Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

We become what we least wish.

Scanning through photos from other places, people I knew in a time I can hardly remember now. They’ve all grown-mostly rounder, as I have, some balder, some with more tension around the eyes. Some carry obvious signs of bad marriages, sick children, secrets. Little over 10 years have passed by, and we’re caricatures of ourselves, of who we’d thought we’d be.

Did you imagine you’d be balding, children on the way, too much weight gathered between you, the subtle sigh and smell of settling casting a pall over you?

Did you imagine you’d still be in Korea, somewhere I never imagined you’d be brave enough to sit still in, my awe shivering?

Did you imagine you’d have a home, smothered in country kitsch, like your mother’s. The very thing you swore you’d never do, the clothes you’d never wear, the haircut you’d never had. All in the palm of your hand.

I stare in a mirror, in the lens of my camera, and I don’t recognize myself. In the eyes at least-the loose skin of my face hasn’t changed much, aside from a few more wrinkles. My hair, uncontrollable and wiry, looses it’s grip on itself more each year. My body becomes stagnant and yet stronger, built up in places my hands forget to remind itself about. My eyes have darkened and turned inside, faithful to only me.

Old friends find me, and the same story stumbles out of each-that I inspired them, that I was braver than they could be, that I was always so funny, so dear, so fabulous.

My memories don’t match. My memories are all of a scared little girl running for her life, playing some act better than she ever could on stage. A friend tells me that she wished she could be like me through high school, and I nearly cry, knowing what my seeming strength cost me.

Are these hideous kitchens in photos much the same? Something we put on, for who we think we are, who we think the adult versions of ourselves are meant to look? Do we like what we’ve become, the men and women we’ve grown into?

I’ve grown into my strength. Where once was smoke and mirrors now sits true power, my knuckles white around my heart, grasping and guarding. But so much still feels like a 17 year old-my inability to keep my side of the bed neat, not knowing how to put myself together, that constant feeling that I’m the child in the room. I never feel like the adult-hell, most of the time I wonder who the freak is who let me have children.

I can’t help but step back sometimes thinking, “Fuck me…I’m over 30.” Like a rushing car in a dream, it hovered, but it still hits and you hang in the air staring at it, wondering how it happened. It’s like 18 to 29 just…wafted away into the sky, and I wonder if I really held it after all. Then I look at the people I knew, and how they’ve turned into their parents, and not necessarily in all the good ways, and I wonder what happened to that desire to do something new, be it where they grew up, or thousands of miles away.

What happened? Why do we give up, or in?

I don’t feel this old, as old as I am. I’ll look down and see myself and wonder if I’m too old to dress the way I’m dressed, too old to listen to what I might listen to. I’ll realize that inside, I’ll never feel as old as my parents always seemed, I’ll never have the “adults” house. But I’m ok with that.

I just wish I knew when it all changed.

So my burden I began to divest

When I was small, my father, on those days when he’d had just about enough of me and my endless questions and comments, would tell me to go play in traffic. I’d tell him to come with me and we’d both smile and giggle and he’d tell me no, seriously, go play in traffic. Or run with scissors.

Of course, he’d also let me play with the large wood planers and chisels when my mother’s back was turned. He was just that kind of father. My mother spent her time running me away from bogeymen that didn’t really exist-my father pointed me in their direction and whispered “Go get em”.

This morning, I spent my commute listening to the new Decemberists album, and just before getting to work, listened again to “The Rake’s Song”, this time paying attention to the lyrics.

What can one do when one is widower
Shamefully saddled with three little pests
All that I wanted was the freedom of a new life
So my burden I began to divest
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright

Charlotte I buried after feeding her foxglove
Dawn was easy, she was drowned in the bath
Isaiah fought but was easily bested
Burned his body for incurring my wrath
Alright, alright, alright

I do look at the song as I do many of theirs, as a narrative story, much like “The Mariner’s Revenge”

“Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
*sigh*” 

Good ole, bloody thirstyness.

What struck me this morning, as I giggled at the line about incurring wrath, is how differently this song would be received if the narrator was a woman, or even the singer/songwriter. I giggled hearing this song, knowing it was outlandish and satirical and a story. But would it be different if it was a widow reciting how she killed her offspring? Would it be different if a woman was singing a song about another woman, or a man?

I personally can’t help but feel like there’s this huge chasm in terms of what a woman is allowed to say as opposed to a man. The average listener can infer that the songwriter here might possibly recently had a child, and channeled the adjustment, the sleep deprivation, the sudden lurch of a change of life into a song, into horrifying words that signify nothing more than a fantasy one would never act on, a story that would never truly act out.

Now, change the sex of the narrator in your mind, and tell me what your impressions might be then.

