It's a long-winded road from guilt-ville

I repost this blog entry with a disclaimer and a wise quote reminded to me by wise JB:

Sometimes I tell the same joke three times in one day to my three classes. When I'm feeling sociological, I like to deliver it identically. I stand in the same spot in the room, and I carefully re-enact it to examine reactions. It is never the same. There's one class that thinks I am hi-larious. Doesn't matter what I say. I'm funny-fun-lady. There's another that either doesn't get the joke or doesn't even realize I'm in the room or has caught on that my jokes are really lame. The third class is hit and miss, and it's a real victory when they chuckle.

My blog posts have a worse ratio. What I think is a real side-splitter more often than not causes others alarm. I think a good rule of thumb is that if something makes you want to reassure me, then I probably meant it to be funny. My sense of humor, as most of my students and one tough-sell of a Gus will agree, is off.

"Everything that happens to you, belongs to you." Anne LaMott. Here is what is happening--and yes, really, I think it is funny:

The past two Augusts, I've convinced myself that only bad mothers go to work. I think about all the scenarios Gus encounters all day that I could help him process, and I tell myself he is turning into a horrible man as a result of my neglect. I start reading Cup of Jo and think wicked thoughts. I perseverate on the value of autumn and tractors and I make myself depressed, slightly insane, and agitated. Gus senses this. He has a weird mother. She smiles too big when he comes in her classroom after school. She hugs him too tight. She asks him, "Was anyone mean today?" and gets too close to his face. She takes the Fisher Price people and role plays potential character building scenarios. "See this farmer, Gus? This farmer is that big kid next door that doesn't pick up his toys from the yard and borrows our playdough but never invites us over to play..."  or  "Noah and his wife here are the bus driver and the bus monitor. When Mrs Noah says buckle your seat belt..." This makes Gus angry. ANGRY. He tells me his feelings. He has a lot of feelings. He draws on things that are not paper. He is as much fun to be around as I am. And of course, I interpret this as the result of me being a working mother, and the cycle beats itself into a wild froth.

I told this all to my running partner, and she just laughed. At first I was mildly offended, but it's possible that's the best reaction any of us could hope for.

I like to look at my Goodreads account in August to take a barometer reading. Parenting Without Fear. They Called Themselves the KKK. Third-Culture Children of Educators. Love and Logic: The Toddler Years. Honestly. That list needs a glass of wine and a don't-take-yourself-so-seriously pill.

Years and years ago my sister said something that she didn't realize would become a refrain in my head for beating me back into sanity. I was having hysterics over something ridiculous and would not calm down. I was crying that something was all my fault: I ruined Christmas, or there was no world peace, or everyone ate too much at Thanksgiving dinner and had stomachaches. She looked at me, with the sensibility and the frankness of an older sister and said, "I've never met anyone so insecure with such an enormous sense of self-importance."

You betcha. She's sitting right here. She's a bad mother with the capability to influence the planet into darkness and ruin. Guilty.

Tonight, I attended Gus's first-ever Back to School Night. Given my book reading and my train to guilt-land, I was in rare form. Both Gus and I had gotten antibiotics that day. I stayed home from work to take him to the doctor. I may have bought some expensive guilt Legos post-doctor-visit that I'm hoping no one in the house mentions. At the start, it seemed like the evening might be normal: It was a lovely group of people who seem to really love their jobs and my child. Gus drew a self portrait that was magnificent:

(He's probably inspired by his super artistic dad who just made something really fab)

But then it happened. The parents were asked to leave behind a self-portrait of themselves drawn in their non-dominant hand. Now, I need to mention that something had already agitated my weak and grace-less mind. I chose a very specific seat, and a group of fairly non-threatening people sat around me. Peace prevailed. Then, out of nowhere, BO lady sat down. I am so glad BO lady made it to her kid's Back to School Night and didn't worry about washing prior, but it really set me off. As a result, my safety net of strangers moved. Couples would walk to my row to sit down and the wives would get a whiff of BO lady and mouth to their husbands, "not here." But there I sat. Alone. Rows empty around me except for BO lady. It got my crazy motor running.

