October 2009 Archives

I live about a mile from the house I grew up in (the west coast house, that is) and Lex goes to the same middle school I did.  Back then it was a junior high, and I still call it that because I'm old and cranky that way. 

Every day when I drive my younger kids to their elementary school, I drive past the house of the boy I had my first kiss with (this song was playing  I thought it was about Magic Johnson, but I was a total goober in seventh grade).  I am pretty sure that one of his wife's young cousiny relatives is on Lex's soccer team, but honestly I haven't thought much about it other than the unusual name and same religious background. 

My teenaged son has to run laps around the same track I did.  He even has first period PE like I did, and I remember that mostly because I thought I was So Clever in the mornings when I shouted up at the grey sky for God to please turn on the heater because we are freezing down here.    

I remember loving my grey Nikes with the pink stripe/swoosh thing, and my layered pink and grey polo shirts and my string of pink beads, like Lex was recently into his Chuck Taylors and black skinny jeans.  Now he's moved up to blue denim, sorta-skinny, but not too tight jeans, and Oh My God if he doesn't start pulling them up I may lose my mind, which HELLO is the first clue that I'm the mother of a teenager, thankyouverymuch.

He's a reader, like me, and very into music (most of which I sort of like).  He tends to buy stuff off iTunes before checking with me and is always SHOCKED that I'd actually have all the (good) REM (or whatever band) CDs sitting on a shelf in my room when he just paid to download Superman.  SG and I both are constantly saying You PAID for that?  I HAVE that!  Ask first!  

It's funny, watching him with headphones on, intently listening to some of the same stuff I did when I was his age.  And this is neither here nor there, but I found a video thing for the first REM song that grabbed me and made me feel cool when I heard it on the radio while driving with my dad in Houston one 1980's summer (cool because I *knew* that alternative song, so I must, therefore, be totally rad) and it has the lyrics and you know I love Michael Stipe but he is not a Great Annunciator and so I had to laugh all these years later at seeing what the real words are. 

And another favorite REM song (favorite in the way that you *l o v e* music when you are young, because everything is so much, I don't know, just MORE when you are a teenager), was this totally unintelligible masterpiece.  I'm putting the words below so that I can change the wrong ones I've been singing for over 20 years. 

Does this mean that I'm about to start my midlife crisis?

I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change
Though all the feelings that broke through that door
Just didn't seem to be too real
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes
Somewhere it must be time for penitence. Gardening at night is never where
Gardening at night, gardening at night, gardening at night
The neighbors go to bed at ten
Call the prayer line for a change
The charge is changing every month
They said it couldn't be arranged

We ankled up the garbage sound, but they were busy in the rows
We fell up, not to see the sun, gardening at night just didn't grow
I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change
Though all the feelings that broke through that door
Just didn't seem to be too real
Gardening at night, gardening at night, gardening at night

Your sister said that you're too young
They should know they've been there twice
The call was 2 and 51
They said it couldn't be arranged

I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change
Though all the feelings that broke through that door
Just didn't seem to be too real
We ankled up the garbage sound, but they were busy in the rows
We fell up not to see the sun, gardening at night just didn't grow
Gardening at night, gardening at night, gardening at night 

These are so good that I hid a stack from everyone else and we are making another batch after supper tonight.  Sophie stopped her pumpkin carving last night (well, she enlisted SG to do all the work anyway, so really she just moved away from the pumpkin) so she could stand with me and make teensy little pumpkins out of some of the dough.

The littlest one is the size of a barbie earring.  So.Cute.

Willow made some, too, and also a skeleton.

Lex's soccer team won 8-0 today, Nate had a bye, Willow's team lost by one but she thinks they won and I'm sure not going to correct her, Sophie's team had their first not-win, a tie, and Soph says that they

technically won, because we were better, and we almost scored in the last two seconds. 

Well, I said, that's not "technically" winning.

Yes.  It.  Is.  [glower]

Technically and imaginarily are very different things, I thought but did not say because I am getting wiser by the day.

