Trapped

Sometimes the metaphors in life are just so obvious. Yesterday's proves too irresistible for me to pass over: I woke up to find that my driveway was partially washed out, my road was nearly impassable and the bridge at the bottom of our hill was completely gone—just a big round culvert sitting in the middle of a raging river. (Well, it's actually a brook, but that doesn't really evoke the kind of water that took out our bridge…so, I'm calling it a river.)

As if being married and having a new baby hasn't made me feel trapped enough at times, yesterday the isolation was physical and it was real. For months I've been describing my experience as a new parent as being much like house arrest, and yesterday we literally could not leave.

We live on a U-shaped road, our house is on the little stretch connecting the two primary roads. Here in Vermont, "primary" is still dirt, but it's dirt that is maintained by the town. From the end of our driveway, the road was washed out in both directions, and bridges in both directions were washed out as well. We called school and arranged for subs; we weren't going to make it in. We spent the day bonding with our other trapped neighbors, the two Richards who live on either side of the road down below. Other neighbors from the far side of the bridge came up to see it. They waved to us from their freedom, yelled friendly jokes about sending in supplies, and made real offers of help if we were in need.

I don't think stir-craziness is technically a need. At least not in its early stages. But, by the end of the day, when Sam and I were snapping at each other and I was making what felt like astute observations about the inevitable demise of our marriage if we remain incapable of carrying into our day-to-day lives the romance and relaxation of our vacation days, well, by then we were close to calling in the troops for a rescue.

It rained more last night, and more this morning. Sam was getting ready to leave for school and I didn't technically have to be there until midday, but as the rain kept coming and the notion of being trapped on our hill started to sink in—trapped in our muddy yard, in our small house with our ever-growing baby—I panicked, threw a bunch of stuff in bags and ran out with him. I didn't really have anywhere to go, but I knew I needed to get out. I didn't even really care if I could ever get back up again.

One day soon after we finished building our house, and not long after our wedding, I was home alone, sitting in the living room admiring all of the beautiful details. It was then that I first started thinking about writing again. I imagined a first chapter title for a memoir: "I Built My Own Beautiful Prison." Today I would add chapter two: "I Gave Birth to My Jailer."

I love the house, and the kid. But some days, I really miss my old life. I miss waking up when I wake up. I miss spending my first hour of being awake tending exclusively to my own needs: coffee, quiet, sunshine on the back deck, a long shower. I miss coming and going as I please. I miss being in the car alone. I miss being spontaneous about going for a run, walking the dogs, going out for a beer or a movie. I miss having energy. You get the idea…I miss my free and independent former self.

Lately, the switch that gets flipped in my brain is when Sam says something like, "I'm going to go out and start the tractor," or "I'm going to go take a shower." I get so angry with him for not asking me if it's okay to do these things, not because he should have to ask me, but because I feel like I have to ask him (one of us has to be with the kid, right?). And if I feel this constant nagging sense of responsibility, well, he should feel it too. And it's a sucky way to feel, so I'm definitely not going to be the only one feeling it, "you feel me?" (Have you watched The Wire on HBO? You must.)

Of course, yesterday, when he said he was going out to start the tractor, which I needed him to do so he could redirect some of the rushing water and prevent what remained of our driveway from washing into the woods…well, that wasn't really a good time to have the discussion with him about how the success or failure of this team effort largely depends on his choice of words. I wasn't the only one trapped on this hill after all. Sam has used the word "claustrophobic" more than once in the past twenty-four hours.

Today was a better day for that discussion. It was better because we weren't trapped here on the hill, so we felt a little tiny bit less trapped in our lives. I got mad at him for going to the dining hall to get lunch while I gave Quinn her bottle in my office. Not because going to get lunch is a bad thing, but because I wanted to be the one going to get lunch. And once I made that known, Sam happily took Quinn, propped her up to play with some rolled up ace bandages from his bag of lacrosse gear, and he freed me to go get my lunch.