How dare a mother. How dare she say something bad about her darling children. It’s nothing to laugh at. It’s horrifying, that any mother, any woman could say those things. The sanctity and purity a vagina bestows upon a woman.

It really hit me this morning-I could never write something like that. Most women couldn’t write something like that, or if they have, they’ve paid a price on some level. Accused of being unfeeling, monsters, undeserving of their children.

Men? It’s a giggle, a chortle, a knowing glance, a grin. A father, a man is allowed to feel, to acknowledge, to say the horrible, no good, very bad things. Women? Women have to fight for even that small allowance, especially mothers.

No one ever says that these are good things that are aired. I just don’t understand why my womanhood might make me a monster for saying the same things a man suffers no ill will for.

Friday

Very, very , very drunk on more Screwdrivers than I could count.

Annoyed at being sat next to slowest member of class (and I mean like my Dad slow-i.e., not comfortable with it being 2009, let alone 1989 technology wise) I understand why, but there comes a point where someone is just NOT going to get it.

Critical mass, we have some.

So drunk. Helped friend wait for her little fuck button. Left, dutiful friend. I hate bars. That little mating ritual-annoying. How do you single people deal with that? Everyone looked the same, talked the same, bored me to tears. OK, except for the fact that there was a fucking convention of bald men with glasses. And the dude with the face pubes who kept playing with them. I can’t deal with that. I cannot handle face pubes.

It’s gonna be a beautiful day tomorrow. Typo’s and all.

Thursday

I’ve felt so good this week.

I’ve had more compliments paid in 4 days than I have in at least 5 years. Plain, honest compliments-people liking my sense of humor, admiring my ability at something or other-it doesn’t really matter what.

Feeling valued nearly puts me in tears. Realizing how long it’s been since anyone has made me feel this way makes me want to cry even more. How can a person live like this? How could I go for years with only the voice in my head telling me who and what I am?

My self talk had become so fucking toxic-a constant reminder that I’m a fuck up, that I can’t possibly be loved, that I’m not as smart as I think I am. This merry go round upstairs, making me dizzy and so bloody depressed. Lonely.

It’s lonely to live by yourself like that, to be the only one believing in you, to feel a desert around you. I feel like a drunk having her first drink after ten years on the wagon-I can just lap it up, feeling a glow start inside me at the thought that strangers might actually just think I’m funny or interesting or neat to be around.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt like that-so long since I felt worth something-anything-to someone. It feels cheesy to take such pleasure in it, but at the same time, I ache knowing I’ve gone so long void of anything like this.

Wednesday

No matter what happens, I can always be glad I’m not twittering American Idol. What the fuck is with that?

Today was ok! I think I may have almost made a friend, a normal, human being with the cutest child I have ever seen and the same veiled disdain for the entire process. It’s cool.

Having said that outloud means that I’ll now say something horribly offensive without knowing it and ruin the entire thing.

Anyway.

I proved myself a pain in the ass by finding a mistake in their knowledge management tool, and pointing out that the little quiz questions are vague and misleading, asking us to make assumptions when in reality we would clarify the ask from the customer.

I can’t shut off the salaried employee in me, looking for places to improve. I used to work in the Process Improvement department, and have helped to write training materials. It’s killing me. Sitting back and shutting the hell up is bloody difficult. REALLY freaking hard.

What’s kinda cool is sitting next to this woman who is the sweetest thing I have ever seen, and totally reminds me of my MIL. She keeps giving me all these compliments, like telling me how confident I am, and how she can’t believe how easily I retain info, or how easy I find things online (on this one I remind her it only means I have no life). It’s so NICE, after the last few years of little to know positive feedback, to just be around someone so plainly sunny and optimistic. Weird, but nice. It’s like sitting beside this little pocket of gentleness, and feeling refreshed. Having a guy later tell me, “hey, I really dig your brand of humor.”-I’ve gotten used to people basically telling me to shut the fuck up, so this was….yeah, it was kinda cool. Maybe people aren’t all bad after all.

It’s just hard, staring at someone with their cell phone and laptop, coming as they please, sitting at their desk, their space, and missing it. Missing my desk, my spot. But not the work. Not the stress. And that’s what this change is really about-change. Oddly enough, it feels good. It feels good to press myself to leave the book in my bag and talk to people, to relate, to identify and laugh.

However, one thing I haven’t mentioned to anyone is the bipolar.

Normally, I don’t care, but I just have this feeling…this feeling that mentioning it will not be in my best interests. It’s killing me in a way, to be hiding this, because I’m not normally open with it. But I do worry, and will likely worry for awhile, that mentioning it with ruin any chances of anything in the future.

I want to be the advocate-I just don’t want to ruin my chances, or set any expectations that aren’t warranted.

And yes, you’ve stumbled into me blogging my first week at a new job. Sorry-don’t really have anyone else to talk to about it.

