Hello From Crazy Town

The effects of sleep deprivation don't hit you all of a sudden in a "wow, I’m kind of cranky, I think I need a bit more sleep" kind of way. They seep into your system slowly and accumulate. One minute you're a relatively normal human being, capable of holding a job, making friends, etc. The next thing you know, you can barely hold a conversation. You find yourself standing in the kitchen, reaching for the sugar canister, then pouring half a pound of sugar directly into your coffee while you marvel over the empty sugar bowl right next to it. This happened this morning; I'm not clever enough to make that up.

But that's a fairly benign example of what a cumulative lack of sleep will do. Lately it has caused me to behave quite badly. And, unfortunately, I am in the constant company of someone else who also has not slept; Sam isn't always on his A-game either lately, so that makes him my likely target.

Here's an example: Monday, after another night of tossing and turning, trying to scare Darth Vader out of my husband's body, and getting up and down to deal with Quinn, I woke up angry. I won't bother painting the whole picture for you, I'll just get to the punch line: after a couple of hours of bickering, I decided to make Sam an egg sandwich as a peace offering. He came in from stacking wood, thanked me, and got ready to sit down for breakfast. Some other switch got flipped and the next thing I know I'm snatching the egg sandwich from his plate and feeding it to my dog right in front of him. It was a very satisfying moment actually, for me and for Boone. Even now, the memory brings a smile…But then Sam made the decisive, game-winning move: he calmly put on his coat, picked up his bag, and walked straight out the front door.

The egg sandwich was the funny part of the day. What came next was less funny: it involves me opening the front door and slamming it shut, over and over again, as Sam continued to walk calmly toward his truck. Sam is like a chess master in these matches—he's literally unflappable and that (obviously) drives me utterly mad. After three tries to demolish our front door, I happened to glance over toward the living room. Boone, the same dog who was moments ago happily devouring a warm egg sandwich, was shaking like a leaf behind a chair. I didn't dare look at Quinn who was strapped into her bouncy seat; I was afraid I'd see the mini-Sam sitting there in judgment.

Seeing Boone's terror helped me to come to my senses. I called to Sam and told him he couldn't leave until I got myself together. That was a redeeming move, right? As he walked quietly back into the house, I did what any sane person would do: I went out to my car, opened the hatchback door and climbed into the trunk to take a few deep breaths.

Welcome to Crazy Town. This is where I live.

The question is: how did I get here? Well, I had all day Monday to think about that and here's what I came up with. I've been brainwashed by the Boob Nazis. You know, Breast is Best and all that other garbage. Here's the thing: I was raised on formula and, until recently, I've always been a sane and healthy person. I am not a chronic allergy sufferer, I have never had a cavity, I am not obese and I certainly know plenty of adults who were breastfed who have much lower IQs than I do—though I won't, for now, name names.

With this compelling empirical data in mind, I was never committed to breastfeeding. I told myself (and all the complete strangers who were nosey enough to think it was their right to ask) that I would give it a try. I made no promises. If it worked and I got used to it, I'd do it as long as it continued to work and that's it. In the beginning, it was one of the most awful experiences of my life. After a few weeks it got easier. Then a few weeks turned into a few months and I made it through my maternity leave and that was really all I had secretly hoped for. 

When I started back to work, that's when the brainwashing really started to take over. I have a full teaching load at my school, and I babysit one morning a week as a trade with Quinn's babysitter. I planned ahead for this by freezing tons and tons of little packets of breastmilk: they were my back up plan, my lifeline. After a couple of weeks of dropping Quinn off with her diaper bag, pacifier and little cooler of thawed milk, only to have her babysitter tell me that she "wasn't hungry" all afternoon, I knew something was wrong. Eventually I figured it out: the milk had gone bad…all of it. So now, on top of teaching a full course load, babysitting one morning a week, and "breastfeeding exclusively" around the clock, I now had to find extra time to pump a bottle to send to the babysitter each day. No problem, no complaints (okay, maybe a few), and no sleep…but stress by the bucket load, I can tell you that. 

So now we're approaching the six-month marker that everyone tells you to aim for: it is best to breastfeed exclusively for six months. And, even though I never believed all the crazy talk, at some point I willingly drove myself to Crazy Town and managed to obsess over this "recommendation" despite the fact that I haven't been able to sleep, haven't been able to escape for a yoga class or a ski, and haven't had the energy to do just about anything…I MUST FEED QUINN…HER LIFE DEPENDS ON IT…NOTHING ELSE WILL DO.

Holy shit! Snap out of it! I mean, Quinn is now old enough that when I get set up to feed her in her pretty little room, in my mom's old rocking chair, with the sun coming up over the distant ridge—the view that Sam labored over for us—you know, that blissful, mother-child moment…

..well, my kid grabs me by the collar, makes that hungry baby bird face and screams as she lunges toward my exposed flesh. Thank god she doesn't have teeth.

In my opinion, there's only one thing to do when you find yourself living in Crazy Town: figure out how the hell you got there and make a change. I bought a canister of organic formula, thinking that on March 7^th, Quinn's half birthday, we could give her her first bottle of formula. Then I thought: oh yeah, six months is arbitrary because the pediatricians and the lactation consultants and all the other "experts" say that really, whatever breastmilk you can provide your baby is great, and I've been providing my baby breastmilk for 5.75 months, so what the hell…let's do this thing!

