music ho
I cannot tell you how happy I am.
I have gone on and on through my blogs about my music ho days, back when I was trailing all over the southeast from St. Louis to ATL to Nashville to The Ham to see so many amazing independent bands, people who knew how to play, how to produce, and were FOR REAL. I’ve watched one or two go from nobodies, who actually knew me by name, to disillusioned acts with immense talent who got screwed by their labels, to big shots who didn’t even know me any more. I’m happy for them. I just feel smug that I know how to pick them.
Five years after having my baby I am finally at a place where I can start touching on that part of my life again. I fell out of the scene — was only able to make it to a few treasured shows over the years, Rush, Driveby Truckers, My Morning Jacket, but not nearly the number of places I wanted to be.
I don’t trust anyone with my baby except my mama, and all my friends have babies of their own, so they don’t take to kindly to keeping mine til two or four am so I can go bring the rock. And as much as I’d like to bring her wtih me to bars, I don’t think that’s allowed.
I believe in starting them young– her Daddy plays screaming guitar, my best girlfriend is a former struggling Queen of Rock and Roll, and music is always present in our house, from Common to Tool to Joni Mitchell to Dan Zanes. But I can’t take her to bars, and we’re not in one of those big cities like Houston that has huge outdoor festivals where you can bring your baby to absorb all that world of goodness.
So… I’ve been sitting it out. But I know it’s here. Or it used to be here, back when I was all over the Southeast following truly heartfelt, original, kick your ass music. All those real musicians, paying their dues, traveling, making no money and doing it for love (and probably for the beer and the chicks, get real, I certainly threw myself at a musician or two, and wish I’d thrown myself at a couple of others but I was too shy or too busy ‘making good choices’), were telling me, yeah, Montgomery actually is the rap capital right now, at least for the true, real, roots rap/hiphop.
And I’m all about the rawk, and the alt. country, but I’m all about true heartfelt rap and hiphop too. I love the sampling and scratching and the truly good spontaneous poetry and realism of the lyrics. PE and Wu Tang always blew me away. Listen, really listen. If you have any sort of literary sensibility at all you can hear it.
And then I got pregnant and didn’t ever get around to checking it out.
I LOVE music. It is not about genre. I have everything in my collection from Wu Tang and PE to The Smiths to the Meat Puppets to System of a Down to Swingshot.
It is about the music, the art, the lyrics, the feelings, the connections, the shared experiences played out in the music, and the people. Music transforms us. Someone puts their heart and soul, the harsh and the triumphant, out there through creative expression. A good rap IS fucking poetry.
And then I went to work where I work and the kids are all about this. They sit for hours and look at videos online. They have big dreams– can you tell me how to copyright my song? So I responded, because these are three things that matter so much to me– libraries actually serving people’s actual needs/interests, music, and kids.
I had the privilege tonight of meeting Queazy and Li’l Chappy. They generously gave me their CD’s which I already love and will enjoy more than I’ve enjoyed anything since my last Wu Tang purchase. They are also *fine*. And Lil Chappy whipped out his LIBRARY CARD! That was like the biggest thrill of the evening.
I’ve listened to the hip hop stations around town, and heard things I like, but wondered how to cross over from big radio (cumulus) to the real thing. I know it’s here but I don’t know where.
Thanks to Queazy’s and Li’l Chappy’s generous donation of their time and thought and energy at the program tonight… maybe a few young people got some ideas. Maybe the kids will come to the library and let me teach them to blog and podcast and get them started creating their own work through audacity or acid.
And maybe I can crawl back to music, in what time I have left after working and loving my little girl, and maybe music will take me back.
can’t resist…
Just one or two more listens to Up On The Sun. Not too much more/too much more… It is such a paradox, the sweetness of that song and the abrasive, ugly things Curt Kirkwood says that I also find so funny and honest. I am too tired to write about the trickster who appears across cultures and times and literatures and indigenous’ peoples’ belief that the trickster is important you cannot access the divine without laughter and embrace of paradox the trickster character provides. I was studying it for our April 1 programs at work… maybe later I’ll have something to say about it, but for now I can only offer the transcendant lyrics of Meat Puppets songs along side Curt Kirkwood’s assertion that life is a pile of shit and he’s here to put frosting on it.
I wish I could put the song on constant play, but I don’t know how and don’t have time to find out.
Maybe we have something to talk about…
I have six little moonflower seedlings in big pots downstairs. They’re destined for the northwest fence in my back yard, if they’ll ’make’ there. I haven’t had moonflowers in years. I hoarded some seeds many years ago, either from my mom or some very dear elderly friends, and planted them at my little shack down in the holler. But my boyfriend’s fat silver doberman dug up and ate the precious seeds and spent days after hallucinating on the couch. Who knew dogs could have drug problems? Needless to say I am tickled, tickled to finally be headed back in the moonflower direction. I have no fat silver hallucinogen-seeking doberman, and I think my dogs’ drug addictions are limited to chocolate and whatever’s fermenting in the compost pile or kitchen garbage can.
