So the other morning I was getting ready to drive to the office and I was talking to Jenny about work stuff, and we weren't done talking and I needed to go BUT I didn't have my phone headphones because I left them on my desk at work, so I put my phone on speaker and sort of shouted at it and then held it near my ear so I could hear.
I brought the phone close to my mouth, and yelled, I don't think this counts as hands-free; it's way more distracting than just holding the phone to my ear. I'd better call you when I get to the office.
Just do what I do, Jenny said. Stick it in your bra!
Luckily I had on a scoop neck top, so I just put the iPhone into the iCleavage, and then talked to my boobs like they were Jenny for the next forty five minutes.
You totally won't see that in a Victoria's Secret ad. But you should!
Wow. I was going to write a little bit about Michael Jackson, but then I read Susie Bright's post, and Megan Smith's.
I picked the girls up from camp tonight late and told them about MJ while we drove home. They were crushed, Sophie in tears, because their favorite songs to listen to while we drive around or clean up their room are ABC, Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, I Want You Back, and Never Can Say Goodbye. Plus, they know the little-kid Michael Jackson from their Free to Be You and Me DVD. He sings about what he'll be when he grows up, which was already making me a little sad every time I saw it.
Tonight I went to yoga class and we did abs to Billie Jean, but my favorite was always Ben. Kinda sappy, but I'm a total softie pushover. Dont' tell anyone.
And Farrah Fawcett. When I was a kid, she was the beautiful woman in the poster on the wall of every straight teenage boy. I guess she's the person (along with Tina Turner and Bo Derek) who introduced me to What Sexy Is, now that I think about it.
So between work (hectic, to say the least, but good) and other stuff (tax audit! shitload of tough financial paperwork for divorce! such fun!), and the whole Mom to Four Kids thing, I've been a little busy. I'm really and truly looking forward to this weekend. The kids are with their respective fathers, so SG and I are going to go for a ride
and also to Monterey to swim, dive, snorkel, bike ride (bicycles this time), and maybe take out the boat. Then on Sunday I get to go to San Francisco to meet up with some of my visiting-from-out-of-state extended family members who are, awesomely, some of my very most favorite people on the planet. It proves how much I love them that I'm willing to brave driving up to the city on Pride Day. Honestly, I hate to drive and I hate to drive in San Francisco especially, and this is the biggest parade in the history of California forever and ever, Amen. Maybe I will just train it in. With my camera. Because, seriously; Dykes on Bikes, The Leather Contingent, AND Drag Queens? That's a lot of fabulousness marching on the road right there.
So, I'm a total monster who made Willow cry today because I yelled (not really at her, but definitely in her general vicinity) about the mess in the living room. Why are you crying? I asked her. I'm not MAD at you, I just want you to pick up your shistuff. (That's what happens when you start to say shit and then remember this is the six year old, not the twelve year old you are talking loudly to.) She looked up at me, all snotty and red eyed, Because you are mean, she said. Because you are yelling and mean and I was TRYING to play with my toys in the living room.
I left the girls with Lex then, so I could drive over to the skate park and drop off Nate. When I got back, they'd thrown away the wrappers and trash that was on the floor, picked up the dirty dishes, put away the shoes and papers. The rug was three quarters of the way vacuumed, and two little girls jumped out from behind the couch yelling Surprise!
I really did yell at them before I left. I know it's a bad idea, even when the words are flying out of my mouth, but I get tired of my kind and reasonable requests being ignored. Still, though, I love these people, why the hell do I have to yell at them?
I apologized. Especially to Willow. She was over it by then, and brushed off my apology, gave me a hug and a smile. When she was so tiny and so sick, I couldn't have imagined ever yelling at her. All I wanted to do was protect her. Keep her safe and happy and make her feel loved. Same goes for all my kids, of course. I don't want to fight with them, but I also don't want to live in a sea of crap where everything is gross and I can't find anything. I don't want them to grow up to be slobs, to expect someone to clean up their messes, to not care about how their actions ripple across the household where they live.
Later SG came by on his motorcycle and stayed for supper (quinoa with chicken apple sausage, bell peppers - orange, yellow, red, and spinach) and then let the kids sit on his bike before taking us all out for ice cream. The kids were messy and tangled after a long day, but I looked at them, laughing and talking all at once, and I looked at SG, so patient and funny and kind with all of us, and decided that this is the picture of my family that I need to call up when I find myself angry at the kids. Yelling really doesn't have a place in my house. Or anyone's.
