Oy! Motherhood.

hibernation

yesterday i emailed one of my oldest friends. we haven’t been in touch lately. so the first email i sent just said, “hi.” in response she wrote, “hi to you too. you need a wikipedia page.”

i sent a very silly reply and then she appeared on instant messenger. “wow. you haven’t been online in years,” she started. of course i have been, but i've not been using IM. “you’re nutty,” she quipped. “that email you sent was nutty. like you have come out of hibernation.”

and then it occurred to me that she was right. since the girl was born i’ve not really been myself. my spark, my playful side has been in a long, deep sleep. there are piles of reasons—the book before the baby, the baby, the book after the baby, the school during the book after the baby, the husband’s last depressive episode after the baby, the fear of another depressive episode, financial struggles….each of them makes enough of a case for hibernation. combine them, and frankly, i think it’s a miracle i get up every morning to do it all again.

you know what else? and this is going to sound especially crazy because looking at it all from a birds-eye view it makes no sense, but i have been bored. bored out of my gourd. until recently there has been nothing fun and lighthearted happening. nothing remotely bacchanalian or indulgent. no decadent dinners or tra-la-las through the park. just boring, boring. boring. get up, feed the troops, dress the troops, yell cajole everyone out the door, drive to school, work, drive home, clean, cook, do some laundry, work, work, work, work, throw in eighty million trips to the grocery store, sleep a tiny bit, get up and do it again. i was dying a little at a time. the little was so tiny that i didn’t notice until it was a great, huge, heaping pile of dying staring me right in the face. like a big dog poo on the living room rug on a saturday morning.

and now that i’m thinking about it, that’s not even true, really.

i honestly didn’t notice until i started coming back to life. and that bit happened when i found myself feeling a bona fide connection to some friends. i know, that sounds nutty. but think about it. when do we, as parents, as married people, get the time to bond with other people the way we might have when we were younger and single. almost never, that’s when. either the husbands don’t like each other or the wives want to claw each other’s eyes out or the husband of one couple can’t stand to be in the same room with the wife of the other. it just rarely gels in a way that satisfies everyone. i mean, don’t get me wrong, i’ve had acquaintances who have filled the social need, but for the most part (with the exception of my friend S), it just falls flat. there’s nothing of substance there. everyone seems so preoccupied with impressing everyone else, which is not the way i have ever lived my life. (just ask my parents.) and frankly, it bores the crap out of me. 

so now we have these great friends, who were friends before, but suddenly became better friends, and we hang out every friday night (although this week’s been switched to saturday, which is today! yay!) have some dinner and drink some smoking loon or some bitch and laugh our heads off. B and i work on jigsaw puzzles (this part sounds really stupid, but it was spontaneous—one day we had a puzzle out on the kitchen table that i was working on with the boy and B started doing it, then i sat down with him and worked on it too. now it’s a *thing.* we’re on our second 1000 piece puzzle. puzzling whilst drunk is slow-going!). His wife and J make cracks about how crazy we are. he and i challenge each other and engage in name-calling and the kind of banter that is only comfortable with a good friend, because otherwise? it would just be scary. some other peeps came by one night and actually thought B and i were related. that should tell you everything you need to know. by nine o’clock all the kids have passed out on the couch or the floor.

 

i look forward to friday night. it’s not more of the same old same old, it’s real and safe. sometimes, during the week, N will stop here and have lunch with me because she works less than a mile away. the other day i was driving the girl around for a nap and called N who said B had asked her to bring him coffee but she couldn’t because her lunch break was just ending, so i dropped one off for him. sometimes B will bring the boy home from school or i’ll bring their boy home with us. they get angry on our behalf and vice versa. we take care of each other and it’s easy. at this point, i have a hard time remembering how we even managed to survive before they came along. i really hope they stick around.

the lost days

not much has been going on here. the usual plus a few moments of grace, clarity, and insanity thrown in for good measure.

an update is in order, though, so here it is.

first, this is my new best friend:

initially i bought it for the label because i'm shallow like that, but i have since bought five more bottles because it is so damned good. australian. barossa-grenache. from what i understand, it's a tough grape, but this wine is superb. i highly recommend it, not only for its delightfully sensuous--voluptuous even--flavor, but also for the fact that it's fun to say, "gimme a bottle of bitch," or "i'm just sitting here with a glass of bitch," or "don't touch my bitch!" at the register it rings up as "bitch wine." and it makes me giggle. best of all? it's a screamin' deal at $8.99 or so a bottle.

also, the girl is finally weaned. mostly it was fine, but a couple of days ago she woke up asking for "momma's milk," and i said, "mommy doesn't have any more milk. mommy's milk is for babies and you're a big girl now." she burst into tears and said, "i don't want to be a big girl, i want to be a baby again!" heart breaking. but! she's weaned. my boobs haven't figured it out yet.

that's all from my little world.

for now.

random

i know it's lame to post someone else's poem as a blog entry, but i don't care. i love this. for lots of reasons. today it feels easy to tumble right into it. in fact, it almost feels necessary.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

		e.e.cummings

overheard

driving around in the car i heard the girl farting away in the back seat. the boy was laughing hysterically. each fart took him to a new level of belly laughs and made her fart more.

"do it again, K!"

"i can't!"

"why not?"

"because my bum is open."

don't even try to make sense of it.