That two weeks each spring when I am actually thrilled that I live here in Alabama has stretched out for several weeks already. I got my grocery shopping done at lunch. I got the really ugly patches of my yard mowed after work, before the rain. I have a book club meeting at my house tomorrow. Shaky baby is snoring on the floor because she had such a big day today. I didn’t get to read to her, but I did yoga with her AND read to her last night, and I need the mommy time.
My Curt Kirkwood-looking husband is in California for his grandma’s funeral, so shaky baby spent the day with a wonderful friend of mine so I could work. I didn’t even have to take any time off. I’ve been giving, giving, giving lately, feeling very depleted/hard done by, and even though I paid my friend, I still feel like she pampered and nutured me– she picked up my baby at the library, brought her back to me shortly before quitting time, said so many nice things… Shaky baby appeared to have had a wonderful day– outside constantly wedged with her friends into the teeny tiny baby pool or playing at the water table, providing a bridge between the two boys, ages three and six. My friend said good things about the day, and sent me home with dinner. I’m not sure if the dozen or so insanely delicious falafel I ate were vegan, but I know the chocolate chip cookies I made this morning are, so that balances out, right?
I have two friends who really know how to mother girls. I mean, it’s not that I’m not feminine. I am, at least in many, many ways that matter. I am a feeler and a perceiver and very sensitive to others’ moods and prone to try to see both sides as best I can. I cry about really good, and sometimes even about really tacky, literary or cinematic emotional situations. I sometimes find upsetting situations hilariously absurd, and can’t stop myself from giggling, which pisses my husband off no end. I know how to love babies, at least other people’s babies, now that I’m no longer in the throes of lost sleep or soaked in breastmilk and spitup with my own any more, I really, really do know how. I have the magic touch, I swear, and babies give me so much joy. If those things aren’t feminine, I don’t know what is.
But I’m sort of, well, girly impaired. I’m a hippie. I don’t even wear makeup, although I’d like to, but I’m such a snob I’m waiting til I can afford vegan cruelty free expensive stuff. I am too tight and too busy to go look for girly clothes for work. I absolutely cannot, cannot accessorize. I wear a ton of rings, and a particular necklace that is very, very precious to me, but pearls? Scarves? Forget it.
I can’t remember the last time I purchased perfume, probably ten years ago. I finally, FINALLY got me some wonderful hippie smelling shampoo and deodorant from Lush… smelling good is so important, but I have just bypassed it for so long. I hope I don’t stink, I do strive to be hygienic… but smelling good (well, good to me, hippie good, or Clinique Aromatics good)– no brainspace for that, lately. I used to pride myself on it.
My other closest girlfriend C is a TOTAL hippie. That’s why I like her so much. She wears no makeup, never smells of anything whatsoever except maybe baby wash, wears a dorag on her head like a Swiss Miss or a Mammy, has prominent tattoos, says what she thinks, is very difficult to piss off (which isn’t to say she isn’t nurturing, sensitive or anxious, because she is as much so as any of us, perhaps more) and she is totally no nonsense, and it is so relaxing and freeing.
I have to add here that we’re all more or less hippies in my set– extended breast feeders (at least a year if not longer), cosleepers, organic food buyers, attachment parenters… so it’s just degrees of hippie, not whether we are or not. 
H, the hippie friend who kept shaky baby today, always sends her home with her hair done in such a girly way. She looks like a different child– a little girl. She said to me, do I look seven? That comes from when I told her her Easter dress looked older, and she said, you mean, seven? So now I guess seven is the pinnacle of ladyship to her.
I do her hair, too, but I either jam a stylin’ hat on her curly mop head, do two (or more) spiky pigtails that look zany rather than girly– and that truly fits a pretty substantial side of her personality– or I do the southern smock and monogram pull to the side with a fat cloth bow. I’m pretty utilitarian, a one or two trick pony. I hate it that she prefers dresses… I put her in these Prince or Adam Ant or Liberace or Nancy Griffith-esque, late eighties-early nineties 18thC or froufrou military or psychedelic clothes that seem to demand those stylin’ hats or zany spiky pony tails. My friend just pulls shaky baby’s ponytail back a different way, and she looks… just like a little girl.
My other friend K got shaky baby truly girly stuff for her birthday– a tea set, a tiny cubic zirconia and sterling butterfly necklace, little Chinese stamps for her scrapbooking. This is the same friend who remembers hostess gifts, thank you notes, all the sweet little things.
My husband and I got shaky baby an automated baseball batting practice machine.
Both these particular girlfriends put on their makeup every day and look so lovely. I just don’t know how to do that!