Yesterday morning I had to go to the pharmacy before work, and of course it took for-ev-er. I sat in the waiting room, catching up on work email from my phone while I waited. And waited. When it was finally time for me to go, I headed toward the exit and fell in step behind a woman who was pushing an older woman in a wheelchair, and that woman, the older one, was pushing an older man in his wheelchair. Your wheels are bumping together! the younger woman said to the woman in the chair. She was cheerful and didn't appear to be struggling, but I approached her anyway and asked if she could use an extra pair of hands. Thanks, she laughed, but this is the best entertainment they get all day. And the trio continued their wobbly path out of the building and across the parking lot.
Lots has been going on here these past few days. Willow graduated from kindergarten:
My brother and his wife and baby Max came for a visit:
::swoon::
I went to a pretty outdoor wedding with SG, where I met and instantly loved a bunch of his extended family members, and talked him into dancing with me. I watched Napoleon Dynamite for the first time, with SG and the kids. The boys had already seen it, and I'd heard them saying Napoleon, gimme somma yer tots, for so long it was great to finally get the reference. Though now they will say, Gaaaawd, idiot! under their breath and when I get on them for it they say, Oh, I was just quoting Napoleon Dynamite, Mom. I swear.
I'm not sure why -- it's not the end of the calendar year or the beginning of school or anything -- but I've been all reflective about the General State of my little family lately. Things are going so much better than I'd even hoped they would be at this time last year. My kids are truly happy, and after seeing them on Sunday, my mom, brother, and sister-in-law all commented on how content they are. How relaxed and comfortable they are with each other and the world. After so many years of wondering how in the hell everyone else does it, I'm finally starting to think that I'm getting close to doing a good job at being the mom to these kids. I'm still terminally behind on housework, terrible at keeping any sort of schedule around the house, and way too much of a pushover, but I'm really happy, which I think is coming through loud and clear to my children. I don't think it's the case that if I am happy, they will be too; but I do think that they look to me to be sure things are okay, that the sky is clear, that it's safe to relax and have fun.
Each of my four children had a very different birth than the others, so the stories I tell at bedtime in February, June, October, and December don't resemble each other at all.
I didn't ever have an underwater birth, and there's no way that doing it unassisted (Freebirthing) is for me, but I still can't wait to see this episode and hear how these totally non-medical births compare to my own minimally medical home delivery:
And, I can only imagine the heat that these women must get for the choice they're making. Most people in my life were not shy about telling me what a big mistake it was for me to have a baby at home on purpose. I didn't come away from my first two labors the poster mom for childbirthing, much less doing it at home without so much as a tylenol. Both my boys were induced; I took any drugs the nurses were pushing, thanked them, and then asked for more; and I begged and demanded an epidural starting when I was about not-even-1 centimeter dilated. Things were different this time, though, with my daughter. I found out that I was pregnant just a couple of months after I had a miscarriage, when my boys were not quite 2 and 4 years old. I thought about having a homebirth, because I was so insprired by a couple of my close friends who'd done it recently. My first two birth experiences left me wanting to be able to talk about the next one the way these women did about theirs. They never had to say the words, "It changed my life," but I heard them whenever they talked about it.
When I was six months pregnant with Sophie, my June baby, her dad and I split up. Far from being the tragedy that lots of my family and friends thought this was for me, it was actually a huge, freeing relief. Her dad was really skeptical of non-hospital deliveries, and we never even discussed the subject. Within a week of becoming a single mom, I had found a midwife, Veronica, and made a Grand Master Plan for my homebirth. Veronica worked with an MD in the wings in case of emergencies, but she had more experience than any of the OBs I ever had. She'd spent time as a traveling midwife in impoverished villages, delivering babies with no doctors on hand. She said that she missed being able to do breech deliveries now that she was back in the US. Also? This woman had a root canal, completely unmedicated. (Typing that gives me the shivers.)
I remembered how great it was to be in a hot shower during labor with my first two, so I started asking around about renting a birthing tub. I didn't want to spend much, and I found a great match with a couple not too far away who rented out Rubbermaid horse troughs just for that purpose. I lost count of how many times I had to say, "No, not straight from the farmyard." (eyeroll) "They're bought and only used for birthing."
Once the tub was set up in my living room, I went to the hardware store for a new garden hose to fill it up with. Everyone recommended using the washing machine hook up to fill the tub: just connect the hose, open up the spout, and soon after you'd be immersed in warm water, laboring to soft music and low lights with no beeping monitors or IVs jammed in your wrist. But. I lived in a two bedroom apartment, and the washing machine was communal and down the hall. No problem! I thought, I'll just use my kitchen sink!
