My kids in the afternoon

Liam: always mellow, happy to snooze whenever the moment allows. Except then I won't fall asleep at night so my mom won't let me nap! Aoife. Sleep? Why would I want to do that?

Oh, my.

Is anybody out there?

There is great joy in letting go. I don't understand why as a parent I sometimes cling to the things that I do, firm in my belief that this is how I do things and it makes my life better.
Oh, my, how wrong I always am.

Raising children is like following the dripping wax down a candle, you just don't know what shape it's going to make at the bottom. There's a point where you can sometimes tip the candle so there isn't a drip, but then the wind starts to blow, or the wick gets too long, and you just can't really do much but watch it fall.

So lately my moment of RELEASE has been around afternoon sleep, which we don't do anymore. At all.

The mom who was so rigorous about the sleeping schedule for her little son (because he was a GOOD sleeper!) has realized, in raising her little daughter, that not everybody follows the same schedule. And my attempts to have my children "rest" in the afternoon left me feeling pissed off with a sour taste in my mouth because I hadn't gotten a thing done during the "rest" time-- unless you count 63 laps up and down the stairs to try to tell them to rest quietly.

(First of all, what I must quietly interject, is what I am defining as getting done, because is it more important to hang out with my kids, or wash the kitchen floor, think about this)

So I silently surrendered, and now, after lunch, I just let them wander around the house. We stay in for an hour or so, and I read to them, and we do something kind of quiet with blocks, but it's a whole lot quieter than standing up in bed yelling every request and excuse you can think of for 45 minutes. And I cannot tell you how much happier I am for it. As sad as I was (and am, truly, what I wouldn't give for just 30 minutes to breathe in the middle of the day) to give up that time, I am so much happier to not have that excuse to feel irritated with my kids.

Because if I'm irritated? I need to change something. Maybe it's my routine, maybe it's my own tone of voice to try to calm things down. My close friend just described to me that when she's really, really mad at her kids, she tries to pretend like she's really stoned. So she sets herself back into super-mellow, out of it, disconnect and addresses the situation like such. Calm, groovy, and to the point.

This is all to short to really get your panties in a knot about. But boy, I have had some tough knots to unravel.

Greg read a story
to the children tonight
It was called, Sophie and the New Baby
and in it, the little girl waits
with her daddy through a snow-lit night
while her baby brother is born

just sophie and her dad

then brother arrives
and Greg read it, the story about Sophie
the biggest girl
who waits with her dad for her brother
to be born

and fat tears splashed
into his lap
and onto the golden heads of
the children, who laughed
and said daddy, why are you crying
silly daddy

they laughed, but he cried more
because in our family
there is no big sister

Ivory Soap and NYC

My dear cousin Sabrina, whose art is so remarkable in so many ways, created this Monument to Childhood on a rooftop on Weehawken between W. 10th and Christopher, one block from the West Side Highway. It seemed a fitting tribute to show this work here, where so much of DeGrassi's beauty has been portrayed through words.


see more of sabrina's work: www.sabrinawardharrison.com

A tiny fur seal, c. 1996

There are those moments in your life that send chills up your spine.

I have so many of these in the realm of my Charlotte. I see a picture of myself, holding a tiny sweater that she would never wear up over my belly, an enormous smile on my face. I find something that I wrote to her, assuming that I would have her forever. I remember that moment of looking up at the ceiling in my living room, caressing my huge belly, and wondering if I would be able to survive if my baby dies. I never thought I was seriously pondering this, at the time it was just a way for me to wrap my head around how crazy in love with her I already was.

So today I found this huge packet full of all the letters I wrote to Greg while I was in New Zealand and he was in Madagascar our junior year at Middlebury. They are akin to old letters sent during the war, explaining things that I saw, what I did, feelings that filled me. We had no telephone contact during that time, so it was inclusive of mostly everything.

In the midst of one of the letters, I recovered this account of a fur seal dissection that I attended at the University of Otago in Dunedin. A graduate student studying fur seal populations had an arrangement with a certain fishing company to procure all of the fur seals that died accidentally in their nets (! :( oh dear). In any case the animals were used for reasearch and I was there, assisting with this dissection. I had never attended the dissection of such a large mammal before.

I remember quite vividly, having been reminded through my writing of this experience, the dampened, melancholy curiousity that came over me when we realized that the seal we were dissecting was quite pregnant. This is what I wrote to the man who is now Charlotte's daddy. I am shivering right now.

