Letters 5 & 6: "...Continually searching for the perfect toehold..."

Dear Magdalene,

I'd spent the whole day (and I mean the whole day!) trekking from store to store, hunting down all the things I need for my sweet girl's birthday party next weekend. I feel kind of like a brat for saying how exhausted I was from shopping, because it sounds like fun. Shopping all day! Poor me! But I'd waddled my pregnant self through so many stores and obsessed about so many options, and was planning so many projects, and I was just tired.

The boys (the high school boys who board with us because they need extra help) had been busy with their weekend work project all day, painting the baby's room a sunny Goldilocks yellow while my husband split his time between supervising and helping them and taking care of the little girls. He was horribly frustrated by the time I got home because every time he turned around to make lunch or put the girls down for a nap, the boys were spilling paint or taking lengthy video game breaks. But they were pretty pleased with themselves, sprawling contentedly around the living room, spattered with yellow from head to toe.

And the baby's room? It looked...awful. The most badly-painted room you ever saw, with great big uneven patches of gray showing through two coats of yellow paint, big drips all down the walls, paint splotches all over the ceiling, just as many paint splotches all over the carpet in spite of the big tarp they had been told to lay out. And all through the rest of the house were traces of Goldilocks yellow. Shoe prints in the hallway and on the stairs, smears on the living room furniture and the X-box controllers, the glasses in the kitchen, the screen door, the back doormat, the bathroom sink, a huge puddle on the back deck near a pile of brushes and rollers happily baking the left-in paint into their fibers.

I carefully put my shopping bags away, biting my lip and thinking rapidly. This was one of those tightrope moments, you know? Where there is one response that is exactly right, but not only is it a terribly narrow path, it is awfully easy to teeter off the edge and into a very wrong response after you've chosen your course and set out.

Crying, which is what I really felt inclined to do, didn't seem like it would be useful. A harsh scolding was also tempting, but didn't seem quite right. Picking up a roller and climbing onto the stepladder myself seemed ill-advised at seven months pregnant, and meekly thanking the boys for their hard work and then staring at gray-yellow streaky walls for months while rocking the baby wouldn't really benefit anyone.

Is it silly that I was fortified by the fact that I'd been re-reading Little Men and the Bhaers are constantly giving their boys Earnest and Serious Talks to help them grow into good, useful men? Because I really kind of drew on that.

(and incidentally, would you like a completely random side note here? I never realized before that Jo actually named her youngest son Teddy Bhaer in that book. And it wasn't to be cute, either, because Little Men was written thirty years before Teddy bears were even invented.)

So I had to call the boys in and ask them if they had hired someone to paint a room, would they feel like this job was worth the money? And they said no. And then we had to talk about developing a work ethic and doing your best and taking pride in a job well done and how much less time a task takes if it's done correctly the first time. And about how there would be no more video games until the room was painted (and the paint messes all cleaned up!) to my satisfaction. Then they spent the next two days working at it.

I just wonder... can they ever know how difficult it was for us, having to keep on cheerfully pointing out the mistakes and missed spots, time after time? Do they have any idea how much we would have preferred to let them off the hook, or that we only persisted because it seemed like an important lesson for them to learn? It was a tightrope-walking weekend and continually searching for the perfect toehold between being so harsh that they feel bad and so lenient that they don't learn, it's left me a lot more weary than the shopping did.

But the nursery is a beautiful Goldilocks yellow and the ceiling is a crisp new white and the carpet is all scrubbed clean again. And the boys are awfully proud of themselves, deservedly so now.

All my love,
Beatrice


Dear Beatrice,

Yet another tally-mark for the goodness of reading: as help for our parental struggles.  Oh, fine, I realize you aren't these boys' parents, but you're doing a parenting job so it still holds true.  Perhaps I should read Little Men, not only because I've never done so (don't throw a shoe at me!), but because I need some lessons on saying the right thing and holding back all the wrong things.  I'm certain I would have started crying and then fuming and then caught some boys' hair on fire with my wrath.

