Eat the Bird

Is it strange to wake up the day after Thanksgiving and realize you and nine or 10 of your friends and relatives sat across a table from one another to share a meal yet never once shared in conversation the things for which we are thankful?

Is it horrible that we never took the time to reflect on what it was that got us to this place?

History?

Happenstance?

Luck?

Good or bad?

Perhaps.

For a moment I felt a twinge of guilt ... as if the failure to verbally examine gratitude made me as ungrateful as if I'd spent the last Thursday in November greedily shopping for things I didn't need.

It didn't last long. I know what I am grateful for and for whom; and trying to put those thoughts into words doesn't give them any more weight.

I am grateful for everyone who has ever made me laugh ...

or smile  ...

or feel important.

And yet, perhaps more surprisingly, I'm just as grateful for everyone who has ever made me irritated or anxious or feel at loose ends. For all the things that have frightened me. Saddened me. Made me think about the world and all the parts of it I can't control.

As I sit there, looking over at my parents, it feels wrong to be thankful for things that just plain hurt.

Thankful for acceptance.

It just makes a speech about gratitude seem as awkward as the silence. 

Crescendo

If music took flight.

Giving Thanks

It's not been the best year.

You know?

Maddy ...


The layoff ...


My mom ...

And still, I'm thankful.

Thankful for tiny mysteries ...

Like when my daughter looks at me and asks me if I'm 25, even though I know to her 25 might as well be 100.

Or when the lady at the grocery store cards me for beer, even though I know she's required to card everyone. She's not required to act surprised by the dates.

I am thankful that when my husband holds up a turkey baster he bought during a Thanksgiving eve shopping trip he took with our son, it comes with a story I never in a million years would have guessed:

"Uhhhh ... I don't baste the turkey."

"I know, but it kept your son from melting down in the middle of the store. He really, really wanted a turkey baster."

I am thankful that he decided a $2 kitchen tool was one battle not worth fighting.

Though I'm not sure I'll be thankful when the boy douses me at bath time with his new squirter toy.

But I know it's just the price I'll have to pay for being thankful for all the things that sneak up behind me, yell 'boo' and scamper off, giggling.

If I ran the circus ...

I would not be putting the superheroes in the back ... where you can't even see them.

No one ...

And I mean NO one ...

wants to sit on a superhero.

Picture imperfect

I feel this way a lot lately.

Eyebrows trying to meet eyelids.

Hiding the frown as best as I can.

It never fools anyone.

People tell you to "smile,"

Which only makes it worse.

I haven't been interested in taking photos lately.

Which ... I'm not sure is usual.

Which is to say I'm not sure it's unusual either.

I can't tell if this feeling is the backlash of a year of daily snapping ...

Or the aging of my subjects and their apparent desire to be left alone ...

Or something else. Something within me that's had enough.

The thing I'm starting to notice, though, is an inkling of wanting to get it back.

Just in case you were wondering ...

This is essentially the reason why photos swimming around in the flickrverse are heavy on her brother lately:



I am the official photographer of Overshot Your Welcome.

There's other stuff I haven't been talking about much.

For instance ...

THE PARENT TRAP Who's big idea was it to design a gift holiday around St. Patrick's Day? Isn't it enough to believe a boy kidnapped from England and sold into slavery grew up to drive the snakes out of Ireland? Now you hook the kids into making intricate traps to capture little green imaginary creatures, who once cornered will leave a gift?

Guess how I found out?



She made a trap. And checked it hourly.

Also ...

EGYPT * LIBYA * NEW ZEALAND * JAPAN I am sending my best agnostic prayers your way.

WISCONSIN? THAT'S THE CAPITAL OF MINNEAPOLIS, RIGHT? Oh, education in this country is the target of much scorn. I know we need to work harder to energize students and prepare them a world we can't even comprehend. But I can't help but wonder why millionaires are picking on school teachers. To me one group eviscerating the collective power of another isn't the answer for society. In fact, it seems a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

SMALLER IS BIGGER, THOUGH. Consolidating districts, sharing superintendents, administrative staff? That's OK in my book.

