This toddler sized adirondack chair was a hit.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Summer's Last Hurrah
This toddler sized adirondack chair was a hit.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Wild
For book club this month we read Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. This has been a very popular book and is a New York Times bestseller. In my opinion, with good reason. I loved this book – I assumed that maybe it could be a bit boring because, really, how scintillating and page-turning can a thousand-mile hike be. But it was rather fitting, really, I saw so much of myself in it. At least, so much of my younger self. On that note, Rach indicated that she did not enjoy the book - because she didn’t love the author; I won’t take it too personally :)
Strayed’s memoir is about hiking the PCT, yes, but also about finding herself and coming of age, so to speak. She was in her early 20s, her mother had recently died, and she had subsequently gone off the deep end and her young marriage ended in divorce. Obviously, the parts about her dead mom spoke to me, and there was one particular passage that I wish I could have written myself:
Page 267:
“But it was too late now, I knew, there was only my dead, insular, overly optimistic, non-college-preparing, occasionally-child-abandoning, pot-smoking, wooden-spoon-wielding, feel-free-to-call-me-by-name mom to blame. She had failed. She had failed. She had profoundly failed me.
Fuck her, I thought, so mad that I stopped walking.
And then I wailed. No tears came, just a series of loud brays that coursed through my body so hard I couldn’t stand up. I had to bend over, keening, while bracing my hands on my knees, my pack so heavy on top of me, my ski pole clanging out behind me in the dirt, the whole stupid life I’d had coming out of my throat.
It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that my mother had been taken from me. I couldn’t even hate her properly. I didn’t get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I’d have to fill it myself again and again and again.”
Although there are several differences between Cheryl’s story and my own – namely, hiking the PCT, young divorce, the age at which her mother died, the type of mother she was – there are many similarities between our feelings. Granted, I did not have anywhere near the level of maturity as she portrays here. Those last lines really get me, about be trapped but being alone, about being an empty vessel in which no one can ever truly fill. My mother has been dead over 12 years now, and only occasionally do I now have such moments of grief, sorrow, or anger as Cheryl describes here. Several weeks ago during a drive out to Manzanita, I had such an experience. The Bean was asleep in the backseat, my heart filled with love for this little nugget that Alex and I created together; a wondrous creature who insists on growing and changing and always blowing our minds by simply being. On the drive over the coastal mountain pass, through the trees that densely lined the road, I was reminded of the last trip my mom and I took together. We spent a night in Seaside, the last time we were together when she was decently well. I explicitly remember the road trip, she had asked me to take the wheel, because she was too tired to endure driving for more than 10 minutes anymore. She napped in the front seat of her red Neon, me increasingly aware of how sick my mother had become, but especially happy to feel like I was helping out some, before I would leave for a summer on the other side of the country. At the hotel while we pigged out on salt water taffy, after a short stroll in the sand, she explained to me about her seizures. Not the kind like in the movies, but more of a “space out,” a result of the cancer having metastasized to her brain. She napped more, me laying next to her in the hotel bed flipping through the TV channels. I still have a photo or two from that trip, an unflattering self-portrait of us during a stroll along the water’s edge. Her in her purple bandana and too-big prescription sunglasses. Me with my upper ear pierced multiple times, my hair pulled back, and my face makeup-free and fuller with youth and the effects of too much drinking.
During the more recent drive, with my daughter instead of my mother, I was struck by the absolute heartbreak of it all. It had been a while since I felt so utterly despaired, but I was smacked down with the anger of not having a mother of my own, no grandmother for my daughter, and then the grief of knowing that no one - not a soul, not even my husband, not my father, not my children, never - not ever, would love me the way my mother did. I only know this know because nothing can compare to my love and devotion to my own baby girl. It’s primal. I can’t help it. I might not always do right by her, but there is something so animal-like about a mother’s love. My eyes are welling up again as I write this, the feelings far beneath the surface, but the tectonic plates of my grief shifting a bit to make my earth quake. The idea,that the one person who loved me above all else perished, was too much for me to handle, my tears quickly turning into heaving sobs, and then retching. I pulled the car over to the side of the two-lane highway, hoping not to wake Francie, not wanting her to see me like this, or to know the threat of losing her mother, as I had mine. As soon as the sobbing turned to heaving, I collected myself, re-established the here and the now, acknowledged the terrible tragedy that is a young girl losing her mother, and prayed that the Bean would never have to share my experience.
