Internet Grapes

joy in my heart

Originally posted elsewhere back in April of this year, but I find myself re-reading this and trying to take it to heart especially now, in the holiday season.

Dear me,

Not very often, but sometimes, as you are busy remembering what's gone wrong before or predicting what will go wrong later, it is all you can do to keep going, but you must. Do not stop. Continue: to put one foot in front of the other, to give your loved ones hugs, to help your children get dressed in the morning, to do the grocery shopping and the laundry, to think about what you want to do with your life (to believe that you have a choice about that), to pick up your camera and leave the house, to clean the toilet and the litter box, to stay in contact with your friends, to go to choir rehearsal and sing your heart out.  Keep going through the motions, and fake it until you make it, whether that only takes the next five minutes, or the next hour, or the next day, or the next week. There will come a point when real pleasure and ease return. There will come a day when you feel real joy.

Let this stand as a reminder to yourself. The real pleasure and ease and joy: they will always return. 

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A week or so ago, I had an argument with Geoff (or rather, the argument had us). I was talking to him, thinking that he was listening even though he was sitting in front of his computer, because he was making occasional reassuring type listening noises ("uh huh" and "yeah" and "oh"). There came a point when I discovered that he wasn't listening at all, had possibly not heard a word I'd said, and I felt so stupid for talking to myself, for not being able to tell whether he was actually listening or not. I stopped mid-sentence and walked out of the room and upstairs to bed, but then I wasn't sleepy, and so what followed was one of those fights that's about nothing and everything at the same time. Unlike most of those types of arguments we've had, though, this one ended with both of us calm and comforting each other. Geoff admitted he was worried about the music at church for Easter Sunday, and had been trying to finish with a piece he was working on when I was talking to him. I sympathized and comforted and told him he's a brilliantly talented musician (because he is).  It was better, but still exhausting. Sometimes it still feels like we have a lot to worry about.

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These days, a specter of myself and (of what I see as) my failed career haunts me, telling me that I've brought shame upon myself and my family (all that debt; all that effort; all of this selfishness, wanting to leave that behind). Most of the time, I see right through her. I wave her away, I tell her she has no power over me, I tell her that a life pursuing what I love doing is better and more important than following through on something I don't love just because I started it. (And I remind her that I tried so hard, so unsuccessfully, for so long, to get a legal job despite the fact that I didn't love it.) I tell her she's a jerk and a liar, and sometimes I think that she is really, truly gone. But she is preternaturally patient, and so far she always returns. She waits as long as she needs to wait, until my guard is down, until I am vulnerable, until she can hurt me again. I am determined to outlast her. (I am taking an online class with Brene Brown & Jen Lemen called ordinary courage, on love, shame resilience, and worthiness. I hope for further healing.) 

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Our trip to London, which I will write about in more detail soon, was wonderful. I love London, and I loved being there. The trees were blooming, the weather was pretty much perfect, and the company (my mom and Katie) was excellent. There was this thing, though, that at first I had some trouble identifying. For awhile, in London, I felt one step removed from myself, and wondered whether I might be losing touch with my emotions - whether I had lost the ability to just feel, without worry, without doubt, without a sense of level-headed temperance. No matter how much beauty surrounded us or how intrigued I was by anything, a part of me stayed detached. So I did have a marvelous time. I did love the experience. But because of the circumstances (most notably, my beautiful and sweet but devilish seven year old companion), I was mostly unable to truly relax or to be completely wide open to what I was experiencing. This is ok, I think, but I am glad I have recognized it and named it. It is not a flaw in me.

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A week and a half ago our cat Lucy (the mother of the eight kittens who were born at the end of April 2010) was hit by a car in the middle of a street a few blocks away from our house. She was killed. Geoff and Katie and I have shed many tears over her. We buried her body in the back yard, between the fence and the back alley, and marked the spot with daffodils that we picked from our back yard. Lucy's life, and the birth of those eight kittens, was a joyful blessing to our family at a time when we desperately needed it. Her fur was the softest. Her eyes seemed the wisest. When we'd drive up to our house after having been gone for awhile, if Lucy was outside she'd be on the front porch waiting for us, and she'd stand up and pad over to greet us as we got out of the car. When I sat on the couch and watched tv before going to bed, she'd come over and lay on my legs, purring. I miss her. It's been almost two weeks, and Katie cries about her death almost every night, and apologizes when she cries. "You don't have to be sorry," I say, and most nights, I will stay there in Katie's bed next to her, petting her hair or rubbing her back or just letting one part of my body touch hers so that as she drifts off to sleep she will know that I'm there with her. Lucy is gone, but I'm not. I'm right here, sweetheart. I'm right here.