I finally see the effects of age in my face… or I finally admit it to myself. I see where a little facelift would come in right handy. Wouldn’t it be better to get it now, instead of waiting til later when it was real bad? I think losing 30 pounds or so has contributed to the breakdown of my facial flesh… I’m sure it wasn’t hard living or stress or actual chronological years. It sure would be nice to have my high smooth cheekbone look back. Wonder what that would cost?? Is there any truly vegan, cruelty free product that will push and plump the crepey flesh back up? How much time would I have to spend with my legs in the air (yoga! duh!) to remedy this? Probably the next hundred years. I was looking over a slideshow today of 5 hair makeup and clothing makeovers that ’took years off’ the subjects’ look. H’mmm…
One of my glamorous girlfriends is slightly older and one is slightly younger, and they both look lovely all the time. So I know, at the bottom of it, it isn’t about age at all. Now that I’m pushing forty I’m just going to have to sit at their feet and learn.
If you see it closer then the finer points will show…
Not too much more/Too much more…
so thankful
I have to post quickly, just because the mood of my last post was so glum. I’ve had so much I wanted to say, but between my thinking of late about the energy I pour out toward others and whether that might be better turned inward, and my activities of the last week or two, I haven’t been able. And I’m still not. I just wanted to say briefly.
I’ve spent the last two weeks and way too much money sweating over trying to have a great birthday party for shaky baby yesterday. I am an extremely ambitious party planner, but I am not a top down person, and my husband figures if you can’t get it done the day before or the day of it’s not worth it so… you can imagine the chaos and mass of half done tasks all through the house and yard. I really need to call up my inner military strategist.
I also really need to be more consistent about all those things most of the time so I don’t have to panic when it’s time to have folks over. Or throw away all my stuff so dusting is not a major project. Or, just get over it. Why can’t I just say, fuck no I don’t dust, ever, why would I? My life would be so much easier.
I can’t believe how much I stress. I just want so badly to have people over, and I forget between times just how badly I can screw it up. I never hit the right stride of preparation and relaxation. Or else, I need a maid/server.
We spent her birthday with a dear friend of hers from school… then I had a cold and stayed home with her Wednesday as well, then our baby sitter had a terribly contagious issue at her place so we didn’t have child care Thursday so I split my day up between having her all day and working the evening 1/2 day… then back to work in earnest Friday, half a day Saturday and that insane party.
I think the kids had a good time, truly, and I hope the parents did too. We did manage the pinata of course, and to decorate cookies. A couple of friends brought very nice additions to help out. The weed flowers which make our back yard look so ragged, but which are so beloved of shaky baby, were a huge hit, they were scattered everywhere like fresh rushes for us to tread upon. Thoughtful parents took all the dangerous implements of destruction or bodily harm that I thought I’d adequately stowed away and truly adequately stowed them away. I am trying not to think about anything except the positive– like, after everyone left, my weekend still had two days left in it.
I took her to get her hair cut Thursday, and washed her hair in real shampoo tonight– we usually do water only, or Tate’s Natural Miracle. Her little curls came right out. They are tighter than botticelli but looser than corkscrew, but cut so close to her head they just tighten right up. When you look at the back of her head you can almost hear ’sproingggg’. I need to get her one of those silky mob caps women used to wear to keep their hairdos pretty as they slept, or just a satin pillow case.
As I kissed her good night I realized I’ve spent most of the last week simply celebrating her existence. That is entirely appropriate. She’s an amazing little girl and she is an amazing blessing. I wished her happy birthday again. She said, am I six now? I said no, 359 more days. And we need to think of something special for when you’re six, like going to New York or Paris like Eloise. She said, will Eloise be there? I said no, but we can go to the same places, right? But we need to save our pennies.
My step daughter is here– my stepson had to stay home so he could be in a robotics competition. Today we went to the park in the morning and ate McDonalds breakfast (I know, not vegan, but a girl’s got to eat) picnic style, flew kites, talked to one of my girlfriends who was there too, went to Lowe’s for garden plants, kept a friend’s children for several hours while she’s in the hospital so her exhausted husband could clean and nap, decorated more cookies, and when he took the little ones home, worked a bit in our raised beds and planted some of what we bought today.
You should have seen my little 1.08 year old out in the four o’clock sun and breeze. She would lay on the beach towel, butt in the air and face to the ground, kicking her legs out– just luxuriating in the fresh air and the loving earth under her cheek. It was a beautiful thing. I love all of the kids but they mostly entertain themselves– the 1.08 year old is usually stuck with me. I did take about ten minutes or more with each child especially to do something with them, though. I’d envisioned their visit as a structured repeat of the birthday party, or actually as a chance to do the birthday party right in all the ways I’d failed yesterday… but they arrived just as we got back from Lowe’s so I couldn’t prepare, so nothin’ doin’. They were a bit bratty, but shoot. Their mom’s in the hospital, I had not sorted anything out for them to do– it was fine. I know that even when one of them (including mine) is crying or tattling every five minutes they’d still rather be together. I sure wish shaky baby had let me play the ’whoever pops their balloon first wins’ game though.
Have most of my herbs planted, the ones I spend a fortune buying at the supermarket anyway, and some flowers… husband working on strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, onions… have no idea whatever what to do with the rest of the yard. I got an extra azalea, some Spanish lavender and a gorgeous blue (really purple) hybrid tea rose. I did not get the hydrangea… I thought about how much space it would need in full sun, which would be exactly the area that I’d prefer to keep open at least until I plan my yard a bit better.
