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Friend 1 had New Friend with her. New Friend has a 7-month-old baby.
She is very, very tired.
NF recently hit her sleep deprivation wall and had the mommy meltdown. The meltdown I thought only I had, but later realized I was just one tiny link in a timeless mothering chain badly in need of a nap.
I look at her and say, “You are not alone.”
New Friend smiles.
We are standing there on the corner. NF says, “I didn’t know I was in trouble until I was already there.”
I think about this. I think this is probably how I live most of my life, in retrospect, suddenly finding myself IN something.
A few years ago someone told me, “Maturity is like a kid toilet training. First, they just pee their pants and walk around in it. Then, they pee and know they are wet. Then they know when they are peeing. Then they know when they have to pee. And finally, they know they have to pee AND make it to the toilet on time.”
I hope someday I get to the “make-it-to-the-toilet phase. Sigh.
Friend 1 says, “It has taken me a long time to allow myself to be human.”
Yeah.
“And to have limitations…” I say.
I tell NF, ‘I remember when son was 8 months old. I looked at him and thought: Whoa. This kid is not going anywhere.”
NF looks at me a little sideways funny. I say, “What I mean is it just kind of hit me that this was a long term gig. That I wasn’t going to be able to keep this perfect parenting thing up. And I guess that I wasn’t going to be able to save him from myself.”
I can tell just by looking she still thinks she will be able to manage it. But that’s ok. She will eventually be slammed against the kid wall and forced to let go like we all are.
Powerless. Surrendered. Smashed into oblivion exhaustion. Over and over and over. And then: TEENAGERS.
Friend 1 has kids older than mine. When son was just starting to cross the street alone I said to her, “How can I ever let him go out into the world alone?”
She said, laughing, “Oh, he’ll help you…”
Yep.
Friend 1 and NF head off. I watch them go, talking. I think about all the people who have made me a mother. How I thought I knew it all. And how day-by-day, moment-by-moment I was shown how little I really knew about any of it.
Smashed. Humbled by the son and the daughter and forced to let go of everything I thought I knew.
Yep.
I am pretty sure I hear the parents of college kids chucking.
The other day I went to yoga. Apparently I over did it. Or over twisted it.
Whatever it is, it hurts. And it is forcing me to slow down. And I hate slowing down.
I don’t understand whom I am slowed down.
Hello? Hello? Who am I?
God! I feel like I want to peel my skin off.
Probably not a good idea, right?
It’s too noisy in here. And hot. I want to get out of here. Mostly I just want to go to yoga. But I know I should rest. At least for a day. Maybe tomorrow I can run. Can I? Run tomorrow? Oh god. Help. If I can’t run tomorrow I will be forced to sit here and listen to the contents of my head. And you will too. Because misery loves company, goddammit.
Ugh. Maybe I should go eat something.
Son is in his room. I wish he would go somewhere. Daughter went somewhere. I never get a moment to myself around this joint. Never ever ever never. Ever.
Ah HA!
See? See??! That’s why I have to run. It is the only way I get to be alone. And make my head shut up at the same time. Yeah.
I really want a donut. The kind with the little crumbs all stuck on the outside. When I was younger I used to shake the box so the crumbs would fall off. Then I would take out all the donuts and kind of vacuum up the donut droppings with a spoon and replace the almost bald donuts.
My mom would be like, “Why are there hardly any crumbs on these donuts?” And I would be all, “Whoa. I don’t know.”
Ok, I used to do that with crumb cake too. And pretty much anything with a topping. After awhile, my family was onto me. “I KNOW there were nuts on top of this cake. I checked when I bought it.”
Busted.
Sometimes if your family gets mad that you pick the nuts off the top of the coffee cake, you can turn it over and pick them out from the bottom next time. You know, so when you put it back in the box, no one can see.
Jes’ sayin’…
Yeah. Small parts. I like things like that. Like rocks. I like rocks. Or gravelly kind of texture food. In small pieces, that you can eat for a long time. Like a new box of granola that you can pick out the big parts. Or raisin bran that you can hunt raisin treasure out of.
Treasure hunting is good.
You can treasure hunt ice cream, with chunks. Mint Chocolate Cookie is my favorite for digging. And if you eat all the cookie parts out, you can get some Oreos from the cabinet and break them up and stick them back into the chunkless ice cream. Then no one will yell at you for eating all the chunks later when they go to get some ice cream.