Some hours later, after dropping Quinn off with her babysitter, teaching our classes, attending an all-school community meeting, meeting with our advisees, picking Quinn up from her babysitter and doing the grocery shopping, we made it home. The guy in the excavator was still working on the bridge. We drove over it and up the hill. More of the road had eroded, but there was still enough there that we could sneak alongside the chasm and make it to the house. The pile of snow under the roofline on the north side of our house was still there, but it was smaller than it had been this morning. The tips of the plants coming up in the garden looked just a little bit higher. I carried my school bag, Sam's school bag, Quinn's diaper bag, and Quinn's toy bag in the house. Sam carried Quinn and a bag of groceries. We got through the door, set things down and exhaled. Sam put his arm around my waist. "We made it through the day," he said and smiled. I did one of those laugh/cry things and made a point to say that if our marriage is going to succeed, it will likely do so because he manages to hold me together on the days I start to fall apart.

I hear all those voices in my head reassuring me, "It is SO worth it...Enjoy every minute because it goes by so fast"! Yadda yadda yadda…whatever people! It's a lot of work and somedays I look forward to time going by just a little bit faster.

In the meantime, I'll try to keep finding the humor in it as best as possible. On vacation last week, we took turns being under house arrest for the afternoon nap. One day I stayed at the house while Sam went to the beach, the next day we switched. On the day I stayed, Sam came back to check on me, and Quinn was being her stubborn self, refusing to fall asleep. He knew I was frustrated, stuck indoors on a beautiful day, the ocean within earshot. I insisted he go back to the beach, so at least one of us could enjoy it. An hour later, I gave up. As I picked up the canvas tote bag and prepared to fill it with all the requisite baby crap, I realized: I bet Quinn fits in this bag. Sure enough, she did. I sat her in the bag, pulled it up around her and fit the straps over my shoulder. I looked in to be sure she could breathe; she actually seemed content, curled up kind of cozily, examining her hands as if they were some new and wonderful object. I walked to the beach with her in the bag. I found Sam and he looked up. "Are we missing someone?" he asked. (I was impressed he noticed.)

"I got so fed up with her I just strapped her in her carseat and locked the door."

"Okay; I'll go get her," he said calmly. (His lack of alarm was a bit less impressive.)

When I leaned over so he could see in the bag, the look of surprise made my previous sense of imprisonment disappear. Sometimes I truly crack myself up. And thank god, because sometimes that's literally all I can do…on the good days that is, all I can do is laugh at the absurdity. That and hope the rain stops.

Count 'Em Up

When it's April and still snowing and the pile of snow on the north side of your house is still high enough that, if you stand on it, you can touch your roof, it's a good time to look around and try to find the blessings in your life. I thought of this the other day, as I drove to work in yet another snow squall, and I nearly drove off the road at the sight of snow geese in an open field at Simplicity Farm, the organic dairy farm just a few miles from my house.

Last year's corn stalks are poking through the shrinking snow pack and, in among them, I have seen for some days a flock of Canada geese. But the other day, white geese with black-tipped wings milled about in their company. Snow geese have made western Vermont one of their stopping points on their southbound journey each fall. In years past, another lifetime it seems, I made fall journeys over the Green Mountains, from my eastern side of the hills, to the Dead Creek Wildlife Refuge to welcome their arrival. They are a spectacular sight when they number in the hundreds or thousands. The other day, I saw only a handful which, in a way, seemed somehow more magical.

I don't know too much about snow geese, but I do know they mate for life. I know they spend their summers in the Arctic tundra. And, I know they are beautiful.

The snow geese at Simplicity Farm briefly expanded my sense of space to the bird's eye view and to migratory distances. I swirled around above all of the murky weather and mud for just a moment or two before landing back here in the Mad River Valley. I drove on thinking about this place where I live. The people who make it what it is. The reasons I've chosen to live here…

I thought about the early phase of committing to it all. Sam had just bought our little 5.8 acre lot and we were living as dorm parents in order to save money to build a house. We spent all of our free time up on the land, cutting trees, pushing the woods back to create a bit of space, excavating the old stone walls that surround us on three sides. We built a tent platform where we thought the house should be so we could try it out...see what the view was like, see how the sun hit at different times of day and different seasons. 

At the end of a work day, we'd sit on the edge of the platform and drink a beer, admire our progress. Suspended as it was in the trees, we could hang our legs over the edge. It felt good to be up in the air. Our house is now where the platform used to be. The trees that held it up are built into our timberframe, still holding us up. 

