Writing

Here's my experience with writing a story. A fictional story, but really I'm drawing from the moments of my life where I've felt the most alive, the most passion.

Writing the first word is agony. There are self doubts that scream at me: why would anyone want to read this, why would I even bother to put the words on the page? What sort of revisionist history will I create, how true will I be to myself, my own voice? What am I doing, seriously?

The first four pages fly by. They are an opening, an introduction that will most likely be cut, that will become irrelevant to the story I'm really writing. But they are necessary, a necessary mental direction - a map laid out on the page that says, it's ok to continue. You're going somewhere now.

Then I get to the hard part, the part that needs perspective, that's screaming out for it, and yet I haven't found a voice yet to provide that perspective, to write about all of this as if it actually turns out ok.

This is a story that I want to hear. I want to know how it ends. If for no other reason, I need to continue to write it.

Small Miracles

Thanks to Margaret for writing about the goddess Devi for me, and for putting her own sense of humor and spin on the lessons Devi presents. http://margaretfinnegan.blogspot.com/2009/11/goddess-of-week-devi.html

The "minor gods" she mentions are very relevant to my situation right now. I hate asking for help, or admitting I need anyone, especially my husband, The Old Man. I have this vision of myself as an independent woman, forgetting that everyone needs someone.

I was thinking today that I really want to write, and want time to write. As much as I love spending time with The Kid - taking him to the pool, or the movies, walking with him, and especially the early morning 5:00 am quiet time we get together, while he is holding my big hand in his little one - I need silence and time to myself. And the writing itch is scratching long red marks in the back of my brain.

So The Old Man called, and said, "I was thinking that since I'm going to be working late nights next week you would need some time to yourself. Why don't I take The Kid tomorrow morning?"

So this "minor god" is thinking ahead, anticipating my emotional needs. Granted, I play a big role in this because I made it clear my needs were not being met, but I did not expect him to be attuned to what I needed so soon, or so accurately.

It is acceptable to depend on others. It's still so strange that I am actually afraid of doing this with a man I've known for seven years.

My Favorite Quote Ever - So Far This Week

"A social worker would be fascinated by my in-laws' family dynamics." A friend of mine, gearing up for her visit to her in-laws' house for the Thanksgiving holiday.

It's a well-known fact that holidays are stressful. So many - often unrealistic - expectations are piled on top of the mashed potatoes and turkey and ham bones and pie and cranberries. We want fellowship, time to catch up with family, heartfelt conversations - but instead we get football and work in the kitchen, and if we're lucky, the men do the dishes. If we're not lucky, we spend all day on our feet preparing a meal, serving a meal, and cleaning up after a meal, and somehow the day goes by without any reflection or recognition of each other.

And then there are the veiled comments, the blunt comments, and the outright inflammatory comments, all made with bubbling gravy and the scent of cinnamon apple candles in the background. Knowing what I do about animal behavoir, this makes perfect sense to me.

I did my thesis research on the dynamics of young male wild horses, specifically sub-adult bachelor male groups. There were 3 to 8 horses in each group, and when the groups would meet each other, they would go through an elaborate ritual to establish dominance. This is what all social creatures do when reunited. The hierarchy, the lines of control, must be established.

The horses would stare at each other.

If one bowed or lowered its head, he admitted subservience.

If not, they would approach each other.

One would drop to a knee and bite at the other's hocks. If a horse loses an achilles tendon in the wild, he is dead. This was a very ritualizing form of biting though, and rarely did any horse break the skin or do any real damage.

At any point the horses could lower its head, chomp its teeth, and bow out of the fight, admitting his lower rank in the hierarchy.

There was a lot of circling involved, a lot of staring, and in the end, a lot of giving up and chomping of teeth.

The mares, the females, were much more vicious to each other when establishing an alpha.

I don't really have a rosy ending to this post. Humans should be able to keep the peace better, matriarchs and patriarchs should be able to quash their evolutionary drive for dominance. The human's ritualized fight for dominance - words shaped and formed like weapons, aimed at other human targets at the dinner table - should be civilized. We should be past it.

But we're not.

Love Letter to My Low Rise Jeans

Dear Low Rise Jeans,

We met at Express. You were really expensive, but as soon as I felt your poly-denim blend and slipped you on, I had to have you.

You coexist nicely, dipping low enough to stay out of the way of my expanding creamsicle belly. I promise I will find enough long maternity shirts to cover my new Wal-Mart panties that show above your plunging beltline.