This may seem like a non sequitur, but it's not: Every few years I decide I'm going to grow out my hair. I used to have very long hair, then, I had very short hair. This is in keeping with my personality: very black & white (or, long & short, as it were). Some time after I took up residence in Crazy Town, I decided that old moms have short hair and young (or at least young-looking) moms have long hair. So, I've been growing my hair, in an attempt to look younger than I am so that when Quinn someday looks back at the photos of her babyhood, she won't think, "Wow, my mom was really old!" All the while, I'm feeling foreign to myself because really, I am meant to have short hair. So first I was pregnant: that was weird. Then I had a baby: that was very strange. Then I turned into an Exclusively Breastfeeding Nazi: who the flock am I?

Tuesday, after our disastrous Monday, I had an appointment to get my haircut. For the past couple of years, that has meant a trim. But on this day, delirious from lack of sleep, I left Sam with Quinn and the canister of formula and strict instructions to "get it done" while I was out of the house…I just couldn't bare the thought of it. I drove to Burlington, crying, walked into the salon and wordlessly held up a photograph of my former self. "Get it done," I told Connie and she set to work.

Two hours later, my hair was gone and my mojo was back! I walked around Church Street leisurely for the first time in 5.75 months…no little birds chirping for my return. I bought myself a salted caramel mocha, bought Barbara Kingsolver's latest book which I have been coveting for months, went into a store to see if there were any cute baby outfits I needed to buy for Quinn (okay, maybe I still felt a little guilty), and found a sale bin with $2 t-shirts. I found one with a polar bear on it, and the caption "Bearly Awake." I knew I was meant to have it. When I got home, I showered just for the pleasure of washing my newly short hair, and I put on my new t-shirt which for now is a bit tight across the milkers, but that's okay…I might as well show them off while I've got 'em…and then I climbed into bed with Quinn for an afternoon nap, happy to be out of the grip of the crazy people and back in my old hometown…

Get ready Quinnie-the-Pooh…'cause your real mom is coming back!

If anyone reading this is interested in an alternative-to-breastfeeding point of view, here's a great article (thank you Erin, my sane-mom friend who laughs at me a lot but always provides me with a healthy dose of perspective):

 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/7311/

Payback

I don't like babies. I did not get pregnant because I liked or wanted a baby, but rather because I wanted to someday have a teenage kid in my life, who would continue to grow up from there and become, hopefully, more and more interesting. When we were contemplating having a baby, I really just wanted another puppy, but I knew I'd have to invest in that future teenager and there appears to be no other way than to start small…literally.

So, getting pregnant became a goal and I am a goal-oriented person. In the first month that we didn't succeed, I was ticked off. Not because that put me one month further away from a baby, but because I had failed to achieve the goal.  In the second month that we didn't succeed, I was psychological: What if I'm too old? What if I can't? As soon as I imagined being told that I was incapable of reproducing, I of course wanted to even more…again, not because of a desire for a baby, but rather because I absolutely bristle at being told what I cannot do and then I go forth Braveheart style on a mission to do that very thing.  The third month was November and Sam was away so instead of worrying about the goal I hosted the annual Scorpio Party for all of my sassy Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio girlfriends. (I'm guessing you're not surprised to learn that I'm a Scorpio).

It was December when the goal was finally reached and I thought, "Oh shit! Now I'm pregnant!" 

It was on the night of the 30^th when I was waitressing at Egan's and I first started to sense it. I was serving chicken fingers to a bunch of obnoxious kids who were being ignored by their obnoxious parents who were busy sending me back and forth from the kitchen for one friggin' thing at a time. For years, waitressing had been great birth control. Why would I ever want to have kids after seeing kids who were allowed to behave badly in restaurants? My Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio girlfriends and I would sit around at Table 8 after hours drinking wine, talking about all those condescending people from New York and New Jersey and think, "Ha! Joke's on you, people! You and your obnoxious kids, schlepping all the way up here for a brief respite from your insane life, and we live here, in the mountains, without kids, playing every day instead of once a year!"  But that night, as I walked back and forth to the kitchen from the stupid booth that's built out of a car, that all those friggin' kids want to sit in, to fetch another fork, or a bit of ketchup, or some other thing that the kid or the parent was screaming for, I walked back and forth gripped by the growing realization that I was suddenly in danger of living that very same insane life…not to mention getting very fat, very soon.

Sam and I had friends visiting for New Year's Eve, so I waited until New Year's Day when everyone cleared out to go upstairs and take the test. The damned thing confirmed my worst fears: I had just cashed in my free & independent, healthy & fun life for fatness and chaos and servitude. I called my sister Amy before I told Sam. I was in a full-blown panic. And, as she had done when I wet my pants playing Hide & Seek in the fourth grade, she laughed at me, though admittedly with a bit of empathy this time. But she did laugh, and she laughed because she suspected that my panic would subside and I would eventually come around to the fact that I did, after all, enter into this project willingly.

This same issue of my own culpability came up when I went to my first doctor's appointment: "Congratulations," said the doctor. "How do you feel?"

"Horrified!" I told her, thinking this was a normal response. She looked puzzled.

"Is this a planned pregnancy?" she asked. When I said yes, she was really confused. And when I saw the little peanut-shaped creature on the ultrasound screen, and heard the heartbeat for the first time, so was I. My doctor sent me home with a handful of business cards for therapists she recommended.