It was, and is, the right spot.

During that process, we also planned our wedding. That ritual was about our relationship, of course, but it was also about this place…our land, our town, our valley beyond. It was about building a life together, and about building that life here among the mountains and rivers we love, in the company of friends and neighbors we value.

So, when I heard that one of our neighbors on our hill was a justice of the peace, she seemed like the perfect person to marry us. I hadn't met her yet, but I knew where she lived. We'd pass her house a mile before reaching our land. She has the best view of Camel's Hump in the entire state. I started looking for her every time I drove by in hopes that I might meet her. One warm morning, she was sitting outside in front of her house. She was in her nightgown, eating a bowl of oatmeal, the gallon can of maple syrup on the table next to her…my kind of gal.

I might have driven a bit fast on our road, in those early days, always eager to get to our land and never fully appreciating the scenery on the way up. So, that morning when I saw Stephanie, I was almost past her when she came into view. I slammed on the breaks and kicked up a cloud of dirt from the road. I jumped out of the car, amazed to finally see her, in the flesh, after all those months of stalking her.

"Are you Stephanie?" I blurted out.

"Yes," she replied slowly, eyebrows bent in a "who the hell are you?" sort of way, seeming to suggest that I should, first of all, slow the hell down, and second, have a damned good reason for interrupting her early morning solitude.

"My name is Kerry and my partner and I are wondering if you'd marry us!" As if she knew our whole story. As if she cared. As if I hadn't just put dirt in her oatmeal. I don't remember her exact response, but I think it was essentially a "Yes…but let's get to know each other a bit first" kind of answer.

From then on, I drove by slowly and always made sure to wave as I passed—whether I could see her and her husband Louie or not. (Some time later, when I was visiting in their living room, they told me they always saw me wave and appreciated it. They also suggested I convince Sam to slow down.)

Stephanie eventually did marry us, but only after she came up to our half-built house on a warm fall day and sat with us on our back porch. She asked us a bunch of questions—about why we wanted to marry, about why we wanted to live here on this shared hill, about how the hell we planned to get up and down it in the winter! We talked with her about our families and our values and our goals and, when the talk was over, we had a better sense than we ever had before of why we were doing what we were doing.

Stephanie took that conversation and turned it into the most lovely wedding ceremony I could've imagined. I dreaded standing up in front of everyone to say our vows; I was nervous and embarrassed for some reason. But, in the end, the ceremony itself was my absolute favorite part of the whole event. We were surrounded by loved ones—a small group by most standards, only about sixty family members and just our oldest friends. We didn't have a fancy alter or arbor or anything like that. We didn't even have flowers up there. It was just me and Sam, our friend Jim and my sister Amy standing up with us, and Stephanie with her music stand to hold her prepared words. 

Sam and I wrote our own vows—you would expect that of two English teachers, I suppose. We wrote them separately, with no guidelines, and they turned out to express nearly the exact same sentiments—the same themes of respect for each other's independence, desire to share adventures together, devotion to one another and of course a promise to love one another through all the highs and lows. Stephanie's additions were about a sense of place, about our shared hill, about the community we were coming into and which we would help shape.

When I was growing up, my family moved twice, once when I was in third grade and again after ninth grade. I never felt rooted anywhere. I never felt that I had a real home, a sense of history or continuity. I always felt like the new kid, from somewhere else. My whole life I craved home. I have always wanted to belong and have been envious of those with real roots. 

Seeing the snow geese the other day, I was reminded: this is my arctic tundra. I have chosen this place to build my home, set down my roots. So now, as I wait for the snow to melt, and I take stock of my life, I take solace in the blessings I can count. Underneath two feet of snow, there are snow drops working their way toward the sun. My friend Tei gave me the bulbs. And there are tulips and daffodils from my friend Mike; they're on their way too. I have strawberries from Sam's mom and dad's garden, and rhubarb from our friends the Stetsons. I have perennials galore from Char and Jean and neighbors here on our hill. I have a crab apple tree given to me by my friend Bernie on my mother's birthday, to plant for my mom. I have a new stone wall, holding up a new curved garden bed, built by Sam late last summer, that's just waiting for me to decide what to plant…what roots to set. And I have neighbors who appreciate when I wave.

