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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

being tethered, this balloon...

i sent my hubsJ an email this morning that went like this:

===
my being so entirely of the earth, buried in fact... makes it harder and harder to hear your ether. the muffle is great and i struggle to bear it witness and mourn again who i once was, untethered. and the great and tidal sadness in me creates such distance ...

===



post-fight, i am struggling again to understand how we have become as we are... and i am standing by it, my relationship to being deep into the dirt of it... buried but not suffocating... and amazed by the tethers by which i am bound to the earth, the flap of a flop,  the whack of the cheese powder pack against my belly while making lunch, the chatter on the deck of boys re-meeting each other on a new summer day, pages turning, a toddler leaning into my side in a moment of rest... the meat of the earth... the dirt in my fingernails, the scrapes on my toes from the rocks underwater... the bready smell of an overfull diaper... the sweat on these boys reminding me of teenagers, scooping legos from mouths... the wild fears that overtake as they seem to be too far away in the waves... the yelling and guilt of the yelling... balls in all the corners of all the corners. . .
so physical, so much tether.
i look so fondly at who i have been, and so wistfully at what i used to take for granted... it seems too much... and i'm no fool, so i know i will look back at these times with fondness and wistfulness, so i am trying to turn in on myself while still remaining sentient and present... and it is a stretch, i tell you...

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Trials and Tribulations of the first world.

(may we all be forgiven)

HubsJ's car has been in the shop for over a week, and this weekend we got a loaner to cut down on the carsharing -he'd been driving his mother's car, a nondescript vague brand green car with a puttputt sound... love me some putt putt... i do.. but its funny how i have no idea what the make or model of that car... couldn't identify it in a parking lot, for instance... funny, that.
so we got this loaner, and into the driveway rolls a mustang.
muscle, baby.

and do you know how well carseats fit into mustangs? hmm? do you? 
and when you need to go get diapers.. like, right away, while its still light out and your eyes still are functioning at daylight levels... and you've got to fit a gigantic carseat into a two door low-lying throbbing penis car?
and then you drive an overtired toddler the three miles to the cvs, and have to drag your body out the door legs first, then do the full re-climb in order to retrieve the screaming child and you have to park in the middle of the lot because these cars are expensive and as big as small boats-on-trailers.. i'm now a professional big-rig driver and now i understand some of those road-side parking choices.. but i digress. i scurried away from the car to the diapering world of safety.

boy, did i feel like the biggest assho** in the world. 

yes, yes i did.

Monday, July 21, 2014

summer vacation? hmm...

I do, I feel like I've been away from the house for a week... away from writing for longer than that.  we've had family here, of the hubs' persuasion, though mine now with so much time passage... or at least, it feels like that most of the time, complete with total familial disrespect and overt generosities...... every single bed and spaces 'madebed by sleeping', full.  all the groceries i think are there, are not. ... inbetween two weekends of baseball tournaments... last nights' championship game which kept us and the eldest out of the house until 11!!... babies and siblings with aunts and grandmothers to keep them from the ballfield glare. . . beach visits with old friends which lasted into the night.... dishwasher load after dishwasher load, til i'm afraid it will fail... a car in the shop. . . a working working husband. . .

i have been away.  this week the boys and cousin living here for the summer, are at camp.  full day.  a pool! a rock wall! archery! songs! kidskidskids!! today is the first day.  the return of a routine for myself and the babe is a cool summer evening, replete with sweater. lightning bugs. happy children yelling in the summershadow.
i know the evenings will be chockfull but the hope of a morning breeze is there... so changing, that hope. i am returned.  i think the baby is inhaling me in the fear/worry/anticipation of being left with someone else... but hear this: baseball is over.  today i throw away the baseball pants with the stains and the worn out knees, the irredeemable polyster would insult the ethos of the salvation army, so they are in a pile by the laundry, washed (i know.. why? who can tell) but ready to be tossed when i can really admit that they are as used as they will be.



 
the red whites and blues are really exciting, but a few more greens would be really appreciated.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

GeezLouise.

I'm all bagged out and not writing these days.  Its happening faster and faster, all the time, this summerpassage.  I haven't even had time to complain, and the first half is winding down.  shoot. This summer has been so busy and manic and emotional and upheavel-y... its that whole 'first year' withoutmy dad stuff, first birthday, all that... plus my tomatoes are ripening and somedays i feel like i've got noone to tell. and i'm aware that i'm romanticizing my relationship with my dad and that sucks. i can't go changing it now.  it had its ups and downs, and i liked him a lot and sometimes didn't.  its not as if i'd be only telling my dad about the tomatoes. its just not true.  there is always something else going on, and i'm heading to another baseball tournament tonight and i gotta tell you how wrongly these men are setting up sports these days... mothers need to be a bit more vocal about simply not allowing baseball to be a three season sport, or not allowing three games in one day on a hot july sunfest. just Not allowing it. . . i'm afraid i'm seen as 'not a team player' or a 'pansy' for giving my kid water over the fence during an inning shift, i'm afraid my complaints or worries about the 3rd game are seen as insults/criticisms of the other mothers.  i'm afraid of how often i am afraid of things like that... and then i realize i must not be too afraid, because i continue on... and i am pretty sure that we'll be skipping this tournamentseason next year... i do not want the entire family life to be centered on one person, or one sport, or one strive.  we are a multiply talented group, with multiple needs and desires, and we should all be fed.  obviously, i've been in the mothergame long enough to know that there ARE sacrifices.  but, also obviously (to me),  i know that game has limited benefits and returns and that the quip 'if mama ain't happy, nobody happy' is a very strong truth. 