Now wish Bon good luck and stuff.

Tuesday

Having correctly identified the lat few days as period induced insanity, today wasn’t too bad. (And as an aside, why can’t someone DO something about PMS in bipolar women? Seriously. It sucks to suddenly be suicidal on and off for a day or two. And then be PERFECTLY fine.)

On one hand, it is nice coming home and only thinking randomly about work, instead of worrying I’ll get a call that someone needs something rightthissecond! or that I’ve forgotten some little task or that I need to spend 3 hours of my time on a powerpoint presentation. But, there’s something depressing about speaking of SVP’s and realizing that where I used to work, I was on a speaking basis with those types of people. There’s something irritating about learning about processes and tools that at a previous job, I would have helped to implement or create.

But, the people seem pretty nice, the options in terms of advancement there if I want them, and shifts seem to improve rather quickly.

What will be weird is talking like people on the floor again, instead of the people in the offices. It’s strange to suddenly have to worry about things like break times and if I leave a mess on my desk. I’m used to coming and going as I pleased, relatively speaking. Of course, the option of PAID overtime is a nice one at the moment.

The training just might kill me again. People developing corporate curriculum’s-PLEASE explain to me why people need to be treated like 14 year olds?! I don’t want to get in a group and spend 20 minutes making a team sign. I don’t want to sit in a group to follow vague instructions with no explanation. I want the trainer to talk like a normal human instead of a babysitter. Dude, I just want to get to the actual information.

And I know-spending years reporting and analyzing data has left me with an inability to process superfluous information. I just can’t stand it. But I can’t help but wonder if training is 6 weeks because we spend most of the time playing.

Yeah, this isn’t the kind of playing I dig.

Overall, this move has felt right, which is good. Now if I can only stop getting annoyed at things like perfect attendance awards (cause I TOTALLY love those people who bring the flu to work!) and constant CONSTANT propaganda that professional, GOOD employees are the ones who love to socialize. If I can get past that, we’re good.

What’s happening with you? I’m not reading bubkiss right now.

Monday

Starting a new job sucks. I don’t do well in crowds, I hate being forced to buddy up to find answers that take two seconds to find, and I cannot stand having someone walk me through an application I cannot touch yet. Don’t get me started on ice breaker exercises. Do they actually break the ice for anyone? Everyone has or had a pet. Good to know.

In short, my brain nearly exploded today. But I got a cute new phone, which almost makes up for it. And unlimited text messaging! Be grateful I don’t have your phone numbers.

I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up.

This week has been a contrast in states. I’ve been sick, oh how I’ve been sick, with a head cold that began least weekend with a tightening in my sinuses, and ended with me actually taking a nap on afternoon, intending to read another Sebold novel, but passing out next to a gently snoring 4 year old. It’s mostly passed now, slight congestion left in it’s wake, while the rest of the household contends with it.

But outside-outside has been glory-the sky blue, the sun warm and frank, the air full of the smell of melting snow, thawing ground, winter receding. I’ve seen two robins, their breasts rusty and familiar against the endless blue sky. I’ve smiled just for the sake of it, my face warm and my body sighing in that “FINALLY!” sort of way, my skin itching for the feel of the sun and air after such a long and cloistered winter.

I start a new job on Monday-a fairly crummy job, but it’s work, and it’s money and it’s, more importantly, stressfree. Spring feels special this year, because I have my new beginning this time-it’s scary to me, and it’s complicated, but it’s newness, and my chest is lighter by ages because of this, and my mind is relaxed, knowing all that matters is the roof and the food and the clothes and past that, we’re golden.

My head is clear and blue enough to write again. To start writing, to have those thoughts of characters and places and things to say and not say. I’ve been committing words to paper, or Open Office, and I’ve just been writing. Not much, not yet, but the important thing is that, after years of feeling mentally constipated and annoyed, my mind has opened it’s arms to the robins of thought, and embraced them, feeding them tiny fat worms and feeling the beating of their hearts.

Oh my friends, it is spring.

Captain Tightpants has a Winnah!

So I fed all of you through through random.org, and arrived at a winner while nom noming peanut M&M’s with Ros.

Ms. Changes Pants While Driving!

You may commence Squeeing. And email me your address.

I’ve been using my copy as bathroom reading-it hasn’t been too bad-makes me miss writing silly essays.:)

Why can’t mental health hours suit the mentally ill?

You know what really chafes my ass?

I’ve been without a psychiatrist since January-ironically enough, the last appointment that was cancelled was the day I found out my job was disappearing. My doctor had a heart attack-that happens, it’s terrible, I get that.

So I’ve had the option to go to a doctor who I’ve visited before and REALLY dislike, or nothing at all. I’ve been mostly ok, so I’ve ran with nothing.