In these seemingly interminable late winter days, it is easy to think about the lingering darkness that is both real and metaphorical. It is easy to feel sad when I think about Japan, or anxious when I think of Tik, another recent student who just spent two weeks in a Syrian prison. It is easy to feel profoundly vulnerable when I think of my current students who have, in the past week, had seizures and been diagnosed with cancer. Even as I look forward to going on our first vacation with Quinn next week, I am reminded of the panicky phone call I received from my friend Mary years ago; she was about to get on a plane and she called to ask if I would take care of her daughter Claire if anything happened to her and her husband.

I have my own panicky thoughts now. I do not want my daughter to be motherless as I am, especially as young as she is. Sam and I spent yesterday afternoon filling out our application for life insurance. But, what value do you put on a life? Who will we ask to raise our daughter? Will our daughter grow to adulthood without having seizures, without cancer? All of this is an exercise in self control.

How does one make it through life with all these hazards to navigate? Is it even possible to navigate them? Believing so is magical thinking…as much as I plan and organize and arrange all the details, there is no controlling it all, there is no controlling what hasn't happened yet.  And, when you are me and control is important, some of these late winter days of darkness and cold are really dark and really cold.

And so, you do what you taught yourself to do years ago: you interrupt yourself even though interrupting is technically not polite; you do it because you have to. You interrupt the dark thoughts by counting up your blessings. You lift yourself up above it all and you look around from the bird's eye view and you see your neighbors' houses which are actually much closer than they feel when the road is blocked by snow, and you see your gardens starting to reveal themselves, and you imagine the taste of fresh strawberries and the feel of sun on your skin, and you feel lucky to have seen the snow geese because they may have been some crazy fluke here in this valley, and you were there to see them and you can tell your neighbors about it the next time you see them because this is where you live. You have a home, a place to set down roots, and so many people who have shared a bit of their world to help you create yours. And, you have Quinn, sleeping on the bed next to you, to hand it all over to someday.

Last spring on May 4th

Enough Said

Very Much Wow

Some years ago, for some reason, I had my eleventh grade American Literature students write haikus. It was springtime and I think we were all feeling celebratory, and claustrophobic. So we wrote haikus in our classroom and then ran down the hill from one building to another. Attached to the second floor dining hall is a large porch that looks out over our small campus and the Green Mountains just beyond. It's a beautiful spot. The class gathered around in the green grass below the porch, each person finding his and her own piece of earth. One at a time, the students climbed the stairs up to that high perch, came forward to the railing and, at the top of their lungs, belted out their beautiful haikus to the sunny day, to the mountains, to the smiling faces of friends below.

Masaru, if I remember correctly, went last. As he bounded up the stairs, the class was already wild, cheering, arms in the air, unable to stand still. He stepped forward. "This is an original Japanese haiku!" he yelled proudly. His haiku, as it should've been, was delivered in Japanese. We had absolutely no idea what he was saying but…and I think I'm speaking for the whole class when I say this…we loved it. It was as if Masaru shared with us some sort of blessing directly from the Haiku Gods. It was an honor and a moment of pure springtime-poetry-friends-all-around joy.

This is Masaru, at home in Japan:

Masaru translated his poem for us in a second reading. Sadly, I don't remember what it was about, but I'll never forget that brief wonderful experience of the "Original Japanese Haiku" so graciously and proudly shared.

The next spring, Masaru graduated. In his graduation speech, he said, "…and Kerry's class was very much wow!" He might have meant anything: wow, what a waste of time, or wow, that was boring! I don't really know, but I've always taken it as a compliment because, well, compliments are nice. And I still think of that phrase whenever I think of Masaru.

And very much wow is just about all I can think of now each day when I see the latest news from Japan.  I am thinking of Masaru all the time, and I know he's one of the lucky ones; his home is not near the coast and he's sent word to us at school through one of his old classmates:

"We are ok and our all families are ok. Thank you man. Still there are

earthquake coming constantly...But I know that we will be ok.

Cuz I know how to survive from those crazy earthquake."