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A few nights ago, all of us were tired and grumpy, and Annabel kept saying "uh uh" in her whiniest voice, incessantly, over and over (as she does every day lately; a few days ago she said it so many times, and refused to even explain what she was saying it about, that I lost my temper and yelled at her, which made her cry so hard there was no way I could feel anything but regret and shame), and after Annabel was in bed, Katie was whining about everything, too. As Geoff and Katie and I stood in Katie's room, getting ready to tuck her in, I said something about the drawing Katie had done on her whiteboard, and she misinterpreted what I'd said as a criticism, which in turn hurt my feelings. As we stood there, frustrated and full of hurt feelings and disconnect, Geoff reached out to pull us both closer, but instead of feeling comforted, I suddenly had a flash of insight into the future between Katie and me. I was suddenly sure that when she is older, we will not get along, but instead the air will be charged between us, full of miscommunication and missed chances to reach out to each other. (I thought of Angela and her mother on My So Called Life, actually.) I cried about it a little bit then, and I cried about it later, about how much I will miss Katie when we aren't able to get along with each other anymore. Geoff says it won't be like that, but he doesn't know. Of course, I don't, either. But the possibility of losing Katie's friendly, easy companionship during her adolescent years has never felt real to me before, and now it does. 

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Saturday morning, there was coffee and playing in the backyard. We rehearsed beautiful music for the next day's Easter service, and we visited with friends from out of town. Later, the ingredients for lemon curd (for lemon cake, for Easter dessert) simmered on the stovetop, and the smell of lemons wafted all through the house. The very first spring tulip opened that afternoon in our backyard. Annabel & Geoff were napping. Katie & a friend were upstairs laughing. There was sunshine everywhere, after so many days of rain. And this is what sprang into my head: Joy in my heart today.

Despite everything! Despite everything I can think of that is sad and heartbreaking, still. Joy crashes into me, overwhelming me, drowning me, and I'm so grateful and amazed. 

I posted about this joy on Facebook, and then went back to making the lemon cake, and I started having second thoughts about posting about joy right there out in the open, for those 500 plus friends (or "friends," in some cases) to see. Should I delete it? Should I have written it? Am I ridiculous to think that my joy matters to anyone else, or is even real? 

I knew the right response to these doubts, as clearly as if I heard a voice telling me: it would be a waste, a great sadness, a tragedy, a huge loss, to ignore this joy. These moments of overwhelming joy don't come along that often for any of us, or at least not for me. If I had one of these moments a week, I'd say I was living a pretty joyful life. How wrong it would be to let any one of those moments pass by without recognizing that it is here!

Katie and her friend had gone to her friend's backyard to play, and while they were gone, I started working on the cake batter. They burst back into the house when I was almost done, just mixing in the last ingredient, and Katie asked if she could play in Chyanne's house, because Chyanne had Just Dance, and they could play it. I said yes, she could, and then she asked if she could have dinner at Chyanne's house, and I said yes to that, too, as long as she was invited, as long as it was ok with Chyanne's mom.  Chyanne said it was, and so I said it was ok with me, and the two of them shrieked with their own joy, bursting into huge grins, running from the house. I followed them to the door and watched them leaping down the sidewalk happily. "Bye!" I called, feeling bemused, and Katie called back a goodbye. "I love you," I said. She kept running alongside her friend, didn't turn her head, didn't look at me. But I heard her call, loud enough for me to hear, "I love you, too," and I was both comforted and devastated by the easy casualness of her declaration of love, by the way she is growing up and forming her own friendships that have nothing to do with me. Amazingly, joy continued to run through me as I watched them running down the block. I cried a little bit more, and then I went back into the house. A huge shaft of sunlight streamed through the dining room window and lit up the dust motes and pet hairs. Only the sunlight mattered to me.