So, the parents are all supposed to be self-portraiting in their weaker hand. I look around and see that virtually every other parent is not following the rules. They are just drawing! They are making happy faces that do not look shaky and awkward! People---drop the crayons! Regrettably, instead of turning on my social filter I loudly proclaimed, "Looks like everyone is choosing not to use their non-dominant hand." No one likes the smarmy lady. No one likes the weirdo that comments on rules. No one likes the self-righteous woman wearing deodorant. I have no idea why I spoke but speak I did and their looks replied more than my ridiculous words. And so I left. I turned, I left, I got in the car and texted Patrick that I'd let the family down. (inflated-sense-of-self-importance-Becky ALMOST texted the teacher to apologize for ruining the evening)

So there I was, a grace-less lady who smelled just fine but was riddled with guilt and social angst and a sinus infection. It was August in full depressive force. And as always, a little magic happened just when I was thinking it was time to make that appointment with HR to break my contract. I walked into a little boy's room who was almost asleep. He rolled over, he didn't tell me he hated me, and he said, "I just need to hear a song about a star, mom." So I sang to his request, and held him tight and prayed over all three feet five inches of him and hoped that he would have character that definitely transcends mine. I thanked God that for now, his self image is pretty darn good (those lashes in the drawing are spot on). He is happy. He is okay. He is not saying rude things in front of other adults like his mother. He is playing every day and learning every day and amazing me every day. He is all right. You could feel the all-rightness in the room even with his emphasymic-seal cough. I left that cozy boy of goodness, took a deep breath, and realized I am just three days until September.

It is going to be okay. And like my running partner wisely modeled----we are all just going to laugh. Especially at ourselves.

Recycled topic: Living well 101

It's been almost three years of almost:

Almost back in shape.

Almost drawing again.

Almost Skyping all those people I've told I'll Skype.

Almost enjoying long hours building block towers that get knocked down over and over and over and over.

Almost writing.

Almost parenting.

Almost making it home for Christmas without the flu.

Almost maintaining friendships.

Almost sleeping through the night.

Almost hanging all the pictures in the eight months "new" apartment.

Almost figuring it out.

Almost buying a house.

Almost handling that last interaction with grace (before it went tragically south).

Almost learning Czech.

Almost making it through the whole year within my sick day allotment.

Almost attending the 47 dinners I've canceled.

Almost grading all those papers on time.

Almost using "swag" correctly in front of my seventh graders

Almost giving up coffee.

Almost tackling that skin rash.

Almost answering the phone.

Almost finding a new topic for the blog other than the cyclical, "How do I enjoy this cup of life that is handed to me?" one.

As I've alluded to 40 billion times, as someone that read wayyyyy too much Emerson in college, I know that I should take heart in the process of transcending my yucky self, but being on the verge is really unsatistfactory. I'm a lady hankering for a victory. An apex. Two and a half weeks post-sinus-surgery, I have a big ol' infection in my face. I'm thanking God it's not MRSA, but I'm also cartoon kicking the dirt and saying, "shucks!" If you knew how meticulous I have been with self-care, you would think my usual cavelier-about-doctors'-advice-self was taken over in the zombie apocalypse. I have been careful. 

And so I'm mildly defeated over dumb reasons.

I canceled another dinner date.

I came home from the doctor and was a poopy mom and didn't really enjoy setting up the lego train or (worst game of all) pretending there was a bee trying to get us so we hide under a blanket and scream (repeatedly). 

