not so long ago I was feeling stuck in a hair rut.  You know how that goes, right?  So, I dyed my hair back as close to my natural color as I could find.  I loved it so of course they discontinued it.  Enter "Dark Brown".  I dyed my hair with dark brown, semi-permanent color thinking maybe I'd try the darker, glossy look since I haven't done that in ages.

I rinsed out the dye, conditioned, dried- and voila!  BLACK hair.  It does not look natural on me.  I look like a still-30-something goth wannabe.  Scary.  So, I've been browsing the internet looking at ways to lighten it up without totally frying my hair by bleaching it.

I tried peroxide.  I usd to do that when I was a kid, spritz on some hydrogen oxide and then head out into the sun.  I got nice red highlights in my dark brown hair.  Nothing this time.  Not even the tiniest of lightening.  Then I came across someone who said to use lemon juice mixed with conditioner and a heft dose of cinnamon.  This, she claimed, woul lighten my hair 1-2 shades and give me some pretty red highlights.  Cool.

I whipped up the concotion, slathered my hair in it and wrapped it in a towel to wait.  (She claims she left hers on for like an hour and a half).

OMG.  About two seconds after the towel was on my head the burning started.  I thought, okay, its just chemicals relaxing, it'll chill in a minute.  No such luck.  After maybe 6 minutes my scalp was burning so badly I was imagining blisters and all my hair falling out(not that I'd mind, low maintenance and all).

I rinsed that crap out of my hair, and rinsed and rinsed and insed, then conditioned and rinsed again.

The result?  Maybe the slightest of lightening.  We'll see tomorrow when the sun is out.  Worth it?  Not on my life.  I will NEVER do that again.  I hiighly recommend avoiding the cinnamon and lemon juice concoction- or use with EXTREME prejudice.  

I'm staring to think this experimenting on my hair at home thing is OVER.  I'll be making my appointment at the salon, even if I do have to sit there for two or three hours. (I hate all the primpy stuff:hair, nails- becaus it takes so much TIME that I could be doing other fun stuff).

Whew. I think I got a little endorphin rush from the pain.  Still not worth it. :P

Step away from the Cinnamon!

 

 

Ice Skates.

I've been in building mode.  Honestly, I've loved this house as much as I've hated it.  When we moved in it looked like it hadn't been touched(except for the cheap renter's linoleum on the bathroom floor) since the 1960's?

But for me it is never about what it IS now, it is about what it CAN be.  Everywhere I looked, colors blossomed.  I pulled up a corner of the carpet to discover nearly pristine oak floors and over time, I've been going on manic binges of redoing rooms.  I rip up carpet, spend hours singing along to my iPod while on my hands and knees prying up carpet tack and staples.   I've spent hours scraping peeling paint off the walls and even more hour refinishing furniture and assembling and making furniture.  I kind of love that my dad taught me how to use a circular saw, the chop saw, a bigass nailgun, how to cut tile, how to solve problems.  Mostly it is the building of things I like- making things better, useful, colorful.  

Right now, the window is wide open and and the dark blue sheers are billowing out with the breeze, rippling like water.  Why do so many people want things to be beige and white?  I want my world full of color.  And even though it drives the girls crazy, I take my favorite pictures and blow them up to massive sizes(thank you Canon) on gallery canvases and I've been putting them up everywhere.

It isn't about me showing everyone how great and perfect my little family is... it's about capturing a moment, light and color, and someone I love.  Why would we not wallpaper our homes with what we love.  It makes no sense to me.

So, I have spent the past 24 hours with a small break for sleeping, cursing and sighing and other angsty things tryng to put together some pieces from Ikea to organize all my stuff.

I came across my pair of ice skates.  We go occasionally.  Dean and I used to take lessons together.  That was fun.  But looking at those white boots and sharp blades, I could close my eyes and remember skating on the pond in the village where I lived in Germany.  I remember at first, picking my way down to the ice, skeptical.  It was rough, bumpy and sometimes there were sticks and leaves or other detritus that had blown onto the ice from the shoreline.  I remember being stiff and scared that at any moment I would hit a bump or chink or rough patch in the ice and fly like a pancake across the ice.  And I did that a couple times.  One time I laid there on my back looking up at the sunny sky after a big wipe out and then suddenly I was surrounded by a huge group of little faces in red and blue and green and striped knit hats, kids with mittens and scarves.  The boys openly guffawed at me, some of the little girls giggled behind their hands until I started laughng, too. 

And then I wasn't scared anymore.  And that was the secret to it- to go, be light, be free.  We're so used to living by the regular laws of gravity.  Gravity doesn't make much sense in my life, though.