I never called them because I had Amy. My sister gets me. And she knows how to help. She listens, she validates, she comforts. She doesn't judge, she doesn't get impatient, and she inherited from our mother the ability to give a very good pep talk. 

Someday I'll forgive her for making me stand up next to her
as her Maid when I was 4.5 months pregnant wearing a
moo-moo and she looked like this!

I'm pretty sure Amy knew all along that I would eventually fall completely in love with whatever offspring I managed to produce.  So, when I started leaving her voicemail messages to the effect of "Now, when I sneeze, I pee myself! Call me back," well, she called back, every time, and she helped me to laugh and to exhale and to get through my pregnancy one very long day at a time. Don't get me wrong; I had an easy pregnancy. The only thing that wasn't easy was me. I worry a lot, and have a hard time anticipating big changes. And, I don't like to share…at all. I don't like to share my chocolate, or the blanket, never mind my blood supply! 

Frankly, I probably never deserved to even have Quinn given this melodramatic explanation of her arrival. But, I did have her and of course I now understand what all my crazy mom-friends were trying to tell me all those years…it really is different when the baby is your own. But this entry isn't meant to be about Quinn; it's about Amy.

Amy is different than me in many ways, but she too is a Scorpio (albeit a kindler, gentler one), and she is also goal oriented. And even though she actually loves babies, all of them—babies in all shapes, sizes, colors and constitutions...

...she too gets worked up about simply achieving the goal. So, while she's trying to do that, I'm trying to remember all of the things she did for me to help me through the process. The trouble is that I'm not always a good listener. My way of "comforting" is often to offer unsolicited advice, and when my advice is not embraced, I tend to get impatient. (Yesterday, driving home from my dad's house in Massachusetts, Sam and I listened to an old cd of Men Are From Mars. Women Are From Venus. If that guy's information is accurate, I'm embarrassed to say that my outer Tom Boy isn't just on the outside and I'm not always a very good Venusian.) But here again, I know I have to rise to the challenge.

We are motherless women, Amy and I, and we have to stick together. Sure, our mother shows up in dreams now and then, but believe me—it's not the same as having her show up on the other end of the phone! So, I owe Amy, and I need to show up on the other end of the phone a bit more often.  And for the days that I don't, I hope she'll come back to this entry and know that I'm trying to be half the friend to her that she has been to me. 

And if no one else comes back to this blog ever again, now that I've revealed rather plainly some of my more abhorrent shortcomings, well, I won't blame you.  But if you do come back, I promise I'll reward you with some glass-is-half-full stuff, and a long entry about the broad Society of Women that I am deeply grateful for…it includes my sister, and my Scorpio and Honorary Scorpio friends, and my crazy and not-so-crazy mom friends who are all light years ahead of me in their maturity and their wisdom.

Slow Learner

"You make me better than I am." 

-Fred Savage to Winnie on The Wonder Years

On the way home from an early Valentine's dinner last night, I was telling Sam about Janie Mae Crawford and her sweet talking, sweet loving man Tea Cake. These are the two main characters in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I just finished reading with my eleventh graders—just in time for Valentine's Day (you're welcome boys!). I was telling Sam about the moment in the book when Janie realizes that Tea Cake is the real thing and she experiences, as Hurston describes it, a "self-crushing love." We were talking about Quinn and I was saying that for the first time in my life, I think I really understand what true love is; I have never experienced a "self-crushing" anything until now…I have always been more Emersonian in my self-centeredness!

Sam grinned patiently as I explained that I would do anything for Quinn and that while I have loved him truly for a long time (ten years this summer), I wouldn't say I was ever willing to do any self-crushing for him. He's used to my honesty by now.

One time, years ago, someone asked me about Sam; this was before Sam and I got married and this person wondered if I had met my "soul mate." My response was quick and unplanned: "I don't think my soul has a mate; I'm too independent. But I do think I've met my match." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I thought, "Hmm, that was interesting." I had never really thought about myself or my relationship in that way before; I had always hoped for a soul mate, so I was surprised by this matter-of-fact response.

My parents had set a high bar for me: they were best friends, high school sweethearts who were still madly in love when my mother died twenty-three years into their marriage. I experienced serious teenage disgust when I would find them dancing in the living room in the middle of the day, or making out in the garage when I opened the door to take out the garbage.

But even though I was grossed out on the surface, those moments got filed away in my expectations for later years. Through the years I had many nice boyfriends. In fact, I never had a bad one; they were all, every one of them, sweet and thoughtful and attentive and affectionate. And, one after another, I passed them up in order to "keep with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Then I met Sam. We were in a ten-day Wilderness First Responder class in New Hampshire. He lived and taught in Virginia at the time, and I taught for a traveling school based in Vermont. I lived out of a storage unit, a backpack and my truck. I was sitting in the front row on the first day when we went around the room and introduced ourselves. I heard this sexy voice from somewhere behind me, "I'm Sam," he said, and he mentioned that he was a high school history teacher. I had to turn around. When I swiveled back toward the front of the room, a fellow teacher from my school, who was taking the class as well, caught the look on my face. "Wow," I whispered with a wide-eyed smile and he laughed at me.