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Dear you,

You don't remember exactly when it was, the last time you felt this kind of joy. You don't know when it will come again; do we ever? When it comes - when it is here - you owe to it yourself to grab hold of it, to hold it close to you, to let it overwhelm every other emotion that's going on inside you. (I am holding this joy. I am holding it tight.)

When joy comes, let it take your breath away. Let it drive its lightning bolt through the core of your heart (at least as deep as the moments of pain and despair have traveled). Let it make a mark on you that will last for hours, for days, or for weeks. If you are lucky, you will still be reeling in its wake, rocked slightly off balance, the next time that it finds you. If you are lucky, the joy of this moment will be your lifejacket in future times of grief, when the heaviness of loss threatens to drag you so far down that you will be lost forever.

If you are lucky, your joy will shock you, and make you cry real tears, and you will stand there open-mouthed for a second, and then you will laugh. 

You may be tempted to feel embarrassed about feeling your joy so deeply, especially on a day that looks so ordinary on the outside, but ignore that; this is not silly. This is not shameful. This is what life is all about. (Isn't it?  And if not this, then what?)

this is the one for my Belly bee baby

She talks up a storm, and you can't grin at her without getting a smile back.

She's very bossy ("stand up! or I won't sing to you!"), is constantly singing or talking, and will repeat the same things over and over. (Every time she puts on her shoes, she'll say, "Is this the wrong feet?" I'm not sure what the answer is supposed to be, because when I say no, it's the right feet, she'll often switch them, but she also usually switches them if I say yes, it's the wrong feet.)

She lets us (and we do) call her Belly and Bel all the time, but if someone refers to her that way, she'll protest, "No, my name is Annabel."

She has a terrific, always-at-the-ready sense of humor, but is intensely serious if she's focused on something.

She loves going to school, which until recently she called "sook" and then "soolk," because it took her until a few months ago to conquer any dipthongs involving s's (i.e., she used a "foon" to eat her cereal, worried about whether food would be "ficy," and wanted me to push her on the "fing").

When I first started writing this (back in the summer, months ago now), I wrote that I didn't know how we would get her weaned from her beloved binky. I wrote:

Last night she had one in her mouth while she was taking a bath, and later it disappeared. I couldn't find it right away, so I pulled a second one off of our bedroom dresser and gave it to her. Then we brushed her teeth, and suddenly she was binky-less again, so I told her - frustrated - that was it, that was all the binkies, she had had two of them and now there were none, so she was just going to have to sleep without a binky. She sighed sadly, whined that no, she wanted a binky, and when I said that it was too bad, but she was going to have to do without, she started to sob in earnest. I asked her why she was so upset, and she said, "I'm crying because I'm sad because I want to sleep with my binky!"

I have talked to lots of people about how they got rid of the pacifier, and they include: 1) simply saying that they are now too old for a pacifier, and that is that; 2) purposely breaking the pacifier (usually by cutting the end off so it can't really be sucked, at least not enjoyably, I guess) and then explaining that it was broken - this seems to often culminate in throwing the broken binky in the trash; 3) creating an elaborate scenario about sending the old pacifiers to needy babies in other parts of the world and/or about having them taken by some sort of Binky Fairy who leaves a present in exchange. No one has so far admitted that they or their child has had a difficult time giving it up, so maybe it won't be as hard as I think it will. But Annabel is committed to what she wants, has a memory like an elephant, and is very matter-of-fact about what she knows. For instance, I am 100% confident that if her binky is broken, she will simply instruct us to go to the store to buy a replacement, and that will most definitely not be the end of that.

But now I think that one of these days she will just decide to give it up when she is good and ready. Shortly after writing the above, I told her that we had a new rule: the binky was only allowed in the car and in the crib - nowhere else. I expected her to protest, if not initially, then later, but nope. Surprisingly, she has never once challenged that rule, not until last week, when she suddenly announced, "I'm a mom now, so I don't need my binky in the car. Just for sleeping." (She's a mom to her doll Sally, which is actually Katie's doll, and on a regular basis Katie will say, "Ok, Annabel, tomorrow I am going to play with Sally, ok?" And Annabel will say ok, but then when tomorrow comes, she refuses to hand it over, and since Katie gives in, she gets it for another day.) She hasn't asked for a binky for anything but sleeping since then.