Like skating on that natural ice- which I then did every chance I got, its about being free, being light, flying.  Its a perspective about everything I love to do- horseback riding- galloping over the hills, flying over jumps, swimming- being tossed with no up or down by the ocean waves, diving off the board feeling like I'm sailing weightlessly for just a moment, singing- which is like nothing else for setting me free from the things that tie me down.  It sounds silly but, for me, its like I can get into the music and rise up above everything else.

So what am I afraid of?  What are you afraid of?  We just need to set ourselves free.  The laws of gravity do not apply here.

Aaron Sorkin

When I think of Aaron Sorkin, I think of "The West Wing".  Dean and I watched "The West Wing" the entire time it was on air.

Well, today I discovered "The Newsroom"- a series by HBO, also produced by Aaron Sorkin.  I don't think I've watched an episode yet where I haven't teared up.

Pre-menopause?  Maybe.  

Dean and I were talking and I think he hit the nail on the head.  "The West Wing" showed us the inner working of the government- in the way we'd like to see and believe government should be run.  Just the right mix of idealistic sentimentality without coming off totally naieve.

"The Newsroom", same thing.  It is a behind the scenes look at a news show anchored by Will McAvoy(played brilliantly by Jeff Daniels) who has a horrible reputation(abusing his staff, everyone bails, following when one of his underlings is given his own show) as an ass.  Enter MacKenzie McHale(played by Emily Mortimer) as McAvoy's new executive producer and a team of wonderlings and McAvoy's boss, Charlie Skinner(played by Sam Waterston- with much vim and vigor) who wants to REALLY report the news.  This equation adds up similarly to that of "The West Wing"- the inner workings of a newsroom, reporting REAL news with highly moral standards.  For me, this is the way I would like the news to be reported.  Jeff Daniels is the new Martin Sheen.  I love it.

Does art emulate life? Or, does life emulate art?  If television is considered part of the art of our age- I hope that the latter is true, in this case.  

Great show, great writing.  I'll be watching.

 

Dear Viola,

I remember 7th and 8th grade.  Yeah, they pretty much sucked.  I think they suck for everyone, though.

Maybe I am a sucky mom for trying to get you to read books I like and wear cute clothes.  I can't stand it when you live in you sweatpants and giant t-shirts because you have a beautiful body- not some cracked-out Kate Moss body but a beautiful, perfect body.  And yes, you have curves.  Of course I don't want you to be immodest but I want you to be proud of who you are- everything from winning your heat in Butterfly, being a level IV chorister in the San Francisco Girls Chorus to having a beautiful body, face, hair eyes, soul... all of it.  

I know that you think I know nothing- but I've been rotating here on this planet for more years than I would like to say and I don't know that I have met anyone quite like you.  Considering our vast age difference and my inherint uncool factor, when I think of you, I think of the song "I Won't Give Up".  Looking into your eyes I DO see the night skies- a million of them, and a beautiful sunrise- every one that has taken my breath away.

My only regret is that by nature's design I will not be here to see the culmination of what began in you.

Love,

Mom

Goodbye to clocks ticking.

I suppose I'm feeling a little introspective, mix that with a sprinkle of self-indulgencence and well... here we go.

It is between two and three in the morning.  My stomach is bothering me, which is nothing new, but my usual distractions aren't working tonight.

I've been addicted to "Orange is the New Black".   Yes, it is dirty, foul-mouthed and has graphic scenes of lesbian sex but it is funnier than hell and REAL and I love it because of that.  

I think most of society likes to sit in the bubble of work/family/home and all the problems out there... well, that's not them so who gives two nickels?

If we're on "spaceship earth" should we give more of a shit about each other?

Maybe we DESERVE to have an apocalypse, an extinction event- because most people don't care.  Seriously.  How many times have you flicked smeone off or leaned on your horn in traffic, shoved someone in the back of the ankles with your cart a the grocery store, walked by a sea of faces without every realizing the miracle in front of you?  I'm not getting self-righteous- I've done it all and worse.  I have a horrible temper.  But at some point it occured to me that I had no idea what kind of day the person next to me at the stop light or in front of me in the grocery store had- did they lose their job, did they find out they have some horrible disease, did they lose someone they loved, are they sad? Lonely? Angry?  So who am I to make someone's day worse?

My grandmother lived a simple life and yet I was always rapt with awe at the stories she told- from Depression times, to the War.  She bought me my first SLR(camera) and she always argued politics and philosophy with me.  At her funeral I read this:

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.

She planted the seeds in me of the two tenants of parenting I hold most dear- give your children enthusiasm and teach then to find joy in the small beauties of life, to realize it is all temporary and to jump in with both feet. (Is that three)

And here I am, not able to sleep at 2:30 in the morning and I hear the clock ticking.  I keep meaning to take it down but there is something about a ticking clock.

