workin 9 to 5

When I was mired in diapers and kids and wanted a little sanity, I would warn Matt that I was going to need to go out by myself for a little while when he got home. Several times I left and went to Oakbrook mall and just walked around by myself. Because that's what I figured I needed. But then I would get sad being without my kids. I would feel guilty for ever wishing to be away from them and I would start to miss them. I would go home early and tearily kiss them goodnight. Even though I couldn't understand the fact at the time, I know now that taking time to myself was a good thing and not something to feel guilty about. Everyone is better off for it.

Now I just started work and being alone at my desk feels like wandering around Oakbrook knowing that I am missing my appendages and wishing I could go home early and kiss them.

Disturbing Ellie question

Ellie: "Dad, what would happen if I cut someone's head off with a scissors?"
Matt: (very calmly): "How do you think that would make that person feel?"
Ellie: "Dead."

Of Mice and (Wo)Men

I just finished reading "Loving Frank," the novel about the affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick. Mamah was married to Edwin Cheney when the couple hired architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new home for them. Like most turn-of-the-century women Mrs. Cheney had abandoned her intellectual pursuits when she married and had children, and when she met Frank, her intellect alit anew with a friend who shared her passion for philosophy, art and literature, and of questioning convention. FLW strove toward "organic" architecture--buildings that would mirror the spirit and the materials of the surrounding land. I've heard this word "organic" a lot in interviews with actors and directors as an analogy to the creative process where parts of a script were made up as they went along rather than sticking to something rigid and preconceived. Imagine living in a home that looks as though it belongs to the land, with native plants surrounding it, letting things grow and blossom at their own pace, in their own time. No more chem-lawn, carefully sculpted flower beds requiring weekly weeding, green lawns with a chem-lawn sign warning people of impending doom if they dare set foot on the treated non-native grass. Imagine letting this same free spirit dominate our personal lives, too.

Last winter we had mice. At first I was in denial. "Maybe it's just one" I told myself. I hear this from a lot of people. "We have a mouse," they say. Having one mouse is kind of like having one cockroach. In my post-college days living in a basement apartment, I would go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and see the cockroach that lived in the bathroom. Just the one. Because that's all that was living there, right? Hmmmm. Well, after I watched various members of the colony of mice living with us skitter on the stove and behind the chairs of dinner guests I got serious about the problem and called the Orkin man. The very next day he strategically placed large quantities of poison around the house in little child-proof containers. I actually am a clean person despite having lived with roaches and mice. Do you want some thumbprint cookies that I made myself? Anyhow, my hairdresser is appalled that I conspired in mammal-murder. She lives very organically and allows the mouse in her house. Because it's just one.

Back to the book...FLW designed the organic, hearth-centered open home for Mamah and Edwin Cheney. And then, in an ironic twist, it was in this family-centered home where Mamah and Frank began the illicit affair. In their ensuing years together, they explored this new organic philosophy of living honestly with themselves out in the world. Having their inner thoughts and feelings and deepest desires of life match what they presented to the world became their new law of order. They lived naturally, honestly. But like the lovely thought that we can live in harmony with nature and allow the one mouse in our house, it's not very practical. One mouse quickly turns into 12, a few weeds in a vegetable patch to the total destruction of the vegetables. Mamah and Frank left their families for two years while they toured Europe, leaving a wife, a husband, and a combined nine children who would forever be scarred with abandonment and rejection while the lovers explored radical new ideas and life with each other. What a terrible price to pay for organic living.

Annie and her books

I signed the kids up for gymnastics for the winer to give them something to do other than huddle for warmth near the vent in the tv room. I was able to get Annie and Johnny into classes that are almost at the same time. John starts at 3:30, Annie starts at 4. For the half-hour that she is waiting, Annie brings a book. The first day she brought Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A fellow gymnast hovered over Annie's book while she was waiting for the class to start and said, "What are you reading?" Not looking up, Annie answered, "Harry Potter." The girl kept asking questions, all while Annie couldn't be bothered to look up to answer. I imagine she was having a marvelous time in her imaginary world and wished the garrulous girl would just go away. When the girl finally lost interest in Annie, I went over and tried to explain to Annie how the girl was trying to make friends with her. "Books are great when you're alone...take advantage of opportunities to make friends...notice when someone's trying to be your friend...find something you like to talk about together..." I think she heard "wah wah wah wah wah" (imagine Charlie Brown's adult world). Sometimes I think this is how Annie sees the entire "real" world. Just noise in between the reality she finds in books.