Later that morning, the instructors said some of us had to move our cars; we were parked in the wrong place. I headed out to move my pickup, which was loaded with my kayaking and climbing gear. I saw Sam out of the corner of my eye; I watched to see what he was driving. He was headed to another pickup, which was loaded with his kayaking and climbing gear. I knew then that love at first sight was real, and I also knew that I would someday marry him.

Our first kayaking date on the Lehigh River in PA, September 2001

What I didn't know at the time was that before I could marry him, I would have to experience a number of reality checks that were neither romantic nor even pleasant, and that I would learn for certain that Sam was not perfect, and, even more shocking, neither was I. It was in those moments that I had some internal shift regarding soul mates. Meeting my match, someone who could still be himself even in the admittedly overbearing presence of my self, well, maybe that was more important to me than finding a perfect mate. This was a man worth holding onto.

And so I have held on—sometimes for dear life, and other times with only two fingers at an arm's length. It doesn't matter to me how we hold on, just that we do. The peaks now are higher and the valleys less deep, and our patterns make sense enough that we know how to avoid some of the Clash of the Titans brawls we used to have. In fact, we've come to have fun telling some of our fight stories, though we usually find that no one else finds them quite as funny as we do. We are very different, but we are very much alike in our stubbornness and our will to win. Like I said, I've met my match.

So last night, as I was explaining that for the first time in my life, I love someone in a self-crushing way, I expected him to share my feelings about our daughter…our daughter, it is still a stunning concept to me!

To my surprise, Sam's response was, "sometimes." Only sometimes does he have for her that overwhelming I would do absolutely anything for you and you are the most important aspect of every minute of my day kind of feeling. I chose not to dwell too long on my disappointed surprise, believing then and even now that this will change for him over time. I know my connection to Quinn is perhaps more biological than it is for him. I have always had Mother Lion tendencies with the people I love, but now I am really a mother and my inner lion is fierce. Hopefully he'll catch up someday.

When we got home, I went straight to bed, exhausted. Quinn has been waking up more rather than less for the past six weeks and I think I am starting to suffer from prolonged sleep deprivation. I've started to dread going to bed at night, because I know I will be up and down and more tired the next day. The same is true for Sam. And so by four o'clock this morning, when I got back into bed, again, and Sam dared to breathe audibly, I threw an unabashed fit. "Can't you even try?" I yelled. He threw back the sheets and stormed off snapping back, "I'm not doing anything!" I couldn't believe he was going to leave me alone upstairs because that meant no more taking turns dealing with Quinn; I would be the only one who could hear her and therefore I would be the only one getting up. Happy friggin' Valentine's Day to you too, I thought.

Quinn and I made it to 7 a.m., at which time I fed her and changed her one last time and then deposited her on her mat next to the couch where Sam was sleeping. I walked back upstairs to bed listening to her chirp, relieved that she was no longer my problem.

By 8:30 I woke up and the house was quiet. Guilt washed over me. I had been mean, and I had not been a team player. I got up and got dressed, prepared to go downstairs and apologize, again, for behavior that I am embarrassed to admit has become a bit routine. The house was empty, the coffee was still hot, and the truck was gone from the driveway.

Twenty minutes later, they came home. Sam came in through the basement, something we do when we are trying not to wake the sleeping baby…I was the sleeping baby. When he came up the stairs, with the car seat in tow, and saw me sitting by the woodstove, his face lit up. "Good morning!" he said with his bright smile, and I burst into tears. I couldn't believe he wasn't mad at me. He came over to give me a kiss, laughed off my meanness and said, "It's just a nighttime thing! I love you."

That was one of those moments I hung on for dear life. I felt run down, my back sore despite the massage Sam sent me for yesterday, mascara smudged under my eyes from last night's dinner date he planned, my hair desperately needing a cut. "You're beautiful," he said. I laughed and cried all at once. Sometimes Sam's imagination drives me crazy. I'm a reality-based thinker; I tend to stop myself at what's possible right now. Sam spends a portion of every day concocting elaborate plans that often strike me as wildly impractical if not impossible. But this morning, when he managed to still love me, and convince himself that I was beautiful, well, I felt profoundly grateful for his imagination. And I realized he has probably known a lot more about love, for a lot longer than I have. Hopefully I'll catch up someday.

Raising Day, July 2007

Osmosis

I recognized the woman walking up our driveway this morning. She has the ruddy cheeks of someone who might drink too much, but maybe it's something else. Understandably, the dogs were barking; we never have unexpected guests. I put Quinn down on her mat, and got to the door as the woman started up the porch steps. I held the dogs back with a knee and said hi.

"I didn't realize it turned into a goat path!"  She nodded to her truck, stuck in the snow just beyond our driveway. "I had some time to kill before I pick my nephews up at detention; I thought I'd just take a drive."

"Yeah, that's a snowmobile trail. You're stuck?"

"Ha! Definitely, it looked plowed but as soon as I passed your driveway I sunk right in."

"It's groomed. The groomer went by just last night; that's why it looks so flat."

Quinn. The dogs. New truck. I thought about it all and then thought of Richard. I always think of Richard; he's our closest neighbor who lives ¼ mile down the hill. He has a big truck, a ham radio, chickens, and a lifetime of experiences that are helping us through ours.