The places I want to fill up with lovely fragrant blooms are in shade to semi shade. For the rest of the yard I have in mind these woodland/cottage/formal gone wild curving vistas stretching away, leaving plenty of lawn for play and leading the eye or the walker back toward a couple of different seating areas among the trees and flowers, plus a butterfly garden… curving vistas really take up a lot of space, and a lot of planning, and a lot of money. Too much is not enough when it comes to putting plants in, and it looks shabby to just put in a bit here and a bit there, especially on that endless east fence line. Trees always look so much more stately in threes or rows, and I don’t know how I’ll work it out and stay within my budget and get much done during each planting season, and the more I think about all we want to do the smaller my yard looks! We can always move our raised beds, of course… We’ll see.
I did realize that I want only green foliage and purple, white, lavendar to gray, and variations on blue and fuchsia that appear purple in my vistas. That was a HUGE step forward. Knocked out the Carolina jasmine (jessamine) I wanted for the scent but… wrong color!! Fringe flower is the right color and it smells lovely… but it was seventeen dollars. Next time. The pale purple hybrid tea smelled delightful so that was my splurge.
And so… off to clean party mess for a time before bed. One more lovely weekend day to go for me before back to work!
Tree says climb
I think it’s a child’s job to put us in touch with the rightness of certain impulses or experiences that we’ve long since lost sight of.
I have some low level angst about (among many, many other things) raising my child and stepkids living here in the Dixie Burbs because I feel strongly that children need unstructured outdoor time in order to thrive, preferably in the country. We live on a busy street, our land is stripped of topsoil and floral or animal diversity, and there’s no f-ing way I would let my kids out of my sight for any amount of time *at all* even in our spacious fenced in back yard. I’m terrified they’ll wander away and get hit by a car or that someone will entice them with candy or just snatch them.
As a child I spent hours alone doing things I would never let my child do alone at the same age, ever. I spent hours outdoors by myself. I walked for hours in the woods, sometimes in charge of my much younger brother, and played at the edge of ponds and creeks.
My husband grew up in Napa CA but it was a different place then. Starting from about the age of eight he and his ragtag band of friends stayed out on their bicycles all day long. They could safely pedal all over town, and wild, undeveloped land was just around most any corner. He never heard of any strangers abducting or trusted adults molesting kids left alone in this way, and nor did I.
I couldn’t let my child or stepkids do that, I’d be panicking the whole time.
Too, I wish my childhood had been a bit more balanced. I wouldn’t take anything for those long hours of freedom in the woods but my family always lived in pretty isolated spots. Social support really helps a child make sense of and heal from trauma.
For me and for my husband both I think the long, long hours out in the fresh air in all weathers was a blessed refuge from unhappy (or worse) home lives.
But looking back on it I can’t imagine much that is more precious. The fantasies spun– everything from Narnia or Tolkien style epics to Little House in the Big Woods-style survival on my own in the snowbound woods– the serenity found, the difficult situations that began to heal in those hours outdoors– there is just nothing better. I think a lack of nature– wide open space, freedom to navigate as one pleases, fresh air, sunshine, cold or heat, mud, dirt, plants, insects– makes a healthy child, emotionally and physically, and I think lack of those things is at the heart of many so-called ills for today’s kids, no matter how loving and present their parents are.
Unstructured time outdoors instils a contact so desperately needed –with basic physical realities, with one’s physical self and one’s inner resources– and so painfully absent. I know I certainly am missing it ever since I became a creature of cerebral pursuits, by turns plodding and suffering incredibly through educational, professional, romantic, financial and parenting experiences.
I’ve always felt a faint-to-painful unease living in urban / suburban situations but over time I’ve just learned to make do, as we all do. Having a baby brought me closer than I’d been in years to the pleasures and boundaries of being a truly physical being again… but that was only the tip of the iceberg of what I did not even know I’d lost.
So at our place we have these crappy scrubby trees that are probably just weeds nobody ever cut down and then it was too late and they were trees.
We spent several hours working in our yard this weekend. (I asked my husband if he remembers trying to throw away the kindling wood, and told him I’d blogged about the whole tree/fire saga. he just made a ‘nyah’ face at me. Haha!) Anyway, darned if she didn’t climb those crappy trees and just love it. It was the first time I’ve ever seen her do such a thing. My ass squinched up real tight, reflexively and painfully, in the way that it does when I’m afraid something will happen to her– I had visions of falls, like in Bridge to Terabithia, wasn’t that it? or of her getting hooked or cut or worse on some jutting branch or the chain link fence next to the trees on her way down. I had to control my urge to hustle her down out of that tree, and reduce my admonitions to her to be careful and hold on tight to only once every other minute.