Katie is so often my reflection, for good and for ill. She looks a lot like me. She goes through somewhat wild and obvious roller coasters of emotions, all worn on her sleeve - so much like me. She is also eager to please, and would try almost anything if she thought it would make you laugh or would make you like her. She wants everyone in the world to like her, and she is deeply hurt if she knows that someone doesn't. Her speech is rarely matter-of-fact, but is more likely full of hyperbole - again, for good or for bad.  She'll swing from "you never want to play that with me" to "you're the best mommy in the world" within seconds. Katie is so much like me that usually, even when I don't like how she's acting (especially when I don't like how she's acting?), I understand it. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm more patient with her, though; often I think I'm less patient with those flaws of her that I'm already so tired of and frustrated with in myself.

If Katie is my treasured not-exactly-doppelganger, Annabel is my cherished mystery, so often surprising and delighting me.  She is different. She is straightforward, and she will not be manipulated into doing something just because we'd like her to; she'll do it if she wants to, thank you, and not otherwise. I am not too worried about Annabel succumbing to peer pressure when she is older (Katie, on the other hand, I can easily imagine going along with something that she doesn't really want to do if she thinks it might make people like her). Annabel is even keel, especially for a 3 year old: when she's at her most upset, she'll scream and fuss and protest loudly, but two minutes later, she'll be calm again. Well, that didn't work, I imagine her thinking. Might as well move on to the next thing.

She will hardly ever be persuaded to agree with you, though, if she started out disagreeing, or if you believe something that directly oppposes what she wants to do. My mom was here for Thanksgiving, and at one point she went into the bathroom and started to shut the door. "I don't want you to shut the door," Annabel said. "I want to see you when you're in there." My mom told her that she'd rather have privacy and be alone in the bathroom, but Annabel insisted on coming in, and my mom relented. "Ok, but at least come in and shut the door," she told Annabel. Annabel went in the (tiny) bathroom and shut the door behind her, and I heard my mom say, "I like to have privacy when I'm in the bathroom." I could picture Annabel nodding in a placating way as she said, "Yeah, sometimes you do." (I laughed out loud when I heard that.)

She can be very sweet when she feels like it, and she has a very definite sense of her own strength and value. The other day she told me that when I am sad and she talks to me that it makes me feel better, and today when I was whining & actually crying in frustration over a stupid computer issue I was unable to solve, she came over to me, said "I love you," and gave me a hug.

Up until she was 10 months old, she was a pretty terrible sleeper, waking up more than 4 or 5 times a night until well after she was 8 months old, and still waking up at least once every night (and often 2 or 3) until April 2009, at which point I was diagnosed with pneumonia and was prescribed antibiotics that were not breastfeeding friendly. After 2 or 3 nights of Geoff being the one who went to her in the night, she apparently decided that it was simply not worth waking up if she was only going to be offered a bottle, and she started sleeping through the night. She has never stopped, and in fact her sleeping habits are still somewhat miraculous to us. Unless she's sick, she sleeps all night, every night, except for an occasional wake up from a nightmare, between 9 and 10 pm. If she stays up late or misses a nap? She makes up for it by sleeping in.  (This is the opposite of Katie, who routinely gets up before 6 if she's been up past 9 or so the night before.)

Have I written this before? About how before Annabel was born, there was a part of me that was afraid that I would not be able to love her as much as I loved Katie, but that instead, from the day she was born, I loved her just as much, just like that (which in a way seemed unfair, since Katie had already had more than 4 years to work her way into my heart; but I know that love doesn't always - ever? - work in a logical, incremental, rational way), just the way people had said it would be: I loved her as much as Katie (inasmuch as my love for either of them can really be measured), but in a different way.

