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Friday, January 23, 2009

Of Woman Born -Rich and I

Everytime I pick up the book (Of Woman Born, Adrienne RIch) I am ashamed at how far I have let my brain slip away from me these past years. how soft I have become in some senses/faculties. Rich writes in an academic-y style that I can hardly handle anymore, and the SUBJECT? what thought and analysis she has directed at this challenge of mothering! and I know that her children were grown when she got it into form, but the plumbing the depths started while she was home... and I cannot help but compare myself and my lacks.



I took a sabbatical of some hours yesterday to attend a 'mini-retreat' for mothers in which there was snack- though not quite junky enough to satisfy (no hohos! )- and yoga and journaling and sharing. I really do love yoga and I do love silence and I have nearly ZERO of either in my current situation... however, as a staunch New Englander, I find socializing and 'sharing' to be quite difficult. When called upon to do emotional sharing in public, I find myself immediately suspicious of anyone who can do so, with very few exceptions. Sometimes it is a judgemental fiesta on my part, with my cynicism and melodramatic sarcasm doing loop-de-loops with each other, but sometimes its just a niggling feeling that other people are 'performing'. When it comes down to 'motherhood' and what we all experience while wearing this mantle, it is hard to imagine anyone has the time to 'perform', really, so maybe I'm entirely off my rocker. ? I still need work, evidently. And I am not suggesting that the women WERE performing, in fact I think it highly likely that none of them were, I am suggesting that my own judgements cloud my space sometimes.



The retreat was meant to be about finding one's center in all this wilderness of motherhood, and as Dorie (friend with wild loopyness:) and I were discussing afterwards, figuring out how to be in our - or comfortable with and without our archetypes of motherhood. Who are we as we walk within our BirthRight? That which WE were given when we arrived... what we talk so freely about in terms of our own children, our hopes and dreams for them, our desires for their safety, their sanctity, etc. IF all is right with the world, someone felt those things for US. So who the hell are we to so disrespect that?! HOW angry will I be at my children if they slough it ('it' being nothing less than THEIR SELVES) off as nothing special?
So who the hell I am to let mySELF slip under the car?

Why not write more about spouses?

I've thought a lot about how often and much I'd like to write about my husband here. Its my only outlet and sometimes, my only conversation with an adult (supposedly someone else reads this...) for days. So why not use it for therapy and for some sort of release of all marital strife? Again and again, I sit down to vent my anger and spleen- by the by, Chakra Carol says my spleen is full of disappointment- in this space. And again and again, I subvert, divert, slip away from direct expression. And I think its like the way I'm watching the process of my aging, there is a certain distance from it, though some details are shining through. My hands are becoming incredibly beautiful as they age, thinning skin- I have onion paper hands. In looking at my marriage, I already spend too much time on thinking those things that I do not like about my husband. I don't really want to spread anger and resentment throughout the one time I have this 'outlet'. OF course, I am also aware that he reads here, its not simply a 'venting' if one's ventee is watching, it becomes some part of a battle done offstage, but not less warlike. I'd like to believe that I have enough respect for my spouse that I don't need to sputter obscenities online in order to communicate anger or rage. It is hard for me to say sometimes the things that are beautiful about my marriage, but using this place to vent would make it impossible for me to 'unsay' the negatives and would bely the beauty that there is, was and will be again. . .



* all that being said: AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFCFHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHHHHH

Monday, January 19, 2009

fire fire burning bright...

Its amazing to see something heat up to the point of glowing red, it really is... and its even more amazing when you are not in a blacksmith shop but in your own house. WE here in Pawtucket are now overly familiar with our local firemen. They like to spin their wheels in the snow by our house, get the ladder trucks out for some exercise and generally mill about in our neighborhood. The kids now consider being dropped off across the street during a fire emergency as a 'playdate'.
The chimney man must come visit, evidently. Yet another service worker to enter my very fond fantasy imagining. Chimney MAN.

It comes at a time when I am both recovering and relapsing into a long fevered sickness. so we have fire and fever. Oh, and did I mention the snowstorm? no. really.
huh.

Friday, January 16, 2009

sick sick we're sick again

always sick here it seems. and with a homeopath for a husband, even. crud everywhere and even the dog is laid low. I hope we all make it.
I'm done. going to make tea.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

My three year old thought about lying to me today...

