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.