I have not written nearly as much about Annabel as I have about Katie, and I have felt guilty about that (how motherly of me), as if by not documenting her amazingness, her quirks, her whimsy, her incredible vocabulary & her extreme gregariousness, that I am appreciating her less.  And honestly, in some ways, I think that might even be true: I look back now and read old posts about Katie and am reminded of things about earlier phases of her life that I would have forgotten about if I hadn't written it out. I am sorry that I haven't written more about the specifics of life with baby Annabel, but if Annabel ever reads this, I hope she knows that my not writing about her had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me (and a lot to do with how difficult the past few years have been, which have made it hard for me to write the way I'd like to have written).

If you read this someday, Annabel, I want you to know that I love you now, have loved you since before you were born, and will love you always and forever. I love the way you often greet me in the morning with an excited, "The bedbugs didn't bite me!" and I love how when I knock on your bedroom door, you call out, "Are you home?" I love the way you run so fast & so hard, so often, on your own or alongside your sister or cousins on their scooters or bikes. I love how determined you are and how difficult it is to dissuade you from doing something you've decided you want to do (even though your determination sometimes makes some days more difficult). I love the weight of your little body on mine when I rock you in your bedroom rocker at bedtime, and already I miss that tired, relaxed weight, since most of the time these days you are still wide awake enough at bedtime that instead you sit up away from me. I love how much you love school, how much you love drawing and cutting and pasting and folding, and how you can count to 16 in Spanish (and how today when we watched The Muppets you wouldn't stop repeating "Hola!" after one of the muppets said it). I love that your artwork is, first and foremost, for you: so often you bring home little personal art projects that consist of a piece of paper on which you've drawn, colored, or painted, that have then been folded a few times, glued together, folded more, then taped together on the outside. You won't let me open them up; you insist that the taped-up, folded-up version of the paper is exactly how it's supposed to be seen. I love how you go crazy for particular foods - the other day you ate 6 or 7 clementines in a row; some days you will eat 4 bananas one after the other, and you will never turn down a mashed, salted avocado with a few tortilla chips.

Oh, Annabel, I just love you, almost everything about you, so much. It is my hope and my belief that, regardless of what I write now or have previously written here, that you will already know how I feel about you simply from the history of our relationship with each other, but just in case there is any doubt: you are my sunshine, my entertainer, my stubborn & beloved little Belly girl, who impresses and delights me every single day.

Today you are 3 and a half years old exactly, and already I am so proud of the person you are. I feel joyous and blessed that I get to be around to continue to help you grow and mature as best I can, and to see how you change and develop. I am so very, very thankful that you're my daughter.

a few final words for now (and Katie is 7!)

Ok, I'll be honest.  I'm no longer really sure whether taking this blog private is what I really want to do.  I think that the judgmental comment from the other day carried a lot more weight, and hurt my feelings a lot more, because it was one of very few recent comments, so I thought (foolishly, I think now) that that person represented a whole lot of people, and maybe even the vast majority of people reading.  However, you very kind people (who like me! you really like me!) who have commented on the last entry are making it seem as if that person was more of an anomaly than a typical reader.  For that I am extremely grateful - and because of that, I've also been questioning my decision.

I do think I am still going to blog privately, at least for now.  If I am going to have even a very small photography business, I don't want to be publishing my very vulnerable types of entries alongside the website for that business (and even if it's not literally alongside it, anybody googling "Jessamyn North" or even just "Jessamyn" wouldn't have to look too long before coming up with both this site and the photography site.  I don't want to make potential photography clients feel like they have to console me about anything bad happening in my life that I've written about online - or feel awkward because they know things about me that they don't feel comfortable bringing up.  Or, let's face it, it's also possible I'd be the one feeling awkward if a client brought up something personal about me, that they'd gleaned from the blog, right in the middle of a photo session.  So I think going private is the right thing to do, at least for now.

I wanted to say a couple more things here, though.  First of all, THANK YOU to all of you who have commented or emailed.  You have helped me at a time when I feel like I can use all the help I can get.  Thank you so much. I have added all of your names to a list, and I expect to be sending out a link and a password to you sometime this week.  (Except!  Erin M. and (bowlegged) Kelly - you didn't leave an email address in your comment!  Please email me or comment again and include your email, so I can email you with the info!) 

