Internet Grapes

adjusting the lens

Even before we made an offer on our condo, we knew it was not our ideal home.  We wanted 3 bedrooms - one for guests, since neither of us have family in town.  We wanted 2 bathrooms, or at least two toilets.  We would have really liked air conditioning.  We would have liked a spacious tub (with jets, even!), a new sink and toilet, a bathroom floor that was tile instead of vinyl.  We would have liked pretty granite countertops, and wood cabinets, and new appliances.  We would have liked an open floor plan, where a person cooking in the kitchen could have carried on a conversation with a person sitting in the living room or dining room.  And oh, we really would have loved our own washer & dryer. 

If our home didn't realize all of our dreams, it did satisfy all of our requirements, plus some.  There was parking (and not just a designated space, but a spot in a garage).  There were two bedrooms plus an office.  There was a living room and a separate dining room.  There was storage space (we have half of the space in the basement).  There was a shared (and free) washer and dryer in the basement.  There was a small balcony on the front that appealed to our (or at least to my) romantic sensibilities.  Pets (both dogs and cats) were allowed, and there was a fenced in backyard where we could let out the dog.  We loved the hardwood floors, and found the crown molding (in a few rooms) and glass blocked window (in the entryway staircase) charming.  And we could (barely) afford it.

In the first year or two after we moved in, I painted every room (floral wood, silver sage, tuscan beige, Del Sol, magic spell, thyme green, and a gentle pink color for Katie's room that I don't remember the name of).  We fantasized that one day, when the value of the place had increased, we would refinance the place and redo the kitchen and the bathroom.  We would put new cabinets in the kitchen (the current ones, our inspector had pointed out, were never properly attached to the wall) and install a new countertop (we could not, our inspector warned us, install a granite countertop without also getting new cabinets, since the current cabinets were so weak that the countertop would likely collapse them).  We would put new tile in the bathroom, both on the wall (our inspector said that the tile, too, had never been properly laid) and on the floors.  We would refinish or replace the scratchy-bottomed tub.  Maybe we would convert the hall closet into a space for a tiny washer & dryer.  Maybe we would install French doors on the office entrance, to make a better guest space.

Fast forward to now, 3.5 years after we moved in, and the value of our home has not increased.  I took a pay cut in October, and will lose my job in March, and the idea of redoing our kitchen or bathroom seems like a ridiculous pipe dream.  Instead, we live daily with various inconveniences.  The burners on the stovetop don't adjust well.  The cabinets are still hanging onto the wall, but I regularly examine the seam between the back of one cabinet and the wall to see if it's widened (so far, it hasn't visibly grown, but often, as I'm putting heavy dishes into the cabinet, I imagine it crashing onto the floor, and wonder, in a semi-detached way, whether the fall would happen slowly enough to give me time to move out of the way fast enough).  The oven doesn't heat to the right temperature (we adjust for it), and long ago the handle ripped off of the refrigerator door (we just pull on the side of the door).  Almost every time I load and unload dishes into the dishwasher, the wheels on the rack of the dishwasher fall off (they snap back on).  There is one tile on the bathroom wall, above the faucet, that routinely falls off the wall and into the tub.  ("Mommy!  Daddy!  The wall fell off again!" Katie will call out to us.  We push it back into place.)  And last week, the gutters (and the part of the house attached to them) fell off of one side of our building.  (Insurance will cover it as storm damage, a result of all the snow and ice this winter, but there's a deductible.) 

Then there is our clutter and mess.  I can sweep the kitchen and dining room at 8 am on Monday only to have clumps of dog and cat hair floating around by 8 pm Monday night.  There are four of us living here now, and each room is jam-packed with stuff.  Right now, in addition to all of our usual furniture, our home contains a Jumperoo, a high chair, and a baby swing, not to mention a Christmas tree that we still haven't taken down (the ornaments are off, at least; soon the tree must follow).  Annabel's crib is in our bedroom, and Katie's room has a bunk bed and shelf and desk set-up that leaves almost no room to turn around in.  There is a cheap Ikea futon in the office for guests that is a complete pain in the neck to flatten and fold up again.  The laundry and the dishes and the sweeping are overwhelming and never ending. 

And then there are the people living in the home.  Katie is almost five years old, a wild tornado, leaving destruction in her wake.  (We do make her help clean up, most of the time, but there is still plenty left for us, too.)  Annabel has not slept through a single night in her life; I feel like a miracle has taken place if she only wakes me up once.  She's on the verge of crawling, and we find ourselves scouring the living room rug multiple times a day to clear away anything that she could stick into her mouth and choke on (where does it all come from?).  I have been living with a job that has left me feeling by turns exhausted, angry, hopeless, and trapped (sometimes all at once), and now I am free of the trap (we're all laid off effective March 9th; that is a story that still needs to be told), but anxious about the future.  (My insurance covers all four of us.  My salary is more than 2/3 of our income.  My 401k is the only retirement plan we have, not that it has much value at this point.)  Geoff stays home with the girls, trying to juggle housework and dinner preparation and Annabel's naps and Katie's preschool with his own job at the church. 

Tuesday night Annabel woke up to nurse when I went to bed, then again a few hours later.  Within 10 minutes after I laid her back down in her crib, Katie appeared at the door, telling me she'd peed the bed.  I cleaned her and her bed up, tucked her back in, and found I couldn't go to sleep until almost an hour had passed.  I had just fallen back asleep when Katie appeared at the door again, telling me she'd had a nightmare that was too "horrible" to even talk about.  I took her back to her room, tucked her back in, rubbed her back and sang her "Edelweiss," and went back to bed myself.  Within 15 minutes, Annabel was awake again.  After I put her back to bed, we all slept for another 3 hours.  It was a rough night, admittedly much worse than most. 

It can get disheartening, sometimes.  Some days it seems like we will always worry about space and money and potty training and sleeping through the night.  Some days it seems like every step forward is followed by at least one equal step back. Some days I realize that I am looking at the days as part of a long struggle that I feel like I should have conquered by now.  I have been a lawyer for over 10 years now.  I will be 40 next year.  I feel, sometimes, like I should be doing better than this. 