His message was a huge relief in our community. But we've had other Japanese students as well. And our students are obviously just the beginning of what I am thinking about. A few days later, Masaru posted this on his Facebook page:

"need to save the energy sources. like gas, electricity, food, drinkable water

...
but never be enough to save all the life..."

Concentric circles ripple out from this great disaster, over all of Japan and, of course, beyond.

Another email came through to Sam from another alumnus who was passing on a message from a woman in Mississippi. Sam coordinates a senior class service project each year. For a few years, they went to Mississippi and New Orleans to help clean up and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Some of the kids have remained in touch with some of the people they worked with down there…

"I'm the lady whose home you dear people readied for rebuilding after Katrina.

I haven't been able to get my mind off Masaru. Did he return to Japan or is he

still in the US? I'm hoping you can tell me if he and his family are safe.

ALL of you will be forever in my heart and prayers."

When I start thinking about the devastation, I get overwhelmed, as so many people obviously do.

I heard a news clip on NPR: a reporter walking around in the rubble spotted a woman sorting recyclables out of the trash. "Was your home damaged in the tsunami?" he asked. "My home was washed away," she said, through a translator. And so, she sorted recyclables out of the mountains of "trash" that was once the stuff of people's lives.

I try to imagine myself in such a position and I can't. I can't imagine having any ability whatsoever to pick myself up and keep going. I used to take pride in the fact that I made it through my mother's death without being institutionalized or becoming a drug addict—as if that was some test of my strength. When I think about the magnitude of other people's losses and hardships, I laugh at myself. It is incomprehensible to imagine having your whole world shaken…and then washed away…and then being left standing in the rubble trying to find your loved ones, wondering how much invisible radiation is raining down on you.

I keep looking at the images coming out of Japan. Rescue workers standing over bodies, their palms pressed together in prayer. Boats perched on top of buildings. Raging fires. Mountains of debris. Adults sobbing. Children's faces covered by masks, except their wide vacant eyes. I watched a six minute long video of the tsunami overtaking a town…at first, a trickle of water rushing up the center of the street…by the end of the video, only six minutes later, everything under water, cars and buildings rushing by. The videographer clearly moving uphill as the time passed. In the final seconds the camera zooms across the raging river to a small group of people huddled together on top of a building, in the middle of other buildings which one by one disappear around them. It just goes blank…the video ends on the screen and yet it inevitably continues to play in your mind.

It is so far away. I take solace somehow in the incomprehensibility of it all. I don't live on a fault line. I don't live near the sea. It couldn't happen here. I count my blessings. I focus on what I can handle. Denial is a family trait.

Then I see this:

...and it all comes crashing in around me again: the sadness, the ache of empathy, my friend Masaru, the vulnerability of us all…the magic and beauty of our short sweet lives.

About a month ago, Sam and I had a date in our kitchen. Quinn was asleep in her crib. We opened a bottle of wine, had a fire in the stove, soft light in our dining room. We were too tired for a movie, or books and for those reasons I tolerated the laptops being open and on (I resist their presence in our home life most of the time). We shared news from friends, looked at things we had each discovered during the week. Sam played me this video that he found:

We were mesmerized by it…the music, the serenity of the landscape, the fluid grace of the skiers, the focus and artistry of the Japanese subject. At school yesterday, I played this video again, in my office, and I started to cry. 

I feel an obligation to look at the hard things, as if my empathy only has potential to reach the people it is intended for if I remain focused, in the way that they must be focused, on their present crisis. And yet, what I hope for them is relief, peace, comfort, a return to beauty and joy…a fast forward out of their present crisis which is really, if we think about it, our present crisis. Our shared, human, present crisis. 

Though for us, from this distance, it is only really shared conceptually. 

Chopped Liver

(or, Patriarchy Sucks*)

One of my greatest character flaws is that I need positive reinforcement; I want people to like me. I'd love to be one of those people who confidently marches through life, satisfied entirely by some internal force…no one else's approval necessary, and in fact able to shed disapproval like raindrops off of gortex. I don't actually know any of those people, but I know that most people in my life are much more gortex than I am. I am 100% cotton; I absorb absolutely everything and in bad weather, I am not very warm.