It's terrible how little I know about being a mom right now.  My oldest is in her most difficult phase yet -- a phase that has seen me crying in bed more nights than I remember -- and if I saw it in another child, I would simply chalk it up to a social learning curve, but since she's mine I worry incessantly.  I think I'm projecting my own childhood fears onto her strong little frame. But she is not me.  She is something different and wonderful.  For some reason it's harder for me to separate myself from her, my first, than from any of my other kids.

Or maybe it's just that since she has the dreaded honor of being firstborn, she also gets to walk me through all of my biggest mothering missteps.  Congratulations, daughter: you win the hard road.  Step lightly, and beware your mother's arm trying to carry you over all of the most exciting character-building boulders and puddles.

But your restraint bolsters me.  I need more deep breaths and clear-thinking.  Less rushing-to-doubt.  Fewer lengthy lectures.  More bonding over ice cream.

Always, more ice cream!

And since ice cream is a natural segue into breastfeeding (right?), listen to this, Beatrice: I think my baby is done.  I won't say it out loud because it makes my heart clench in an uncomfortably broken way.  I've never yet run out of milk in all of my four-plus years of breastfeeding, but this time, I think it's happening.  There appears to be nothing left, and the boy won't sit still long enough to find out.  I snuggle him close and think deep thoughts about wells and poured-out pitchers and will myself to flow, but the let-down is gone.  I will him to relax into me, but he doesn't want a mere, empty suckle.  I don't blame him.  It's not what I want for us, either.  But even if I weren't out of the main ingredient for nursing, I still think he would be winding down.  I've lost a few tears over this, the most natural of transitions away from babyhood.  He's talking and running and just about ready to go to college and get married and leave me forever...

but as long as we were cradled into the rocking chair with our eyes locked together for a few milky minutes, he could stay my baby.

Bah! I say to the hormones involved in motherhood.  Bah! I say to heartstrings.  And bah! to change.  I'll simply have babies upon babies so that this feeling will not have the last laugh.

The thought makes me fall instantly into a comatose exhaustion.  There's no pleasing me, your vacillatory and weepy friend,

Magdalene

Letters 3 & 4: "I was a woman at slight remove from my ordinary identity"

Oh, Sybil,

I went out Saturday night. Leaving behind all the kids, who stood at the door and asked why I had to go, and my sweet husband, who patiently nudged them back inside away from February's bite, I left them. As always, it was exhilarating and felt a little daring: who is this single woman, lipstick and a purse so small it couldn't possibly hold crayons and matchbox cars and sandwich bags of cereal?

I came home to them, of course, but for four or five hours I was a woman at slight remove from my ordinary identity. 

I am shy in person. I always have been and can't imagine what it would be like to be freed of that cloak but, baby, I was born this way. The party I attended was a group of women I know online. A funny thing, the way we now build communities. Like you and me. What is this invisible world? And the truth is, I thrive in it. I can be gregarious at a keyboard. 

So these ladies and I, we all collaborate on a common website. We communicate with each other online every day. We have a Google Groups and a Facebook group. We're all Facebook friends. In one sense, I know each of them very well. But it cannot be avoided that even though I've been with the group for more than three years, I'm one of the newest members. Many of them go back six or more years, and in the early days, they had many in-person gatherings. It's my shyness cloak distorting truth, maybe, but in their presence I always feel inhibited, the newbie, the one they don't know as well as they all know each other. 

I confess, Sybil, as much as I knew it would be a great evening, I also dreaded it. It's so hard for me to walk into a room like that. My heart beats fast and my senses heighten and I question every word out of my mouth just as it escapes in a potential burst of embarrassment. But I went. And should "going out for a ladies' night with friends" be considered an accomplishment? Well, yes, I think it should. 