Telling Annie what to read is like telling a teenage girl what to wear. She loves the "Little House on the Prairie" books except for some odd reason "Farmer Boy." She has a collection of Little House books in a neat little box that she got from her godmother Caroline. She treasures them and keeps all of them neat and orderly in the box, all except Farmer Boy. Poor Farmer Boy can't live in the treasured box, can't even live on the same shelf as the other books, but has to be kept on the baby shelf with Ellie's books. Last summer at our block party we had a book donation bin for the book walk (think "cake walk" except with books as the prizes instead of cakes). In a dash, Annie ran up to her room to finally have a chance to purge the despised Farmer Boy from her bookshelf. She was finally rid of her cryptonite. So imagine her face when she came home two weeks ago with none other than her school's copy of "Farmer Boy" to read for her next book assignment. I was happy when she started to read it and assumed she had changed her mind about how horrible it was. It sat by her bedside for the next two weeks, and silly me, I assumed she was reading it. Last night before I went out I asked her just to make sure she had read it. "It's due tomorrow," I told her. She assured me she did read it. Then I went out to a church event (I make it sound holy when there was actually a lot of wine and dice involved...Bunco). When I got home Matt told me of the scene that followed after I left. Instead of just taking her word for it like I did, Matt opened the book and started quizzing her on the subject matter. Then the truth came out. "I started reading it, but I DON'T LIKE IT!" And when Matt told her that it was due for school and she needed to read it for awhile before bed, all hell broke loose. "NOOOOOOOOO! BUT WE JUST WENT TO THE LIBRARY I HAVE NEW BOOKS I WANT TO READ ANNE OF GREEN GABLES!!!! DON'T MAKE ME READ FARMER BOY I HATE IT!!!!!!!" And she threw one of her all-out fits that turned her face blotchy and her eyes puffy just like when she was an infant. (Funny how some traits seem to be embedded from birth.) Matt calmly sat her down, talked her down from the ledge, and got her to read it before bed. As a reward, she got to stay up 45 minutes later than usual and watch some of the strawberry shortcake movie she picked out from the library.

Funny how we worry about our kids. They're either not eating enough or they're eating too much. They're too needy, they're too detached. They are pushovers, they are bullies. They are too social and not studious enough, or in the case of Annie, so studious that I worry that she will push friends away. The other day she corrected one of her friends on how to spell something. I cringed internally and tried to gently tell her to be careful about correcting friends. "You can let grownups do that. As a friend, you don't want to be the one doing that." In my head I was thinking, "No one likes that person. Seriously." But then I remembered having a huge argument with a friend when I was 12 about whether Alexander Hamilton, who was on a $10 bill, was a president or not. She thought he probably was. To prove it, I sung her the presidents song to the tune of "Yankee Doodle." "See! Did you hear 'Hamilton' anywhere in that song? Well, then, he wasn't a president!" I also think of my husband, who uses cool logic to defend his arguments like a mother lion would use her ferocious claws to defend her young. And now it occurs to me...am I afraid that Annie Is fated to become her parents? Will she unbendingly argue like Matt? Escape into her books like I escape into my mind? Is all the social awkwardness, all the intensity, all the oddness and sensitivity that Matt or I have experienced due to come her way as well? Maybe the key is not to try to change the more difficult qualities we see that our children have inherited, but to become comfortable with those qualities in ourselves so we can allow them to flourish in our kids. Sometimes parenting calls for worrying less and smiling more. The truth is, I love how much she adores books, I love that she uses big words but still has the curve of a baby face when she takes off her glasses, and I love that I can remember that tiny pink newborn who would throw inconsolable fits while her face grew blotchy. I love watching the miracle unfold of mixing two people and getting one beautiful, unique, spirited child that will grow into her own. God help me to give her the tools and the space to grow into who she was intended to be.