LAST IN, FIRST OUT I have to say this is tougher for me. Experience should count, and it should be weighed heavily. That's not to say that I think "bad" teachers should be protected. But I just don't think during a layoff is the time to be punitive. Performance-based reductions should be continuously handled through evaluation. If that was happening, last in first out would be fair. Eventually all these young teachers grow older, too.

NEW YORK TIMES' ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION ANNOUNCEMENT: Wow. Not exactly the "paywall" people had predicted. But to my limited mind it seems pretty brilliant. Although there are several ways to trick the system, the system is really set up to make sure those who have been benefiting the most from having free news to aggregate (socially speaking, anyway) will be asked to pony up. If you are really "benefiting" from the downward trend of the news business I'm guessing $15 a month isn't too much of an uphill climb.


BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? I don't have a crystal ball, either. I'm just interested to see how all this turns out in the end. And really? I'm hoping for a time in the near future when we can laugh about some of this stuff.

Including this:

In need of a Craftacular intervention

We're going on day three of Operation Parade Dragon and I can seriously see this entire project taking until next Chinese New Year to finish.

Every day we add a little something to the dragon.

When the paint dries it will be a feather boa for a beard ...

or for eyelids ... maybe both.

I'm trying to go slowly ... since we have MONTHS until "People's Parade," which we've decided will be optimum for a dragon dancers ... but also because I'm procrastinating until I've figured out how to proceed.

Already friends have provided me with really WONDERFUL links.

Do we want a ground dragon?

A half hoop dragon?

I never even considered the tail!

I'm thinking that I need something light-weight but somewhat strong, but that won't end up being weaponized along the parade route.

If you have any ideas you'd like to share, I'm all ears.

Date Night definitions

"Who's David Sedaris?" my husband asked as I scrambled to procure a sitter so that we might see his performance at The Palace Theatre in Albany.

"Oh, he's kind of a literary humorist -- part social commentator, part memoirist," I replied.

It was apparent by the silence the questioner wanted more information.

"But what does he write?"

"Well. ... He's this guy who tears a page out of life, puts it through a shredder and then takes each individal piece and crumbles them up. He then carefully smoothes out the pieces and weaves them back together in some elaborate order that is not apparent to you. He asks you to hold it for a second as a favor, while he rips up another page. And, as you stare at this weird thing in your hands, you suddenly have two distincly separate but connected understandings: 'modern art isn't really elitist after all' ... and 'my five-year-old can't do this'."

More silence.

"Ok. So ... I'll just Google him then?"

"Probably best."

Opening a window on a world of pain

Whenever I read or hear some wonk pontificate on how the Internet, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Flickr, or fill-in-the-social networking-blank du jour is bad, good or indifferent you can pretty much bet that I got a big old eye-roll going on.

I can’t help myself. When some naysayer talks about how Twitter is a useless tool and some cheerleader talks about how the world will certainly never again need another means of communication beyond the tweet, I wonder: "Why rush to predict the future? Time will tell."

I probably shouldn’t feel this way. I’ve written often about real friendships I’ve made with virtual strangers after I opened up a window to my life in Flickr. I’ve learned to temper knee-jerk opinions of new applications, and wait to see if they fly, like Twitter seems to have done or flop like a previously praised private social network that shall go unnamed.

But it’s been difficult.

The internet has wedged me into this place. I want to sing its praises while protecting myself from its potential for harm: which as far as I can tell is a virtual sense of belonging in a place of actual isolation.

A woman stopped me on the street a few years ago as I was taking a quiet stroll with my newborn son to ask me what I thought of the neighborhood. She was thinking of moving. I was chatty and told her everything that filled my head. She asked if there were good mothers’ support groups locally. There were, I said, but I couldn’t tell her if they were any good because their schedules (smack dab in the middle of the day through the school year) didn’t jibe with mine (working days, full time and on maternity leave in the summer).