You bend and move with me, you are stretchy and elastic and allow my less-than-flexible joints freedom of motion, so that when the lecherous old man from work reaches out his hand to touch my stomach, I have enough confidence to plant my feet and say, "Make one more move, and I will break your hand."

Love, me.

Little Spirit

Ultrasound machines put out a whooosh whoosh sound, fill the whole room with underwater noises.

I closed my eyes to hear the heartbeat. I heard whoosh and felt movement and heard tiny crashes amidst the din of the whoosh.

No heartbeat. All the motion and pressure amplified on my belly and in my ears.

The doctor said the baby was moving fast, moving away from the ultrasound monitor. My eyes closed, wet noises surrounded me, I laughed and heard the belly laughter amplified in the room. Tried not to laugh. Tried to let the doc pin the kid down.

Finally, a fast poundpoundpoundpoundthumpthumpthumpthump. A regular heartbeat coming from a cave.

Baby, I thought, You are gonna be one strong kid. Your ma hasn't even thought very much about you for the past four months, and yet here you are, playing with the doctor, doing somersaults. Letting me know you're there, enjoying your time in the spotlight.

Fights at School

On a side note: Your Pickle Paks are poorly made, Mt. Olive. It took me 42 seconds to open one. Way too long for a pregnant lady to wait.

So my three year old son got bitten today at daycare. This is a common occurrence. He gets into fights and the kids bite him. Note, he does not bite any other kids. But I can just picture him pushing and shoving and grabbing a toy. This fight was over who would be first in line.

I have mixed feelings. I'm proud of his assertiveness. I'm like "You go, boy, get some!" Then on the other hand, I would like for him to share, play nice, let other kids have the first spot in line every once in a while, even though he is way better than they are.

And I can't really ask him, "Now, son, did you get in a fight at school today?" Because he would say, "Don't put water in my juice, mom." And I would say, "I always water down your juice." And he would say, "No water in my juice."

And we'd be on to another conversation, proving that the males of our species learn at a very young age to change the subject.

Blueprints

"Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say." - Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

I've spent most of my adult life convincing myself I'm nothing like my mother.

My mother and father met in a laundromat. He had purchased some land, thinking his wife at the time would want to move to the country with him. As his dream came closer, his soon-to-be ex-wife moved farther away from him. He lived on a beautiful piece of land while he built his house: a floor topped with a wood framework at first, the bare bone beginning of his home. My mom moved into the start of a dream - a house so new she could see the moon straight through the skinned walls and ceiling when she fell asleep at night. My mother wanted land, wanted children, and a garden, and so did my father. They endured freezing cold nights with nothing but the structure of a house - no insulation - between them and the stars.

I spent my childhood watching them build our home. Solar power. Indoor plumbing. A blue tile floor. Carpet. A telephone. A color television with a VCR player. Two years of adding on new bedrooms. A new porch to replace the tiny one perched over the front door. Even today, a new dining room, a new kitchen. Molding their dream, solidifying their vision for themselves. Refusing to let snow and winter and mud and gas wells drive them out.

We forgive our men, my mother and I, for thinking that a home is simply wood and nails, paint and bricks, heat and water. We forgive them because we have food and shelter and laundry detergent and money for shoes and new furniture. We forgive them for not noticing our contribution to building our homes.

Our contributions are very real. Ask any woman if what she does for her family can be packaged, reproduced, sold, described in color and shape, texture and weight. She will say no. If you say, well then, your contributions are nebulous, indescribable, and therefore invalid, you would be wrong.

We keep in touch with our men's families. We send cards, letters, answer the phone when their mothers call.
We understand when our men need their space, and leave them alone.
We care for our children's emotional needs. We are the soft place to fall for our children, and this, out of all our contributions, is the most likely to be overlooked, minimized.
We plan time with our men. We insist that we get away from work and responsibility for a mental rest. We make the hotel reservations, arrange for the care of pets and kids, and check in with our men to make sure they are having a good time.
We do the chicken soup, tissue, poor baby, thermometer things when our men are sick.

We eke out time for ourselves when we can.

My mother moved into a shell - not a house, not a home, a shell - and has spent the last thirty-three years making it a home. She had the wood and the walls but where was the warmth? Where was the insulation that kept out the cold?

We believe in our dreams, we believe in our men, and so we are willing to forgive our men for forgetting the warmth, for thinking the structure of a house is enough.

I've spent most of my adult life convincing myself I'm nothing like my mother.