Secondly, if you haven't already commented or emailed but would be interested in continuing to read, please don't feel like you have to prove your worthiness as a reader to me - or in fact, to prove anything at all - in order to be included.  If you are willing to comment or email to say you'd like to keep reading, then I'm going to assume that you are not someone who's going to take advantage of that by coming in and then leaving nasty comments.  I'm really not very suspicious by nature, and I really don't want to be.  Everybody gets the benefit of the doubt until they show otherwise, ok? 

Finally, so many of you mentioned that you'd been reading since before or just after my daughter Katie was born.  Today is her 7th birthday. Can you believe it?  She's practically a grown up!  She reads very well these days, and is pretty good with the computer.  I got her a gmail account long ago that so far she doesn't really use, but this morning I thought of something cool.  If you have the time and the inclination, maybe you'd be willing to send a quick email to her to wish her a happy birthday?!  I know she'd love it.  I can't promise she'll respond to them all, especially if a lot of you actually send emails, but I'll at least get her to type up a thank you that I'll post here.  Her email address is kathleen dot north at gmail dot com.  Thank you in advance! 

The top photo of Katie was taken about three weeks ago, and is probably my favorite recent photo of her; definitely one of my all-time favorites of her ever.  The three photos below were all taken yesterday, on her last day of being six years old.

 

Also, if you're interested, for years now I've been putting together a Flickr set of photos of Katie - one photo for every month of her life.  I updated it the other day to go through February 2011, so there are 84 photos for her 84 months.  The set - which you can watch as a slideshow if you'd like (or not) - is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessamyn/sets/72157594205839099/.  Looking through the photos, I feel 1) amazed that it's gone by so fast; 2) impressed and proud of who she is; and 3) impressed and proud of myself, for taking the photos.  

like a ship without a rudder*

In the morning it is always rushrushrush, around the house, out the door, to the school (schools).  More often than not, I choose a little extra sleep instead of a shower.  I dress in clothes without caring how they really look on me, because almost no one will see what I'm wearing, anyway, or at least no one I need to impress.  The same jeans I've worn for the past three days, and this old ratty gray sweater?  Sure.  Why not? 

Katie wakes up on her own, usually, and could get dressed by herself, but usually she begs for assistance, at least in helping choose the particular clothes that she'll wear today.  Her school has a uniform policy - navy blue or khaki bottoms, white or navy or light blue tops - so only a very limited part of her wardrobe is eligible to get worn on any given school day.  This morning I had to go down to the basement to bring up clean laundry so that she'd have the khaki pants that she's supposed to wear today for choir.  She eats cinnamon waffles or yogurt for breakfast, plays with the kittens, watches a tv show.  I have learned that socks and shoes or boots have to be located and put on well before it's time to leave, because you never know where we'll find them. While Katie is eating and dressing, I start preparing lunches.  Today they both got thermos type containers full of leftover turkey and noodles.

Sometime after Katie and I have gotten up, but before Annabel is awake, Geoff leaves to teach his 8 a.m. class.  Sometimes he has already let out the dog; sometimes he hasn't, and I do that, too.  Annabel has to be woken up, every morning, almost without fail.  I wake her and change her diaper and dress her in warm enough clothes.  We come downstairs, and she drinks a little milk, eats a little waffle, lets me help her put on her socks, her boots, her jacket.  Before I am really ready, it is time to leave.  We grab lunches and Katie's backpack, and we zip up jackets and I get my purse.  I hold Annabel's hand on the snowy front steps that we still haven't salted or shoveled, and we walk out to the car.  Katie gets into her seat and buckles herself in; I put Annabel in her seat and buckle her in, too, and then we leave for Katie's school.  I always feel like we're running late, and usually we are.  After we drop Katie off at school, we drive the other way across town to Annabel's preschool.  We get there too late for the regular drop off, so I have to park and take her into her classroom.  She usually doesn't want me to go, despite the fact that five minutes before she had been clamoring to get to "my school" to see "my teacher."  She clings to me, a little bit, and I tell her I love her, and most days she goes off with her teacher fairly contently, but occasionally she cries.

On the days that she cries I usually go out and get in the car and cry a little bit, too.

And when I drive away from her preschool, suddenly I have nowhere I have to be right away or at all, for hours, and the day stretches out ahead of me, empty.  I float there, unimportant and unnecessary and uncertain.