and i'm a bit awonder at how much all of this is about the dads. 'coaches' getting mad at their kids for striking out?  woah. 
i think its like getting too involved in a tv sport. its some sort of misplaced energy, a misdirected emotion. . .
i donno. ... i'm sure someone has studied it and has all the answers.  somewhere. 
but its summer, and i'm not looking anything up.  the kids're going to watch too much tv, do some craftprojects and be forced to try reading more and more each day.  so be it. 

off to baseball, on a wing and a 'prayer'... fingers crossed.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Critters are Happy with us.

We had the birthday party for the eldest, the boy who turned nine.  Last year, did the same, and no one came. no.one.came.
Remember that?  For reasons in the dozens, but mostly for the tears he shed and the real sorrow we felt, this year was very different.  It has been a year, invitations were made to dozens, and family friends and last year's friends, and all the mom's whose numbers I've collected and reminders were sent, and all sorts of things.. one friend was invited to come early, so the waiting for him was less onerous.... but for me?  at ten past two i though i might throw up, when noone else had arrived... but then they did.  lots, and fun was had and all was passed by, again.  the uncles came, the cousins, the grandparents, the friends.

i cried with my mother at the end of the driveway, my dad was here last year, and is now missing, still.  i passed off my toddler on to an almost eight year old, fairly successfully, i might add... i had almost a whole beer, i served some salad, some watermelon, some ice cream cake. i yelled at kids on a trampoline, a goodhumor yell. i ignored the kids i wanted to ignore, i felt impressed with the quality of the people that i like. . . i navigated multiple layers of family,mostly by avoiding...  i had more potato salad than you can shake a stick at...

the boys were both! thrilled... but my nine... he was on cloud 9.  really. and not just because its a cliche that matches. . . not just. 

 and the colors of the summer .  ah... and soon the reds will arrive...


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

I'm 40 now. and the month of June.

its been an indescribable period of time, this year i'm in -my fourth decade.  my introduction to the realities of death was pretty fierce and fire-filled and while it may be that way for every single person, i am still in the sway of shock, i think.  the consideration of the mortality of every single thing that I love is too much with me, and I am reeling on a daily basis, and feeling altogether acquainted with the mid-life crisis vibe.. where am i going? how did i get here? is it relevant? here i am, right now, how do i get through the minutes, the afternoons, aware that it all ends in death.  ?  i know it sounds morbid, and overly dramatic, but there it is, how does one grapple  death to the ground,  deal with the futility of the knowing ... notice the caterpillars, the butterflies, acknowledge the incredible beauty in their unbelievably short lives, and then complain about baseball tournaments on my birthday or socks on the kitchen floor?

the baseball tournament didn't happen, my birthday did.  i did not use the paper like i hoped, i carried the journal with me often, unused and uncracked, i read some, visited the library, dropped off a bag i'd been looking to be rid of for over a year. . . the socks for sure were on the kitchen floor, and outside by the trampoline...and under the sofa...  but now it is summer and there is no need for socks so the irritation at their sight will dissipate for almost 60 days...

the kids went away for two nights, hubsJ and i stayed at a hotel one night as per my sister's swagliciousness, and we stayed home the next night. it was indescribably marital.  it was so very nice, so liberating to get along most of the time, to relax in my own house to such an extent i could actually nap. nap! and laugh... and stay up late...

how does one - why does one abdicate so much of one's personal responsibility in a marriage? i read pam's essay over at Walking on My Hands and it was so resonant, for such different reasons, but again, part of my year of turning 40, and turning and turning and turning. . .
i am watching my mother learn and re-learn thousands of details of life each day and month as she navigates all those things that 'dad used to do'... and how grief keeps her moving, and i'm not sure that is enough.  and i have so much worry, and many days when i can't face her because of it.

and i wonder about my own marriage and the days i abdicate my responsibilities and ... i'm not sure thats the same as teamwork. it surely doesn't feel like it.  ,   though i feel the loss of my dependence on anyone else, magnifying the loss of my dad.  in the marriage, the exhaustion of the navigation of obligations, 'having to do it all vs. being able to do it all...
what grace we grant each other, or don't.
the heaviness of disappointment in one's self for the stumbling pace ... the overwhelming pound per pound pressure of self-judgement. blagh.

i'm reading : sue monk kidd, when the heart waits... a midlife crisis book for sure, she's christian-ish with a focus on waiting in prayer of all sorts... waiting as the place where all the action actually happens...
and : madeleine l'engle... the year of the great-grandmother... part two of her crosswicks memoir, this one about caring for her dementia-bound mother over one summer...


and i'd like to have a stride, a pace... or at least to believe that i could develop one that helped me keep my breath.. and in the desire, i am going to tuck a kernel of hope.   a mustard seed, if you will.