See? It all relates. This is why I like rocks. They are good for texture and throwing. Yeah. But you cannot throw donuts really. Or ice cream. And you can’t eat rocks. Unless you eat sand. Daughter used to eat sand. God. What a nightmare that was. Glad she doesn’t do that anymore.
“What do you want to do for your birthday?” I ask.
“Well, I thought I would have a few close friends over. Maybe play some Rock Band.”
“Oh, ok.” I say, kind of relieved and disappointed and shocked at the same time. I mean years of planning parties and cooking special allergy-free treats has become kind of a habit. And years of Mr. Minimal Socializing, I-don’t-like-talking have also left their son mark.
Hmmm. A few close friends. Hmmm.
Son says, “I am going to need some money to go out and get some snacks.”
Ok. He is getting his own snacks. Guess I’ll go to yoga.
And so he goes. Calls up the wuz for a wuzzy contribution. Wakes up with the alarm on birthday morning and goes out snack shopping.
“Daughter is going to make us pancakes.” he says.
“Really?” I say.
Hrummph. Now I am feeling NOT NEEDED.
“Well do you need me to do anything?”
“No, mom. Things are under control.”
I go to yoga. I come back. Son is standing looking all happy and birthday like, waiting for his first guest.
“Everything good?” ‘”Yep.” “Ok.”
I go back out to do some errands. When I get home the Rock Band birthday is in full swing. 5 teenagers plus daughter snacking and singing in my living room. One friend walks by me and is like 6 ft tall now.
Holy crap!
I have known that kid since 3rd grade. Damn. Time flies. Daughter comes in and asks for fire. Over time, I have hidden all the matches. Everyone is always is looking to light things on fire around here.
I say, “No fire. Everyone is always is looking to light things on fire around here.”
She says, “But we need to light the birthday cake.”
“Birthday cake?”
“Yeah. They made a birthday cake.” “Who did? Who made a birthday cake?” “Son’s friend. She made him a cake.”
!!!!!!!!!!!
I trot out of the bedroom to son’s friend.
I look her in the friend eye. I say, “Did you make this?”
“Yes.” she says.
“YOURSELF?” I ask.
“Yes.” she says.
I am looking.
Other friend says, “She always makes son dairy-free treats.”
I look at son for information verification.
“True.” he says.
I have a moment of complete inner freak out realizing my son is out there everyday eating things. And even though I know this, somehow right now, it really hits me. Again. Like it has a thousand times before: This is his life, his body and his relationship with food and eating and all the social aspects surrounding them in our culture. His.
I relinquish. “Well, ok then. As long as it is safe for him.”
She nods.
Daughter the pyro lights the candles on the dairy-free, nut-free, egg free treat. Son stands there, accepting the love directed at him through song. The birthday song-something that used to be way too much attention for him, now received. They sit down to eat the treats made by someone other than me. I look at the friend who made them and smile. I feel like I am walking over a long rickety bridge and handing her a torch.
Yesterday I came out of my room late at night and son was still up, on the couch, studying. It is late, and I am annoyed. I say, “How come you are still up?” “I have to do this.” he says. “I think you should go to bed.” I say. “Not until I finish this.” He is writing in a spiral bound notebook. Really teeny-tiny son lettering fills the college ruled page. “But how come you are out HERE? You never work on the couch.” He looks. He says, “I came out here because the computer is in my room and if I work in there I will get distracted and not finish.” !!!!!!!!!! I just stand there, admiring him. In love with the son, who tomorrow will be 16. Who is right now making a decision in his own best interest. Who is right now, once again, my teacher. Yeah. Rock on son. Rock on.
This week I am meeting with one of my mentors to do some personal inventory-ing.
I have been preparing. Making a list of all the people I have resentments towards.
All the details of how I have been wronged. You know, all my “injustices.”
It’s a kind of house cleaning. Stirring up the dust, vacuuming up the garbage. And like all house cleaning, it is not exactly pleasant.
This time I only have 15 people on the list. The first time I had like 80. No kidding. I do these things and I try to be uh, thorough. Or maybe it’s obsessive. Ok, probably the second one.
When I sat down with Mentor the first time she was like, “So how many people do you have on the list?”
“Mmmm. 80 something I think?”
She did not flinch. Bless her soul.
We sat there for 5 hours. Her listening to me clean house. Me discovering the same situation over and over again as I told my story. And most especially when I looked at my part in every single dynamic, how my own fears and posturing and inability to be open and honest helped recreate the scenario.