And yet last night, as I stirred a batch of chocolate pudding on the stove (you have to stir the pudding constantly, which leaves room for deep thinking), listening to music on the CD player in the kitchen, and hearing the sounds of Katie and Annabel in the bath (and the occasional murmurs of Geoff, with them), I realized the likelihood that one day, this will be a time I look back on with great nostalgia.  One day, we may wax fondly about the stupid wheels that fall off of that dishwasher rack, and almost certainly we will laugh about that bathroom tile falling into the bathtub, because as frustrating as those things may be to us now, they are minor inconveniences in the middle of what is, in so many other ways, a wondrous blessed time in our lives - a time when Annabel and Katie are learning to be friends, when Katie's imagination is taking off in ways that amuse and impress us every day (in the past few weeks she has introduced us to at least five alter-egos/imaginary friends: Lunda, Lund, Blenda, Lenda, and Frank), when Annabel's babbling starts to sound like a language (ticka ticka dada blauuuuu), when the four of us are learning to be a family.  I come home from work, and Annabel kicks and yells happily, open-mouthed, to see me.  Katie yells, "Mommy!" and runs to give me a hug.  I know that as much as I am looking forward to seeing them grow up, I will miss them the way they are now.   

It occurred to me, as I stirred the pudding, that maybe one day I would even miss the way that I can so easily satisfy so many of my girls' needs.  When Katie wakes up in the night after a bad dream or after having wet the bed, I can help her.  When Annabel wakes up in the night hungry or upset, I am able to give her what she needs.  For each of them, I am able to be her comfort, able to solve her problem, able to put things right again so that she can go back to sleep.  How much more complicated will their problems be when they are older?  Will I wish for problems like today's (despite the sleep deprivation they cause)?

I do believe that the not-so-good things will get better.  I do believe that one day our finances will be in order, that both Geoff and I will be bringing in regular salaries, that eventually our student loans will be paid off.  I believe that one day we will have 2 bathrooms (or at least an extra toilet!), and that no tiles will be falling off of our bathroom walls.  I believe that someday we will have a guest bedroom, and our own washer & dryer. 

And so I am resolving to try to experience these days through a filter, imagining how I will feel when I look back on them from a future existence, thinking kindly of them the way I expect I will when I am no longer living them.  It is not so much a matter of pretending that I like the things that currently bother me; it's a matter, I think, of adjusting the lens through which I view those things.  In the whole picture, they can be small.  They can be background.  They can be out of focus.  (They can be bokeh.)  

I spend too much energy worrying about what we don't have, wishing for some ideal situation that I can almost guarantee I will never have.  It's silly, this waiting around for the ideal to become real, when I have so much to appreciate right now.  My husband is my favorite person in the whole world, and I would not want either of my daughters to be anybody other than who they are. We are all healthy and strong and full of love for each other.  Our condo is cozy and bright, and it's home.

How much better would it be if I am able to recognize the good in what I've got now, while I've got it, instead of only looking back later and missing it when it's gone?  How much happier will I be?

Let's try to find out.

rainy

Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Last night I had a bad dream, bad enough that when I woke up from it, I got up out of bed not only to go to the bathroom, but also to give myself a few minutes to snap out of it.  I was afraid that if I went right back to sleep, I'd go right back into the same dream.

There were a group of us in a vehicle together, some sort of shuttle service, maybe, from an airport.  We had luggage with us, and valuables in our luggage.  I was there with mostly strangers, but Geoff was there, too, at one point.  Early on, one man started to act a little angry.  We all tried to avoid making eye contact with him. 

Then suddenly, the van was stopping, and the man had pulled out a gun, and pulled the driver out of the van.  He was holding a gun to the man's back, and telling us all to do what he said.  And then before he had even asked us to do anything, he started shooting the driver in the back, over and over. 

I remember thinking something like, oh, my God, this is the end.  And then: this can't be the end; my life can't end like this!  And then, a realization: I guess that's what everybody thinks, until it happens to them.  I was telling Geoff about my dream last night, and when I got to this part, I started to cry.

Lately I feel like I'm in the middle of an extended early (hopefully) mid-life crisis.  I'm feeling frustrated by my career.  I'm feeling panicky about my failure to get pregnant after 14 months of trying.  I'm feeling trapped, a little bit, I think.  There are still good days when I feel lucky for what I have, but the days when I mourn what I don't have have been more frequent.  And there are bad days when I wonder, is this it?  This can't be all there is, right?  And then, on the bad days, that's what everybody thinks.

This is a just a phase.  A difficult one, but still, a phase.  I believe that.  Spring is coming soon.

Fall (November 9th/10th)

Yellow (November 9th/10th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

So. Not this month, either.

And since this is how it is, I'll say that one good thing about this is that it means I can have a drink or three when I take a weekend trip to D.C. with a group of women friends at the end of November. The last time I saw the same group of women was back in 2003, when I was pregnant with Katie, and it was sort of a shame to be turning down the fruity martinis and amaretto sours and wine that I might otherwise have enjoyed.

And it's true that there are always days when it feels like this one child I have is all that I can handle with any kind of grace and humor. When I go to work, rush home from work, play with her, feed her dinner, go through the nearly hour-long bedtime routine (including bath, good night to the tv show du jour (this includes kissing the paused-on-Tivo faces of Pablo & Tyrone & Uniqua & Tasha & Austin or Miffy & her rabbit friends or Lenny & Mingming & Tuck), bedtime snack, books, Edelweiss, kisses & hugs). And then it is 8 or 8:30 and I feel myself slouch and relax. And is there time for another?

(We do what we must, when we want it enough.)

And anyway, there are still the holidays for "getting romantical."