However, starting a new job, and knowing the warm weather mania is just around the corner, and terrified that it will be even worse this year, I know I need to be seeing someone. Add in the blow to my ego, losing my job, and the fear that I won’t be able to support my family, and I know I need to talk to someone.

Feeling so completely isolated being at home with just my kids, who are slowly driving me completely insane, isn’t helping either. It’s so bloody lonely.

So I finally call, and ask, nicely, if I could see someone OTHER than the doctor who will only make things worse. I’m pleasantly surprised to hear someone callback.

“We have an appointment for you!” she says, happily

“great-I hope it’s for 4pm, since I’m starting a new job and can’t take time off unless I’m having a limb amputated.”

There’s a giant pause on the other end, then a song and dance about how the doctor doesn’t usually work that late (“She’s never here til 5″) and how, seeing as I’m a transfer from another doctor, she’s not sure….the implied message being, as always, that I should be grateful for what I’m getting.*

These doctors, they always talk about how important it is that you function as part of society, have a job, etc, but they fail to comprehend how their bankers hours can impact someone who has to be at their job. There seems to be a blatant disregard for the mental patient’s job or life. My previous doctor would routinely be late, and one day, after waiting 40 minutes (longer than I would ultimately even see her) I mentioned it. She replied “My time is valuable too.”

Like mine isn’t. Like my employer at the time allowing me what ended up being 3 hours off, with pay, wasn’t time that was valuable.

You can’t win. You want treatment? You better take our hours. But you aren’t better until you’re stable, holding a job, have some friends. How dare you try and exist as other people do. You’re sick in the head. You’re different. You’ll jump when I tell you.

It shouldn’t be this way.

*(granted, the woman said she’d check with the doctor, but come on. She only sees people til 4? Even those on disability have stuff going on during the day.)

Sick Day Formulaic

The tug and pull and coercion of another Wednesday morning leaves me snarking at Vivian to get her bloody pants on, and hurry up and eat. She’s already looked up at me 3 times with those enormous brown eyes teeming with seeming pain and said

“But I’m tired and don’t wanna!”

I kept you home on Monday I say. I felt you were getting sick and in the interest of not having the health department in our home, scratching at the corners looking for the plague we’ve unleashed, I kept you home.

I go in to the bathroom, come out to her puking, but without the usual crying and melodrama that generally accompanies heaving your guts out.

“Did you make yourself puke?”

She says nothing, runs to the toilet, but is fine. Maybe it’s the cereal she tells me.

The cereal she loves, and would eat all the time.

I know her sister, she of hack hack, coughed her little head off all night and likely kept Vivian up, but that’s tired. I mean, I’M that tired all the time, what with the “Fill up my water jug” visits and the “I peed a teeny bit in my pants” visits and the “I want you to cuddle me at 3am, but only in MY BED” visits. I get by. And while she looked a little peaked, she didn’t seem that bad. Once I said we’d be lazy and take the bus the 1 km to school, she perked right up.

Heh.

Of course, by the time we’re at school and I’m giving her teacher the heads up, she’s drooped her eyes again and started moving slowly. I tell the teacher that since Vivian is such a good actress, I’m sending her anyway.

“I’ve noticed she’s a good actor.” she says “I’ll watch her.”

(Her teacher is so awesome. She loves Vivian, but she is also ON to Vivian. It’s perfect.)

Walking away, it hits me that I don’t ever remember staying home as a child. I’m sure that I must have-there are very few children who are never sick, especially as small children. But remembering my mother, I would have needed to be VERY VERY sick to stay home.

How do we know? How do we decide what’s bad enough to stay in bed, and what’s a play for a day off? Does running a fever count, or is that just the body rallying it’s defences, and not to be worried about? Should there be more puke, more pain, tears, disinterest, extra whining?

I’m not good with telling with kids, not on the maybe days. I know when they are SICK, but what about those days when they just feel blah-sorta like those days you call in to work occasionally on, the day before your period when it feels like your intestines are attempting to wander out your belly button while inflating. Do we keep them home? Do we risk them knowing that exact key to a sick day?

Don’t kid yourself-it’s a game. I played the same one with my father before he stopped giving a shit. Of course I was a teenager, but it was the same formula-enough to stay home, but not enough to warrant one on one attention.  No one wants to end up in the ER after all.

But then what if you’re wrong? What if I’ve sent her and she pukes her guts out all over her classroom, all over the teacher, and she’s sitting there crying for me and just wanting to come home? What then?

How do we decide? How do you decide? Do you have a formula, or is it your gut? Thus far-I go with my gut, especially since I AM a fan of mental health days. But how does this work in your house, especially those of you with older kids?

Are ALL kids as seemingly manipulative as mine, or is mine just destined for politics?

Careful now…or I’ll turn the lot of you into pigs.