People ask me kind of often how I do it.  The job, the kids, the 4 different soccer teams and doctor visits and lunches and suppers and occasional shift in my church nursery and all that stuff. 

Usually I just say, Not very well, have you SEEN my house? 

Sometimes it's ok.  Like, right now my bedroom is not terrible.  The bed's made (ok, I just got up and did that really quickly, but it's done), and there's nothing on the floor except a stack of laundry that I need to deal with.  So, passable.  Sort of a little cute, even. 

But when I got up this morning (late, again) at 6:45 to make the lunches I spaced on making last night, there were still dishes in the sink and on the kitchen table.  And, here's what my living room looked like:

I made Willow cry when I brushed her hair because I was doing it too fast.  Alex started to leave without his lunch and instead of reminding him nicely, I said, What are you doing right now that is making me want to kill you?

He looked at me.  Um?  I am? Going?  To school?

WITHOUT WHAT? I hissed at him.

Ooooooh, my LUNCH!

OKAY.  BYE.  I love you, Alex.  Have a good day. 

I think most child advocates would frown on that exchange, even though Lex and I both know I'm not really going to do anything other than snarl at him.

This morning was also the third time this week that I have driven my children to school in my pajamas, Ugg boots, and trenchcoat; hair uncombed, sunglasses on over puffy eyes, coffee cup in hand.  Note that I only have two work from home days a week, so the one office day I did that was awesome.    

We are late to soccer practice a lot.  We don't sell as many boxes of nuts as the other Girl Scouts (we do okay on the cookies, but that's a gimme).  We sell ZERO magazine subscriptions for anything.  I stockpile frozen gluten and dairy free Trader Joe's pancakes like the end is neigh and that is the food that will save us.  Here, lately, breakfast=pancakes hot from the toaster.  The dentist has to call six times to remind us to reschedule that appointment to get Sophie's cavity filled.  Sometimes the kids sleep in their clothes.  Sometimes they stay up until 10 on a school night.  SG does a lot of things for me that I should do.  Things like putting air in the tires of my van, picking up the living room, shopping at Costco.  The kids' very expensive computer is so grungy I am afraid to touch it.  Same goes triple for their bathroom.  Quadruple for mine.     

My oversight of the kids homework goes something like this:

Me: Did you do your homework?

Kid: Yes.  Yes I so totally did. 

Me:  Okay.  You may be useless and wreak havoc now.

Teacher, two months into school, to me:  Hi.  I'm your kid's teacher.  So, there's this thing we do, maybe you've heard of it before?  Called HOMEWORK?  Sound familiar? 

Me to kid:  Do your homework.  Really.  I mean it.

Kid:  I always do it.  I just don't always turn it in.

Me:  See that dent in the wall?  Right at my forehead level?  YOUR FAULT, DUDE.   

Oh, alright.  I'm overstating a little bit.  Just a little, though.  The homework really has been a problem, but I am doing a better job of being sure it's not.  Taking away rides to the skate park is working.  Letters home from the teacher don't hurt any, either.  And, in my defense, here are some things we DO do:

• floss
• eat mostly decent food
• read lots of books
• talk to each other
• have fun (when we aren't all bickercity)
• laugh a lot
• eat supper together
• have spontaneous dance parties and talent shows
• sing in the car
• make homemade Valentines
• play rockband (I nail the vocals on Roxanne every time) 

My brain will not let me sleep.  It makes me yawn all afternoon and all through supper and all over SG when he stops by to visit afterwards, but now, when it's the middle of the night?  Now is not the time to shut off!  Now is the time to do some work, to look up this gnarly new drug I told my doctor today that I would try if it would just please make me well, and to spend the moments between thoughts trying to figure out if I could maybe go to this retreat thing in Oregon next spring even though the Magic 8 Ball has nothing but grimness for my politely asked questions. 

I've got this weird daytime insomnia thing happening, too.  Not that I want to sleep but can't -- but stuff like I want to read, but can't.  Want to listen to music, but can't.  Want to take a fifteen minute walk with my camera and take some pictures, but there's nothing to take a photo of around here.  