Sunday morning found me exhausted. It's a toll, being sociable through my shy cloak, and with the last smudges of mascara scraping my cheeks I found myself bone-heavy tired. I didn't want to get up. But one child, two children, three soon found themselves in our bed, climbing on me, saying all at once "did you have fun?" and "what did you do?" and "where were you?" and "I'm HUG-REEN!" (that's how George says 'hungry;' he's almost three, my sweet baby with the endless appetite). 

And I was home in my element, being clambered over as if they were puppies and not children, and I felt comforted and lonely. This is my family and I was back with them, I in their arms and they entwined in mine. But at the same time, I was acutely aware that my Gal About Town status was as faded as my makeup. I was worn out by the challenge of socializing with women I admire so much that they intimidate me, but I was also exhilarated by the afterglow of my accomplishment. 

Is it a big deal or a little thing to have a fun night out? It's everything and nothing, a personal challenge I happened this time to manage well, a memory of a fun evening. It's life as me, life as mom, life as a woman who made the puzzle pieces click together without glue or force or luck. 

My children yammered on and around me and my sweet husband, downstairs, must have been brewing coffee. I smelled its restorative aroma rise up to me and I thought about this family, that night, this blended existence between personhood and parenthood. 

Not every conclusion ends in the emotion of accomplishment but this one was good. I lay there in bed, imagining corking that exact feeling to savor again at future moments of need. This feeling should come with a merit badge, I thought. And a nap.

So naturally I swung my legs off the edge of the bed and went downstairs to make oodles of breakfast.

Much love,

Agnes

Dear Agnes,

If it were possible to reach through my computer screen, I would give you a big high five and celebrate your successful night out! Daring to be brave and to step outside of your familiar is nothing short of heroic. Being outside of your comfort zone is often a wretched thing, but I am so proud of you for embracing it and for contributing to conversation at the risk of sounding foolish! (Though I find it hard to believe that anything you have to say would do anything less than contribute to the quality of conversation being had!).

You and I are in slightly different places right now, Agnes. You're a few years 'ahead' of me! You see, I just became a Mom a few months ago. This new title is so new to me, in fact, that my personal journal is scribbled with several entries that say something along the lines of, "When will I really feel like a Mother?" I find myself staring at Baby Girl, realizing that I am and will be to her what my own incredible mother is and has been to me. It's daunting. It's thrilling. It's terrifying. It's such a privilege! The moment I saw the "+" sign on the pregnancy test last March, I immediately and irrevocably adopted the title I have dreamt of for years: "Mother." In my eyes, I was 100% a Mom. However, now that she's here I've realized that it is also role that takes time to grow in to.

See, when I go out without Baby Girl (to class or the grocery store and such), for the most part I feel completely normal. It's still comfortable for me to be out and about without her. Now, don't get me wrong, I miss her when we're separated. Of course I do. Often times, I find myself looking at the people around me and thinking, "I'm a Mom! You can't see it on the outside, but 3 months ago my life and heart were radically changed. Right now you are seeing just one woman sitting in one bus seat but the truth is that my heart is not with me anymore. The cavity where it used to reside is empty and now it lives in this tiny little Lady that I call my daughter." It makes me look at the others around me and wonder about the mystery that comes with strangers. What secrets do they carry? What do the details of their lives look like? Anyway, I guess I'm sort of in this limbo stage where I feel fully me when I'm with her and fully me when I'm without her. Slowly, though, I can feel that the woman "without Baby Girl" is less and less who I am. It's good. It's new. It's a change that needs to happen and I'm embracing it as it comes.

I dream of the day when our family looks more like yours. When Baby Girl is the oldest of three, and they come rushing in to greet me in the morning and children I haven't met yet make my heart explode by saying things like "HUG GREEN." Until then, I'll continue to embrace each day as it comes.

It's always lovely to hear from you, Agnes. I hope that since your night out on the town, you've been able to find a healthy balance between personhood and parenthood. I hope that you're being brave with your days - even the 'ordinary' ones - and that you're feeling that same feeling of contentment with the start of each morning!

Most Affectionately,

Sybil

Letters 1 & 2: "I was simply in the atmosphere, weightless and free..."