Take a picture it will last longer

I finally, FINALLY got a new, half decent camera today.

World, meet my Fuji S2000, Fuji, say hi world!

 

 

I’ve really just been fiddling around since dude neglected to mention that it didn’t come with a memory stick, but it seems to be exactly what I want-some similarities to a SLR, but without the work. It takes a nice, clear picture without much effort. Exactly what I want. I’d gotten out of the habit of taking pictures of the girls because the other camera was just too crappy.

And I’ve wanted one for three fricken years.

So go me. One last little something before I’m broke again for awhile.

Duly Noted

If one is sitting in the local Indian resturant, faced with the second cutest little boy ever (second only to this guy and his twin), saying “Wow! He’s so FEY!” to the snotty, yippie mother is of COURSE going to be misconstrued or misheard as:

“Wow! He’s so GAY!”

Sigh.

“When you really trust someone, you have to be okay with not understanding some things.”

When she’s gone my mind begins to fill up with all the things that can happen, slowly like I’m filling a pitcher from a drowsy tap. Images fill with bruises and indignity, how well do I know this other mother? Where have they been all day? What might be happening-what could be happening, the things I know that DO happen.

It’s not paranoia, not really, despite being impossible to explain to other parents, women and men who didn’t spend their childhood in a currency usually left to adults. In my brain lies a summer I can never leave behind, and it colors everything. I’m not paranoid, knowing that the worst can happen.

Rationally, I know it likely won’t. But it could, it can and I worry for all those reasons, even if it’s buried in my brain somewhere and the other mother laughs when I call and says “Man, don’t WORRY! She’s great!” I can’t tuck her away in my back pocket and hope nothing ever happens. I have to let her free-but that freedom costs. It huddles in the corner and whispers to me about boyfriends, neighbours, people she might meet. It whispers that they could be holding her down right now, taking pictures, ignoring her crying, hurting her.

It whispers of all the horrible things that happened to me, and more. “Be the person your mother wasn’t!” my body shouts, “Make sure she never hurts!” but then she walks in the door, eyes lit with 5 year old joy and frosty air and I know my fears are relatively misplaced, and that people, most people are good people who wouldn’t help someone else abuse a child I know this and try to wear the callous off my heart.

Pregnant I foresaw this. I felt her tiny feet in my ribs and knew that, if a daughter, I would place the little girl I was over top of her-I would make a transparency of my childhood and hover around it, waiting for the chance to erase the potential of what could be. I would protect her from everything that tried to destroy me.

I can’t though, you know? I can’t protect her from the world anymore than I can get North Korea to stop being asshats. She is in the world, on her own terms and while I can still guide and try to shape that world, I cannot prevent the bad things as I could when she was just an infant. That lesson they warn us, as parents that will hurt the most, it hurts doubly, knowing exactly, in technicolor, what terrible things could happen to her.

I might not ever get past it, the tenseness in my chest when she’s not home when she was to be home, the quiet worry when she walks out the door, into the hands of another woman, the possibilities of caution, the frank terror some of this holds for me, trusting someone, not just with me, but with my child, with the creature that turned beneath my heart such a short time ago.

Letting go of this, my worst fear, my scared little girl trying to make sure the worst doesn’t happen to my daughters-it’s a struggle. And maybe I’ll never grow past it and will always freeze up with momentary agony, remembering, wondering.

But maybe not. Maybe she’ll just come home, smelling of smoke and hay and joy, as a kid should.

A child is a curly dimpled lunatic.

The clamouring starts before I’m even out of bed.

“Mommy, can you get me breakfast? Mommy, can you help me with my panties? Mommy, I don’t want THIS bowl, I want THAT bowl! Mommy, Jayden says that you don’t like me. Mommy, open the sock bin? Mommy, where’s my hat? Mommy, I can’t find Cheer Bear….”

If verbal assault could be explosive diarrhea, my children are official biological weapons.

Since I’ve been home, a lucky win fall for my daughters, the requests and needs and desires have been incessant, and I feel like I’m constantly being poked and prodded by a pack of wild monkeys searching for nits, the howling growing when I deny the T.V, the computer or more food. It’s almost as if they can’t believe their luck, and need to suck every inch of blood from my body until I’m just a husk a pod person comes out of.

I need to go back to work. I enjoy the time, but I’d enjoy it a LOT more if there weren’t kids under foot and I still didn’t need to get up most days to take Vivian to school. I have another job lined up, waiting to hear about one I want better, but DAMN, I am NOT suited to this stay at home thing.

I’m tired of cleaning, especially since no one else seems capable of keeping it that way. I don’t have it in me to constantly run behind everyone, or scrub the bathroom sink for the 5th time in a week. Reading is difficult since children, mine especially, have this irritating habit of talking. I really don’t have the capacity for games or experiments or anything arty. It’s just more mess. Winter has turned into that strange crunchy/slushy winter-spring hybrid, which means going outside is cold and sucky and boring.