Dude.  Somebody totally hacked my brain.  These thoughts make me not recognize myself.  

I'm 100% sure that it's the prednisone I am taking that is doing this.  I also blame it for the antsy, cannot focus, pervasive itchyness that has been pulling me behind it for the past 17 days.  If I stay on steroids long enough, I'll also end up with balsa wood for bones and that's no good for a woman like me who has to be able to kick-ass at a moment's notice.  Sometimes with no notice at all, even!

That is why I told my doctor today that I'd try this other drug I've been a little hesitant to embrace.  If it works for me, no more prednisone.  So that's a big gimongous check in the pro column.  And I wasn't going to (at least tonight) worry too much about the con column, because it's late and I'm tired, but then my brain figured out that I was considering sleeping during normal hours and it was all WAKE UP, JEN.  IT'S WIKIPEDIA TIME! 

So now my columns look like this:

pros:              cons:                           

less ill            fatter                           

                        TENSE                         

                        IRRITABLE

                        HUNGRY

                        addled

                        hairier

                        twig bones

Remicade

pros:                                        cons:

less ill                                      made of mouse antibodies

no more other meds         mouse antibodies gets TWO  

                                                   CONS and unlimited shudders

                                                   sobering side effects

Not only did I make lists, but I ran both medicine names through an anagram maker.  One of the 400 matches for prednisone?  Need Prison.  Remicade gave me Acme Ride, which is so very Roadrunner and Coyote.

I'm not at all sure now what to do.  I mean, I did know about the mouse thing already, but I didn't know about some of the other potential things this new drug might do to me.  I've already emailed my doctor.  

Oh, sweet.  I'm sleepy!  Later.

So I have been thinking a lot about this post that Kate wrote a few days ago.  She wrote it in response to this other one.  

I have so much ricocheting around inside my head about this that I'm not even sure how to begin to begin.   

I'll start then, by saying that I have some experience here.  I've had an emergency C-section seven weeks before my baby's due date; an at-home, quiet, midwife-assisted birth; and two hospital births - one pretty okay and one a little more hurty and scary.  And a miscarriage, which I chose to deal with surgically rather than on my body's own time.

Honestly?  I will tell you that giving birth to Sophie at home with my mom and my friend and my midwife helping me was far and away the most incredible and amazing experience I will ever have.  I get why there is a movement to educate women about birth, to encourage them to birth at home, to bring birth a step back from the medical world.  I believe most births can safely take place outside a hospital setting.  I'm not a huge fan of IVs, monitors, blood pressure cuffs, and laboring flat on your back in a too-bright place that smells like antiseptic and foamy hand soap.  I think that it would be really super cool if every woman who wanted to could have the chance to have her baby at home. Rah, rah, rah, homebirths rock, more women should try it, I'm a huge fan.     

I will also tell you that I'd intended to deliver Willow at home, too.  Instead, a long chain of events that really did nearly kill me and her both ended with her delivery via C-section seven weeks early.  She was bundled up and taken away so fast after she was born, and I didn't see her again for such a long time.  24 hours, maybe?  36?  I don't remember anymore.  After her birth, especially when I knew that she had problems (a hole in her heart, difficulty eating, general tinyness) and I could not go see her, I felt so lost and helpless.  

But when I see a childbirth professional, a woman whose life work it is to support and help other women, write: "your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother," I cannot help but have a physical reaction.  In this case, I looked at my monitor like it just sprouted a tongue and licked my nose.  I squinted my eyes and dropped my jaw open, pulled my head back and said, The hell it is!  What are you TALKING ABOUT?  Why would you SAY THAT?

Backing up a little.  Before I had my emergency C-section, I was talking about home birth with a woman I used to know.  And she told me of a friend who'd had an unplanned and, in her opinion, unnecessary, C-section, and how this woman had been in grief counseling for it for over three years. 