Sometimes I just wander, looking for things to take photos of, and sometimes I do stop and pull out my camera.  Sometimes I meet Geoff for breakfast, because usually neither of us has managed to eat anything before leaving home.  Sometimes I go to the store, although I usually haven't managed to make or bring a list of what to buy, so the trip to the store, like everything else, feels disorganized and of limited use. 

Today I have done dishes and vacuumed the downstairs and the upstairs and practiced playing the piano (for at least an hour) and drunk coffee with peppermint mocha creamer.  I have browsed the internet and updated Facebook and picked up toys and folded laundry.  I have sent some emails.  Some days at this time I have done much more, and other days I have done less, and either way, it never feels like I have done enough.  It never feels like there is time to do enough.  Maybe if I could get by with less sleep. 

I sat down to write this, and what really keeps popping into my head is "WHO AM I" and even though I guess I know the answer, I still wonder how it will be when I look back on my life and my children's childhoods.  Will I be proud of who I was?  Will I wish I had done it all differently?  If I were to go back to lawyering, would I feel like I was making a bigger difference?  Would I feel more important?  Would I feel smarter and more stable?  If I do not ever practice law again, but instead cobble together some sort of career from photography and/or writing and/or being a mother, will I miss the routine of an office job?  Will I feel like I haven't done enough with my life?  Or will I always be grateful that whatever time I have - though it may never feel like enough - is time that I can spend in ways of my own choosing, pursuing goals and tasks that matter to me, if not deeply, then at least truly and personally?  I honestly do not know the answer.

And also, wow.  Will I ever write anything that's not about the workings of my own mind?  And if not, should I still write anyway?

*(Every time I hear or think the word "rudderless," I get the Lemonheads song of the same name going through my head.)

life with you

Geoff is gone, having lunch and a visit with a friend, and Katie is at school.  Annabel and I are here alone.  She is watching Sesame Street, mostly, and I am puttering around on the internet, reading an article about Roger Ebert in Esquire, checking Facebook, looking at photos on Flickr, and drinking a diet Coke.  I am wearing my sock-monkeys-in-Santa-hats pajama pants, and a gray tshirt, and I have a prayer shawl around my shoulders.  There is a prayer shawl ministry at church; several members of the church (all women, at this point anyway) knit or crochet shawls in soft yarns, and later they are blessed and given out to those who are ill or grieving or "experiencing life struggles."  Geoff presented it to me last night when I got home from my trip to Indiana over the long weekend, and when he did, I teared up.  I do feel that I am experiencing a life struggle, it's true. 

In our home it is peaceful and boring and cozy, and I get up from the computer and walk a few steps into the living room, where Annabel is standing, pushing up and down on her tiptoes in her Mary Janes (she mostly insists on wearing shoes or boots even when we're in the house; sometimes she also insists on wearing gloves or hats or sunglasses; she will not, however, allow me to leave any accessories in her hair for more than a minute or two).  She sucks her pacifier like Maggie on The Simpsons - regularly and determinedly.  I lean down over her, across her, and wrap my arms around her round toddler belly.  She leans her head with its soft blonde hair against me, looks up at me, and smiles faintly.  She is engrossed in her show, mostly, which she requests by name ("sess seet").  Still, she tolerates my embrace.  I pick her up gently.  "Woo, woo, woo."  I set her back down. I pick her up, "woo woo" at her, set her back down.  She chuckles just a little bit.  She is happy to have a little bit of attention, to know that I remember that I am not alone - that she is here with me - but she is mostly content to watch her show a few feet away from me and my silliness.

As I am lifting her up the third time, I think at her, "I could have lived a life without you in it," and I am overwhelmed with gratitude that that did not happen.  

I put her back down on the rug, gently.  She stands, shifting her weight a little bit, where I put her, looking unreasonably small for a human with her own individual personality and preferences. 

I come back to the computer and type this out, making myself teary in the process.  I look back at her when I am done, and I see that she has managed to pull on a pair of gloves.  I smile at her and tell her I love her.  She gives me a little smile, turns to the tv, and dances to the music that's on, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, making sure I'm watching.  I am.  Her smile gets wider, her pacifier pushed over to the corner of her mouth to make room. 

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.