I’m going a little nutty. I’m trying to just get away for a little while, since I also know I screwing with the patterns my husband has had for months, but this is a small city and there’s only so much to do. I’ve pretty much settled on spending a few hours at Starbucks or Timothy’s every day to read and maybe write if I’m up to the fierce outlet competition that ensues. Plus, it’s fun watching all the horrid 80′s hair on women far too old to pull it off. The odd poncho I saw today was also a nice touch.

Don’t even get me started on the hugging and the kissing and the cuddling. As people who have met me can attest, I am NOT a hugger, even if I adore you. Not a fan of touching-more a fan of the 3 foot personal space bubble. My kids are ALL up in my shit. I’m touched out in that regard. I don’t know if I can hack it anymore.

I LIKED leaving for the day, and coming back, happy to see my family. I could interact, pee without someone staring through the key hole, eat all my food, all by myself. Now, I’m so bloody lonely for human contact, for adult human contact that I’m being actively nice to strangers. Not just my usual good deed blather, but starting conversations and enjoying them.

This just won’t do. It just won’t.

Look, I love my kids. I do, with every fibre of my being but dear FSM I just cannot get them away from me, even at night. It’s all MOMMOMOMOMOMOMOMOMOM!!!!!, always with the inflection at the end like I’m some strange german word. But I just couldn’t do this forever. Rosalyn won’t stop peeing the bed no matter how many times she pees before hand, Vivian has nightmares nearly every night, and both of them only want ME. Santa could walk in with a pony and all of the Care Bears and no one would care since it’s not me.

SAHP’s-how the hell do you do this? How do you carve out anything for yourself without feeling guilty? These kids are relentless, like the black death….

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

Today the sky was a vicious blue, and the air was still. Nothing moved for a moment as I stood at an icy corner, waiting. A pause in a season, to catch it’s sense of self perhaps, shake March a little, like a snowglobe. Winter and spring fighting for their places.

It’s that blue that breaks the tempo after a long winter-the blue that reminds you that all things change, all things come around, nothing, ever, lasts forever.

“…developed a cancer growth in the large intestinal track. The doctor successfully removed a piece of the intestine that had the growth, so all should be well soon.”

In the mail, a letter from my sorta step-grandmother-the woman married to my blood grandfather. The letter came inside a birthday card for Rosalyn, attached to a check. “Don’t worry” it says.

My adoptive mother died of cancer.

My biological grandmother died of cancer.

My biological grandfather has cancer.

Yeah, I’m not worried. Not one bit. Not me, who muttered “well, at least I’m probably in HIS will.”

I’d slap myself for being so crass if it would make a difference.

Thing is, I don’t know how to feel. This man is my family-his blood runs in my veins, my face, briefly, resembles his, the shy smile, the height. I’m his granddaughter-his first born granddaughter, and I can smell the guilt from him a mile away. I’d like to believe it’s not guilt, but love, or at least like. But I’d also like to believe I’ll have a pony and a beach house someday.

He and my grandmother were truly the only people in my biological family who seemed to truly care, who unlike my birth mother, didn’t just throw money in my face to try and fix some perceived slight, 20 years old. My grandparents were the only ones who seemed to truly want to help, to know me. They were the only ones I cared to know, the only two in a large family seemingly disinterested in material’s or money in the bank. The only two who didn’t seem wrapped up in themselves.

My grandmother died, fast, of cancer rocketing through her body. I was 7 months pregnant with Vivian the last time I spoke to her, excited to be carrying their first grandchild, excited to give them that. She told me about everyone else’s problems, told me how proud she was of my half-sister.

She left out the part about the cancer eating her from the inside. She lived 3 weeks past the day Vivian was born. She never knew her name. They told me later that she didn’t want to upset me.

I didn’t cry-what was there to cry for? A body that is technically like mine, DNA I could mimic, follow home? But nothing beyond that point-nothing to say, nothing in common, our lives so very different for only being 40 minutes apart while I grew up.

40 minutes. That’s all that separates a life from another.

My grandmother was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. But I didn’t know her, and I didn’t feel entitled to grief.

I was not included on the death announcement, still just another hidden secret to be ashamed of.

So to see, on paper, the words that could likely turn into him dying, I just wish I had never looked. I unfriended my half-sister on Facebook since the last time I spoke to her she was, frankly, a bit of a bitch, and how do you explain anything to a 21 year old with a single vision? You don’t.