I first met Richard the day that Sam and Corey lit the hill on fire. It was early spring four years ago and we were still clearing the land. Sam was eager to burn some of the brush piles down. I came up to bring lunch and drove around the corner into a wall of thick smoke. Sam was running in and out of that cloud with his chainsaw in one hand, dragging small pines out with the other. Corey was at the bottom of the clearing digging a trench as fast as he could. Flames were racing across the leaf litter, seeking out the skinny trunks of evergreens, then lighting them like matchsticks. After the shock wore off, I got back in the car and sped toward the house at the bottom of the hill. I ran to the door and knocked. "Hi! I'm Kerry! Our hill is on fire. Can I use your phone?" Richard pointed to the phone and was out the back door. By the time I finished answering the 911 operator's questions ("No! It's not a small brush fire! It's a forest fire!"), Richard already had his rakes and shovels loaded in his truck. He was out the driveway ahead of me.

When it was all over, the volunteer firefighters packed back into their various cars to head out; the Fire Chief had warned them, "15 minutes to NASCAR!"  I went back to town to recover. Eventually, Sam and Richard had a beer or two and had a more civilized introduction. Richard suggested, with what we now know to be a characteristic subtlety, that Sam might want to drop a donation off at the Fire Department. Good advice that we wouldn't have thought of. Then he eased Sam's embarrassment by telling him the story of the time he and his brother-in-law lit a fire that made ours look puny.

Richard always has a story. And he always seems to be watching out his window for our next disaster. The morning after we raised our timberframe, in July of 2007, he walked up to check on it. It had been raining for two days and by the time he came up on his morning walk with his dogs, there were six inches of mud in the basement—wall to wall. He went home, got some hoses and rigged some sort of siphon drainage. When we came up later that day, we found the apparatus and knew the real mess had already been cleaned up. That summer as we were building, Richard would walk up after he finished work every day. Some days he'd grab a hammer and climb up on the roof to start pounding nails.

When winter came we really got intimate. We saw him a lot then. He pulled us out of ditches, talked us out of jams, helped us with an endless rotation of flat plow truck tires and who knows what else; I've long since lost track and this is only our fourth winter. Now and then we bring him beer. I've baked cookies, brought him homemade ice cream, said thank you a million times. It's not enough; we know it and I'm sure he does too, but he's always there, always comes running out the side door of his house, always ready with a tool or a flashlight or some ski poles on icy nights when we have to walk home in the dark.

Sometimes I try to be self-sufficient, just to spare him yet another bail out. Once I got my car stuck when Sam wasn't home and I thought about the "free roadside assistance" that I pay for with my car insurance. I was determined not to need Richard's help, or Sam's. I called for a tow truck. Well, the wrecker got stuck too, far below where my car was. Eventually, after a series of insane forward-and-back maneuvers, the wrecker was out of the way. One of the guys hiked up to my car with me and pushed the front end around so gravity could do the rest. Richard looked on nervously from his driveway, relieved, no doubt, when I didn't launch over the berm and straight into the side of his barn. Glad too that his dogs were safely inside, and probably wondering why the hell I didn't just ask him for a hand. Recently, when I was hiking up with Quinn strapped to my chest, he seemed more nervous than ever. I assured him I'd be fine, not because I felt fine, but because our debt to him is already so massive…and because I really do like to be self-sufficient.

So, this morning I thought of Richard when the ruddy-cheeked woman in the camouflage coat was standing on my porch. I actually called his house. He didn't answer, and I wouldn't blame him if he just didn't want to. Maybe he saw the unfamiliar red truck drive by and then not come back--sure sign that someone didn't know about the road. Maybe he had a long night making snow up at the ski resort, saw my number on his caller id and just didn't have the energy. I kind of wish any of these things might be true, but I doubt they are. I can't imagine he'd ever turn his back if he knew we needed help—in fact, I know he wouldn't. For that reason I was glad when he didn't answer.

I've seen this woman around town. I've noticed her because she drives a huge pickup. I used to drive a pick up too, but mine was small. Still, I felt like a badass in that truck and I've missed it ever since I cashed it in for my practical, fuel-efficient and way-less-sexy car. And as I thought about my old truck and that old feeling, I made my decision: I picked up the baby, stepped into my leopard skin platform shoes and went out the front door.

"My neighbor's not home, but we might still have a tow rope in our old Chevy."

"Isn't she going to get cold? She's really cute."

"She's used to my bad parenting," I explained, "she'll be fine."

I found the tow rope and said I'd be right back; I had to put Quinn in her carseat. The ruddy-cheeked woman asked if she could borrow my shovel and she headed back to her truck to dig out the wheels. I felt a kindred spirit in her few words, her independence, and I felt glad that I was home alone. Quinn and I backed the truck out of the drive and toward her truck. I hopped out and hooked the rope up on her end, laid it on the snow toward mine and got back in to pull a bit closer. When I looked back, she was there holding the loose end, motioning me back.

"I'm sorry about this," she said, once we were connected.

"Don't be." I smiled, glad for the chance to help, glad for the sunny day, glad Quinn was in the truck for the adventure too. "My husband will be jealous," I said.

"Oh yeah?"

"We just got this truck," I explained, "This is its first tow."

"Yeah, last night I had to pull my husband out of a ditch. He was plowing with his Jeep and he just went right in."

I got back in and pulled her onto solid ground with little effort. We each unhooked our end of the rope. "I recognize you from around town," I said. "Did you used to eat at Egan's?" I waitressed there and that's where I know most people from in the Valley.