I found all the support I needed online, I told her.

She winced. She was a psychologist whose interest and study had been exclusively on mothers. She didn’t believe virtual hugs could take the place of real people.

I suppose I just shrugged. Some other psychologist somewhere, I imagine, would disagree with her and prove just the opposite with their own empirical data, or just more hyperbole crafted to resemble research.

‘Round and ‘round we go.

Of course, all that was before my beloved moms’ group collapsed under the weight of its growing membership; before it imploded in a storm of bad feelings and even worse communication.

A year later, I visit Twitter several times a day. I look at the lines of text and click on links. There’s always something to laugh at, something to admire, something to make a person think. There’s also something to make a person cry: There’s a diagnosis, a death, a struggle, a loss. There are prayers sought and given quickly.

I don’t know what to make of it now. I suppose it adds to the pain of existence; adds to the anxiety of getting through the day. I suppose it also proves we, as a society, still have the capacity for compassion for people we don’t really know. Sometimes.

Other times it underscores mob mentality; it seems to circumvent basic compassion. Yet, if you think about it, that happens everywhere. Friends in real life divorce and circles of support change. People move on, die, have difficulties. Real life isn’t any easier. Maybe that's the point some would make. Easy isn't necessisarily good for us.

I don’t know what any of it means. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, I just know that here, there and everywhere it is difficult to be indifferent.

Farewell 2009

"Are you sorry yet?"

That's what the bumper sticker on the SUV festooned with other Grand Old Party sentiments was asking me as we waited for the traffic light to change.

I imagine the person inside had slapped that sucker up the moment polls closed in November of 08.

I wanted to ram the gas guzzling middle finger of a vehicle with the force of a thousand auto crushers.

Thing is, I may be angry but I'm not sorry. I believe Barack Obama was the best choice we had for a leader. I believe he is a good person who has made and will continue to make decisions based on what he truly believes to be in the nation's best interest. Decision that will undoubtedly be unpopular to people along all political spectrums.

Personally?

I would like to see this country embrace socialized medicine.
I would like to see this country turn its back on war.
I would like to see this country spend its earnest efforts and our money on innovation and education; not corporate megaliths beholden to stockholders and their own golden parachutes. And not on the machinery of destruction.

Personally?
I would like to see the newspaper industry go non-profit.
I would like people who rail on about their "God given rights," realize that they were wrong. Rights are given by governments we elect, and which have been happily taking them away while still touting our freedom.

I know these thing I want may never be realized. And yet, I still have hope.

This has been an amazing year for us as a family.

Ittybit started kindergarten, and it has been wonderful for her and for us. It has been far from the exercise in futility and the uphill battle I had envisioned. She still dresses herself in loud, alternating patterns. She still marches to the beat of her own drummer.

The Champ has been, for the most part, a happy little monster who always keeps us guessing. He is hysterically random and, at times cunningly contrary.
HIM: "I don't want that cookie. I don't want that cookie."
ME: So ... do you want that Cookie.
HIM: "Yeah."
He has not, however, slept through a single night yet.

That has been hard on us as parents, and perhaps on us as a couple, too. But it also seems that without much discussion the fact that this time won't last forever makes it somehow seem tolerable. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, or some incomprehensible chapter in the bedtime story of interrupted REM cycles. But smiles here and there between us seem to be some evidence that we are on the same page.

Of course, like most Americans, I look back at 2009 and see it as being a personally difficult year.

I have shut the door on our beloved barn, tearing up the very first time I chastised one of my children for leaving the door to our new house wide open: "We don't live in a barn anymore, you know."

I have been slow in embracing our new home. It wasn't until one day ... months after we'd removed our last box ... that I was struck by the fit. We hadn't purchased one single thing for the new living room or family room or office. The place just seemed meant for us ... for our stuff.

I have learned a lot this year about myself. About tolerance and lack thereof.

I have learned about standing up for myself. I have learned about the necessity, in some cases, of burning bridges.