When we were done I had a list of my character traits. I sat and thought about how certain traits have come to shape my life. I thought about which ones I wanted to feed and grow. And which ones I wanted to starve. Some things I wanted to keep, but bring back into the realm of asset instead of defect. Things like “helpfulness” that sometimes took a turn into “controlling”. 9 years later. Apparently I still need LOTS of practice.
So, I will sit with Mentor this week. She has already warned me, “I plan on holding your feet to the fire.”
!!!!!!!!!!!
“Really?” I say.
“Yes. Really. It’s time.”
Crap. I have known her for 9 years. She KNOWS me. There will be no wiggle room.
“I want you to come out with clarity on what you are doing and why. And from there you can make choices.”
“Ok.” I say. Weakly.
I sit in my room and look at my list. I know I have to tell the whole truth. To be in more pain about my motives in certain situations than to be invested in being right.
Sigh.
Even though you usually feel better about your house when it is all done.
Yesterday I was preparing my mind and my heart and my space for the upcoming school year. Now teaching Visual Art.
I am cleaning out my bookshelves and making space for the new art books I am ordering. I come across a book I love, called “How to be a Friend.”
The 3rd graders LOVED this book. Hell, so did the 1st and 2nd graders.
I think about if I will be able to use it now that I am teaching art.
I decide yes. Cooperation and collaboration have a place in the underpinnings of creation. I put it on the shelf, next to the ALL KINDS OF MINDS book about different learning styles.
I am sitting in my room on the floor amidst all the books and papers, trying to let summer go, to be ready for the year ahead.
I can tell the light is changing. It’s time. Summer is winding down.
This year I will be a newbie again, learning a whole new curriculum and trying to be of service to the little moo-moos. Son will be in his very important 11th grade year and considering universities. Daughter will be taking tests in 7th grade that will hopefully place her in cue for certain high schools she is considering.
I sit here letting go of the open nothingness of summer. I have a little cry.
Last week while visiting the family we went to a coffee shop.
When we got home my mother took the remains of her coffee and put it in a bowl on the floor for Buddy, the little yapping poofball dog.
I walk around the corner of the dining room into the kitchen and promptly kick the dog-coffee across the room.
“Godammit!” I say. “Who put a bowl of coffee on the floor??”
“Oh, that’s Buddy’s!” My mom comes running over, primed for a what-a-big-mess-you-have-made freak out.
I intercept. “I got it. Sit down. I got it.” I wipe up the coffee splatter from the wall.
“Does Buddy really need coffee? I mean, he is kind of, uh, high strung already, you know?”
“He likes it.” mom says.
“Ok.”
I am thinking, but his is a dog that can jump straight up and down like a dog helicopter. Really? He really needs coffee?
Son comes in. “Why is there a bowl of coffee on the floor?”
“Buddy.” I say.
Son raises the son eyebrow.
We stand there watching the dog. He approaches the bowl. Then jumps back. Then approaches. Then jumps back.
I turn to my mother. “What the hell is wrong with him? Is there a fly in the bowl?”
“He’s just a little nervous. He doesn’t like bowls.”
Son says, “A dog who doesn’t like bowls?’
“Must be kind of hard to eat then.” I say.
Mom says, "We just use the one blue bowl. He likes that one.”
Whooaaa…ok.
I am shaking my head. “I really do not think the whole coffee thing is a good idea.”
Buddy is still doing the approach and jump back number. Son says in a little doggie voice, “I am so thirsty. Look, coffee! OH MY GOD, it’s poison!”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Then he says, “What better solution to your problem than running away from it.”
This kid is KILLING ME.
I say, “I know! Let’s get a paper plate and attach a string and pull it around the room!”
Son looks at me. “Mom. That is cruel.”
“Oh OK!” There he goes, Mr. Animal Planet ruining my fun again.
I say, “I bet it would be really funny though!”
The visual of the plate and the dog and the jumping is too much. I am standing in the kitchen totally losing it.
Son looks at me and says, “There she goes again.” He shrugs and walks off to return to the important work of watching THE METS. “And don’t get the plate and a string mom.”
I just stand there, still cracking up. “Ok, son. I won’t. Promise.”
Yesterday we left the parents house down south and came back to Brooklyn.
I sat in the dark writing in the morning before we left, conversations apart from where I started a week ago.