"I ate there once. We had a gift certificate from my brother."

"I must've been there that night." I didn't tell her how I always noticed her in that big truck. And that I wondered about her ruddy cheeks.

I told her my name. "I'm Tony," she said. Of course you are, I thought as we shook hands. I got back into the truck to back down the driveway, and I thought, where are all the boys now? Where are they when you're getting the job done on your own? But, it doesn't matter; the moment was its own reward. And I hoped that somehow it all seeped into Quinn's subconscious. 

There will be many things she learns from us, I'm sure, but I hope among those things she learns to be the kind of woman who can walk up to someone's house, if she needs to, and ask for help. And I also hope she learns to be the kind of woman who looks around and says to someone else, "hang on, I'll give you a hand." I hope she grows up noticing the kindness of others, learning their tricks and wanting to live up to the examples they set.

Most of my challenges in life have been little ones and I've always had a lot of help when I've needed it. For that I owe the universe (and Richard) a lot of favors. And I'm doing my best to live up to the examples that have been set for me, and admittedly, trying to prove wrong anyone who's ever tried to convince me that there are limits in life. I want Quinn's world to be limitless.

I looked forward in time to see Tony's hand waving out the window as she drove away. I hope she has a good day. And I hope Richard is having a good day. And I'm really thankful that Sam found a way to get us this new-used truck. It starts up every time.

Fireflies

It's just before 5 am and I've been up for an hour. I feel as energized as I've been in recent months, having had, for the first time since November, six hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep. Quinn slept incredibly well for the first 3.5 months of her life, but once it was time for me to go back to work, she started waking up two or three times each night instead of one. Last night, before putting her to bed, we gave her rice cereal for the first time…seems to have done the job. I won't get into how frustrating the mixed messages are about breastfeeding…in part because this is not about that, and in part because this little motion activated firefly, that hangs above her play mat which is right in front of me, just started its little tune and light show and, well, it's not moving…someone is trying to tell me to get to the point.

The reason I woke up this morning was a dream, not the baby. I dreamt that I got a phone call from someone at the hospital. They wanted to speak to my mother who, in this dream, was sleeping in the other room. She has, of course, been "sleeping in the other room" for many years now, but periodically I have these dreams where it seems very normal that she is here. In this dream she was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her up, so I asked what the person on the phone wanted. It was a woman's voice and she told me that my grandmother, my mother's mother, had had an accident in the hospital and she'd lost a lot of blood. She suggested my mom might want to get down there right away, and she connected me to a man who gave me instructions about how to get into the hospital after hours. In my dream it was also the middle of the night. When I hung up, I woke up. And I laid there in my own bed trying to decide whether or not I should wake my mom, until eventually I realized I wasn't going to be able to do that.

I shifted gears and realized Quinn had not woken me up for a 1 am feeding, and I thought about the trouble she's been having taking bottles with her babysitter, and I decided to get up and pump so she'd have a fresh bottle later today rather than a frozen one. Once I made all kinds of noise doing that, she was awake, so I fed her and changed her before putting her back to bed. When I got back into bed myself, I realized, sadly, that Darth Vader had once again replaced my husband, I thought more about my dream, and I knew I would not get back to sleep.

So, here I am, typing next to the woodstove as the fire gets going, wondering about my grandmother, and thinking about the fact that I don't believe in god and I don't believe in heaven. I imagine most people on the planet are really just fertilizer when they go and that's a perfectly noble end if you ask me. But even though I've never believed in heaven, I've also never been able to believe that my mother's spirit, magnificent as it was, could simply just cease to exist. I've often sensed that her energy is still out there in the world.

That's not to say that I always feel her with me; I don't. But I do have these dreams, often at critical times in my life, when she shows up. She is still beautiful. And she is usually smiling. She never speaks, but the messages of the dreams are always clear. So, as the house starts to heat up and I make my coffee this morning, and the sun eventually starts to shine on the distant horizon, visible thanks to Sam's determined tree cutting efforts this past summer, I'll be wondering if my grandmother has finally died—she's been trying to, I think, for years—and waiting for it to be late enough to call my sister and find out. And even if she hasn't died, the dream has me thinking about her, and about my mom, and about the fact that most of my stories are, and really always have been, about mothers and daughters.

Good Thing I Like Pie

In the winter of 2007-2008, I planned a wedding, got married, and built a house. I wasn't alone in these projects, obviously, but I was fully involved. The following winter, I threw a lot of parties, hosted a lot of dinners, skied a lot of loops with friends and drank a lot of champagne. Last winter, I grew a baby.

She's here now. Her name is Quinn. And that makes me a mother. So now, in the winter of 2011, this is my project: figuring out how to be someone's mom.

In the beginning, when she first arrived, I practiced just saying the words. When we were alone, usually when I was changing her diaper and she was lying on the changing pad looking up at me, I would say, "Hello. I am your mom. I am your mother," stretching out the words to listen to the way they sounded as I said them. They sounded foreign. And I felt like a fake. I have often felt this way in my life…like someone pretending to be something, hoping the real people won't notice and discover my embarrassing secret: I am not really this person. I am really someone less than this person. This time around, it's the mother of all secrets…sorry for the pun, but what better use of it, right?