And I appreciate the sentiment, but those of you who talk about timing, and how if Katie had been conceived with any other egg or any other sperm, then she would have been some other child, not my sweet Katie, well, you're right. But you're wrong to think that that has anything to do with what is happening now, or that knowing that the failure to conceive this month or the last (or the one before that, or the one before that) can be twisted into a good thing because of the fact that someday, in the future, if I DO have a second child, I will no doubt look back and be grateful that I had that particular child, and not be able to imagine my life without the experience of knowing that particular child. That is not a comfort.

You see, if I had had a child other than my Katie, I would not have missed her. If I had had some other child, I would have loved that child, if not the exact same way that I love Katie, then just as much.

And also, of course, there is no guarantee that there will be a second child at all. If it turns out that Katie is the only, well, then, I bet someday I will look back and see all of the blessings that I've found in being the parent of an only child. And yet that doesn't help me now.

And.  And.  And.

(I keep re-reading this, and I don't think it's written very well.  But I don't know how to write it any better.)

Randolph Street (November 2nd)

Randolph Street (November 2nd)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Some people hate to drive in Chicago, but I've never really been one of them. I don't drive to work very often these days, but if I could park for $5 a day, I'd drive to work every single day. I love driving down Lake Shore Drive - watching the sun come up or go down, seeing what color the water in the lake is today, glancing at joggers or bicyclists on the lakefront, even going past the familiar exits. Lawrence is at 4800 (one of two exits for our apartment when we got married), and Wilson at 4600 (the other of the two exits), and Montrose at 4400, and Irving Park at 4000. There's no exit at Addison (3600), so usually traffic for Cubs games backs up at the Belmont exit (3200). Fullerton at 2400 (Lincoln Park Zoo), LaSalle/North Avenue at 1600, Michigan at 1000, Chicago at 800 (where I used to exit to pick up friends at the law school dorm).

When I drive to work now, I exit at Wacker, and I take Wacker to Clark, which is the street my building is on.  Unless I'm running late, and unless traffic is really, really terrible, I pretty much enjoy the whole thing. (I don't feel the same way about the interstate expressways.)

When I was a little girl, maybe 5 or so years old, I wanted to be a bus driver. A lady bus driver, since that's what I would be - a lady. I thought it would be great to drive around all day, in charge of that huge vehicle, taking people where they needed to go.

I don't hold any illusions about driving a bus anymore, but I do still like to drive. I still like the feeling of being in charge of the big machine I'm in, taking me where I need to go. I wouldn't have to take the Wacker exit to Clark to get to work. I could keep going down Lake Shore Drive to Randolph, and then head east on Randolph, instead. Or, if I was really going to shake things up, I could not even head to work at all. If I wanted to, I could just keep driving. I could go down past Buckingham Fountain and the Field Museum and McCormick Place. I could drive around in circles. I could stop, or go, whenever, and wherever, I decided to turn the wheel and hit the gas.

Just knowing that I could do that makes me feel a little bit powerful. Never mind the fact that so far, if I drive south on a weekday morning, I end up taking that Wacker exit and driving myself to work. If there comes a day when I just absolutely can't take the thought of doing that? Well, then. Who knows where I might end up?

Let me

Reflection (October 10th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I went to see my doctor back in July.  I like my doctor; I haven't seen her too many times, but she had a baby about 6 months before Katie was born, and whenever I see her, we exchange compliments on the respective cuteness of our daughters.  My doctor also has long curly hair, a sweet kind roundish face, and she's somewhat overweight.  For reasons that are probably not mysterious, I feel some kinship with her. 

I went to see her for a couple of reasons.  One was that my right shoulder, which I'd injured back in May and June of 2005 during multiple marathon painting sessions, was still hurting me on a daily basis.  The second was that we'd been trying to get pregnant since January, and the advice I'd gotten said that if you're 35 or older, you should consult a doctor if you've tried for six months without conceiving.  In August I turned 36.

They weighed me first, as usual, and then a nurse took my blood pressure, which was higher than usual.  When the doctor came in, she shook my hand, smiled, and looked at my chart.  "Your weight is up a few pounds," she said.  "And your blood pressure is too high.  Let's take it again."  She did, and this time it was even higher.  "That worries me," she said, "we'll need to keep an eye on that."  She took some notes.  "So, why are you here today?" 

I told her, and she said she would give me some samples of Celebrex for my shoulder, which she expected would be more effective than ibuprofen.  She also said she would give me a referral to an OB/GYN for the fertility issue, and would take some blood from me that day to have them run "fertility work" on it.  She told me to make an appointment to come back in two weeks so that she could check my blood pressure again.  She asked me if I had any questions, smiled and shook my hand again, and told me to follow her out.

As I was coming out of the examining room, she spoke to the nurse.  "She needs a follow up appointment for high blood pressure, Celebrex for her injured rotator cuff, a referral for infertility, and blood work for infertility."

Nothing she said was a surprise, but that sentence right there, with all of my problems lumped together, crushed something inside me.  I felt broken, and old, and unhealthy, and ashamed.  When I left, I called Geoff on the cell phone, crying - feeling like I was overreacting, but crying, anyway.  I drove around for a few minutes, and then I went home, where my sister in law Stephanie was waiting.  I cried to her, too, and she comforted me. 

I went back two weeks later, and my blood pressure was lower, within normal range; we made a follow up appointment for December, just to make sure it stays ok.  My weight was down 3 pounds from what it had been at the earlier appointment, back to the weight I've been ever since a few months after Katie was born.  I got a referral for the doctor who delivered Katie (not the OB/GYN that I had during my pregnancy, who so often made me feel judged); my appointment is not until October 23rd.  That is less than two weeks away now; maybe I will leave with some answers.  Then again, maybe I won't.

*****

I remember how I felt the last time we tried to do this – desperately yearning, impatient, and with an ever-present undercurrent of "I want this so much I am afraid it will never happen."  Before Geoff and I were even married, I brought up the subject of how much I wanted children.  We agreed that we would do whatever we could to allow us to have children.  Before I even went off birth control, we agreed that if I did not get pregnant, we would consider infertility treatments, and we would consider adoption.