I look at my mother, who was diagnosed with cancer for a fourth time, and realize life is too short to suffer for long with anything we know to be damaging to our souls.

As I look at my mother, I also am shown myself. A mother, bound to be reviled for the choices I made, the things I said, the roads I made my family take ... no matter what choices they were. Perhaps revered, too. Eventually.

Looking back I see where there is room for so many regrets. Rest that didn't meet relaxation. Anger that could have used better management.

But ... am I sorry?

No, I am not. I am not even ambivalent. I still believe.

My funny Valentine

Dear Babies of Mine,

Somebody (I can't remember who) once said (and I paraphrase) the difference between mothers and other women is that mothers wear their hearts on the outside ...

People not as anxious as I might translate such a saying to mean that women who are mothers are somehow softer than the rest of their double X sisters. They are more in tune with the universe from the biologic act of procreation.

I don't know anyone who speaks that language.

"Don't worry, mom" is an oxymoron.

Most of us who live with pint-sized humans understand it to mean that our hearts are unprotected ... vulnerable to things beyond our control ... things that lie in wait.

And nothing good ever lies in wait.

Not the skinned knee ... nor the broken bone. The first crush and its inevitable breakup. But more than that ...

Truly, much of what we worry about is unspeakable. We won't - we can't - speak of it.

It's hard to imagine a world without her serious dedication

... or his devilish grin

... or her singing sentences

... or his full-on, toddling gait

... or her smiles and hugs

... or even his emphatic use of the word "NO!"

... or her near-constant motion

... or his desire to copy everything she does

... or just the fact that they are now happily playing together.

And especially now that you both say "I love you" in unprompted moments, it's impossible not to wear my heart on the surface.

It makes me think of "Valentine" not as heart-shaped confections or the Saint for which its day was named, but being more similar to the prongs of a pitchfork - piercing.

I know I have to shake these feelings off ... smile and be positive. Nothing good ever comes from worry, either. Because of you, I see that, too.

I just wanted to let you know that you remind me each day that tomorrow will be sweet.

Love,

Mommy

We interrupt the regularly scheduled Random Question Thursday to bring you the following SAD SONG

We've all heard it before: "Newspapers are dying."

I've often said that we're killing them, but that's probably just quibbling over terms.

After all, we can each point fingers at a cause: Nobody reads anymore, no one wants to deal with the mess, the internet is faster and free, Craigslist is siphoning off the most lucrative (if not least sexy) stream of revenue, corporations have sucked the marrow dry.

Well ... one of ours, The Independent, is closing. Whether it has died or been killed, I suppose, doesn't really matter. The 36-year-old community newspaper, which had been owned by Journal Register Co. for the last eight of them, will stop publishing forever as of Friday.

Something will probably take its place eventually. ... A free rag, put together by people in part-time jobs without benefits, will eventually find its way into mailboxes throughout the counties this bi-weekly once serviced. The new newspaper, if you can really call it that, will offer glowing reports on new businesses and tasty recipes from syndicated (but free) content providers. There will probably be more ads and more announcements of school lunch menus and honor rolls than humanly thought possible.

But, come Friday, an authentic voice of the community, at least in print, will be gone.

I think a moment of silence is in order.

Goodbye 2008

Goodbye 2008, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I can't say as I'm going to miss it, despite the fact that '08 brought us our first African American President and as real a sense of hope as I can remember.

I won't miss it because 2008 also brought us full-force into the debauchery of our times. It forced us to stand in front of the mirror of our own making and see how much we've actually lost. How much we squandered.

On a personal level, 2008 has been good to our family. It's brought us back to the place we started; it's made us see what's important. We have two, healthy, growing children who happen, at the moment, to adore each other.

We have even prospered enough to risk our sanity and future solvency on a new business venture, which means moving a few houses down the road (hopefully by the summer of the New Year).