Once I started to feel a little more comfortable introducing myself to Quinn, the next phase was to see if she'd accept me…to see how comfortable she was having me be her mom. So I would slip around the corner into her room and look over the edge of her crib to meet her glance. As her eyes adjusted to the new object that was my face, I would ask her, "Are you my baby?" And then I'd wait nervously for her to decide.

I respected the fact that she would take her time, as if she was trying to weigh the pros and cons and make a wise choice. And I'm grateful that each time, after a relatively brief pause, she would answer with a full body muscle spasm—arms and legs reaching up and then slamming back down all at once—and a big squinty-eyed, open-mouthed smile. I took all that to be a yes.

So far, she hasn't rejected me. But, that's the phase I'm in now…wondering how to be the kind of mom she won't reject. I had a great role model for 21 years. I think my own mother was flawless—literally. I try hard to think of a weakness, just to prove she was human. I think back to the times we fought, or the times I thought I hated her, or the time I ran away for an afternoon. Each of those times, I was the idiot. I can't think of a single time she failed me, or let me down, or disappointed me. She was my idol and my best friend. And, as a teenage girl, that made me a bit weird, and I didn't even care.

But here's the problem: I'm worried that I can't possibly live up to her. The thing about role models is that they're on a different level. So here I am, in my "mom" shoes and sometimes I can't make them move. It's like I'm standing here in a vast open space and I'm looking down at a pair of yellow wingtips or something, marveling over how strange they look, and then looking around at how much ground I have to cover.

I actually wore yellow wingtips in high school. It was the eighties. And my mom let me. I think she even encouraged me to, but maybe that was because she secretly thought I looked hilarious. At the time, I thought they were very cool. Now, they are a source of great joy for my little sister Amy who loves telling people that I wore yellow wingtips. Amy was the kind of sister who would stand behind a locked screen door laughing when you had wet your corduroys at the neighbors' house playing hide-and-seek because you didn't want to lose, even though you were in the fourth grade.

I was stuck standing still then too…I had good intentions (or at least I thought I did): to win the game. I had an intense desire to win, I always do. I had the resolve. The patience to stick it out for the long haul. I just didn't have the bladder. And that's what I worry about. What weakness will surface in my efforts to be a good mom? What challenges will render me immobile, and ill-equipped?

Recently someone at work asked me how Quinn was doing with her babysitter. "Great," I said, "her babysitter is a much better mom than I'll ever be." The person I was speaking with knows the babysitter too; she teaches part-time at our school. She tried to reassure me, "She's just a different kind of mom." Yeah, I thought, the kind that says "Oooh! I hear some noise in your britches!" while I'm the kind of mom who says, "Man! Your butt stinks! Now I have to change your friggin diaper again!"

I'm almost certain my own mother died without ever dropping the F-bomb. And while I feel a little sorry that she didn't get to experience the joy, the humor, the power of that word, I am also humbled by her unfaltering class, her good judgment, and her restraint. She managed to express exuberance, and be funny, and wield unfathomable power over me without ever using that word…she was more intelligent and more creative. She had artistry as a mother.

I've got yellow wingtips, wet corduroys and a mouth like my Uncle Rey who really was a trucker. I'm screwed. Quinn is going to grow up with the smell of my fear! She is going to laugh at me from behind that locked door. It all comes rushing back…all the former awkwardness in my life, all the fear of failure and loss. It's all wrapped up into this one thing: "I am your mother. Are you my baby?"

Some day maybe I'll feel confident, or sentimental, and I'll write about the way Quinn's face relaxes and her eyes close when I stroke her forehead, the way my mom would do for me when I put my head in her lap. Of course, thinking back to that also makes me think of the times when I thought I needed to be comforted and my mom would smile at me lovingly and then let her hand drop onto my forehead with a thud and say, "Oh, honey! What's the matter?" and then she'd laugh at me…and in doing so she'd force me to laugh at myself.

So, here I am, trying to laugh at myself…That same little sister, who locked me out when I desperately needed to get in, also once told me, "You can't control what hasn't happened yet." This may be obvious to most people, but for anyone who has the kind of control issues I've had, you'll understand how this could be a revelation. Amy has always been wiser than I, despite being four years younger. And I think back to that bit of wisdom all the time, I can't control what hasn't happened yet. And this time, it's for real. Quinn will be the biggest test of my life. The marriage is holding together, getting a little better most days. The house works; it is warm and pretty and people always tell me they feel good when they're in it. And the baby I grew, well, she's amazing…she's healthy and beautiful and I could tell from the first day she showed up that she has the power to see right into my soul.

So now the only thing left to work on is me…everything else is done. And even though I'm trying not to control what hasn't happened yet, and I'm trying not to get so caught up in my desire to "win" this one that I end up embarrassing myself, I do wish my mom could be here to help me figure it all out…to convince me that my shoes will get me where I need to go…and that I don't look too weird wearing them. 

Not Exactly Well Equipped

This is the vehicle we use to plow our 1/4 mile of steep, narrow Class IV road...when it starts. It hasn't started since before our last storm, which left about a foot of snow. This is what it sounds like on a good day...

Today is not a good day. Today is a What Are We Doing Up Here? kind of day. Yesterday, when I didn't have to go anywhere...well, that was a good day. A We Live In Paradise! kind of day. 