Cleaning lady

So I was feeling very sorry for myself today. Matt has been gone since Monday, our steps are barely crossable b/c of a leaky gutter over the stairs that drips onto the stairs and then freezes, Johnny split open a styrofoam packaging that he threw all over the basement to make it "snow" inside, and the car battery decided that it was just too cold to work today (I can relate). I haven't even felt up to the task of running the garbage out through the knee-deep snow into the alley, so I've been letting the bags pile up in the mudroom. I had always planned to take them out, just when it's 20 above zero, not 20 below. Our basement is the refuge for cold winter days like these, but even the basement is a little chilly for me, and stuffed to the top with way too many toys. I started to clean out the toys that are broken, have missing pieces, or are just not being played with.

Anyhow, I was looking forward to having the cleaning lady come today. What a wonderful treat it is. I recognize it and appreciate it. Johnny was learning how to say, "mi nombre es Johnny. Como se llama? " I was asking her in Spanish how Christmas was. She spent the holiday with her 6 siblings who all live in Chicago. I asked her if her parents are living. She told me they are, but they live in Mexico and she hasn't been able to see them for 10 years. She finished up just as I was getting Johnny ready to take to school. I told her to please leave the garbage in the mudroom, that I would get it when it warmed up slightly. But when I emerged from the basement, she was out in the mudroom, having cleared it of all garbage. I felt awful. I gushed a thank you while she finished and put on her coat and walked out the front door. Johnny put on his coat for kindergarten and because today is the day we pick up the neighbor through the alley for school, we walked out the back. And on the back steps, I ran into the cleaning lady. Apparently, as she was taking the garbage out, she saw an art set that the kids got two years ago for Christmas and used once. I had thrown it away because it had missing pieces, but she knew her kids wouldn't mind. She looked down, embarrassed, smiled sheepishly with the art kit in her hands, and said in English, "For my kids. I hope it's okay."

Now, I know this is sounding like one of those e-mail forwards designed to make you feel like the rich, spoiled, lazy people that we all are, and believe me I have been feeling like that for the past several hours, but it's not a good feeling to stay with. Being grateful and praying for those who are less fortunate are all very good. We should all do that. But is there something other than gratitude and prayer that can come from this? An action perhaps, rather than just a thought?

Resolutions

When I make New Year's Resolutions, it looks less like a couple of simple statements and more like a table of contents for a doctoral thesis. There are chapter headings like "Health," "Relationships," and "Professional/Academic." Maybe it's because I hold out hope that if it looks more official, it'll turn out better. Like buying wine with a gold seal. And so goes the doctoral thesis of New Year's resolutions. The titles, the supporting categories, the specific deeds that comprise each resolution have a way of shaping the direction of the following year. I have the last few years' resolutions saved and look back on them. All of the goals are not reached, of course, but a lot of them are! So this year I've started writing the book on what I'll do this coming year. On health and fitness, I wanted to accomplish some bigger races. This serves a few purposes. First, it's nice to accomplish a big race. Second, it's good for your health. Third, I might finally lose that little muffin top that clings to my midsection post-baby #3. Fourth, exercising every day is as good for positive brain activity as antidepressents. I hope the only drugs I take this year are ones I never tried in college. :) Fifth, exercise gives you more energy throughout the day, which could help me be a better home-keeper and a more fun mom.

With a belly full of healthy fruits and vegetables (and tremendous gas), and muscles glowing and energized from the first few "real" workouts in a long time, I hauled my new self to prayer group tonight. Feeling hopeful with my outline of promises to self-improve in 2009, a woman in the group started us off with a New Year's prayer. Here it is:

God's Blessings in the New Year

Every January 1, I ask myself the same thing: How am I going to be better this year? I suppose it's a fair question. We all have room for improvement. But I seem to come back to the same shortcomings time and time again. "This year I will be kinder," I tell myself. "This year I will be thinner. This year I will be more patient."

I am always trying to create a new and improved version of myself--and not just on New Year's Day. In spite of all my resolutions, though, I seem to be basically the same person I was a year ago...and ten years ago. Maybe this year I won't try to reinvent myself. It was God who created me, after all. Maybe instead of trying to fix everything that's wrong with me, I will ask for God's blessings, place myself in God's hands, and trust that God will continue to create me.