My book club gathers tonight, where we may or may not talk about the book itself. And if we do not, this passage right here, written in my blog, is quite enough for me.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
1st Day of School
Thursday, August 22, 2013
17 Months
In honor of the Bean's 17th-month birthday, I thought I'd change up my monthly post a bit and depict "A Day in the Life." Really, it's easier than trying to compile every little detail (that I love) about her. Too many new words, funny anecdotes, new favorites to try and draw on.
A Day in the Life - Sunday, August 18, 2013
7:15 a.m.
8:15 a.m.
We finally make it home from the park. The Bean is eager to give Nesta his "tuts" (translation = treats). We consider putting the Bean down for an early nap, so that she can be well-rested before our lunchtime picnic plans, but she doesn't show any signs of being tired yet. We just lounge in the living room and watch "baby tv" (translation = this is where Francie runs laps through the kitchen, begs us to read more books, or otherwise entertains us with random toddler shenanigans).
We are supposed to be in West Linn in 15 minutes, so as we start to get ready we make extra noise in hopes of waking the baby without deliberately waking the baby. No such luck. So then we go all creepy style next to her crib and just stare at her, willing her to wake up naturally. Our voodoo magic works, and she's happy to boot.
We join a whole crew of WLHS Class of 2000 peeps who are all part of a Facebook group a friend started called "Lions and Friends," for those of us who are now in the mommy circle. We eat PB&J, mingle with friends and former classmates, introducing our very mobile little Bean to anyone she can take a second or two to pay attention to.
She loves the park. She obsessively goes "up" and says "yeah" to all questions regarding the swing. At some point she becomes the nakey baby, disrobing down to her cloth diaper and tentatively walks through the fountain. It's a warm Sunday and Hammerle Park is very busy with young families. Francie calls for "dada" anytime Alex is more than 10 feet away.
We finally arrive back home, after a short and failed attempt at my favorite antique/thrift shop in downtown Oregon City. Alex still needs a few screws before re-hanging the mirror, and the Bean take this opportunity to admire herself.
4 p.m.
More nakey baby time with the kiddie pool on our fabulous new patio. "Buh buh!" Everybody loves a good belly button.
4:45 p.m.
Dancing on the table with mama. The Bean likes herself some Macklemore.
Another poopy diaper. Too many blueberries! She's a girl on the go - clean diaper? Check. Laps around the kitchen? Check. Kidney bean snack? Check.
We strap her into her high chair for dinner. She tolerates about 2.5 minutes before playfully throwing all of her food across the dining room. I think she just made the world record for 1.5 year old bean toss. Unfortunately, Nesta does not help us to clean up this kind of food.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Awesome Week, Thanks
So that part about her not crying at daycare? Ha. She'll do me one better. Not only did she cry, she cried for 3+ hours before finally falling asleep from exhaustion. Apparently she was decently consolable after her nap, but just sobbed "mamamamamamadadadadada" all. morning.long. Separation anxiety? Check.
And because Alex has not officially started the school year, and we therefore have not officially started daycare, we are also using my dad to help get us through this next week. Apparently she hates him, too, and chanted "dadadadadadadadadada" (see "Daddy's Girl" post) for a few hours in the a.m. before finally falling asleep for a nap. This is how she spent time with her BDA:
Or like this, with cute pictures of her playing:
And even when she's with Al, we get newsy texts (even if they break my heart/make me laugh out loud):
But with daycare? No texts. No photos. No frequent reports on mood, sleep, poopy diapers, or diet. I'll have to get used to just trusting that all is well, that no news is good news, and just look forward to the end of the day when I get to pick her up and she'll (presumably) be happy to see me. We'll give Blue Skies & Butterflies another chance twice next week, before going to the regular Monday-Wednesday schedule beginning in September.
So between the stress of daycare anxiety and BDA anxiety, on top of a busy caseload and negotiating Alex's new soccer coaching schedule, I was ready to call it a week already. And then this morning I was woken up at 5 a.m. to my baby crying from a pile of barf. Gross. And confusing. I was still half-asleep, and noticed a bad smell emanating from her crib, and checked her for diarrhea. Diaper was clean and dry. Then noticed the chunky bits in her hair, all over her clothing, and saturating her Soothie. Again, gross. We got all CSI about it. "What time did you go to bed? So she must have gotten sick sometime between midnight and 5 a.m." "The consistency of the bodily fluid resembles strawberries and bread." "Differential diagnoses include GI virus, meningitis, UTI, or stress." "Did she have anything weird to eat?" "Do YOU feel sick? What did you eat?" She seemed in good enough spirits, despite smelling like that one bar in college - not the one with the shuffleboard - and we whisked her away for an early, extra bath.