Do you ever play that "if I won the lottery..." game? Well, I'd buy that handsome, optimistic plow truck driver a brand new big beautiful beefy plow truck so he could saunter out the door with an easy mind, knowing his trusty truck would start right up, every damn time. And then he could enjoy his time plowing our road. And he could come back in the house with a still easy mind, to enjoy a cold beer, a hot dinner and a happy wife...every damn time. 

In the meantime, there are no eggs left in the fridge and it looks like another sled to work kind of day.

Somedays I Make It; Somedays I Don't

(hit play now; you'll know why later)

Step 1: After a long day at work, pick up baby and head home. 
Step 2: At base of hill, scan horizon for hapless dogs or neighbors and make sure the coast is clear. 
Step 3: Step on the gas, hard, and gun it up the hill. 
Step 4: Smile as your car makes it to the top, slides around the corner and seems to be in the clear. 
Step 5: Hold breath as you realize, you are not going to make it. 
Step 6: Ride it out as far as possible, step on brake and regroup. 
Step 7: Glance in rearview mirror and check on baby.
Step 8: Back up to level spot, put it in drive and gun it; slide sideways into ditch. BAM! 
Step 9: Be thankful for bomb-proof car seat and try to convince yourself that you are daring, not an idiot!
Step 10: Repeat steps 7-9 three more times, with particular emphasis on Step 9. 
Step 11: Use gravity to get the wheels pointed down hill, then hope for the best as you careen past aforementioned neighbors’ houses. 
Step 12: Park car, prepare to load baby into pack, try not to curse husband who sent baby off in just pajamas and a hat, then admit to self that you did the same thing yesterday. 
Step 13: Try not to let baby see that you are warm while she is cold. 
Step 14: Hike baby ¼ mile up hill to house. 


Part II
Step 1: It’s a brand new day. Put on empty backpack and sled ¼ mile down hill to parked car. 
Step 2: Load up baby’s gear and strap car seat to sled. 
Step 3: Hike back up to the house and give husband baby gear. 

Step 4: Feed baby, shower, dress for work, then pull sledding clothes on over work clothes.
Step 5: Say goodbye to baby, say goodbye to husband, insert earbuds and hit play on "Blue Mind"

...got no time, got no mind, follow the line in my life, no time to think, 

time for sleep? no! time to sink way into the blue deep...

Step 6: Exhale, get back on sled, enjoy the ride.

Comfort Food

Last night I hosted an evening visit with my friend Char.  We were going to have wine and some grilled cheese sandwiches—something simple. She brought a loaf of my favorite bread and two types of cheese for us to try (an herbed goat cheese and some sort of fig-honey cheese that was surprisingly good). She also brought two potatoes for baking, some organic carrots and a homemade meatloaf (her mother's recipe with mustard and horseradish; unbelievably good). And, she brought a bottle of my new favorite wine (Pennywise Petite-Syrah; tastes a little bit like bacon—wine and bacon, that's all I have to say). And, believe it or not, she also brought two types of dessert.

What did I bring to the table? My tired self in my dad's old jeans, my unwashed hair and a literal ton of gratitude. That's it. Not my usual standard for hosting, but that's the kind of week I'm having.

In the course of our conversation, Char told me more about her recent yoga retreat at Kripalu. I told her about the two yoga classes I had wedged into our schedule this week…and I say our because for the first time in my post living-with-my-parents life I have to base my schedule on the schedules of two other people (more about them later). Then I told her about having to cancel those two yoga classes. The backstory here is the explanation for why I brought nothing but my dad's old jeans and my messy hair to the table, but it's not a backstory worth telling because the telling would be whining and I don't really have anything to whine about. Anyway, I heard about Char's yoga retreat and exhaled. Then I said out loud, mostly to myself, "Someday, when this breastfeeding experiment is over, and Sam's shoulder is healed, and life feels a bit more manageable, I'd like to do something like that. It would be a nice reward. A good way to regroup."

Some people might wonder why I feel I need a reward. A healthy baby is the reward. A healthy husband is the reward. I know these things. But I also know that I'm junk if I'm not healthy and well rested too. And I have some feelings about this whole cult of motherhood and being a wife, and I'll try to share those feelings gently, over multiple entries, so as not to alienate my friends and family members who are good at self-sacrifice and better at these things than I am.

Anyway, when Char left, she put some envelopes on my dining room table where the meatloaf had been, and I put two packages in her bag. This is how we exchange Christmas gifts: sometime after the chaos of the holiday has subsided, handed over with love, meant to be opened leisurely sometime later. The only instructions were that I should open mine when Sam opens his. I'm not good at savoring unopened presents; maybe later I'll tell you my theories about waiting, about patience and about surprises. For now, I'll tell you that before I poured my coffee, I handed Sam his envelope and told him to hurry up because I was opening mine and we had to do it together. Here's what the card said: "A joy that is shared is a joy made double." That's also what Char wrote on the gift certificates for our own Kripalu yoga retreats…to be used sometime later.

So, this morning, I'm back in my dad's old jeans, and my hair still hasn't been washed, and I'm still carrying around that ton of gratitude. And I'm drinking some coffee now, watching the snow fall, and savoring the promise of a yoga retreat, and savoring the Chinese proverb about the joy that is shared because it brings to mind a hundred other stories I want to tell. And I'm wishing that everyone in the world could have a Char.