Quinn can't talk yet so I really have no idea how she feels about me. But, sometimes I get hints—like the other day when I went to pick her up from her babysitter. I practically ran from my car to the front door because I was so friggin' excited to see her. Maury (the babysitter) carried Quinn to me so I wouldn't have to take my boots off. And, as she handed her over, Quinn started to cry. She actually leaned away from me and reached for Maury. I made a joke, of course, in hopes that I wouldn't start to cry too. Maury was kind enough to insist it wasn't as it appeared, my baby preferring her over me, but we both knew it was.

Quinn responds in this preferential way to Sam too. I'll be busily taking care of some need she has—in the middle of the night or at the end of a long day at school—feeding her, bathing her, or changing a diaper, and she'll be all business, like I'm the hired help. But, as soon as Sam walks into the room, her whole face lights up. She smiles and her eyes get bright with joy.

I get basically nothing in the way of positive reinforcement. I have to do all kinds of stupid antics to even get a smile out of her. There is no "Thank you, Mom, for growing me inside your own body for nine months, and for sustaining my life for the past six with what you've produced from your own…thank you for knowing instinctively when I'm on my face and need you to flip me back over, or knowing that I'm crying because I'm cold, or wet, or my toes are being jammed into these pajamas that are too small." And, you know, I don't even really need any of that…at least not yet…but a voluntary smile would be nice now and then. Or at least she might consider not crying when I show up to bring her home.

But she loves Sam...without the antics and despite the fact that I think I am usually more tuned in to her needs than he is. Sam  will walk over to me, with Quinn in his arms, and ask, "should I change her?" This stuns me. "Sniff her butt," I'll say, and that's me being polite, because what I'm really thinking is, "How the flock do I know? You're the one holding her!" And as he walks away, I'll be thinking, "What a moron."

So, okay, I'll admit, maybe the lack of positive reinforcement from Quinn is the price I pay for being overly critical and needy. Maybe she is trying to scold me for being so mean; I am convinced she knows things, that she has fully developed adult thoughts in that little noggin of hers. Maybe that's why she will only smile at Sam. Maybe she's trying to say, "Stop being such a bitch, Mom; he's trying."

That would be fine if there was some way for me to get my tank filled up now and then…some way she could show me that I’m doing something right, or that in the broader world I could get some credit for all this work. In the absence of these things, I cling to mostly irrelevant data, like how much she weighs. I rejoiced proudly at the doctor's office this week when we were told that Quinn had moved from the 13th percentile in weight to the 18th (like it even matters). She now weighs 14 lbs 6 oz, thanks largely to my breastfeeding efforts because she's not taking to the formula quite as I hoped she would, and she'd rather spray the kitchen with the butternut squash I grew for her than eat it. (It pains me still to recall those hot summer days, faithfully bending over my gargantuan belly to pull weeds from the squash bed). She also enjoys spitting the homemade applesauce in my face, more than she enjoys swallowing it. But, she's growing! And as the doctor measured the circumference of her head, she said with a congratulatory smile, "Wow, Sam, she really is your Mini-Me." Would someone please take this invisibility cloak off of me!?!

If it sounds like I'm calling Whine-1-1, well, I suppose I am. Because Quinn doesn't look anything like me. And she doesn't have my name. Even though I'm doing all this work, she's a Jackson, and she looks like one too. And furthermore, she worships her father and treats me like the lunch lady...well, maybe worse than that because at my school, just about everyone thanks the lunch lady (and the lunch man) after every meal.

What gets me too is that I think back to my own childhood and see similarities...not in the distribution of genes necessarily (I am a near look alike to my mother), but in the distribution of adoration. I'm tempted to somehow blame my dad for this weakness of character that makes me crave people's approval; I grew up craving his and, like Quinn, he didn't give it up easily. Here's the ridiculous part: I still seek his approval, even though I'm 39 and no longer need to earn an allowance or get his permission.

I grew up believing I would marry my dad when I got older…I was little, so this seemed normal. I worshipped him. He was funny—always the guy who could put people at ease, make people laugh. He made silly faces. And he made quiet jokes in church that made my sister and me laugh out loud. Our mother would give us the look—the cut it out! behave yourselves! look—and my dad would frown in mock agreement, and that would make us laugh even more. I never had any idea what was happening in church, but I knew my dad's every move. Everything my dad did was funny, and cool. And I always preferred to be doing the things he did than those my mom did. I wanted to mow the lawn. I wanted to stack firewood. I wanted to build stuff in his workshop with him, and use his power tools.

