Almost Christmas

Tuesday. 2:24 pm. The kids are napping, or at least making a good show of napping; the house is quiet (except for the purr of the washer). There is a bird singing outside in the cold sunshine. Birds in December, singing, make me feel very confused. It is almost Christmas! What is a bluebird doing singing, as if it is spring? I am not yet acclimated to the south.

I love Christmas; the whole thing. I love the tree--the fresh pine smell filling the house, the wonder of taking old ornaments out and sentimentalizing over them, and taking new ones out that were forgotten. I love the tradition of sweeping the house clean of old things, dusting, putting out fresh linens and greens. I love pulling nativity sets out of cardboard boxes that are soft and beginning to come apart at the edges from wear--the old shredded bits of newspaper that really need to be replaced, wrapped around each piece--all of it brings back a part of my childhood that sits very near the happiest part of my soul.

When I was pregnant with Evie this summer, and on bed rest, there were few things I could think on that would help me relax and go to sleep. If I thought about the present--the state of the house, how I was failing the kids by being so ghastly big and on bed rest, the state of my mind and emotions--none of these things were helpful. If I thought about the future--possibly having a preemie; what I was going to do with three... and bigger questions about job and vocation and happiness--that was not helpful either. But, if I closed my eyes and thought about my childhood, I could disappear to a place that was restful and happy.

Summers at our lake place, for example. The feeling of the ice-cold glacier water of Lake Tapps, and the warmth of the dock under your bare skin as climbed out, shivering. A sunset boat ride, wrapped in cast-off sweatshirts and beach towels. The feel of the wind coming so dangerously fast in your face, laying down on the front of the boat and feeling every wave pass under you. The feeling of complete trust, as I knew, no matter how dangerous it felt, that we were safe with my father driving.

And Christmas; there are so many aspects of my childhood Christmas that bring me a simple, deep contentment. The entire living room floor cris-crossed with lights, spending the entire afternoon determining which ones worked and which ones didn't. A tin of popcorn freshly opened for the occasion of decorating the tree. Finding mom's special angel ornaments; putting up the brown nativity scene with my oldest sister. I could go on.

The point: two-fold.
1. For children, there is meaning in even the most menial tradition that is repeated, year after year. Possibly this is the same for adults, but I know (from experience) it is even more so with children.
2. My happy childhood was a blessing... but also a curse. I want to give my children the same sort of childhood that I have... and I do not if, as a parent, I am up to it. I have a temper; I am impatient. My energy is limited, as well as our resources. Am I as happy, now, as I was then? Can the kids tell if I am faking it? And... with such a beautiful childhood, it is easy to become discontent when life now is less than prosaic. Not that I am craving European vacations and a nanny; but the ability to buy artisan cheeses, and have a weekly house-keeper would be nice.

How does this fit in with my annual resolution to be more content?

Oddly, I think the baby has helped in this respect. A year ago--certainly two years ago--I was still harboring this secret fantasy of returning to grad school, finishing a PhD and teaching somewhere. Maybe it was the advent of Kindergarten this year that also helped me realize my children are growing up. I remember a distinct moment in the doctor's office, when I had both older kids in for their yearly check-up--they were being measured against the wall, first one and then the other--and it hit me--we are making progress! They are growing; they are coming along. They are sitting still in the doctor's office; they are answering her questions on their own volition. They are hopping on one foot, taking eye tests, gaining weight and getting taller. Of course I knew this, because I witness these small gains every day. But standing back, seeing it all from a clinical perspective--I was impressed. And I felt like celebrating a bit. We have made progress! Even though half the time I am not sure I am doing the right thing, and the other half of the time I am sure I am doing the wrong thing, we are moving along.

And that baby...
sometimes I am afraid because I love that baby so much. I find she is so dear to me, I often do not like to use her name, but call her the baby, or her newest nickname, Evykins. She has this smile that stops your entire day, clears your mind and makes you say, after a minute or two, "what was I doing?" She is getting new hair now, a bit thicker and coarser, but still has this soft sweet head I love to rub and smell. She has the most lovely baby smell, still, even though she is nearly five months old. We all are in love with our baby; that is one of the truest statements you could make about our family right now. I worry, loving her this much, that something may happen to her. And if that were to happen, I do not know that I would survive it. I suppose I felt this way with the other kids, and still do, in some respect...but it is mingled now with parenting frustrations, attitude issues, etc. The baby is so good, and so sweet-tempered, it is hard to ever feel ill toward her, even when she screams her head off in the car seat because she is lonely, or insists on nursing all night and sleeping in the crook of my arm.