So my due date, June 2nd, arrived and I was still pregnant. I'd just gotten over a horribly wretched case of strep throat that hit me after I'd spent two weeks taking care of my boys who had it one after the other. 105 degree fevers and puking all around! That's motherhood. Well, at least part of it.
On my due date I had a class at my midwife's office. I was sitting there, watching birth videos, when I felt a twinge in my belly. I'd never gone into labor on my own, so even though this was my third child, I wasn't sure if this was "it." After the class, I stopped at the drugstore to stock up on a few last minute items, and I think I was a little bit manic because I was telling anyone who wasn't afraid to come near me that I was, "Going! Home! To Have! A BABY!" I did go home, and was still having some mild contractions, but nothing that really slowed me down. We had plans to meet family at the park that night, so I packed up my boys and we went. Later that night I got the boys to bed, then tried to sleep myself.
At 3:00 am, on the nose, I sat straight up in bed, no longer wondering if I was kinda maybe sorta in labor. It was now abundantly clear to me.
I called my mother. She arrived to find me on my hands and knees, rocking back and forth. She sized up the situation and asked if I'd called Veronica yet. I hadn't, so she got that ball rolling, and also called my friend, K, who was my doula. My mom has had four children herself, so she knew that this was no false alarm.
While we were waiting for Veronica and K, my mom turned to me and said, "So, you wanna fill up this tub?"
"Sure, pantpantpant, that sounds pantpantpant like a great idea!" I said.
There's this thing you've maybe heard of before, called a Dry Run? That would have been a wise thing to add to my birth plan, just under the line that read "Get birthing pool." We somehow got the hose connected to the kitchen sink, and it just barely stretched across the apartment to the trough. My apartment was sort of cute; it looked vaguely like something out of Melrose Place, and was built just after World War II. The original wood floors were under the carpet, and, as it turns out, the original plumbing was behind the walls. There was just not any water pressure. A trickle, no -- not even a trickle, a very weak spit of warm water dribbled out of the end of the hose. I had a big contraction and threw up in the little plastic bowl I was holding. My mom looked at me. I looked at her. We both started to laugh, because there was no way that pathetic stream of water could ever begin to do the job, especially now that the contractions had gotten a lot more serious about making themselves known to me.
I dragged myself over to the couch, which was covered in a sheet and some big plastic-backed cotton pads, and my mom got the hose put up.
I must say that even though I was feeling nervous about the whole "no drugs" thing, I did alright. Unfortunately, I did vomit almost every time I had a
contraction and the contractions were right on top of each other.
Still, I noticed the absence of bright lights and beeping machines and
there weren't announcements and people in the hallway. All that was a
huge difference for me. Veronica made a little pallet on the floor so
she could lay down, and talked me through when she heard me
struggling. I went straight for the blowing breathing they teach in Lamaze class. Couldn't help it.
When things got more and more intense, my lower back spasmed on me
(or as a guy I used to work with would say, "It seized up, ahhhhhh!").
I couldn't move, and the grip was furious. I remember laying on my
side, feeling like I'd never be able to leave that position, and how
every time I threw up, my whole body felt like my lower back: one big knot of extraordinarily painful muscle. My
friend K stood on the other side of the arm of the couch at one point,
and when I was having severe pain she took her hand and pressed it, open
palmed, into mine. I pushed back, and immediately had less pain.
Counter-pressure = magic.
When I reached the point of thinking that I'd made a stupid,
horrible mistake doing this at home and felt like I needed to be taken
into surgery to get. this. thing. out. of. me. RIGHT NOW; I said
something to that effect. I think that I was so tired that I just
said, "I can't do this," which was Veronica's cue to get up and see how
I was progressing. She checked me and said I was at 8. And I thought
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME? EIGHT?!" Just then I
had a massive, physics-defying contraction, and she said, "OH wait,
you're at nine. . . no, ten, okay, you're there, BUT DON'T PUSH!"
Uh, no.
I pushed. Hard as I could. Don't tell me not to push.
On the first push, Veronica told me that my water hadn't broken yet,
and that she was going to have to take the membrane off Sophie right
after she came out. Then I pushed again and her head came out right when the water
broke, on its own. One more push and she was out. Three pushes. Three. And really, it could have been one if I'd applied
myself.