My dad traveled a lot for work when I was young, and I missed him, a lot. On a couple of occasions, to make up for his frequent absences, we had Kerry Days and Amy Days. I don't know if this was his idea or my mom's, but I can tell you, these days were seriously awesome and he got full credit! From morning until evening, he was all mine. I have vague memories of going out to breakfast at Perkins, of walking around the mall, of him buying me some Snoopy stuff, and even of having dinner out (probably pizza) at the far end of those long, indulgent days. But, even better is the fact that in the midst of these vague memories, I have very vivid memories of my dad taking me roller skating…at the roller rink…with disco lights and a bunch of kids my age in corduroys and rainbow stripped leg warmers. Well, maybe I was the only one in leg warmers; that's possible. The important thing is that my dad was there with me. And he roller-skated too.

What I've never stopped to think about before is the possibility that my mom might have influenced the idea for Kerry Day. Even if she didn't, she facilitated it by entertaining my sister on those days, and taking care of everything that needed to be done at home. I never thought about those things...those many, many things. When I think back to my youth, I think of missing my dad when he was away, and of following him around when he was home. I think about sitting in the family room with him on fall Sundays to watch football, not because I liked watching football, because I didn't, but just because I liked being with him. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved my mom. Especially when I was a teenager and I needed her to help me process things. She really was my best friend and best role model. But, I didn't really appreciate the amount of work she did. The amount of behind-the-scenes, keeping-things-running work. I remember that she was always in a bad mood on the day that she spread the bills out on the kitchen table with her calculator and the checkbook; she hated paying the bills, but she did it. Our pantry was always full, clothes were always clean, and we had a hot family dinner every single night…and I could get all Energizer Bunny on you right now and keep going and going and going...but I'll just try to get to the point:

My mom gave her love freely, constantly, and tirelessly, and yet I craved the attention of my dad. I'm glad she at least lived long enough to know I eventually appreciated her in the full way that I should have all along. But I wonder what sustained her all those years when I thought her presence was a given and her efforts were invisible. 

Maybe she took some solace in what was visible.

FYI: This week marked the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day. If your mom is still within earshot...give her a call and tell her she is awesome...especially if you look just like your dad. 

*Full Disclosure: Sam was willing to give Quinn my last name. I agreed to Jackson. (It must've been the hormones).

The Pussy Posse

One day, when I was complaining about a man I know who was being a bit vulnerable, possibly even a bit dramatic, my friend Mollie cut me short: "Women have pussies. Men just act like them." Mollie doesn't mix words; she's one of my Scorpio friends. And, though her theory doesn't always hold true, it did on that particular day.

Do you know that after a woman pushes another human being out through a very small opening in her own flesh, the people at the hospital tell her to "take a couple of Tylenol" for the pain? 

Tylenol. And I bet many women don't even bother.

That's what I need to talk about now that I've talked about Crazy Town: I need to talk about women. Or, as my friend Cathy would say, The Pussy Posse. Because, even though I love Sam, and even though he works really hard to be supportive, without the women in my life, I'd still be sitting in the trunk.

I am very lucky to have a wonderful and diverse posse. Some of the women in my life have been hanging around for a long time. Others are relatively new. A bunch showed up somewhere in between, but of course, that part is irrelevant; I am deeply grateful for all of them.

Girlfriends are the people who sit around in a church basement after your mother's funeral and manage to make you laugh. They call you up again and again and invite you to do things even when they know you're trying to sleep a year or two of your life away. Girlfriends bake your wedding cake for you, even though you were too young and too naïve to find a way to even get to their wedding. They come to your parties early, dressed up like they've been invited to some very posh affair, and equipped with incredible food they've prepared just for your event. Girlfriends each bring their own bottle of wine (or ginger beer), and they settle in, undistracted, for as long as the fire's going and as long as your husband is away.