What will be left of me when I am done parenting? What will I have become? I can see, already, small changes, though I have not had the vantage-point experience with myself yet that I had with the children in the doctor's office last year. I cannot see, compared with who I was six years ago, what I have become. Small benchmarks of change, for better or worse: I hit the ground running the morning now. I am more productive in the evenings, practicing and cleaning and doing correspondence. I value quiet times in the afternoon in a way that would have been inexplicable to me before children. I am more compassionate, and slower to judge. I feel more guilt, on a daily basis, for things I have neglected to do or do poorly. I have more compassion when looking back on my younger self--especially my self as a young mom.

Beginnings

December 4, 2009

Survival of the Fittest

A word about the title of this project:

I have never understood the principle of survival of the fittest. It is not, in most cases, the most fit that survive. It is often those who happen to be in the Right Place at the Right Time, or those who have Determination or can plain Hang on the Longest. It is the hanging on the longest that in the long run proves most useful in motherhood, I believe. If I survive a day, it is not because I am in top-top shape (as a British woman so aptly labeled my baby at the airport this week –‘oh, she is just top-top!)
It is because, white-knuckled, I hung on until at the end of the day, I was the last one standing. Which is a bit how it feels when I turn the house upside down and shake the kids out of it like dry leaves from a tree in autumn, in to their beds and they finally settle in to sleep for the night.

It is Dec 4. Tomorrow is Thomas’ 30th birthday. I have a million things zipping around my brain like helium balloons with the ends cut off. I can’t nail down a single concrete thought, idea or project: put in the lasagna! Do the dishes! Must practice both the Debussy and Christmas carols, as well as Mozart (wait—that is more than two things!)

The kids are up for a brief and restless quiet time…and I have chosen to write.

I want to begin this blog for a few reasons: first of all, because every time I begin a writing project, I cannot find it again. Ever. I go back on the computer and it is mysteriously moved and Not To Be Located. I write in a journal or spiral notebook that is then promptly buried under catalogs and coupons. So, I am using this URL as a safe filing system; if I don’t remember the name of my blog and can’t find it one day, maybe someone could email it to me.

Also… I miss my family, and can’t possibly seem to keep up corresponding with everyone. I think of it when I am nursing, or in the shower, or on walks with the kids…but these are not good times to write or call. Often I am writing at those times; on the walls of the shower, on the surface of the lake—phrases that describe this stage of life, bits of poetry, sometimes whole paragraphs. Sometimes I write these down; most of the time I do not. The moment, so beautiful and perfect like a Dawn and Karo Syrup bubble (know that trick? It makes the best bubble mixture….) sits there in the air, so round and rainbowy and perfect…then it pops. And I can’t remember afterward what was so inspiring about a walk around the lake in late autumn with my two kids and the baby.

Which was what inspired this latest entry; yesterday, 65 degrees, a quick pack-up and out the door when the house is still a disaster so we can walk around the lake once before dinner. Let me clarify. The “lake” is really a small holding pond that we frequent; there is a blue heron there, a favorite of the kids’ to spot; a number of ducks (all, curiously, with the name “Mr. and Mrs. Mallard) and a bunch of sticks in the water that are frequently mistaken for turtles.