And it was pretty darn neat. She was so happy. She climbed over, and over, and over. She installed herself in one of them and just stayed up there, peering at us through the leaves like a gorilla in the mist and saying mom, dad, look at me! Look how high I am (about four feet). She sang, and sang, and sang, Winnie the Pooh style, little made up songs about how she felt up in that tree. She got stuck over and over and went from asking us to get her down to navigating her own way down. She begged to climb the tree one more time when, hours later, it was finally time go go in
I suddenly remembered something I’d long forgotten.
Tree says climb.
I remembered at least cerebrally even if I couldn’t really bring it back, the compulsion of childhood to climb any and everything vertical. Because it’s there! What a wonderful mindset to be in– tree says climb. I climb. Why can’t we live our entire lives that way?
Of course my angst kicked in– I can’t give my baby real nature, she has to climb these crappy scrubby weed trees.
I realized that to a child a tree is a tree, whether it’s an ancient crab apple tree with limbs broad enough for me to lie down on and stuff myself on crab apples, or a scrubby little crap tree in the Dixie Burbs. I always got in trouble because I could not control my longing to climb a small young ornamental tree in my grandmother’s tiny suburban back yard (it’s huge, now, in spite of all the abuse it took from little me). She’s just four, almost five. So many mundane, substandard things are full of wonder to her.
What a lesson. I feel even more grateful for our yard, such as it is. I realize that she has the faculties to create a precious experience of fresh air and connection with her physical body, of challenges to her strength and bravery, right where she is.
Tree says climb.
The contents of my child’s pockets
the contents of my child’s pockets
I give her new jeans, a coat, or a dress. She says, does it have pockets?
I empty her pockets as I do the laundry. Yesterday was something new– a small, pretty plastic butterfly.
At the holidays my husband laughed as he told me he saw her pull out and ring a fairy-sized metal bell.
She always stops and darts like a bird to pick up a choice bit of gravel, or an acorn– I’ve removed more of those from her pockets than I can count in the years since she’s started preschool.
For a long time, I superstitiously kept all the little stones. I thought they might somehow be a mark of some affinity we’d need to know about, that might be weakened if I took it too lightly. Or maybe we had to put them around the house because of her kinship to some feng shui aspect I haven’t had the time to look up much less nurture– earth?
Let’s not even talk about a trip to the beach.
Finally I got the courage to start throwing the bits of gravel away, though many are still lying around the house. There are about seven on the sink in the laundry room. I just looked away, this evening. I’m not strong enough to dispose of them today.
In one most touching phase, she was folding her art projects in half, and in half again, and again, until she had a bit of paper compact and hard as a rock. Look what I brought you, Mummy! Slowly she brought it out and unfolded it for me, beaming with pride, generosity, and accomplishment.
I saved every one and am overwhelmed by these wrinkled bits of paper. It took immense courage for me to begin, only recently– these were not just rocks! she made these!– to throw away those which did not represent ‘her best work–’ like she’s some sort of Mary Cassatt, whose legacy I have to guard and conserve.
These are her choices. She finds them significant and sticks them in her pocket, holds them for some reason, sometimes to give me, but more often for me to find at laundry time.
Are they little totems, small familiars? Or can I cast them like bones to gain some kind of understanding?
Even if I could, it seems like that would almost be a species of prying. You know, like witchcraft or a ouija board. Where I go, you cannot follow.
The meaning is in the very act itself– of spying and choosing, or creating, and carefully stowing–
of discovering and realizing– her dimpled, callused hands chose this. Her beautiful, dirty little fingers plucked this and saved it.
I think I’ll start a big clear glass jar. It will be like a three-dimensional scrapbook. I know it’s really detritus, but it’s treasure to her, at least for that fleeting moment. Or, what is it?
Maybe it will yield some insight for her, about who she is or was, some day. Though she’s not nervous, not like I am, and she probably won’t ever need to ask. They’re her bones to cast, if she even chooses. She may choose to live consciously, and in only this moment, a good choice.
I am supermom
I am super mom
So sue me.
Well it helps to be raising the coolest kid on this earth. But it’s really beside the point.
Here’s the icing on the cake. Or the proverbial straw, more like it.
Shaky baby loves pancakes. What have I done every morning for the past several days or maybe couple weeks?
Got up and made pancakes.
From scratch.
With non hydrogenated vegan butter and pure maple syrup, of course.
It has to be better for her than the refined sugar and flour in breakfast cereals– even the small amount in the generic cheerios we get.
Yep, cigarette smokin’, adderall-poppin’, scrapbookin’, curtain makin’, vegan cookin’, taking on to much-in’, highball swillin’, nightly story time-in’ beggin’ for a divorce, Spoon-lovin,’ world savin’ (one library book at a time), kitchen redoin’ super mom.
I don’t know how long it will last, but it’s been going on for a while and I am nearly at the top of my game.
I got up this morning shortly after four, after tossing and turning for quite a while. I made pumpkin muffins and got started on from scratch, vegan veggie burgers and sweet potato rolls to share with my girlfriend tonight. I made said pancakes. I updated my list of folks for Christmas cards– oy vey! I’m up to fifty four and counting! — and addressed and slipped photos inside several. I took the baby to school, went to Wal Mart and Dollar Tree, came home to finish our supper, and got started cleaning up the house.