Girlfriends laugh at you when you take yourself too seriously, they call your bluff when you're trying to cover something up, and they tell you to stop acting like an idiot when you are acting like an idiot. And if you're not the idiot, they are happy to join you in lambasting the person who is. Girlfriends walk past the screen door, hanging from just one hinge, and say, "We can fix that," and then they come in for a cup of tea. And they keep coming for tea even though you seem to be developing a habit of trying to demolish your front door.

Anyone who is lucky enough to have a good girlfriend, or two, or twelve, knows what I’m talking about. True friends rank as one of the very best aspects of being alive. As my friend Char says, "friends are the family we choose." And, when you find yourself pregnant, after trying to get pregnant, but horrified by the prospect of being pregnant nonetheless, you need these women friends…you need all the women you can get your mitts on.

You expect your sister to be there for you because she can't really escape you, right? And you expect all those crazy friends who had kids back in their prime to be there for you because frankly they've been trying to get you to join their club for years! Here's the part that surprised me: just about every woman you know, close friend or casual acquaintance, baby-lover or not…women all over the place come to your aid.

I didn't anticipate this. I thought I would be going through it essentially alone, missing my mother and paying for my own past failures to support and celebrate my pregnant friends. But, I was wrong; I had more support than I knew what to do with. One day I was visiting my dad and I sat crying at the kitchen table because I was more than halfway through my pregnancy and my baby-to-be still didn't have a single thing to wear. On cue, my dad's wife Louise produced a gift bag with a bunch of soft little nightgowns. From there, it was as if every woman in the universe heard my plea and the supplies started rolling in. First, it was boxes and boxes of hand-me-downs from friends in Colorado and Connecticut and Maine. Then our basement filled up with swings and seats and play stuff from a friend who, best of all, would need it all back when we were done! 

One night in July, my non-mom friends came to pick me up for a summer girls' night. It was Cathy's birthday that night, but still, they piled out of two cars in my driveway with armloads full of little frilly dresses, fuzzy blankets, hand painted onesies and, for me, wine and a gift card for a future dinner out. These friends, with beautiful bodies that have never been stretched, forced me to snap out of my self-consciousness and embrace my own bulge.

And my already-mom friends, the same friends I ran around Burlington with doing all kinds of things that I imagine laughing about someday, when our kids (all but one of whom are girls) are grown enough to sit around and tell those tales to...

…well, those friends bought me all the gifts I didn't want but they knew I would eventually need. And I did need them.

And when I really just needed my mom, my friends even shared their moms. Carol, who bought some of Quinn's most adorable outfits and accessories, called me from North Carolina after Quinn was born and kept me company on the phone for a very long time while I struggled through the early days of nursing. And Wendy, who filled Quinn's room with more wonderful stuff, including her first pair of cowboy boots, has also continued to fill my inbox with just the kind of encouragement my own mom would provide if she were here…even though Wendy has, at the same time, been watching her own mother struggle through the ailments of her old age.

Then there were the neighbors, who sent sleds and beautiful silver bowls and more outfits…the same neighbors whose husbands have had to come out in the wintery dark to pull me out of ditches. And there are the friends from school, and the parents of students from school...who knitted hats and sweaters, and sent books, and little gardening tools, and fuzzy unicorns.

I can't even catalog all the stuff, and all the kind gestures…it would take way too long. Suffice it to say, Quinn is six months old now and I am still writing thank you notes.

My point is this: women are extraordinary, whether they are sisters or friends or acquaintances…they have a sixth sense that detects what other people need. And they provide for one another. They help each other get ready for the big events, and then they help each other recover after the big events. They take your calls and give you the information you need. And, after you confess your insanity to the world, lots and lots of them take the time to write you an email and tell you about the times they went to Crazy Town too.

I can't even really express how humbled I am by them, and how grateful I am for them. And I keep thinking about how I might have been a better girlfriend myself if my mom had been around to coach me in my twenties, and so, as Quinn naps next to me on the bed—our new weekend ritual: she sleeps and I write—I'm trying to figure out how to be sure Quinn gets this coaching, whether I'm here to provide it myself or not. 

So that's what this entry is about: it's about jotting some things down for Quinn to read someday when she is older, and it's about saying thank you…Thank you for the stuff, and the support, and the empathy, and the encouragement and all that magical estrogen. Thank you for being in my posse. A million times and for the rest of time: thank you.

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.