I didn't say what was on my mind, because it wasn't at all nice.  It was something about how I thought that was a huge waste of time, seeing as how she had this perfectly healthy, sweet little child who was here wanting to be held and loved and played with.  But, you know, I hadn't had a C-section myself, and I had had that fantastic homebirth.  So, maybe, I thought, maybe the bad birth made this woman feel as terrible as my good birth had made me feel powerful.  Maybe I was being a little judgy about the grief counseling.  Who was I to judge?  Who am I now to still sit here and roll my eyes and think that if having a C-section is the worst thing that ever happens to you, you are pretty fucking lucky?  

But now I'm wondering if someone else told that woman that she'd really better have a perfectly-lit, serene, midwife-assisted homebirth.  OR ELSE.  What if she ended up in grief counseling because someone convinced her that birth was the most important event in shaping her life as a mother and she got stuck on what happened that day and couldn't really be with her baby in the way that she should have been able to because she was so upset at how it went and she wanted impossibly to have a do-over?

How sad that would be.  Women shouldn't be pressured and scared into choosing a midwife over a medical doctor.  That's just as shitty as the OB/GYN who induces you early so she can go on Christmas vacation and you end up with a baby who won't nurse or even wake up much really, and you sit up nights putting cold washcloths on his feet so that he will please, please, just nurse a little bit and gain some weight.  (That was with Nate, my second kiddo.)  In fact, it's worse, because at least the doctor was honest about her motive:  I'm going to be away for Christmas and your kid is due December 26th.  Since you had some complications, I'd really like to be the one to do the delivery in case that old but now healed tear in your placenta becomes a problem, so let's induce you around December 15th, okay? Thanks!

Your birth is the most important event in shaping your life as a mother.

I'm amazed that someone who is supposed to be helping women is saying such an asinine thing as that.  Birth is just one day (or more if you roll the dice and get that version), and the first day at that, of being a mother.  Yes, a lovely birth is rewarding, and if you can get your hands on one, good for you.  It really is wonderful and moving and powerful.  But also?  It's gravy.  It's extra.  It's lucky.  It's not a good idea to get too attached to the idea of it hovering over and influencing your entire mothering career. 

And, the clincher in my argument: Giving birth is not a requirement for becoming a mother, so how can it be the most important thing? 

What would I like to say to "every young woman in the world" then, about the important things that will shape her life as a mother?  

You have to make your own list, and you'll likely be a little bit into your mothering experience before you're even able to recognize what shape it will take.  Some things won't become important until they're in the past and fit into the context of everything else.  A lot of the important things start off  invisible; you wouldn't ever guess they are secretly a big deal until you're looking at them shining and waving to you from the rear-view mirror.  Like that day you decided to take the kids out in the rainstorm to the park in their boots and raincoats and let them splash in the giant puddles that dwarfed the ones in your backyard?  Your kids might remember that later and do it for their own.  Or you might remember it and laugh at the memory when you're needing a stepping stone to get through a rough afternoon. 

Maybe it's putting a radio in the kitchen so you can dance and sing while you make supper.  

Maybe it's reflecting on the women who raised you, consciously keeping their traditions bright in your own family.  

Maybe it's letting the kids decorate the Christmas tree, even if it's lopsided and odd looking.  Except not to you, of course.  To you it's so beautiful that, bare spots and all, it makes you unreasonably happy.

Maybe it's having the wisdom to know that when your heart keeps telling you something, over and over and over, you should probably get on board with that, even if your brain thinks it's impossible. 

Definitely, though, definitely it is all the stuff that comes after that birth that is going to matter the most.  That much I know. 

Last week, my first baby turned thirteen.

This one will not need braces -- isn't that thoughtful of him?

He grew a few inches over the summer, and now likes to walk up to me (especially if he's got shoes on and I'm barefoot) and smile down at me. In a nice way, I should say, not like: I'm finally bigger than you, let's see you make me go to bed when you think I ought to NOW, Lady! Ha ha!

Maybe that part is coming up, but for now he's just straight-up bemused with it all.