WTF?
Shaky baby goes to gymnastics Monday and Wednesday, 4.50-5.45. For the past few weeks and for the next couple weeks she also has swimming lessons Tuesday-Thursday at 5.50. I cart her to school at 8.15 and go off to work, to return home about 6.20 exhausted. I have two wonderful days off– Sunday and Monday, today being Monday– and those go so quickly and I feel so bitter when they are over. I spent the luxurious days off of Thanksgiving week– working my ass off.
We got our kitchen mostly painted… I have one more set of curtains to make. I cooked a big vegan Thanksgiving dinner. We watched Santa Clause (can you believe Tim Allen’s a big cokehead? I’m in total denial. but I should have known.) and made some family portraits on our front porch that will do for Christmas cards. I took the kids to get scrapbooking supplies and let them print some photos on my computer. I’ve started my Christmas cards and I’ve started ordering gifts and I’m providing the table decorations, flatware and plates for my mom’s group Christmas party. I work constantly on the mountains of laundry and dog hair bunnies and dishes.
And that’s just the stuff I remember.
My husband and I have been going round and round. You know what’s sad? A housekeeper visit a couple times a month would eliminate about 85% of my gripe with him. Or, if he doesn’t want to pay a housekeeper he can pay me. He says no damn way will he pay me.
I called my (divorced, sadly) brother almost in tears to bitch about the situation, and one of the pithy things he said– he’s a man of few words, my bro, but they’re good words– is that men just don’t have that problem with taking on too much.
It was like the clouds opened to reveal the golden rays of sun.
Well at the time it wasn’t really like that. But as I’ve thought on it… it’s become kinda like that.
My husband is so much better than most husbands I know. That’s the other sad part. He brings shaky baby home from school most nights and there is never, ever a question whether I will have child care so that I can go do something important to me, baby free. He takes shaky baby to gymnastics and swimming lessons three times a week– I only take her once. (After five years of bitching and complaining on my part) he alternates weeks with me, cooking and doing dishes or getting shaky baby her bath and reading her a story and putting her to bed. He is patient and kind to her almost without exception. He’s a workhorse. When he wants to, he will work til he drops to assist me with something– like that damn kitchen, or the Halloween party we had a few weeks ago.
It isn’t that he isn’t working. He may be working somewhat less than I am, but he works.
I have *got* to start taking care of myself first.
I clean, cook, clean some more, fold, craft, cook, drive here, drive there, craft some more… I put everything outside of myself, first.
My attic office is a shambles. My bedroom is piled with laundry. I never take long warm baths any more.
Our kitchen looks damn good though.
It’s so clear, what’s happening here. I have got to put myself first each day. I can’t spend *more* hours on selfish pursuits than I do on family pursuits– well I guess I could but I won’t. But when I run out of hours at the end of the day, if something is going to be left undone, it had better not be my personal, emotional and spiritual work.
I can take care of myself– healing work, journaling, organizing and planning, bath and high quality paperback fiction, creating a comfort zone in my bedroom and office– before I set out to be supermom and the best damn library director, friend, and all round person *ever.*
I don’t know why I do this. And I thought I was well beyond the problem of being unable to say no. But it goes far deeper than I ever imagined. My inner house is a terrible mess, while I struggle to keep up appearances, do the right thing, make the world a better place, and buy the affection and admiration of the people I care about– and the people I don’t care about, too.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Doesn’t it suck to realize that one’s problems with someone else really do start within oneself? Sigh.
Okay gotta go finish those curtains, fold three loads of laundry, clean the bathroom, and veganize my favorite petits-fours cake.
Hahahahaha!
I really am going to do those things. But first I’ll clean my little office some, make it more of a haven of comfort and sweetness and less of a dumping ground for the ruins of my attempts to keep up appearances and make the world a better place at my own expense. I’ll get a nice warm bath today too.