When Katie was a baby – not when she was a newborn, but since she was a bigger baby, old enough to smile and giggle and interact with us – I felt torn about having another child.  (I've written about it before.)  On the one hand, she is so wonderful, I can't help but want another one!  On the other hand, she is so wonderful, maybe she deserves all of the attention we can give her, just her.  Maybe, I used to think, I wouldn't be as good of a mother to two children.  Maybe, I thought, the three of us together is the best family we can be. 

I have no doubt that we would (will?) love another baby just as much as we love Katie.  In fact, I think I would probably love a newborn second baby more than I loved Katie when she was a newborn, because even during those early days, when we were exhausted and worried, before he or she was capable of giving anything back to us, I would know what lay ahead.  I know that my love for that baby will grow more with each passing day.  I would know that Geoff and I would sit together and marvel over each new small development the baby makes, and that (in addition to great challenges) the new baby would bring us great joy.

And so each month starts with hope and promise.  I think about when my due date will be and how old Katie will be by then.  I consider whether my emotional state is a symptom of early pregnancy.  I think about how far along I'll be at future holidays and vacations, and whether I'll have any maternity clothes from last time that I can wear again this time. 

But each month ends with a new failure, and each month's failure hurts more than the failure of the month before.  And now that it's been almost ten months of trying and failing, I feel like I am failing.  I know that everything might be fine; I know that any month now, I might get pregnant.  I know that this worry and anxiety could be for nothing.  I also know that, because I no longer feel the desperate need for a child that I felt before Katie was born, that we will probably not do whatever it takes to have a second child.  If it comes to expensive infertility treatments that we can barely afford, we might stop.  If it comes to considering adoption, we might not take that step.  How long will we try?  How long will we hope and fail, hope and fail? 

We might not have another baby, I think to myself, and I'm sad, but not heartbroken.  I can't be heartbroken at having "only" Katie, because being mother to "only Katie" is about the single best damn thing I've done in my life so far. Still, in January I was ambivalent, and for the first few months my sadness at not being pregnant was tempered with a little dose of relief; now in October, I have reached the point where I feel no relief.  If we do not have another child, I will need time to adjust.  I will need time to grieve.  I don't know how long I will need.

*****

Geoff didn't get the job at the church in New York.  We don't know this because anyone from the church called him, because they didn't.  Geoff got no response to his letters, emails and phone calls sent and made over the past nearly seven weeks.  We only know this because there is now an announcement on the church's website advertising an upcoming concert, and it contains a reference to Dan, the church's new associate minister of music. 

Geoff wasn't looking for a job, and we weren't actively trying to relocate.  But once the opportunity arose - once the potential boss (who now won't take the time to compose a five second reply to Geoff's inquiry about whether he is still being considered for the position) invited Geoff to apply for the job - it started to seem like a puzzle piece falling into place.  This time in our lives started to make sense to us in a way it hadn't before, as if we'd been looking at things upside down, or sideways.  Aha, we said, as we spun the picture.  So this is how it's supposed to look.

References to New York are everywhere, in case you haven't noticed.  In the weeks after Geoff came back from his interview, we pointed them out and smiled to each other.  One day we sat in a booth at a restaurant.  "Look at the picture behind you," I said.  He looked, and saw the New York Yankees poster.  "It's everywhere!" he said, laughing a little. 

After over a month had gone by, with still no word from the church, we were pretty sure it was not going to happen.  We talked about it a lot - about how although nothing in our lives had changed (the same jobs, the same home, the same city), we felt like we had lost something.  "At first," Geoff said, "everything seemed like a sign, you know?" 

I nodded.  I knew.

He smiled a little sadly.  "But now it just feels like it was the universe mocking me."  We laughed.

*****

Katie started full-time daycare last week.  For the most part, she loves "school," and looks forward to going.  Her first day was reported to have gone "amazingly well," with no tears or sadness.  She ate well, napped well, played well, and wasn't even excited to see Geoff when he came to pick her up.  As the week went on, though, it seemed to get a little harder.  She was thrilled to see Geoff on Tuesday, and both of us on Wednesday.  On Thursday and Friday, when Geoff dropped her off, she cried and said she wanted to stay with Daddy, but was fine the rest of the day.  Her daycare was closed on Columbus Day, and when we drove past it on the way home from lunch, she yelled, "My school!  That's my school!  Look, mommy daddy, my school!"  Today, again, she cried when Geoff left her there.  I'm sure she has been fine the rest of the day. 

I am sure, in so many ways, that she is doing just fine.

It is no mystery to me why my sadness over not getting pregnant has gotten more intense in the past week or so.  My little girl is growing up.  (I could be biased, but I think she would be an absolutely fantastic older sister.)

I have asked Katie whether she would like for us to have a baby, a sister or brother for her.  She always says yes.  My brother and his girlfriend Frankie are expecting a baby girl in mid-February, and we met them at the beach this past Sunday.  I've told Katie that their baby will be her first first cousin.  At the beach, Frankie lay on her back for a little while with her tshirt pulled up to expose her belly.  She feels the baby move around a lot now, and Josh has felt her move, too.  We stood there for a few minutes, watching Frankie's belly.  "Forgive us for staring at your belly," I said, smiling at her.   She laughed; she didn't seem to mind. 

Our latest baby-making failure made itself known on Sunday.  I wasn't really surprised, since the pregnancy test I'd taken early had been negative, but I cried anyway. 

Last night Katie was fighting bedtime, the way she does more and more often lately.  I got frustrated, and I told her so.  Katie looked at me and moved toward me.  "You have a baby, Mommy," Katie said.  "You have a baby in your belly." 

"No, sweetie, I don't," I said. 

"Yes, you do, Mommy.  You have a baby in there.  Getting bigger and bigger."  She stood there looking at me, her hand on my belly, patting it.