But, I did do something I haven't done in months. Maybe years. I handwrote a letter. I got out paper, and I scribbled a long note to a dear friend and in the slowness of those looping words, I reminded myself about (warning: repetitive blog topic alert!) seasons. We don't get to pick how long some seasons are, but we can wear them well and with kindness to self and others. We can quit fighting them and live them. We can shut up. This season is one of loose ends and loss of muscle tone and holding tight to what is near. Writing it out to her relaxed me enough to think past simply grinning and bearing it (at least for the afternoon), and I was able to react to my day with true delight. Gus was wild, and so he and I sang ourselves through a little Sesame Street therapy after dinner, which I did thoroughly enjoy. Prior to his shower I got out the "washable ink" (a manufacturer's joke) stamp pad, and we made marvelous fingerprint caterpillars and a few deranged handprint turkeys. And as we lay in bed thanking God for his snail collection, his friends, his dad who is admirably building houses in Cambodia with 14-year-olds, and anything covered in chocolate, I was understanding of our now. I wouldn't have chosen all of it. Almost-living isn't best for my personality. I'm disappointed I didn't get to have Nepalese food with a gaggle of interesting people tonight. But I am thankful--very thankful--I got to watch my interesting son shovel in quinoa and tell me the differences between male and female mosquitos.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote often of the necessity for "being time." The time where we walk alone, where we sit alone, where we write for ourselves, where we let our brains relax a bit so we can tackle the routines before us without animosity. I am so ridonkulously stupid that I forget it. And I waddle through days in my Almost-fog and forget to live. And to be fair, how is one supposed to feel excited about that dreadful bee game when a truly disgusting situation is going on in her newly remodeled nose? Being time PLUS giving ourselves a big fat break seems a fair balance for sanity and the ability to recognize the good in life.

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I took some being time last week while I mended to celebrate a birthday of a new friend. She doesn't resent my 5:00am texts canceling our jogs, understands why I didn't show up to the dance party, and she also eats frosting-laden cupcakes, so I like her very much:

I also bought these confectionery shaped erasers. They've totally amped up tea parties around here:

PS. It's question list time in my class! Man, is THIS a season that's easy for me to savor. My list wonders what adenoids do, what YOLO means (yes, I finally looked it up), the reasoning behind the mango shortage during Chinese New Year, why they all laugh at me when I say "swag", whether or not I can eat my lucky Mandarin oranges, how they pick a new Pope, what the US's involvement in WWI was, tenable methods for deterring a large asteroid from striking the Earth, what was the Marconi scandal, and does Chapstick really create a dependence on lip balm. Good times.

 

Story telling

I've been thinking a lot about story lately. Dear friends were discussing a family phrase for recentering worrying in their house, "Is that the truth, or is that a story you're telling yourself?" It's a good barometer reading for self-imposed-suffering.

Since Deborah Wiles worked with my students (see yesterday's post), I've been thinking on how story tells the truth, even when what you're writing is fiction. It's helping me frame some of my own stories and giving me license to write. It's also providing a more compassionate lens.

(thank you for DW)

When P and I were recovering after the tsunami, we had our stories taken from us by two different people. One journalist published an email we didn't want seen and another author lifted quotes by P and used them in painful, derogatory ways in widely-read angry diatribes. Those violations made me quit talking and question my own reliability and experience. This week, an 8th grade student was doing a research project on the tsunami of 2004 in order to write a short story for her language arts class. She found one of those "shocking but true" books that tells tales of brushes with death. And of all the stories, in that book was the tale of the family that P helped rescue eight years ago. But, P wasn't in the tale. They shared an entirely different story with an entirely different hero. At first I was enraged. For the third time we were absent from our own life-changing experience. But then I thought about what Debbie Wiles taught us, and I stepped back. That story was what that family experienced. They were panicked--like us. They were in survival mode--like us. What they wrote is what they felt, hoped for, and lived through---even if it didn't really happen. Who am I to say I'm the reliable eye-witness? I spent enough years teaching social studies to know that no account is to be trusted when we examine history. Include me in it. I'm sad we're not in the story in the book, but it's only for petty reasons. Mostly, I'm happy that family had a shared narrative that leaves them stronger and that gives their children scaffolding for making sense of something very hard and scary. I'm grateful for story, and it's not mine to judge if it's fiction or not. 