I watched the notion pass through his face, so transparent, like my own. What HAD he done to his brother? WHY was Elijah crying? hmmm...

so much for innocence?! yikes, what a week it has been for him, there must be something happening with the stars or the moon or somesuch. He almost ran into traffic during a wild bid for freedom, I was sprinting fullspeed to catch him and believe it or not, he's never done anything like that to me. When I did make it to him, he stopped, we crashed and almost hit that selfsame traffic. wonderbar. He ran from me three times that day, the traffic-near-miss being #3. We made it home safely and I reclined on the sofa while he went on with his life (which I granted him, begrudgingly).

AND I am on some sort of rollercoaster, reliving events of a year ago- as pertains to my hearing loss - and when I say reliving, I am being exact. Sweeps of memory are just taking over my walking life and I"m having a hard time dealing with my fears of the actuality of it happening again. I'm not sure what I will do and I do not feel in a strong spot to face it. And I don't know how long I can go on expecting it to happen each morning, I can feel the pressure on my heart even as I type.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Wife or Mother?

Just read some of a debate on which is easier, Wife-ing or Mother-ing? on a site called Dooce, by a woman called heather. Would link to it if I knew how but so it goes. It was pretty interesting and seems that if a marriage is not altogether horrifying, it gets put on the backburner while the whole business of mothering goes on. So, lots of the discussion seemed to relegate husbands to the corner if divorce was not part of the picture. Some of the younger mothers made all lovey to both marriage and motherhood, but most of the women sounded sane and heads were realistically wound onto necks... in that, motherhood was such a shock and getting through those first weeks the first (and second, third, etc.) such a mind-blowing thing- husbands couldn't begin to understand and so were relegated to the sidelines.
this all seems a bit of a blather.
but here's more.
Its nice to know its not all me. I'm not some sort of emotionally disfunctional woman who can't understand why her walnut heart cannot encompass all the men in the house at the same time. I do my damndest. AND I DO. but I can't take care of everyone's needs when they have them. There are too many and too many of the needs involve my breasts, frankly. There are only two of them, large though they are. and stretchy, at this point, pendulous...

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Unstoppable repetition

I am in a grand funk. GRAND. The chimney is slowly collapsing, the door handle is gone and has to be pryed open each time I go to the car, the three year old is unceasing in his aggressive play (normal boy, i know, but UNCEASING), the mice are playing poker in the waterlogged basement, i am never ever going to stop doing laundry or picking up other people's shit, both literal and toy-based. And I am just in a goddamned funk about it. I have a half an hour left before I have to slog through the streets to get the threeyearold back from his heavenly school and then I'm back to refereeing and trying to save the one year old from destruction. When does the play turn into the graceful swandive of irony and self-adjustment, knowledge of one's own physicality? hmm?
ANd while all this repetition exists in my daily life, my hubby gets friendly with the bar down the street yet again. glad to know he gets a break now and again, right? shure.
again is the word of the day, Fucking AGAIN

-- and later in the day, i am sitting on the couch stroking the foreheads of my two sons, one blonde, one red - and its a long straight sigh of contentment. one sleeping and one just resting and everything smoothes out for a minute or two. I know that chaos will return shortly but hiatus is a wonder.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

cat litter

my husband cleaned up the cat litter, he wante dme to post it.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Heart Chakra Walnut

so. I went to Chakra Carol, who makes me feel cared for in a very nice way. However well my sacral chakra may be doing right now, my heart chakra is a walnut. yes, friends, a walnut. Carol had her hands on my heart and said, 'oh, now I'm in... whoops, no, now I'm out. geez, Okay, here goes again... nope, out. " So says the professional nutcracker.. a walnut. I have some issues regarding trust, it seems. I"m not sure that I trust GOd to take care of me anymore. I sure used to. I certainly don't think my husband can. It is sometimes hard to keep self-sufficiency from feeling so lonely . I keep my disappointment in my spleen and my distrust in the walnut shell around my heart.

Got it? My god, i feel like a loon. My moments of Grace these days surround memories of c.s.lewis' lion, aslan, and the feelings that I had when I was a twelve year old and believed unrelentingly in that lion as the hero of all. That year, my mom told me Lewis was a christian and the whole series was nothing but a shade retelling of the bible stories. I was literally crushed, I remember the entire time she was telling me, she was in the bath and I was visiting her to talk about the Last Battle, again. I read them all dozens and dozens of times. I was so angry at the 'trick' of it all. I'd been fooled into church, in a sense. And, while it didn't neccesarily shake my faith, it began or begat some of the cynicism/suspicion I've carried around for so long. My faith is more shaken by the events of my adulthood now, the suspicion/cynicism having grown to nearly unbearable weights. And that probably is where the walnut comes in.