"No, Katie, there is no baby in my belly." I picked her up and looked into her face and tried to smile like I meant it.  "But you grew in there," I told her.  "You were in there, and you got bigger and bigger and bigger.  You used to be my little baby."

She nodded, and she relaxed her body against mine.  We rocked.  We turned out the light.  We sang.  We hugged her.  We kissed her.  We put her to bed. 

*****

I don't know how to wrap this up.  I am doing all right.  There are lots and lots of things in my life that are wonderful; there are so many things to be grateful for, as I told Geoff the other day when I was especially sad.  It's just that right now, lately, there have been some big things that I'm sad about, too.  I'm just trying to go with the flow, letting myself feel how I feel, figuring it out as I go.

I don't pray only for others.  The other day, I was driving in the car, feeling sad, and I prayed for myself.  I don't really believe in praying for the specific outcomes that I want; it is clear that the world isn't fair, and that bad things happen to the best people.  It doesn't make any sense to me that I would get something just because I wanted it, or that I could make a bargain with my life that would earn me something I'm yearning for.  So the other day, I drove and I cried and I prayed something more like this:

Let me be open, to whatever happens.  Let me love.  Let me feel.  Let me see.  Let me appreciate what I have.  Let me understand as much as I can.  Let me live with grace and humor.  Let me do my best.  Let me find my own peace.

It's a good prayer, I think, because it stands alone, valuable whether or not any God hears it or answers it.  I'm also praying to myself. 

More

Here is what's been going on.

Katie is doing great.  She gives us hugs and kisses, both spontaneously and on demand.  She has just started being interested in having a blanket over her while she sleeps, which seems like some sort of milestone to me, since she never wanted one before (we put her in footed sleepers during all cold weather, to make sure her feet stay warm).  I have big plans to buy her a small pillow, too.  She talks more clearly, and with a larger vocabulary, all the time.  Just a day or two ago, she progressed from saying "help! help!" to "help me! help me!"  Geoff and I both notice and comment on these little changes - these little bits of evidence that she is growing and learning all the time.  She loves books, and gets very excited to see letters.  So far she doesn't accurately identify many letters, but I've seen her correctly pick out and name a "K" and an "X," and maybe an "A."  When she counts, it usually goes - 1, 3, 8, 9, 18!

When I was pregnant, and when Katie was an infant, we read a lot of books about the stages she was (or would be) going through, but for the last year or more, we haven't done much of that.  The other day I was looking through our books - only one of them talks about child development past the first year.  The introduction to the 24 month plus stage said that for the most part, a child's two-year-old personality and social style is the same personality and social style that the child will have when she is six (and to some extent, when she is an adult).  I thought that was amazing (already?!) and gratifying (she is so fun to be with and be around!), and also a little bittersweet (already?!).   

Work continues to be something that I do because it is what I do, not because I love it.  I got a good review this year, and a (relatively) generous raise.  For the most part, I like the people I work with - my supervisors, in particular, are fair and kind and consistent, and can be trusted not to fly off the handle or take out their difficulties on anybody else.  It's not an arduous job.  I work from home one day a week (usually Wednesdays - yay, tomorrow!), and I get one "flex day" off each month (after working the extra hours during the previous week, a little extra time each day) - the next one just so happens to be this Friday.  I am in my fifth year of employment, which means I now get three weeks of vacation instead of two.  As of 2006, I am enrolled in both long and short term disability, so if we were to have another baby, I would actually receive 2/3 of my salary while I was on maternity leave (unlike when Katie was born and I took unpaid leave).  Ever since I started here, I've had my own office with a door that closes, and last fall I moved into an office with a window.  I am doing a good job here.  They like me. 

I was talking to Geoff a few minutes ago - he is up at the church today, composing music, Katie-less on a week day for the first time in awhile.  Per university rules, he needs to finish his doctorate either by this fall or, at the latest, by fall of 2007.  In order to give Geoff more time to do the work he needs to do, his dad generously offered to pay for some daycare/babysitting for Katie a few days a week.  Today is Katie's first day with the sitter - a woman named Jennifer who goes to Geoff's church.  She is about our age, with two young sons of her own (the older one about 4, the younger one about 13 months), and Geoff reported that when he took Katie to Jennifer's house today, Katie rang the bell several times, and walked right in when Jennifer opened the door.  The older boy asked if he could help Katie take her shoes and socks off, then handed her a sword and said, "Let's fight." I think Katie will be better off for spending 5 or 6 hours there a couple of days a week.   

But I was talking to Geoff, and I asked him if he was having fun.  "Yes," he said.  "Are you?"

"No," I told him.  "You know I almost never have fun at this job." 

We have a long-term plan to leave Chicago - not this year, and probably not the next.  But maybe the year after that.  We'd like to move to Indianapolis, where we can drive to visit my family and some of our oldest friends more easily - we can drive over for dinner, or for a Saturday afternoon, instead of having each visit be a weekend trip.  Since Geoff only gets three Sundays off a year, weekends are precious - usually if I go somewhere on the weekend, Katie and I go without him. 

But Indianapolis is closer to people we'd like to be closer to, and it's also a less expensive place to live.  Sometimes we look on realtor.com at houses for sale in Indianapolis, and then we report to each other.  For less than the price of our (two bedroom one bath) condo, one of us will tell the other, we could buy this five bedroom, 2.5 bath house with a basement, yard, front porch, back deck.  We sigh longingly. 

Geoff has only been the music director at his church for a little over a year now, and we only bought our condo last May, so we aren't going to move yet, but still, Geoff has been keeping an eye on the church musician job listings.  A little while ago he found a posting for full-time music director at a church in Indianapolis with a salary range starting just barely below my current salary.  He is probably barely qualified for it right now, but in a few years, with a little more experience, it's something he would have a good shot at getting.  And this is the thing - I have always thought that if we moved to Indy, that I would probably use my contacts here to try to find a similar job in the area, but if Geoff got a job like that, then I wouldn't have to.  If Geoff got a job like that, I could stay home with Katie and try to start a photography business, or do free lance writing, OR WHATEVER.  I could do whatever I wanted.