That's all sort of heavy and weary-making, so I'll think about this: Today, while I continued to recover in bed, Gus brought me a coconut he picked up on his walk home from school. Things like that make me really dig Singapore. We shook it together, heard the milk slosh around and made plans to smash it open when his dad gets home. In Gus's story, he knows that you can't stand under trees laden with coconuts or one could fall. He also knows that there are different kinds, and we usually only drink from the green ones the street vendors hack into with machetes and poke with bendy straws. He knows every snail in his yard by family order ("that's the littlest brother and the almost biggest sister"), and he also remembers not to touch milipedes or yellow fuzzy caterpillars. The sting is outrageous. Yesterday, a green snake (mildly venemous) climbed the trees in our yard and got into a second story apartment. Gus knows that snakes are dangerous and that we run and get help when we see one. The condo "uncle" who caught it, also told Gus tales of a python he caught on the eighth story last year. Gus is learning his natural world even in a city of five million people, and he is creating memories that I had. Mine featured large mouth bass, ducks, and sunfish. I picked lilacs and goldenrod and not tropical fruit. The parrots in the trees we see here would have only existed at the zoo. When we moved overseas, I worried that we'd lose our footing with nature. Thankfully--hallelujah-- nothing has been lost: the storyline is the same, the elements have just altered. That gives me great joy.

So does smashing coconuts. 

Hallelujahing and Hiding

It's all hallelujahs and hiding spinach around here. Almost 11 months ago, I found myself unable to get out of bed or pick up my baby or hold a cup of coffee. A pesky joint disease altered life for this family. Altered it a lot. It hit when I was finally gaining a little confidence after a bucketload of bewildering newness: We'd kept the baby alive for nearly a year and survived our first months on a new continent. I was back clocking happy kilometers on long runs, and our first winter in seven years--a long and gray one--was starting to lift. It was a cruel time to find myself abruptly bed-ridden, and I let that disease knock the hope right out of me.

But I've got good peeps and Grace and This Too Shall Pass. And it did. It's not the same body; there are joints that will never quit growling, but I can move. Hallelujah, I can move! Today marked a milestone of moving---18 glorious kilometers through Praha with a dear friend. It was hard, but it was beautiful, and I never ever ever thought it possible. I am one grateful girl.

Tomorrow will be Advil and ice and spinach muffins. That's right. I'll take this poor transition from what really is an awfully Big Deal to explain that I obsess over iron intake, and so we've been eating Rebar's Broccoli Soup (take the time to make a pesto to swirl in, toss in some steamed florets and you will never ever ever make any other creamed brocolli soup--or possibly any other soup at all. You'll find the bare bones of it here.), which should really be called spinach soup, and finding other creative uses for the green stuff.

The boys have no idea there is wilted spinach in these delish carrot muffins. 

And tomorrow's fruit smoothies.

Bad photography aside, you have no idea how happy this all makes me. 

Happy Birthday P

Fifteen years ago, in the Schroeder farm kitchen, I met my beloved P. Someone asked me the other day if I liked him from the moment we met. I was in a hurry and regretted my quick response. If I'd taken advantage of a moment to sing out our song, I'd have explained that before that encounter at the Schroeder farm, yeah, I had seen P. He'd been in some of my classes at University. He was outspoken and confident and always seemed surrounded by a gaggle of good looking people. At that point in my life, I was unimpressed by anyone that seemed remotely competent and thus ignored him. But when a mutual friend (thanks, SV) had us both over to make a batch of her mother's homemade raspberry hooch, it was like at first sight.

It's only been a few times that I've had the experience where you meet someone and your friend-meter starts shaking. You just know that you're in the presence of Something Good. We squashed raspberries, sang rowdy songs at the top of our lungs, and saw each other almost every day after that. The Schroeder farm (and a nip of raspberry liqueur) has a way of bringing out the humor in folks. We decided we were the funniest people the other had ever met.

I didn't know what love was for nearly ten years (fully aware that everyone around us did). I just knew that P and I were soulmates. We made lists, we laughed, we learned things, we cooked, we crafted, we ran and kayaked and stirred up a lot of silly. P has a way of making the ordinary unbelievably entertaining.

I'm so happy that we both finally figured ourselves out and so grateful that I get to celebrate his 36th year with a gorgeous Gus and a hopeful heart.