But it also means deciding to sell our barn: the place we've realized ourselves and raised our infants. It's where we were married, and where we planted our first tree. It's even where we buried our beloved dog Maggie. Someone else will be walking across the tile floor I installed. Someone else will open and close the big barn doors my father-in-law made. And eventually, someone else will paint over the marks on the wall charting our children's growth from the time they could stand until now.

All of that has next year to play out, but the deciding has taken place in this year.

I'm choosing to look at it as an opportunity to make a new home out of an old house. I'm deciding to look on the bright side and be excited.

Time moves on, so will we.

Moving meditation

denise's labyrinth, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Sometimes walking in circles quiets the mind.

A place in my heart

Be Still gave him these when he was just a baby, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Dear Silas,

You walked over to your sister last night and gave her a bear hug around the waist. She kissed you on the head.

It was bedtime.

Both of you were taking spins on the wheeled cars in the hallway. She was careening past you while you were pushing yourself along, slowly.

Time for bed.

You followed her down the hall and into her room. She let you play in her closet.

You were quiet.

As we were reading our books for that evening - "The Mitten," "I Love You," and the next chaper of "Alice in Wonderland," you interjected.

Clawing your way onto the bed, you first went for the books and then for the play tent your father recently repositioned for optimum purposes of princess pretending.

But the bedtime, right now, is only your sister's. She has a bed. And a room, and a routine.

After she was tucked in, kissed goodnight and the lights dimmed I closed the door and walked to the space that will be yours.

The room is an afterthought: A corner leftover from renovations. A place for weary travelers to spend the night. It has a trundle bed I bought at a yard sale for $15 and a dresser I bought for you.

Nothing else.

No windows. No real doors. No space for much else besides walking in and out (or through).

When the ultrasound technician waved her magic wand and told me you were a boy, my heart sank. I wasn't disappointment because of you, however, rather I was disappointed for you. I knew this room would be yours. And I felt it wasn't enough.

Since then you've settled into our lives, but not really into our house. There is not place that's really yours. I've put it off. You were, afterall, a baby. A part of me could justify your being still a part of me. At night, in bed, with you kicking gently into comfort, I am reminded of when you were kicking on the inside. I can imagine you are still a part of me.

That night, as your sister settled down to sleep, I took you into your room thinking I might be inspired. You had no urge to get down. There was nothing for you here. Maybe some shelves for toys would make it more welcoming? Maybe a plush rug? Still nothing.

I heave a sigh and snap off the light: "I'll think on this tomorrow, boyo. Tonight you are still a baby."


Love,

Mama

Morning Commute

me = old and tired, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I never realized how many times I could be wrong in a day.

By 9 a.m. I'd already been wrong about sixty-seven times.

For example:
I'd been wrong about the breakfast.
Wrong about the clothes.
Wrong about the shoes.
Wrong about the status of cartoons.
I'd been wrong about the rain.
Wrong about the car.
Wrong about who got to sit where.
I'd been wrong about every song we sang and every game we tried to play.


It's just that kinda day I suppose.

By the time I go home ...

... well, I hesitate to tabulate the mistakes I will have racked up.

Let's just say bedtime will probably push it into the BILLIONS.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

What's that sound?

paintbox, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I hear the scritch-scritching of a bristle brush against the nap of the canvas

The tinkle of metal against glass

The tap, tap, tapping of rims.

She had asked me to outline a princess that she could paint.

I took the canvas and a pen and drew something unremarkable.

After I was done she thanked me and was silent.

More tinkling of brush to glass. More scritch, scritch, scritching of paint on canvas.

Her color slowly obliterates my line.

Tinkle, tap, scritch, scritch ...

This is the sound of growing up.

Writing through water

swirly swing, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Words are coming in waves but not in any order that makes sense. Not that I can really write them, anyway.

You see, so much of my story really isn't mine to tell.

It is my custom, at least in my head, to rethink what is my intention with this place here in the ethos. The last few times I checked, it was my intent to leave something for my children to know the me I thought I was if I am not around to answer their questions.

It is a place for them to come and learn what I thought while they were dazzling me with their little beings.