It was cool and crisp, barely sunny… a perfect near-winter day. The trees were nearly bare. There were some geese flying, as should always be the case in early winter. The kids were riding their bikes, happy and occupied, and I felt satisfied. This is not an emotion I have frequently, and I stopped for a moment to savor the feeling. My kids are growing; they are healthy. They fight, yes, and are strong-willed, and possibly I give in too much and yell too much and don’t make them tidy up their rooms enough, and negotiate when I should not and say no when I should not and pick fights over vegetables when their must be a happier way to do dinnertime—but, at that moment, I felt satisfied. Maybe it was the late afternoon sunlight, and my pleasure at being out in it after two weeks of rain (we had been in Seattle visiting family…) maybe it was the pleasure of having the baby snuggle her head in close to me, which felt like a gesture of affection, even though she is only four months. Partly, I think, my pleasure also came simply from being out in nature. I have always loved being out of doors, even more so if there are trees and sky, birds and some other types of wildlife. I have learned to see a holding pond as a body of water, even though being from the Northwest I would have scorned this type of puddle a few years ago. I have learned to pretend the traffic noise is the ocean in the background, or a waterfall just around the corner. Sure, the nature path is paved with asphalt, and there are plastic resting benches every few hundred feet. Still, the essence of nature is intact: there are trees, and they grow through the asphalt where they must. There is sky, and looking over the lake, you can actually see quite a bit of sky, which is unusual for this part of the country. There is wildlife—a blue heron, for instance, that stalks with the most incredible stealthiest across the water. All of it brought me a kind of pleasure that was hard to put in to words, but that made me, if even for a fleeting moment, perfectly content.

On Leaving Papa

Tuesday morning we ended a ten-day stay in Washington, visiting all the people we love. It is incredible to spend such a short time with all the people who you love and love you the most; it is wonderful and heart-wrenching and exhausting. Wonderful, because it feels so good to be loved, and it is a splendid thing to have family who is always interested in the very best for you. It feels as good as an old pair of slippers or a warm sweater on a cold day; protection and comfort and sustenance all at once. It is heart-wrenching because there is always that thought, getting on the plane going home… “what if I never seem them again?”

Which is what struck me with peculiar clarity this time as we were dragging suitcases in to SEA-TAC on Tuesday morning. My grandpa is 87 years old, but you would never guess it. He is as fit as any 70 year-old, thin and active and spry. He does exercises every morning, works out in the yard and around the house, and lives with Grandma right on the Puget Sound, in a house that can only be accessed by walking down 50 (steep) wooden steps to the front door. But… he is having health complications. Body not producing enough blood; red blood count down…medical terms I am not familiar with, inconclusive diagnoses. He does not seem as ill as he should, the doctors say…they are not concerned… or not as concerned as they should be…which is comforting, but not really.

My papa. Who stayed with us so often when my parents went on vacation. Who, with my grandma, came to every ballet recital, piano and harp recital, every birthday, Christmas, fourth of July. Who helped us make cars and bears and ornaments in his wood-shop, who was patient when we messed up his tools and did not clean up after ourselves Who took us on beach walks and showed us shells and glass and how to put a rock between clam shells to make a pet. My papa, who took me fishing for the first time—and celebrated my first catch, even though it was a bottom fish and hardly enough for one bite, my grandma fried it up for dinner—I don’t remember if I ate it or not. My papa, who loves my children now, who bought a ride-on horse for the great-grandkids, and turns the heat up when we stay there—even though it goes against all his life-long established principles. I don’t know what I would do if that was the last time I get to see him; in the midst of pulling out suitcases and carseats and backpacks and children, I did not even get to tell him a proper goodbye. Watching him drive away, I could not fight back the tears. How do people go on living in the midst of grief? When there is this person-shaped hole in your life, does it not just become a vacuum and suck all the rest of your living in to it? I felt an overwhelming sadness, and fear—I wanted to run back and say, wait—

But then what would I say? Don’t die?

I feel so much guilt in moving away, as if my moving away has sped their aging. But I know it has not. Living closer would not make their days longer; and I do not know how much longer they will have.

But as I walked in to the airport, I was sucked back in to the hectic flow of Living: had to check bags, had to pull things out and weigh and re-weigh suitcases; we were late hurry up! Use the potty empty juice-cups, take off hats/coats/shoes (everything but your underwear!) be scanned and put it back on again…gather things up, all in a row then march to the gate—

And suddenly I realized I had forgotten my reverie.

And that, I imagine, is how we survive. Life, with all its needs and demands, sweeps us up without pity or empathy, and somehow helps us recover ourselves. I needed the duty of security check to take my mind off the leaving, my sadness, guilt and desire to run back and halt time. I understand now that some (most?) things we feel most deeply cannot or should not be expressed with words. What an optimistic statement at the beginning of this experiment in expression…