Since Gus was born, we've both felt like we are in humilty boot-camp. So, to commemorate our year of new horizons with continued hopes of self-improvement, I painted and drew P one of our favorite (and timely) verses. It's become a bit of a manifesto:

P also got his favorite cake: carrot. Gus was happy (though you'd never know it from his somber face) to help:

And happy to eat:

Happy Birthday, dearest P. You're the best Something Good I've ever met. 

May Thought Salad

May.

(Third from the left--collage card made by Z. Fantastic.)

Epiphanies this new June week:

1. This move was good.

2. I am not living for naptime.

3. Health is on the horizon.

Things are looking up! We're steroid free this week, off to a weekend at a lake, and able to tell you what a penguin says ("waddle waddle waddle"). If I don't sound elated, it's just because I'm in a rush. 

I've even got time to think silly almost-epiphany art thoughts that I can't articulate well. It started when someone asked me why none of my art was on our walls, and I responded with a scrunched up face and some quiet babbling: "Oh, that stuff isn't art. I haven't done my art yet." The person--rightfully so--looked horrified. And I thought about how ironic that is, since this year was peppered with reading Donald Hall's Life Work and revisiting Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water and Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak. There are common threads in there. And I'm ignoring them. And so, I wonder about that.

I read a lot of art blogs, and recently an artist that I admire lamented her upcoming birthday. Her birthday that honors an age many years younger than mine and that she claims to be old. Her birthday celebrates a woman with a HIGHLY successful art career. I wondered about that.

I take frequent long walks with Neighbor B, the talented writer. And we wrestle over creating on our jaunts and talk about the darkness that comes from straying from what one feels called to create. Recently I made a new friend and marveled over her studio of paper mache and metal work torches and how she spends time at her craft--every day--for no gain whatsoever except for fulfilling her need to create. And I wondered about that.

A defeating submission to a publisher shamed me, as I doodled things of which I was embarrassed. And in their own way, they called me on it. They called it what it was, what I knew it to be before I emailed it, which was not authentic. And so, I've been wondering on that.

All these wonderings are good. They mean my brain is working again and there is space for newness where before there was stress. And best of all, my sense of humor is creeping back, and I'm able to make fun of my wonderings and tell myself to not take myself so seriously. After all, I'm a woman who found her toothbrush in the washing machine (better than the toilet, Gus) and does nothing to remove the playdough dried under her nails.There is great danger in taking oneself seriously (See Anne LaMott quote below). Because after all, Let's be real. I'm a middle class gal with the luxury to ponder and draw and read. I need to remind myself that there are real things in the world that demand my headspace.

(My former self would go on and on here about how can I possibly be so trite and pithy when there are refugee camps in the world and places without clean water. But if I bring up the refugee camps one more time, P might have an intervention.)

I've got no conclusion, but I do think I'll make a goal of making something for my walls. And I'm going to buy some wall paper paste. I can get really excited about the potential with paper mache.

Further ponderings. Quote salad:

Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." 

"Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious." 

Anne LaMott, Bird by Bird

"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each steppping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking will do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."

Hear hear!

The Birthday Litany

It's a good day. I woke up to two handsome boys, breakfast in bed, a gift certificate to the local spa, and the best coupon ever. And then the lovely Odens emerged from the guest room, where I was blessed with Patrick Oden's new book among other wonderful gifts. After they tolerated a morning at the park with sand-eating Gus and too-many-theology-questions-asking-Me, we wished them well on their European travel adventures (sniff sniff) and spent the rest of the morning blowing out a trick candle with Neighbors M, H, and E.  So nice to share a special day with old and new friends. 

And despite Neighbor B's warnings of bad luck, I'm cooking my own cake and planning what to order from the neighborhood's new Indian restaurant.

While I pick out my paneer and tandoori chicken, perhaps you want to log in to Minted and vote? 

Sand-eating, hat-throwing, cookie-holding, new-shirt-wearing Gus.

Book-and-shirt-giving, question-answering, baby-tolerating (much missed) Odens.