Magdalene,

The other night I took the kids to a McDonald's for dinner.  I know the nutrition is cringe-worthy at best, but we have a small pile of gift cards from Christmas, and the cold weather lately has made us more hermitic than I like.  Meaning: We're all driving each other nuts, even after exhausting all the craft supplies on hand and hours of imaginative play in the snow. 

So off we went.  We slipped and slided across the icy parking lot, urged on by the smell of french fries.  We shuffled carefully with our loaded tray into the playplace, where we were greeted by other harried-looking parents, gleeful children, and the strange, misplaced smell of chlorine.  In total keeping with their personalities, my oldest, Armand, inhaled his meal and asked--mid-swallow with his last bite--if he could go play.  My almost-two-year-old, Eliza, having taken perhaps four and a half nibbles, also declared herself to be done.  The baby was waking in his seat and I was only halfway through my own hamburger, so I relented, burbling reminders about removing shoes and staying together.

Of course these reminders quickly dissipated amid the onset of pretend adventures.  The shoes were shucked quickly into the colorful cubbies provided, but it wasn't long before the 6-year-old had ditched the 2-year-old.  This wasn't for lack of caring: his much longer legs ferrying him to the top of the structure within seconds, he'd yell down to his sister to huuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrry.  She, however, is not a lady to be rushed, and soon enough I was juggling the baby and my remaining quarter of hamburger, swaying by our coat-laden table and using my super-mom vision to track my girl as she made her way through the plastic and nylon Mc-jungle.

Inevitably she encountered a spot she could not maneuver by herself, impressive, tiny abdominal muscles aside.  A trio of girls, maybe 8-10 years old, reached to help her instantly, exchanging grins with my tiny lass.  They told her how cute she was and asked if she needed any more help, and instead of being moved by the sudden comradery these big girls were showing, I was embarrassed that my other child (the older one) had failed to help his sister.  I called to him where he was whirling down a slide: "Armand!  Come help your sister!" 

Even as I said the words, I wondered why I felt so urgently that it needed to be him rather than the strangers--the girls--assisting Eliza.  I'd thrown a wrench in their cooperation, as Armand scrambled to get to where the girls, big and little, had bottle-necked at a point where Eliza was struggling again.  The big girls looked at me innocently, questioningly.  I felt embarrassed for my scrutiny of them, as if we were adult women competing for a promotion or awkwardly vying for the last elliptical at the gym.  These were kids.  They were willing to help my daughter without prompt or reward.  And I was prickly-protective because I didn't/don't want to need help.  From anyone.  Even kids.

"It's okay, Armand.  Eliza's made some friends," I said.  I smiled reassuringly at all the girls, and they smiled back, and returned to their play. 

I sank into my chair, holding the baby to my chest, and put myself on a mental time-out to interrogate my inner brain and heart for reasons.  Why, why, Self, is this your instinct, to slap away an outstretched hand, to hold in higher admiration a set jaw rather than a warm smile?  I remember a time when I hugged freely and without restraint, and perhaps it sounds silly, but I freeze up a bit now when people outside my immediate family try to embrace me.  Even when it's from good friends, I catch myself when I slip close to the divide between vulnerability and independence.  This is probably all indicative of a much larger Something going on with me, but I know in other ways I'm not alone, because (ironically) I can think of friends I've counseled to accept help, accept assistance, accept invitations to branch out beyond the walls of their home and share life-- burdens, joys and all. 

What is community to our generation?  ... When grandparents live in homes for the elderly rather than upstairs, and even on Facebook, we can choose whom of our 'friends' to hide (Who shall see my pictures?  My posts?  When I'm online?)  There are so many shades to this aspect of our social culture; I take no firm stand, just yet, on my feelings about it.  This I'll confess to: I often feel more at ease Googling for answers than searching for them in conversation with those I call friends.  Sometimes I'd rather piece conclusions together from articles and posts than hash them out in person.  And I don't think I like that about myself. 