This man is the last link I have to a family that never wanted me, and has never even tried to fill in the blanks for me, never tried to be there. My birth mother has come and gone at will, rejecting me, pushing away. Occasionally an aunt sends a gift, a letter, then nothing. I sit here wondering if this is what family feels like, and if it is, why anyone bothers? I have more family in my father than I have in that entire group of people.

If my grandfather dies, when he dies, It will bring home how close I am to being an orphan, a story I could avoid telling myself for years. I thought finding my birth family would help me close the holes in my heart, help me move on with life.

It’s done nothing but wound me slowly since the day it happened. The farther I get away from it, the more I wish I had never, ever looked.

All I ever wanted was a family to love me, a normal family that wasn’t broken or strained or lying to itself. Meeting these people at 19 was a lesson well learned, one that continues even now.

Pop Quiz: Finding Serenity

So I get my eagerly awaited Amazon order today, and I’m pawing through the luscious pile of books (yeah, I’m odd-bear with me) when I notice that I have two copies of one book.

Odd.

I have two copies of “Finding Serenity”-it’s a book of essays about Joss Wheadon’s Firefly series, which I love. I figure what happened was that when the second volume went out of stock, I mucked something up and gave myself two copies of this thus far fun to read book.

Now, I’m a lazy girl. Just as the person still waiting for yarn (which I am going to mail out tomorrow I SWEAR, assuming I can still find your address.) Or the person waiting for the baby blanket for a kid almost a year old (I am nearly done-starting on the border this week!) I cannot be bothered to send this back to Amazon for a credit. That’s effort.

What I am willing to do if offer it to someone who wants it, and can follow simple instructions:

I’ll draw a name in a week’s time, on the day I get my next tattoo, March 17. All you need to do is leave me a comment on this post. Extra entry if you tell me why you love Firefly, or if you link to this post from your site as well.

That’s it. Nothing terribly difficult since as we’ve established, I’m lazy as hell.

I also now have about 40 books to be read. Good thing I’m currently unemployed.

Fire in the Belly, at 4

Originally uploaded by thordora

Lately I find myself reaching for babies a lot, my fingers twitching greedily for the soft, chubby legs, the tiny buttons on the tiny sweaters, the wispy hair (OH! the wisps) I don’t really want one-hell, I didn’t want mine when I had them, and hurried their babyhood’s alone with a wink, and nudge and the hope that lack of sleep would cause amnesia.

It must have worked since I can’t remember Rosalyn’s first word. I do recall that she walked for the very first time on her first birthday however. I don’t remember much else though, and thinking on it is like wading through mist. Ok, actually, I remember her exersaucer and how she took it as a personal challenge to get it across a room. She was always so determined to get moving.

In flipping through pictures of her, I noticed that her face, particularly her mouth, is dirty with something in nearly all. Cheese, crackers, peanut butter-always a greasy smear and crumbs down the front, too busy, much much too busy, white rabbit watch checking and running busy.

Then lately, now, I think of her, and the constant strains of “my haaands are durty!!!” and the running for the bathroom, the recent fastidiousness that has risen within her-the clean face I hadn’t seen since birth. I stopped and thought about that snack filled face, and nearly dropped what I held.

She’s a little girl now. My baby, my second born, my brave wonder woman birth, my angry little baby, so serious and sad for months in photos, still with the lost in thought head. She is not a baby. I can carry her down the stairs to her bed, her tiny arms twisted around my neck, her breathing warm in my ear, and I realize she never liked this as a baby, was never comfortable. She wants to do things, communicates her thoughts, tells me she misses her sister when she’s gone. (Yeah, I usually have to pick my jaw up at that one)

Man, where did she go? My baby, will she always be my baby? I know I treat the two of the differently, but how can’t I? They ARE so different! Where Vivian seems to run the rails on the straight and narrow, Rosalyn just…floats by, like she’s on water, plucking lilies from the shore. She’s got that purple crayon, and she’s drawing the road herself.

She really is a fabulous little creature. Not my baby, the baby is gone, and yeah, good riddance and all that jazz.

Four years ago, I was such a mess, and I was angry and depressed and scared, and almost unwilling and unable to love my baby, my daughter.

Four years later, I can’t imagine my heart not full with the sight of her.

Happy Birthday Ros. Sing me a song.

Teetering on the edge of all her tomorrows.

High on daiquiri and bravado, I follow a friend into a bar, a dark bar, narrow, one which,  a few years back, would have held tightly in it’s fist that blue haze of cigarettes and cigar smoke. Now, it has only a few morose smokers huddled against it’s heavy doors, looking listlessly out into the rainy night. We squeeze through the awkward crowd of 80′s clad early twenty-somethings and father figure type bearded men and find seats at the very end of the bar, unfortunately positioned directly in front of the amps, from which poorly executed Johnny Cash covers are whining their way through the room.