I am thinking about my mother. About my aunt. About female authority in my life. About engaging with authority, and how my mother and I engage in a kind of mother-daughter combat, seemingly no matter how hard I try not to.
How strenuously I assert my will. Against my will.
I like to think I can anticipate the future, force myself upon it, and to believe parts of my reality instead of the whole. Most of last week was like that. Thusly, my head feels like the inside of a piñata, split wide apart.
Candy downpour illuminated.
Baseball bat and gum wrapper.
The in–your-face kind of YOU WILL NOT IGNORE THIS LESSON kind of week.
I sit with my mother and realize my part in my actions towards her and reactions to her. I look at her and know how hurt by this life she has been and now how lonely she is. And I try to sift through all the crap we have added to the pile over the years. Grasping to reside in the gratitude for her, my mother. Who loves me. Who really wishes I were different sometimes, as much as I wish she were different.
I used to ask her sister, my favorite aunt, about her. “Why is she like this?”
Favorite Aunt would try to explain what she could of my mom. We would have long conversations about the many manifestations of control and my mother’s emotional distancing. I remember watching Favorite Aunt with her daughter, petting her head, stroking her. Speaking sweetly to her. It was at this moment, standing there, watching her with my cousin that I realized what I was longing for. And how foreign it seemed to think of my own mother ever doing this to me.
Ah, but it is a balance within a family, a kind of people puzzle. And Favorite Aunt fills in some of the pieces for me. She was and is the person I can always talk to. She is the only adult person I spoke honestly to about my inability to stop certain behaviors in high school. She is the one who listened without judgment. She is the kind of person who looks at you and you can feel her heart right there in her eyes.
It takes a village to make a family. It takes a DECISION to choose to continue to grow. Even years and miles and holidays apart.
And being in captivity with one’s family of origin can really call the question into action:
Yesterday we met the extended family for a little Ginny Hoedown at a chain restaurant down here.
We are on the way when 1st Cousin texts my mother: I am not coming to lunch. Sorry.
1st Cousin is the one who set up the lunch, but, oh ok. My aunt and uncle are there. And some of their offspring. We begin discussing the wishes of my uncle’s daughter to get a Labret piercing. I of course, am for this. My uncle the curmudgeon, is not.
“She is going to do what she wants anyway.” I say.
He is mumbling something about “under my roof…” which seems to be the parental battle cry of this family. I remember I used to sneak pierce myself in the bathroom growing up. Back in those days, there were no “body piercing” places. Sometimes it would take days for my parents to notice.
When I pierced my nose it was two days later at the dinner table. My mom says, “Is that a ring in your nose?”
I smile proudly.
My dad is disgusted. He says, “What are you going to do next? Put a bone through your head?”
I briefly consider this.
“Nah.” I say.
This was probably not the best response.
I look across the table at the Labret candidate. Uncle and his daughter are now down there picking on each other.
My family thinks picking on one another is amusing. I however, do not.
I am still looking. I think she would look great with a Labret. I say, “Well, if you don’t want her to get a Labret, how about a nice tattoo?”
Heh.
He eyeballs me.
GOD! These Italian men. So controlling.
Cousin’s new wife says something about a piercing she has that is not visible. Then she says, “but this is not table talk.”
HAHAHAHA! That’s funny. EVERYTHING is table talk in this family. And anyway, she has a piercing I can’t see, so she fits right in. Go Cousin’s new wife!
We eat. The waiter is from Queens. He is Irish. He tells us this. He talks a lot. He tells us story after story. I am wondering how much he drinks. I bet it is a lot. I am thinking, “I would have been a good waitress. I really like to talk and ask questions.”
Then I think: But people can be annoying. Maybe I would be a bad waitress. And you have to carry all those dishes. Plus the greasiness.
But there are also not so greasy restaurants. I wonder how come I never waitressed? I did work in a shoe store once in high school. I got fired though because I called in sick and then my mother called looking for me.
Wait. Someone is talking to me. Ok, someone is always talking in this family. No wonder I got so good at looking like I was paying attention when I was not paying attention.
“Mom, are you listening?”
“Mmmm. Nope. Not listening.”
“Mom!”
I look around. Tomorrow we go back to Brooklyn, the son, daughter and I.
I think I am going to miss these people. My family.
Crazy, in your business like nobody else, what-are-we-eating-next kind of family.
To link to this blog from blog posts/comments, use [blog violet915], from anywhere else use http://personals.techtv.com/blog/violet915,
and to read it remotely use the feed.