So there was Sophie, totally clean from being in the amniotic fluid, and tiny and perfect.
The time? 6 a.m. Exactly. Three hours from the "this is labor" to babe in arms. I
suppose you might call hers an 'easy' birth, though I don't think those
two words belong in the same paragraph. Since I was on the living
room couch in my tiny apartment, I was near the front door. I
remember that someone opened the door, and there was a cool breeze and
the sun was coming up. Birds were singing, the fridge was humming, but
it was really quiet, too. I remember the damp cool breeze coming into the
house, and how blue and grey and cool everything was. It was nice
after working so hard, like a drink of water.
Veronica weighed Sophie in a blanket attached to a spring scale;
like a fisherman would weigh a fish. She was nearly seven pounds by
that scale, but I think she was really closer to six. She had no
eyedrops and no shots and no bath and no blood tests and no plastic
bracelets and she didn't leave my arms for a good long while.
It's hard to explain without sounding a little like a cornball, but never in my entire life have I ever felt so capable; so loving toward myself and my body; so able to do anything, literally, in the whole wide world.
It's Sophie's birthday today. (Edited to add: It WAS her birthday when I started this, but now it's a couple of days past.)
I snuck out of the house this morning early, while the kids were still sleeping, to walk to the store for cupcakes and milk. Last night, I told Lex I might do that, just so there wouldn't be a panic if they woke up without me here. (Or a party!) It was already light at just a little after 6am, just like it was at 6am as when she was born, eight years ago. I got in line behind a woman with donuts and milk; she told the cashier that it was her daughter's 11th birthday, and I felt so much better about not staying up late last night to make cupcakes or cinnamon rolls or something from scratch like I used to on birthdays. Because that is how I do it now, single fulltime working mom of four kids, I cut corners and do what I can when I can. And it's fine, really. I think Caroline Ingalls herself might have walked over to the grocery store to get premade cupcakes if she could buy them for less than it cost to get the ingredients and she was feeling a little too busy with other things to find the time to bake. Behind me was an old biker dude, and when he put a dozen roses on the belt, the cashier said, Awwwww, thanks! Those are beautiful. They laughed and then he complained that the edges of all the roses were wilting and discolored. I didn't find out who the roses were for, but it was sweet to see this leather and Harley tshirt dressed guy even notice that detail.
I
walked back home and found the candles, put eight of them in a cupcake
for Soph and set all the cupcakes on a plate. Poor girl was so tired
when she got up that she could barely keep her face from falling into
them.
Last year around her birthday, I wrote about her birth. Before she was born, my friend Karen (she was also my doula) hosted a Blessingway for us. At the ceremony, we took a ball of string and the first woman to hold it wrapped it around her wrist a few times, then she passed it along, and the next woman did the same. When it was your turn with the string you got to say a few words, share a few hopes for the new baby. The woman leading the exercise, A, then pointed out how we were all connected here, all brought together by this little baby who we were waiting for. Then we cut the strings and tied them off, making little string bracelets that we kept on until she was born. I still have mine. It's in a bunch of short pieces from where I cut it off when she was tiny. During the string thing, or maybe during a different part, A said, Okay, when I was getting ready to come over, something told me to bring glitter to sprinkle on Jenifer's head. I think that Sophie is going to be a playful little puck of a girl. (Not exactly that -- but you get the gist.) And A was right. Sophie is playful, sometimes innocently, sometimes in full-on mischievous ways. Here's an excerpt from a post I wrote when she was 21 months old:
Yesterday morning I woke to the feel of something cool and almost slimy
rubbing the bottom of my foot. Sophie said "Hi Mama!" She was happily
rubbing deodorant on me. It wasn't even 6 am yet. . . Later, Sophie dragged a chair to the kitchen counter while I was
changing Willow. She picked the counter
area with the toaster. Lexy's Lord of the Rings cards were also on the
counter. Yes. She toasted Legolas and almost started a fire.
I think that, pretty much, we are who we are. Some of us so much so that people paying attention can tell what we're going to be like before we're even here to show them.
Happy Birthday, Soph. You are never boring, you impress the hell out of me every day, and I have no idea how I will survive you being a teenager. You're your own boss, as you like to remind me (and uh, your church & school teachers and the school principal, and the uninitiated adult who tries to tell you what to do) and I love that about you. In many ways, I want to be more like you, and I hope you never lose your sass, even when I'm cussing under my breath because it's directed at me.