You would think this idea would make me happy, and it did.  But it also made me pretty scared.  That would be it, I think.  That would be my chance.  No more excuses.  I had to admit to myself that there is safety in this job that doesn't make me happy, where I don't have fun. 

Today it is sunny out, and it is already afternoon.  It is quiet here today, and I will spend the afternoon tidying up loose ends on my To Do list, listening to music and drinking water and diet Coke.  At the end of the day today Geoff will pick me up in our falling-apart car, and Katie will grin hugely and say, "Ma! Ma!" when I get in the car, and Molly will wag her whole body at me.  We will drive home together, and we will go inside.  We will have dinner, and I will give Katie her bath, and she will get me soaking wet with all of her splashing.  Maybe I will get out the camera and take pictures of her, trying to capture all of her utter joy on "film" and in my own memory.  Later, we'll get Katie in her pajamas, watch a little bit of tv, then take her to her bedroom to read books (Moo Baa La La La is a current favorite).  We'll turn out the light, sing "Edelweiss," hug her and kiss her good night, and put her in her crib.  As we're leaving the room, she'll say "Night night, Mama.  Night night, Dada."  We'll leave the room, and Geoff will go to his meeting at the church, and I will relax. I will go to bed relatively early, and Geoff will tuck me in.  I'll ask him to set up the coffeemaker so that I will have coffee in the morning when I wake up, and tomorrow I will wake up when I hear my daughter talking and singing to herself in her room.  And I will get to spend all day at home with them, interspersing hugs and songs and dancing with working on claims, watching the sunlight beam in through the windows, watching the dust motes spiral in the air, feeling the warmth that is home. 

Sometimes it feels so greedy to want more. 

Going to Be (Happy Now)

[Reworked from email I sent last week]

I was having a hard week last week, and for a little while before that, too. There was this near-suffocating sadness pressing down on my chest, on me, that I couldn't seem to shake.  I think it was related to money and non-money, to my job, to winter-time sunless days, to the fact that I haven't been writing or exercising but that I wish I were. 

Last Tuesday night, just before wishing me a good night, Geoff pressed his forehead to mine so that he could, as he said, take my sadness from me.  And you know, I don't know how the reality of our lives are divided: how much is made up of what you believe in, and how much is what you wish for, and how much is actually grounded in the physical world.  But I know that as Geoff pressed his head to mine, he said, "Oh, sweetie, you are so sad!" And he teared up. "You are so disconnected from your core!"  He said.  I felt a little better - who knows how much of that was because he took my sadness from me and how much was because he wished that he could.  (And does it even matter?)  I asked him about it the next day, and he said that he had felt a strong wave of sadness wash over him at that moment. 

Sometimes just being understood is so powerful. 

The next day I was telling Geoff that I was still sad, that I wanted to just let myself be happy, but that for some reason I couldn't seem to do it.  I couldn't seem to relax from the anxiety and worry.  He told me that I should just tell myself that I was going to be happy, and I thought about it, and then I opened up a new document in Word, typed "I AM GOING TO BE HAPPY NOW" in 12 point font, printed it out, cut it out, put a piece of tape over it, and taped it to the front of my monitor. And every time I looked at it, I took a deep breath and smiled a little bit, and I felt better, time after time after time. 

By the end of the day I was no longer suffocating.  I stepped out of work at the end of the day, walking to the train amid snow that fell like hail - round weird pellets that bounced off of my hair and my coat - and I felt it: HAPPY.

Sometimes it is all so hard, isn't it?  When I first started working a 9-5 job, after college, I could not get over the sheer vast number of hours that were now gone from me.  That was how I felt about them - they were part of work, not part of my life.  What a waste!  Over the succeeding years, when I have worked 9-5, I have gradually incorporated my own life into those work hours, so that it no longer feels completely separate.  I have friends at work, and I email other friends while at work, and sometimes I shop around online, and I am still me. And on Wednesday I picked up the phone and started to say "Jessamyn North" when I heard the sound of giggling.  It was Katie on the other end. "Hi," I said.  "Hi, mom-mom," she said, and then she gave the phone to Geoff.  "She wanted to call you," he said.  "She picked up the phone and said, 'hi, mom!" and when I asked her if she wanted to call you, she said, "otay!" 

There are so many days when work still drives me crazy, when work still feels like such a waste of my life, but there are other days when it all seems like part of me, when I don't mind so much.

A couple of days before Christmas, while we were in Halifax, I got an email from a literary agent asking me to let her know if I was interested in writing a book.  It turned out that she had found me through the Dot Moms site and recently started up her own business, so she was looking for authors.  It turns out that she only accepts non-fiction, and not (usually) memoir - so I'm not sure if she and I will have any future relationship or not, but in any case I figured I'd send her a writing sample.  I picked out 4 or 5 short pieces and emailed them to her a few weeks ago.  The response I got, while not bad, didn't make me happy.  Several days after I had emailed her, she wrote back and said something like, "I enjoyed reading this and you are a very good writer."  Something like that, and that was all.  "You are a very good writer." Really, is that the best she could do?  I think if it is, then she is not the agent for me.  This doesn't mean that if I write something that fits within the parameters of what she is interested in trying to sell that I wouldn't necessarily send it her way, but if I am looking for someone who will recognize and appreciate my unique wonderful voice (see, I'm trying to just take my talent as a given, and work from there), then I don't think she's the one who's going to do that for me.

I just finished reading Dance of the Dissident Daughter, by Sue Monk Kidd, and I'm feeling more inspired.  It has stuck with me, especially this part when Sue  Monk Kidd says that our souls are made to do two things: to love, and to create.  I can get behind that.  So I have my Sue Monk Kidd book, and I have my I AM GOING TO BE HAPPY NOW sign, and I started re-reading a book we read in my college creative writing class, If You Want to Write, and all of these things are colluding, colliding, meshing with each other. I got an email from my dad that was like that, too - another push in the right direction, another vote of confidence in me, another inspiration. 