-Victoria

Victoria-

 

I've been reading a book lately that's made me think of you on more than one occasion, and your McDonald's incident brings it to mind once more.  It's The Paris Wife: an imagined account of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, and her life with him as an expatriot.  Granted, the expatriotism is about all your respective lives seem to have in common.  Well, other than this: Hemingway's wife was fearless. 

 

I DID say fearless!  That's you, dear Victoria.  Hadley was, at first, quite cowed by the ultra-enigmatic black-hole-ish-ness of Ernest, and tried to be just what he wanted her to be: flexible and strong all at once, but never needy or dependent upon him.  But in the middle of following him around Europe, trying to be his model wife/muse, she found a core of strength.  Or maybe the core simply grew, like an alpine violet that bursts up through the last crust of damp snow in springtime.  In any case, the strength was there to see her through some ugly, trying times.  Now, I'm not implying that you're having ugly times, but my goodness are they trying times.  And you are brave when you come up against them.  So I say (quite supportively, I promise), don't worry too much about this feeling of Something going on.  You've told us all a hundred times to grant ourselves some grace, and I'll spit those beautiful words right back at you: may you recognize the grace.  Which, by the way, you did, when you saw your stepping-in for what it was -- unnecessary -- and backed off. 

 

As far as this generation knowing about community, it will take people like you (and maybe me, if I could be so brave) pushing up and out of the layer of snow again and again to show our loved ones that there is sunlight up here!  Up in the stratosphere of interactions and awkward hugs and shared life!  It's so bright that it hurts your eyes at first, but it's vital.  

 

I've been trying to soak up my own bits of sunshing in this middle-winter stagnation.  Of course, today it feels like springtime down here, which is doing my pre-February anxiety no good.  I dread that month.  It is unending, is it not?  I'm worried that all of this beautiful warm air means we're in for a nasty spell of frozen weather (which would only be natural), so my knickers are in a twist before these horrid 28 days have even commenced. 

 

Earlier, I took the baby out to the swingset.  I had no choice, really, as he was fairly beating down the door with desperate fists.  If he had known the words for OUTSIDE NOW, STINGY WOMAN! I feel certain that he would have yelled them at me over and over.  In his mind, I'm sure he did.  So we went, and he was promptly lulled into semi-consciousness by the swaying of the bucket-swing.  I could have been an invisible, pushing hand, for all the attention he payed me while he flew through the air.  He's taken a drug, I thought.  A powerful, seratonin-like drug that is only produced by being weightless and powerless and completely free.   

 

Do you know, I can't remember the last time I went swinging?  When the girls were younger, probably, I sat with them on my lap while we pumped our legs in rhythm.  But by myself...I just don't remember.  So this morning, I sat on the open swing next to my oblivious boy, and I flew.  I leaned back as horizontally as I could manage, and pointed my toes to the sky.  Above me, the clouds were thick and gray, dark with withheld rain.  The tree branches were black and jagged, damp with humidity.  For a minute, the birds stopped singing and the wind picked up and I closed my eyes and inhaled on an upswing and lost the world completely.  I was sure my hair was about to drag the ground, but there was just no ground there.  I was sure the swingset was about to groan and creak in protest of my ambitious height, but there was no protest.  I was simply in the atmosphere, weightless and free --

 

I loosened my grip and jumped from the very top of my arc.

 

And I swear, as soon as my feet hit terra firma, the birds started singing again.  The highway moaned in the distance.  The wind slowed.  A single raindrop landed on my cheek.  The baby looked at me, startled, like he was wondering where on earth I'd just flown in from. 

 

Maybe my prescription for you, Victoria, will be to go swinging.  Propel yourself higher and higher, close your eyes, and jump off when you feel like you could burst from the opposing gravitational forces.  It's wildly freeing, in the way that no google search or forced acquaintance will be, and you can do it in any country in the world.  You don't need to be friends with it, you just need to trust yourself.  And your fearlessness.

 

Love,

Magdalene