It is a place to jot down all those little things I am apt to forget minutes after they happen. Like THIS little tidbit a reader in Philadelphia dug up today, and, through my sitemeter snooping, let me have a teary little stroll down memory lane.

For every thing I write here, as well you may gather, there are dozens of things I don't write. There are tons of experiences, outside of motherhood, just as a human being, that I don't discuss. In some cases it's not prudent, and in other cases it would be unkind.

I'm holding my breath a lot, these days. When I breathe it's with a gigantic sigh. So much is just the human predicament. All the things we as mortal beings are incapable of protecting ourselves against. All the things that can keep a person up into the wee hours of the morning replaying in their mind.

Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I've got nothing of importance to say. I don't know. What I do know is that it seems like everything I try to write sounds like it's trying to be written, and trying too hard.

But what's even more frightening is just thinking about it all leads me to another conclusion: that so much of what I've shared here already really isn't mine to give, either.



*sigh*

An exquisite form

The following is an essay about the (unmentionable) love we feel for our children, prompted by HBM and The Joy Which Can't Be Words*

There's something no one talks about out of fear, even in an age where us verbose types can't seem to stop talking: the physical attraction we have to our children.

We have reason to be fearful.

WalMart, with its strange blend of corporate conscience, has made a name for itself not only by shortchanging employees, meddling in their lives, limiting their access to healthcare and decimating the communities they inhabit by edging out the little-guy, but also by becoming the eyes and ears for police, scouring the prints at their photo departments for exposed skin and potential pederasts.

Under such hysteria, (which admittedly has been around long before WalMart) the bodies of children have become sexualized. But when truth matters naught and appearance is all consuming, how can we ever differentiate between what means us harm and what doesn't?

That has never been more apparent to me than when I first brought my daughter home from the hospital, took off all her clothes and marveled at her lovely and amazing form. How could I not adore each inch of this marvelous body.

Each fold of skin was a masterpiece. I tickled her tummy as I changed her diaper. I bent down to kiss her newly exposed belly button. Her smell was intoxicating, clean and new.

The attraction between mother and child is most definitely physical. It grows in time, too. Not only did I have an urge to touch her, feel her skin against mine, I needed to hold her and squeeze. There was a surprising amount of latent violence in this expression. I held off the full force of my hugs, afraid to break her. My jaws clenched, teeth biting lip. The phrase "I could eat you up" was nearly literal. Everything about her being -- and not merely the idea of her being -- was yummy.

I took photographs of every part. I couldn't believe how defined and perfect her muscles were. I was transfixed by the roundness of her head and the dimples in her soft, full skin. And yet, I remained keenly aware of the danger waiting to tear me limb from limb in this world jaundiced by a sad mixture of superiority and anxiety.

I knew that such images, no matter how innocent, are taboo. I know that should someone with a lascivious mind find pleasure from them, there are those who would call me a pornographer. I hesitated showing my images to anyone, lest they judge. I just thanked the gods of technology for the digital camera I had long eschewed.

But even the mention of such thoughts has the potential to devastate.

When we say "physical love," most people conjure a mental picture of sexual love. Sensual love gets lumped in there, too. We make no distinction superficially, and yet we are all drawn to sensual things, innocently, in ways that no one would ever accuse us of crimes against humanity. Every time I walk past suede in a department store I have an intense urge to caress it. It pleases my senses. But I have no desire to have my way with a coat, I assure you.

In fact, much of my own thoughts concerning physical love have changed since becoming a mother. Since having a child so much of my own body has been transformed from the sexual to something else -- something life giving and life sustaining -- that I've had difficulty reassigning my parts. It's been nearly a year since this baby of mine stopped nursing. And still my breasts are unaware of sexual gratification. Touched in that way, I recoil.

My baby's body, in my thoughts, is the same. Its beauty is more than emotional; it's esoteric. The attraction is so surely physical it's palpable. It offers proof that we have the potential for perfection in all the ways that matter.