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Currently listening : Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga By Spoon Release date: 10 July, 2007 |
mama’s Bible
Monday, October 15, 2007
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mama’s bible When we were living in Hill Country Population 767, Texas I was between six and ten years old. Back then we got S&H green stamps at the Superette. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&H_Green_Stamps I guess mom got sick of fooling with them. And I guess that’s what they depended upon to happen. But S & H didn’t count on me. I licked them and stuck them and counted them and saved them up to get a Bible with a white imitation leather cover. I probably had to save my pennies to pay the shipping and handling, too. I had to have it. It zipped shut. I think it probably took a while. We were educated, but we were damn poor. I made my Dad, who was an angry atheist thanks to his tour in Viet Nam (and I don’t blame him one f-ing bit), sign it for me on the This Holy Bible Presented To page opposite the picture of the Dead Sea at Sunrise inside the front cover, as if he and Mom had given it to me. 7/10/78. He did it. I was eight years old. I trace the roots of my bizarre, at least bizarre for such an agnostic, deconstructed, materialist, women’s studies corrupted, call-it-the-Universe type belief system, ability to quote just the appropriate scripture, to that time. I was a GA (shudder). I won a prize (probably a large quantity of Super Bubble) one summer at Vacation Bible School for reciting the name of every single book from Genesis to Revelation. Mom and I went every week to hear Brother Gary Buckner, a round faced blond man who was probably younger than I am now, preach at First Baptist. I got saved and ‘warshed’ there when I was eight or so, dunked by Brother Gary in the big baptistry with the heavy clear glass panel on the front. This means I perceive that I have not only my salvation, just in case it’s needed when the book of life is opened, but also the insider’s right to question and even tear down the belief system of my childhood. It’s easy to say all these things that I do, from the inside. What about those who don’t have that assurance, and can’t muster enough belief to go and get it done, but continue to worry– what if? And what do those people think, whose livelihood it is to ’save’ people and dunk them year after year? Do they think something really happens? Dunno. But I certainly marched out as quick as I could to get the cross marked in holy water on shaky baby’s hairless pate in front of various loved ones and my church congregation. I didn’t even wait around for her to choose for herself. Now she’s in too– what she chooses to do with it is up to her. Anyway, last night I was looking for the context for the title of a book I am reading– Like Trees Walking, a fictionalized story about the last lynching in Mobile, in 1981. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdonaldD.htm [watch out, upsetting picture here, but also a good account and some thoughtful writing quoted] You know, the case Morris Dees used to break the Klan? I don’t think they mention Morris in this novel, and I’m still not sure what as trees walking means in the context of the book, although the words standing free of the Biblical context remind me of that chilling moment in Macbeth, when Birnam Wood moves on Dunsinane. The narrator in Like Trees Walking talks about his anticlimactic experience with water baptism.But that’s a side note. So I was scanning the shelf downstairs and I couldn’t find my white leatherette zipper Bible. First I panicked. All I could see was the NIV my aunts gave me when I graduated college. Did they think I’d read it more if it was in more accessible language? Please. Lord, let there be a King James here somewhere, I thought. Did I throw it away? I’ve certainly been in a purging frenzy over the last few years, wanting some control of what my children learn about me after I am gone. But my little childhood Bible, that I saved up S&H Green Stamps to get? Why wouldn’t I pass that on to my baby? Then I found my other King James, a big red plastic leather bound from my high school friend Nikki, dated 1993. I guess she thought I didn’t have one. Sigh. Never mind. That was the time in my life I was really churchgoing constantly, as an adult– where I became an Episcopalian. Almost fifteen years later I still have my membership in that little mountain church, that little den of intellectual questioning and historicist, deconstructionist, feminist analysis of our faith and our scripture. Anyway. Whew! Crisis averted. I could look up my verse in King James. Cause everybody knows, if it ain’t King James, it ain’t Bible. * * * As a girl, my mother used to sleep on the floor instead of in the bed, so that she wouldn’t get too comfortable and could get up in the morning to study. I’ve always wanted to know that steadfast little girl. Course, each week she also took her 35 cents allowance and bought seven chocolate bars and sat down and ate every single one right then. What a mix! Anyway I always wanted to know that little girl. I haven’t thought of it in years but I remember so clearly now how I wanted to connect with the part of my mother that was once little like me. And wouldn’t my little girl want to know me? Wouldn’t she want at least the chance to touch and hold that beat up old white Bible that her mommy used to carry faithfully to church each Sunday morning when not much bigger (and definitely less smart) than she? It’s not about passing on a family faith. Lord (yes I still feel free to call on the Jesus of my childhood) knows it’s not about that. It is about letting her connect, if she wishes, with that little girl in ways I wished I could connect with my own mother. I have it in my hand. I waited until just this precise moment to face the task of either finding it, or not. It was on the shelf here in my little attick hideaway. The zipper has long since been broken. The white cover is cracked and dirty. I can’t tell if it is thin leather, or if it is a leather pattern painted/stamped onto heavy paper. There are a couple of places marked with torn paper bookmarks or underlines, and there’s a thirty-year-old Lift High the Cross sticker from a long ago revival, but there’s not much else there. When I was really going to church, I used the big red plastic Bible Nikki gave me, I guess– easier to see and read. Still, it’s here in my lap, and I’ll probably print this little story to put between its pages, in case I die before the occasion comes up for me to explain to her where it came from, what it means and what it doesn’t. |
today
Today’s myspace post:
just today
Current mood: 
calm
Going today up to way in the country to see the dear friend who kept shaky baby back after maternity leave ended but she was too young to go to Montessori school. She doesn’t drive these days, but even so, it’s a lot to ask her to be the one to always drive down here.
She’s such a neat person. Among many other things, like me, she abruptly left a youth of recreational drug use (although for me it was pretty strictly alcohol and cigarettes only, and she grew up a lot earlier than I did) to become a mother. She is a wonderful caring hippie mommy. She trusts her instincts and is suspicious of The Man. She is much stronger about parenting in a way she believes in… at some cost to herself, I might add. I am far too selfish and unsure of myself to be as strong as she is.