He's half as old I was when he was born, and he's been with me now for 1/3 of my life. And it's funny, because Lex has been Lex since he got here, but he's also a different person every few months just because that's how kids often are. One day last month he came home and announced that he'd joined the wrestling team at school, which *literally* made me cock my head and look at him sideways. And while I wouldn't have ever predicted that choice, turns out it's very much him and he really loves it. It's so nice getting to watch you get to know you, kid, I want to tell him.

He's confident, he's honest with me, he does his own thing with no apologies to the friends in his group who aren't interested. Eh, whatever, is his take on it, I don't have to do all the stuff they do. It's cool.

I was taking his photo, that pose above is from his actual birthday, and he was monkeying around and being funny, and I was looking at him through my camera viewfinder thinking to myself, Hold it right there . . . perfect, in the literal sense of getting a good photo, when I realized that I do want him to hold it right there -- mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whateverily -- as he goes through these next few years. It's not that the choices we make as teenagers are bound to define us forever and always, but they certainly have the raw power to always have a felt influence.  I want so very badly for him to still be this way in six years; for always.

I just turned thirty nine, and I look at my son and I think about how I'm letting him go, just very exactly like letting go of a bird flying from my hands. There's that little moment where all you can do is lift your hands up high as you let go and hope, probably with your eyes closed, that you've remembered all the stuff you were supposed to tell them about flying. I don't feel like I'm finished raising him, but I bet that secretly I've already done the work that matters the most. All that's left is the reminding him to keep his eye on those stars up there.

And in our same-colored, parallel way I'm here feeling my own potential.  You don't have to be young to look forward to your future.  Bright is bright is bright.  

• increased appetite (check)
• weight gain (check)
• facial swelling (partial check)
• depression, mania, psychosis or other psychiatric symptoms (check, check plus, I dunno)
• unusual fatigue (check)
• mental confusion (check plus)
• insomnia (check)
• anxiety (check plus)
• twitchy left eye (OMG)
• shrewishness (checkity, check-check-check)

I am on a ridiculously high dose of prednisone; 60 mg per day.  It's not permanent, but when I decrease to 40 mg per day next week, I'm not expecting to suddenly be able to sleep and think coherentlyish and say No to the tablespoon full of peanut butter and chocolate chips.  Without going into details you don't want, I'll say that the treatment is both better than and worse than the illness, and that I'll put up with the awfulness of the treatment for a little while in hopes of getting the illness back into a corner where I can kick and stomp it out of my way. 

It's Autumn Color week, and instead of taking any new pictures, I lugged my camera around all week and then made do with what I already had.  I feel like that person who is mumble singing along to a song they don't really know, maybe a little loudly, and then even more loudly during the chorus.  You know; you want to follow along and join in so very badly, but just can't quite make it happen.  

It's been nice, though, to look through past photos.  I don't generally make time to do that.  The present swallows up all my time and then burps, licks its claws, looks at me; hands me a long list of all the things I should have done that day.

Pictures above are:

• berries on a bush in the wintertime, taken on the way home from the park with the kids
• a tree near where I used to always park my car for school drop offs and pick ups
• a firework stand where FM 1417 hits 82 just outside Sherman, Texas
• Lex's new Vans when he started 6th grade
• the buoy bell, seal hang out in Monterey Bay (that's a recent one from a boat trip with SG)
• a fortune teller swag thing (from BlogHer Chicago 07)
• a tree on my street a few autumns ago
• Radio Flyer trike pedal
• a tulip
• a paper lantern in Chinatown, San Francisco
• little Sophie hands
• a window near La Seu Cathedral, Barcelona
• another Barcelona window, in an industrial neighborhood near the Poblenou Cemetery
• the felt heart and twig mobile Lex and I made when he was in preschool
• Chinatown, SF sign
• Barcelona alleyway 

I think, though, that these are my very most favorite red photos:

Willow in November of 2007

It's day four of Autumn Color Week.  Still haven't made time to pick up my camera, but I found enough old photos to put together.  That one of Soph in the corner is one of my favorites of her, blurry though it is.