Fine

On Sunday afternoon I meet two of my friends for lunch.  They met each other at 11 for manicures and pedicures, but I wasn't able to go because Geoff has to be at church services every  Sunday morning, and I have to either attend, too, or drop him off and pick him up, and in any case I have to take care of Katie then.  On Sunday we have attended the second service, and even though Geoff had promised me that he "wouldn't stay and chat" after this particular service, so that I could get to lunch on time, he still stays and chats, and by the time we leave I am irritable. 

I drop Geoff and Katie off at home, feeling slightly guilty that I am going to miss spending time with Katie this afternoon, feeling annoyed that it is already 12:26, 4 minutes before my lunch date, and realizing suddenly that my cell phone is completely dead, so I can't call to let anyone know. I feel helpless and powerless. 

When I meet up with them, twenty minutes late, they are a little giggly,  relaxed,  happy.  They are suntanned.  Erin's toes are orange, and Candace's are pink, and as I watch them I feel like I've missed out on more than just the nail treatments.  I am wearing my black Payless sandals, and they are both wearing flip flop type sandals.  I remember, too late, that I had brought a pair of flip flops to change into after church, but that I've left them in the car.  "How are you?" they say.  "You look tired.  Are you tired?  You look tired." 

"I'm tired," I say.  "I'm ok."

We go to lunch at Potbelly's, a sandwich place, because they want to get something cheap.  I get a diet IBC root beer out of the refrigerated case.  They both get bottles of water.  I feel like I've chosen the wrong thing, but that it is too late, and too silly, to change it now.  An old Steve Miller Band hit is playing in the restaurant, and they both dance along to the music.  I feel no urge to dance along.  I think that maybe I should try to fake it, but I don't.  I try to smile appreciatively at their dancing.  I don't believe the truth of my own smile. 

"Do you want to get a table outside?" Candace asks, and disappears to the sidewalk seating area. 

We sit down at a table outside and unwrap our sandwiches, and Erin looks at me.  "So, how are you?" she asks brightly.  "How's Katie?  How's Geoff?" 

I look at her, start to speak, and hesitate.

"Uh oh," she says.

I smile.  "Katie's great," I say.  "Geoff is fine.  I'm fine."  I take a deep breath and realize that I am choking up.  I'm glad I'm wearing sunglasses.  "Everything's fine," I say.  I laugh a little. I realize that I am trying to hide the fact that I'm crying, that I don't want to turn this afternoon into a pity party for one.  I realize that I'm not hiding anything from them.

They look sympathetic.  "I don't like to hear that," Candace says.  "'Everything's fine' is not good!" 

I tell them what I know.  I tell them that I really am fine, but that I am tired, just like I look.  I tell them that it is hard, that I am having a hard time juggling everything. I tell them that our new home that we moved into a few weeks ago is a mess, and that's it's bringing me down.  I tell them that I am still overweight and struggling with that.  I tell them that I need time for myself, but that I don't know when to get it or how to spend it.  I tell them that when I get home from work, I want to spend that time with Katie, and that by the time she is in bed it is 8 or 8:30 at night, and I am tired.  I love my daughter, and I want to spend all of my free time with her, and yet I want free time for myself. 

They say that I should go ahead and go out, even if it means I need to sacrifice an evening with Katie, that it's more important for all of us that I stay happy than that I spend one particular evening with Katie.  "You should come out to dinner or a movie or drinks with us," Erin says.  "You need to do something for you."

"I would do that," I say.  "I would totally do that."

Erin nods, but it has taken at least a month and a half for us to plan to get together today, a day on which we end up spending an hour and ten minutes together.

I change the subject and ask how they are doing, and they tell me what they know, and as they talk, I think: I love them both, but today I am not one of them. 

After we finish our sandwiches, we go and get Italian ice.  Well, Candace and I do - Erin pops a stick of gum into her mouth so that she won't be tempted to eat anything else.  Candace and I get small peach Italian ices, and the three of us walk down the sidewalk together toward the grocery store, where Erin needs to buy a few side dishes to take to a cookout that night.  We walk, and we talk.

As we stand in front of the deli case, debating what Erin should take to the cookout, I say that the topic which takes up more of mine and Geoff's conversation than any other these days is the topic of how wonderful our daughter is.  Erin shakes her head and says, "Oh, no," but I actually mean it in a good way.  I have thought, on more than one occasion, how much harder it would be to be a parent if the other parent is only half as into it as you are.  The two of us are constantly proclaiming to each other, "Look how cute she is!"  "How did she get to be so smart?"  "She is amazing." 

"We talk about other things, too," I tell them.  "But so much of the time that we spend together is spent with her, too." 

I wonder if this is what people mean when they tell you that you don't understand what it is like to be a parent until you have a child.  I always thought that they meant that you would not understand how much you would love your child, and I thought that while I might not know the exact intensity, I was pretty sure I could at least imagine it.  But maybe they mean that you will not realize how lonely it will make you.  Maybe they mean that you will not realize how hard it will be to put your own needs second or third, 98% of the time, for the next several years or longer.  Whatever they mean, lately I have been feeling it: I didn't know this is how it would be.  This is hard.

We walk back from the grocery store, and we get to my car first.  They each hug me and leave me at what I can't help but notice is my dirty, aging car (with broken turn signals and trash in the back seat), and as I walk around to the driver's side and get in, I suddenly start to cry.

They walk down the block away from me.  I get in the car, start the engine, and drive.  I pass them a few seconds later, and I honk hello.  They raise their arms and wave.  They smile. 

I suck in a deep breath and wave back, and as I drive past them, now that I'm in the car alone, I let myself cry. 

*******

After I get home, I pick Katie up.  I lean in toward my beautiful lovely toddler daughter.  "Can I have a kiss?" I ask her.  Sometimes now when I ask her for a kiss she will run across the room to me going "mmmm" and then pressing her head against my face.  But this time when I ask her she looks at me, lifts up her hand, and bats at my face.  She shakes her head.