She cloth diapered. For the first few years I knew her every time I came to her house there were stacks and stacks of adorable clean cloth diapers. She cooked healthy home made foods instead of giving her kids processed foods. She breastfed for a long time. She had her second baby at home, pretty much by herself before the midwives showed up. She is staying home with her children in spite of her family’s limited income. Like me she still has that punk edge, and issues aplenty, but her babies come first.
This girl and her sister– well they are ten years and more younger than I am, but they remind me of my best friend in high school. The day I met each of them I just got this good feeling from them. There’s just that deep, real, been there done that honesty and sense of humor about them that I would like to associate with country people… but I have never met anyone like these girls.
Their backgrounds are different yet similar… trailers yes, but my best friend in high school had wonderful loving parents who stayed together and these girls had hard, harsh broken home childhood– and came out just as hard headed, beautiful and determined, more so really than my dear friend from high school. You know how redneck girls are often so much better groomed– better haircuts and makeup– than city girls? None of them went to college. They are all three very smart, big fish in small ponds who breezed through high school without having to study, but without bothering to worry about college. They all have horse sense and an ability to see through the bullshit, their own bullshit, and others’, and call it like they see it, that sometimes just has me rolling with laughter. They are nice girls, but they don’t let being nice keep them from seeing and telling the truth.
I can’t describe it. There are some people who just remind you of the good parts of your childhood in such a way that you can truly be yourself, whether you’re seventeen or thirty seven, as if those twenty years never passed.
Twenty years… I’ve been thinking a lot about that number, as my reunion is coming up this summer. It hardly seems possible. I am still just as frivolous, just as cool, and almost as stupid, as I was when I was seventeen. I hit a turning point about thirty, and another as my baby began to grow and I slowly became a mother. But inside… my essence is pretty much the same. I’m a party girl. I am deeply introverted and shy– but I need my friends and community. My imagination paints huge beautiful emotional and visual pictures in my head, and after all these years I still can’t manage to write them down. I love, love, love to work, like in the garden or cooking or quilting or on the house, but I fucking hate doing the grind of someone else’s routine if I can’t see the bigger picture.
I don’t know how it can be that this time has gone by. Time goes faster and faster, and while life doesn’t necessarily get easier– okay, I must admit I prefer my problems now to the problems I had in my twenties– not easier, but… I dunno. Anyway, life becomes more and more precious every day.
I have some deeper and darker thoughts regarding just how precious life is but I’ll have to save them for another day. I want to tote the baby quilt up there
to work on while the kids play and we talk. I want to get some garbage out of the house because it’s trash day and it’s good feng shui to keep this stuff moving all the time. I wanted to take some vegan cupcakes up there too but I’m starting to run out of time.
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Currently listening : Bareback By Hank Dogs Release date: By 02 February, 1999 |
cosleeping
A fellow mom just sent this link to the Mother Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at Notre Dame to our mom’s group.
Cosleeping is such a polarizing thing, unfortunately. Add it to the arsenal of issues mothers use to tell each other they are good or bad parents.
I believe in it… but in my mom friend’s post she notes how she loved cosleeping and how eventually she had to transition into letting him sleep by himself, resulting in better sleep for her and her child.
There are various ways in which cosleeping can be accomplished safely and save the sanity of parents. It’s a paradigm thing I think… we come at it from the position that it is best for babies and parents if babies sleep alone (I certainly did), and so we aren’t prepared to create a cosleeping arrangement that might feel safe to us and let us get good sleep but still work with the baby’s needs, such as an attached but separate cosleeper or a large firm safe mattress with no gaps around the headbooard or frame.
What if we came at it from the position of understanding how babies and mothers respond to each other, and put safety and parental sanity at the top of the list and *then* evaluated options– of which there are many?
Some of each, I say, according to what’s right for each family. But for us, cosleeping benefits have far outweighed the concerns. And… we never hung our hat on it, particularly. We came at it accidentally. Sometimes sleeping with her drove me *crazy* and I needed to sleep alone real real bad. Sometimes sleeping with her was the sweetest and most helpful thing in the world. She ended up in our bed for a while, she slept in a toddler bed for a while, she transitioned herself into a big girl bed the moment we set it up. It was all good. I fervently cherish and believe in it… and think safe and satisfying arrangements for baby and parent sleeping are as varied as the personalities and needs of families.
moon baby
I was on the phone with my mom, smoking a cig on the back porch, when a small pale shade blew silently and quickly past me and disappeared into the dark.
I walked out to check on her, and she was digging in the horseshoe pit in the pale moonlight.
I walked back to the porch and finished my conversation with my mom, and then went out to get her.
I said honey aren’t you cold? She said, as she always does, I have long sleeves. I said, what are you doing? She was burying croquet balls. She said, burying balls. She had a little tiny garden trowel. I said, can’t we go inside now? I can’t leave my baby outside. She said, the moon will keep me company.
Wow.