A beer, a feisty red beer which sits so poorly in my overly fruited belly, and I stare before me into the small sweaty dance floor. The man playing the guitar mentions it’s “mother-daughter night” and I glance closer. So it is. So it is a group of smiling, shiny young girls are drinking and dancing and holding close their mothers. Mother’s who hold their daughters right back, whose eyes shine with pride and amazement that their daughter, THEIR daughter, is so perfectly beautiful and delicate, so explosive with life. So ready for what might come, hanging on the edge of tomorrow and the next day. Tangled in the hair of one with black hair is a white flower, glowing against her, the porcelain gaze of her skin made frothy almost. She shines, like the new leaves in spring, just from the bud. I find myself watching her in awe, trying to recall when I felt that simply alive.

To be those mothers now-not the daughters. That ship has sailed and frankly, i know what lives underneath the lovely dresses and perfect tresses. Doubt, fear-am I on the path I need to be? Will things be ok? Will I find love, happiness, truth, beauty? Will anyone ever love me? They were beautiful girls, but I focused on the women, the singular devotion, the quiet in their eyes. The sweet satisfaction that come from them, their strength passed on to their daughters, girls on the cusp of becoming women, of finding their footing and destiny. They were the sweet oracles of Delphi, their daughters, merely the handmaidens, for now.

It was as if a ritual, a letting go, a slice at the ribbon of childhood, allowing these mother’s to really see their daughters as the individuals they are, not just as the babies that once suckled at their breast or the rotten 13 year old’s who screamed “I hate you!” when denied the chance to see Outcast or Nelly. Watching these women, there was the sense of a job done, and done well. Satisfaction, and pride. The cubs were coming into their own, and were lovely, and strong.

They stumbled into each other, drunk, mother or daughter. And they laughed a laugh I have never laughed, but wish too more than anything. They saw each other only with love.

It was beautiful.

***************************************

My darling second born, or Shiva, destroyer of worlds as we are apt to call her, turns four on Monday.

That’s right. FOUR. I turned around, and the universe put a stubborn, obstinate, flighty little GIRL in place of a cranky sweet baby.

Already I experience such joyous things as, when told she cannot do something, usually along the lines of, no, you cannot run with scissors, she’ll cry out “You never let me do ANYTHING! It’s NOT FAIR!”

Yeahhhh. At FOUR. Not 13. FOUR.

Or the constant battles about underpants and proper bathroom hygiene. We had a 20 minute argument/fight/screaming match due to both of us being tired over her wiping her own butt.

Yeeeaaaahhhh.

Since both of us are stubborn and always believe we’re the one who is right, I’m thinking the ages of 10-18 are pretty much going to suck. Hopefully she smokes more pot than I ever did, because lord, she is smart and wily and strong and pretty fucking awesome.

She’s lying next to me in my bed as I write this, unable to sleep due to having a small nap too close to bedtime. She’s sounding like she’s snoring, but it might be the horrid congestion that’s had me feeding her cough strips all day long to moderate the croup like barking. You know the cough-the one that makes all the other mother’s stare at you at the mall like you’re this pathetic mother for taking her outside, even though it’s only post nasal drip?

Yeah. You know the one.

 

I look at her and think about last night and cast my mind ahead 15 years or so, to a day, a weekend, a night where all of this doesn’t matter-the interrupted sleep, the inability to remember to get to the bathroom 30% of the time, the screaming over nothing. I think ahead to how lovely her eyes are, and how they’ll burn with fire when she’s 20 and on the verge of taking everything by the horns. I think of her strong legs, and how she’ll maybe be a runner, and fly like the wind, the wind I could never quite take hold of.

I think ahead to that life where we have a beer, then maybe 5, and laugh about where I’ve been, and where she’s going, and all the wonderful, horrible, incredible places in between. We’ll see each other, in the strangest places, in the hairline, the wrinkles at the edges of our eyes. I’ll think of my mother, the empty placeholder between us, and wish she could see her granddaughter, be there to correct her posture and grammar. But I’ll see my mother in Rosalyn, her strength, in their inability to take no for an answer.  I think ahead to us in a dim bar, age narrowing to where it no longer matters, on a plane of is and was and will be.

I think of how beautiful she will look, teetering on the edge of all her tomorrows.

****************************

Dammit, she’s FOUR! Which makes me 32 this year, which makes me feel time speeding past me so fast I can’t hardly catch my breath. She was just this giant baby in my arms, a sturdy toddler. Now, she’s this gorgeous creature who looks so much like me I get confused. How could something so lovely, and yet so very immovable and strong be brought forth from me? My heart breaks at little bit, thinking of how bewitching she is, how sublime. How marvelous her future will be.

She’s the creature most like me, mercurial in her moods, loud in her upsets, sweet in her love. She’s the me who was, or as close to it as I might come.

And I love her, both.