"Why?" I ask her.  I read the other day that at this age, children should not be punished for hitting.  Instead, parents should say, "No hitting," and remove themselves from the child's presence.  "No hitting," I say, and I put her down.  She reaches for my can of diet Coke, then reaches for the remote control, then turns back to the tv, which is playing Baby Bach.  I sit in the chair by myself and watch her and feel sorry for myself.

*******

Geoff and I talk. I tell him I don't know how I feel about anything, hardly.  He asks what I am upset about, and I spend five minutes talking about all the things that have upset me today, from being overweight to being hot to being tired to being lonely.  How I feel about friends, how I feel about myself, how I feel about us, how I feel about our new home, how I feel about my job, how I feel about my age.  I am sad, I am scared, I am worried, I am confused.

He says nothing except that "I'm sorry you feel that way," and so after another minute of silence I say, "Maybe we shouldn't even be together."  He gets angry then, and asks me why I would say such a thing, and I say that it's because I am thinking such a thing, and that the reason I am thinking such a thing is because he is not talking to me, and because I am lonely, and I need someone to talk to me.  So we sit, and I cry, and we talk, and he cries, and he hugs me, and I talk more, and he tries to listen and ask questions instead of telling me how to fix things.  "I love you so much," he says, and I know it's true. 

"I love you, too," I say, and that is true, too. 

(I wrote what's above earlier in the week.  I was feeling tired and depressed.  I'm feeling much better today - sort of surprisingly better, since not too much has changed, other than that I've gotten more sleep and had some more free time and unpacked some more boxes - but I guess those things are enough to make a major difference in how I'm feeling.  Anyway, lately I've been wondering if I've been giving the wrong idea about how it is for me to be where I am right now.  It's good, overall, but it rarely seems easy.  Maybe I should write the hard stuff sometimes, too.)

Summer of 2005

First Sprinkler Fun (3)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Andrea Scher has issued a challenge to her readers (of which I am one).  Write an essay now about the future: "What I did during the summer of 2005 that made me a better, smarter, happier person." Then mail the essay to Andrea along with a self addressed stamped envelope, and in September, she'll mail it back to you.  "Be sure to list the thing you think you cannot have," she says. 

I'm writing my list and sending it to Andrea.  (You do it, too.)  I first thought about writing my list for this summer right here, on this site, but when I started mentally crossing things off of my list, I knew that that would not work.  "No, that's too silly," or "that's too huge" or "that's too private" or (the real revelation) "I want that too much."  So instead, I'm going to write my list on real tangible paper, and then I'm going to send it to Andrea without keeping a copy for myself.  And then I'm going to spend the Summer of 2005 seeing what I can do to make myself better, smarter, and happier.  And in the fall, when she sends my list back to me, I'll talk about it here, and we can see what kind of summer we've had. 

Here's to a good one!

Is it okay if I cry now?

So, this is one of those times when I know I should be really excited and happy, but what I actually am is nervous and sick-feeling.  We close on our new home today.  It's not true that we are buying our first house, since it's not a house, it's a condo, and it's also not true that we are going to be moving to our first home, since the apartments that we've lived in have definitely qualified as homes, but it is true that this place will be the first home that we own.  Which I should be excited about. 

I'm not really excited, but I feel like I should be, so not only do I feel kind of sick for no intellectual reason (at this point, all of the loan issues have been resolved, at least as far as we know, and this morning, less than 8 hours before the closing, our attorney actually deigned to let us know how much we needed to get a certified check for to bring to the closing, so once Geoff gets the check, there's nothing left to be resolved, as far as we know - but I guess maybe that's part of my problem, because "as far as we know" doesn't mean very much, if the last few months have been any indication), but I also feel an additional layer of guilt/sadness/anxiety about the fact that I am not excited.  Good lord.

It has been pretty awful, this particular loan approval process.  The search for a home was kind of stressful, but it was at least somewhat within our control.  The loan issues that have come up have always been about us, but have almost never been within our control.  Our credit is either good enough or it's not.  Our income is either enough, or too much, or just right.  Our gift of funds from Geoff's sister Stephanie is either in our accounts, or isn't but will be, or isn't and won't.

The loan company either trusts us to be able to make our monthly mortgage payments, or it doesn't. The people making these decisions don't know us, and yet their decision about whether or not to trust us to be able to handle the responsibility of a mortgage feels so personal.  Are we good enough?  Or aren't we?

I have surprised myself by how emotional I've gotten over what's been going on the past few months.  I've tried to downplay the effect this should have on my emotions.  What is wrong with me? I'll think.  In the worst case scenario, if this all falls through, we are no worse off than we were before we started looking (except for recently, when we had already started packing and we were going to have to unpack).  This is a happy thing.  Why is this so hard?

I know THEY say that moving is one of the most stressful life experiences that people go through, up there with divorce and weddings and job changes and deaths in the family and having babies.  But still, I'm aware that a lot of people (including us, even now, if we hadn't gotten help from Geoff's sister) can't afford to buy homes at all.  I should be grateful, not tearful. 

As I'm writing this, I actually feel like I might start crying, and I suddenly think of my wedding day and mine and Geoff's first dance, and the way that, just a short hour or so after the wedding ceremony, I felt so overwhelmed that I looked at him and asked if he would mind it very much if I cried.  "Is it okay if I cry now?"  I was worried that if I cried, he might take it the wrong way.  He might think I was sad or angry.  He might think that I wasn't excited and happy. 

Instead, he looked at me and smiled, his heart in his eyes, and said, "Of course," and I laid my head on his shoulder and I cried, as much as I wanted to, and I knew that it was all going to be all right.

Geoff's getting our certified check this morning.  I'm leaving work at noon.  Our final walk through is today at 2.  Our closing is at 4.  And after that, if it's all gone well, I think that I will cry.  Is that ok?