Loving God, bless me and keep me in the coming year, however you see fit.

Mean bone

Johnny's friend Alex is an only child with a very gentle older mom and dad. Over Christmas break, John was playing with Alex while both his mom and dad were at home. John had never met the dad before. Alex's mom said to John, "You'll like Alex's dad. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body." John had a wonderful time. But this idea of "mean bones" I think has been swirling in his head ever since. Last Sunday at mass, John was on my lap and was looking at my hands, playing with my watch, etc. He saw the tendon that runs on the inside forearm and kind of sticks out and whispered to me, "Mom, I think that's your mean bone."

potty talk

Ellie had a rash in a sensitive area today. When her diaper was off, she was whining about it and pulling at the aforementioned sensitive areas. While doing so, she looked down to examine and was surprised with her findings. "I have a hole in my vagina!" Hooray. My 2-year old now knows what a vagina is.

She is quite interested these days in private part words. Yesterday Matt told me he heard her in the next room singing to herself all the naughty words she could think of to the tune of "Oh come Oh come Emmanuel."

Penis penis penis penis penis
butt butt butt butt butt butt butt butt butt
poopy poopy pee pee pee pee
fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart fart
Vagina! Vagina! Vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina.

I am so proud.

The Circle of the Sun

Aunt Amy Bridget Vander Zanden Twadell
Born into this world December 2, 1953
Born into Eternity October 7th, 2008

There was a song that my godmother Aunt Amy would sing to me when I was little. She would sit with her legs crossed on the ground and I would sit in her lap. "Put your arms around me like the circle of the sun, you know I love you baby when my easy ridin's done..." I didn't really understand what the lyrics meant then, but liked the tune a lot and loved hearing her sing it as she hugged me and rocked me back and forth. When I was a kid I thought she made it up herself. Everyone in the family thought of it as "Amy's song."

A child of a very large Catholic family, Amy Vander Zanden was raised in a strict but very loving household. Speaking with a giddy cheerfulness when recounting childhood stories, she told of the seven children using an assembly line after dinner to clear, wash, dry, and put away all the dirtied dishes. If you'd ever seen my grandmother cook you would understand the challenge that would have awaited them. The table would have looked as if it were set for a State dinner at the White House; the kitchen would have looked like Hiroshima after the bomb. The seven kids celebrated when their assembly line technique helped them achieve their all-time best record of seven minutes. My Aunt Amy laughed when she told stories of playing loud music with her siblings and holding rolled up paper between their lips when their parents were away to arouse the suspicion and ire of the nosey old lady across the street. She rolled her eyes when telling about her fancy sister buying expensive shoes and paying her little brother (who wore the same size at the time) to break them in for her very sensitive feet.

My Aunt Amy didn't tell many stories of her adolescent and teenaged years. There were whispers of a cousin's sexual abuse and my aunt's subsequent troubled times. She went to college in the early seventies and fully embraced the age of drugs, artists, and rock and roll. My mom described her during those years as soft-spoken, kind, and "a little unsure of herself." She met a long haired, warmhearted lover of art and music and fell in love. Shortly after my Aunt became engaged, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and was given a very short time left to live. The family mobilized and put together the most charming, heartfelt wedding in two weeks time. Wearing a simple, vintage garden dress and adorned with a crown of flowers, my Aunt Amy married Kenny Twadell in a simple church ceremony and a reception at home among a very small circle of friends and family. For my Aunt Amy, this wedding was absolutely perfect. My Uncle Kenny and she moved to a farm in Darlington, Wisconsin shortly after. My aunt talked about that house as her favorite place of residence, a place of peace and simplicity. Eventually they moved to Chicago and my aunt became a social worker, helping children from the city's south side and surrounding suburbs cope with lives broken by abuse and neglect. Never having had children of her own, she poured her mothering instinct into loving her nieces and nephews and caring for the troubled children who sat in her office each day. My aunt became a straight-talking, strong woman while working as a therapist. She excelled in this role and helped dozens of children overcome their own troubled times, but the sadness and brokenness of these children's lives was a heavy burden. She battled alcoholism much of her adult life. I remember asking her once when she was braiding my hair why her hands always shook so much. It wasn't until I was in college that she finally started on the path to sobriety. With the help of AA, she got better and helped dozens of others on the path to sobriety. She made deep, soulful friendships with her AA friends. She began to radiate a confidence and peace like never before. Embracing her artistic and spiritual side in this new life, my Aunt Amy started making gorgeous scarves and shawls on her loom with her now steady hands. Many friends and family are blessed to have a few of Aunt Amy's creations.