I want someone to read this at my funeral- not that I want a funeral- I want to be cremated and I don't know, sprinkled in the ocean?  We always had such good times at the ocean.  The ocean is so humbling and I have never felt more free and exhilarated than galloping my horse down the beach.  That is where I have really lived so that is where I want my body to go after I have died.

Anyway what I want read:

But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

The clock ticks for us all and what a gift that is.  We're here for a blink. What will we be?  Self-centered, indulgent, or will we try to make that blink like a flash of lightning that changes the face of the earth forever?

I want to be like lightning.

Playlists.

I like making playlists.

I am one of those people who will find a 'favorite song' and put it on loop until I hate it.  But so it goes... I think it is because I like to sing along with my music which really pisses off the Starbucks customers around me, especially when I have both headphones over my ears and can't hear what I am singing.

Media is crazy.  So many books, so many songs, so man tv programs, so many movies... so many bad movies mased on good books.  It just isn't right.

I usually read a book or two a day.  And no I'm not exagerrating because I read 4 yesterday.  I don't feel like I'm rushing but for some reason people seem to think this is alot of books- especially considering that reading is not all I do.

Today I feel like making some new playlists. 

I was thinking about that line from Dead Poet's Society where Robin Williams says: 

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

So true, right?

I love that movie, still.  Yes, in that soft, naive, idealistic part of me that my hard shell calls traitorous, shakes her head and says :One must be more pragmatic".  Yet, it lives on.  That movie was where I first heard these line from Tennyson's Ulysses(I will include more for better context): 

Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Not to yield.  That is who I want to be: unyielding.  But that which I am, I am.

And yes, it is so true that though much is taken, much abides.

I hope when I sail beyond the sunset that I will be remembered as having a heroic heart.

I hope when and if I am remembered, it is in a newer world.

I think I will make a playlist today- or as we once called them: mixed tapes- and again be the young girl who was so inspired by, who actually felt there was truth in those words- before my shell became so hard.

Bist du bei mir...

Bist Du Bei Mir was probably one of my favorite pieces of music that I learned back in high school.  My vocal coach said I was like a myna bird and she didn't usually let students butcher music in German. It is funny because in a way, that song led me to studying German in college and eventually going there, to live, outside of Nurnberg for a bit.  With everything going on lately I have been reflecting on the path my life has taken.  If you look up the translation of that song. it is quite moving.  I think what I like about it is that it captures the idea that BEING with someone is sometimes the greatest gift you can give them.  We live in a DOING world- I think sometimes we forget about just being and how amazing that is, in and of itself.

The Call came and this nonsense with my stomach continues.  I am going for another scope because the CBC they did at the same time came back with an outrageously high hematocrit which I have NEVER had, EVER.  I've had microcytic anemia since I was two, according to my pediatric records, and I'm lucky to even get in the ballpark of normal with iron infusions on a regular basis.  So, my doctor is worried  my test results might have been mixed up- and doesn't know if the biopsy results also got screwed up so... here we go round the merry go round again.  The good news is that the biopsy results showed carcinoma in situ in the mucosal layer of my stomach(they call it stage 0 and it is basically pre-cancerous but still not something to mess around with)- so I, or someone else, won the lottery as gastric cancer is almost never found this early and they feel I can avoid it turning into the icky metastatic kind with possible surgery and meds.  But since I am terribly paranoid, I want to make sure the results are real before going ahead with a treatment plan.

Anyhow, back to the life path stuff.  I used to feel that having a Job and punching the clock, wash rinse, repeat- was incredibly mundane and I would never live like that- I would live a BIG life.  Now I am thinking every life is BIG because every single one of us is a miracle.  I don't care if you believe in God or some other higher power or a random uiverse or if we are just brains in vats- but whatever it is, it is amazing.  It is amazing to have been here, to see what I have seen, done what I have done: everything from walking along the Seine at night to making chocolate chip pancakes.  All miraculous, every moment of it.

Even the pain.

I have known and loved people and lost them- for whatever reason(death maybe the least of which).  And maybe someday I will find them again, in this life or another.  But as much as it aches, every connection, every love, however brief- for me is amazing, even if it can't be held.  I like to think we are like those Aspen trees- we may not be next to one another, it may rain on one and the sun may shne on another at the same time but deep below is a gnarled miracle of connections that make them all one.  Some connections may be far, long reaching through the dark but still a part of one another.  I think those connections never die because every connection creates-like a seed blown on the wind or a slender root zig-zagging through the soil, we are built by our connections and go on to build others in a never-ending chain.

And such a blessing- yes, even the pain.  Sometimes joy and pain are so difficult to tell apart.  I check on my sleeping girls and they look so young as they sleep and my heart just wants to shatter with love for them.  I know, watching them, touching their hair, there is nothing out there better than this- no amount of fame, no great discovery, no heroic feat could even come close to this feeling.