My favorite memories with my aunt were at Point Comfort, a cozy little cottage which sat right on the water about twenty minutes away from the town of Green Bay. It was there that I would sit in her lap and avoid the tip of her lit cigarette while watching the sky explode into shades of orange, purple, and red as the sun plunged into the water's horizon. I know she was as happy here as she was as a child or on the farm in Darlington. There, all troubles would disappear and the calm waters and golden sun would hold her in a constant state of peace. Out on the beach in front of the cottage I would happily sit in her embrace as she sang me the song that I now know is an old 20's folk song remade by the Grateful Dead, Arlo Guthrie, and others during the early 70's. The lyrics now aren't so unintelligible to me as an adult. I think somehow when that artistic spirit entered the original writer of this song, it had my aunt in mind all along. Eight years before she was diagnosed with a cancer that would prove to be too much to fight against, she sang this beautiful song to me at my wedding. Now, I sing it back to her.

Put your arms around me like the circle of the sun.
You know I love you baby when my easy ridin's done.
Would you believe I love you? Look at the shape that I'm in!
Would you believe I'm sinking? Look at the hole that I'm in!
Stealing, stealing...nobody's got a hold on me.
Cuz' I'm stealing back to my same old used to be.

My dearest Auntie Amy, rest well in the Circle of God's Sun.

The Bitch vs. The Angel

I am missing blogging. Someone described blogging to me once (when I hadn't yet admitted to her that I blogged) as a sort of "verbal masturbation." I'm sorry, Mom. And I agreed. It is. Blogs are full of "I thinks" and "me" and stories that attempt to show what a smart writer, cute storyteller, and interesting person the blogger is. But blogging is fun, it's compelling sometimes, and it's a wonderful release to be able to put something down on paper that has been swirling around in the brain. When you tell someone your thoughts, it feels better. In the old fashioned method of calling a friend up and talking about your thoughts, or sitting in a cafe somewhere to chit-chat, you're also tailoring your stories to that one person. If you're like most people, you change slightly depending on who you're talking to. You don't tell dirty jokes to your grandma, you don't talk baby talk with your coworkers, and you soften and lighten your verbage on political views with someone you know does not share your opinions. This last example you might disagree with.

With a blog, you can more easily be yourself. And for this reason, it's sometimes an even greater release of tension to be able to put onto paper in a somewhat coherent manner one's feelings, opinions, and happenings in life. It's like telling a friend, but that friend is the combination of all friends and relatives in the audience. You can't possibly tailor your speaking points in a blog. You have no choice but to be yourself. And for a woman who is accustomed to trying to please many people, it's nice to be able to be yourself. It's nice to practice how that feels, because maybe, just maybe, we should try that a little bit more in real life too.

When I was reading the Betty Friedan book last year, "The Feminine Mystique," the book that essentially got the ball rolling on the women's movement, I remember reading a quote from her ex-husband as he talked about Betty's personality and how it helped lead to the downfall of the marriage: "She changed the course of history almost singlehandedly. It took a driven, super aggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this." I feel that if we behave like the woman who speaks her mind and doesn't sugar-coat our words, our home life and social life suffers. As the eloquent Tina Fey put it in an SNL skit when talking about Hillary Clinton, "Yeah, she's a bitch...but bitches get stuff done."

Sometimes when blogging, our own questions can be answered for us. Like this: we love to categorize in black and white, yes and no terms when the world is full of grey maybes. Do we have to be either Bitch or Angel, or can we be a very direct but very sympathetic friend?

There. I feel better already. What a release!