We had sawed open the two adults and pretty much disemboweled them and they were lying on the stainless steel table, which was covered with blood. Coated with blood. And the full uterus was just lying in this pool of blood on the table. The student, Gail, cut through one, two, three layers of sac, and amniotic fluid poured out onto the table , and then, there lay this tiny, clean little seal, the only thing in the whole room that was not covered in blood. Its skin was soft and pink, and its tiny eyes were closed. Its nose looked like a kitten's and a soft coating of brown down covered its body. I opened its mouth and it had no teeth yet; its tongue was little and pink. It was so sweet. It was so sad that it had died and never even seen the world, but so peaceful that it had lived its whole life rocking in the warmth of its mother's body. We all surrounded this tiny creature in complete awe at something so small, yet so complete. Examining and amazed by this little seal, I looked forward to one day when a small person, soft and pink, will come into my life, a little piece of me that I'm sure I will be just as amazed and astonished by.

Except at that time, when I was nineteen years old and writing this, I never imagined that my baby would also be dead, did I? Also drowned by lack of oxygen, floating in the warmth of her mother's womb. But she was astonishing, I give you that, and I was truly amazed by her.

Ivory soap, and so on.

A new bar of Ivory soap.

Can you conjure this smell the way I can? We used to carry a bar with us down to the dock at night in the summer, because it was the only brand of soap that didn't leave a trail of bubbles behind. We would walk through the closing twilight into the black pool of a lake, which reflected the starlit sky and the lights of the bay that surrounded us.

When we'd arrive at the beach, a silence would fall as our clothes fell away, clandestinely forming small piles several feet apart as we feigned modesty while derobing. Then the splash, but not a big one, as we would leap off the side of the dock into the shallows, our feet making ripples in the silent water as we entered. The soap, in my hand, would have been dry, and it needed to be wet to get that smell. So I would dip it, just quickly, and twirl it between my hands as I walked through the quiet night.

Inevitably, I would drop this smooth, clean bar somewhere along the way to the slide. The water was only eighteen inches deep, so retrieval wasn't the issue. But the bar was grainy now, its slick surface now a fine grit of maybe a #200 sandpaper, ready for use. Not as slippery in the hand anymore, but I would it hold tightly as I mounted the ladder, heading for the top of our playground wonder, stationed in the midst of our baby beach swimming place.

Ping, ping. I can hear the sound of my rings tapping on the hollow piped handles that ran alongside the ladder, as I would climb to the top. Pause on the landing, passing the gritty bar from my right hand to my dominant left, soap it up, and cover my naked, white bum. Then I would sit, gently, and with a great shove, take flight.

The ride down the smooth, splashed sliding board would take perhaps slightly less than two seconds, and then there would be this moment of silence as my body virtually soared through the air, speed defying gravity taking me five or six feet off the end of the slide before the water hit my naked skin and my arms defensively plunged downward to prevent an uncomfortable bottom-first landing in the soft sand beneath the gentle, still lake. My hair, still dry, would just hit the surface of the water before my feet would make contact. I'd stand, and assuming the position of modesty disguised as coldness, I'd wrap my arms around my body and hunch over slightly as I made my way through the knee-deep water back to the slide, where the splashes would follow me, and the silence gave way to shrieks and giggles and laughter.

The bar of soap would stay, gripping with its sandy surface, on the landing at the top of the slide as we went, again and again.

Sometimes we would find it there in the morning, where we'd left it.

____________________________________

There is peace to this memory, which could be from one of hundreds of nights of my childhood and teen years, from the point at which I gained my independence and was allowed to swim alone at night with my friends, to the point at which I became too exhausted and cold to bother to go out after dinner (this could also be described as parenthood).

So it was pleasing to me, and also slightly puzzling, that as I walked along the Mill river trail today with my two children for company, amazed at the silence of this windless, warm fall day, I could smell this smell: Ivory soap.

My nose is a little stuffed up, allergies to the fall, so I couldn't be sure, but I was sure. Why could I smell soap, here in the middle of the woods? I couldn't imagine. But it made me feel a sense of beauty and peace.

We were walking to Charlotte's stone, of course. This place where we visit with dried flower petals and the cuttings from our gardens. Today's bouquet was fall mums, pink and yellow, arranged around a big bunch of fragrant sage, with a few of Liam's homegrown zinnias to add a lighter pink zest to the little gathering of color. When we arrived, Liam took charge of scattering the petals I'd collected from the dying roses while I carefully tied the bouquet to the little maple tree that grows out of the root of the huge white pine that towers over her stone. Then I pulled from my pocket this little piece of randomness that I wish I'd photographed, this smooth piece of slate from Grandad's lake, and I'd written on the stone by scratching it with another piece of slate: Charlotte, Liam, Aoife. One on top of the other. My three children, where I only have two.

When I was sad, I would visit Charlotte's stone and feel heavy, I could throw myself nearly on the ground and feel close to her and want to talk to her and feel her there. Now I feel muddled because when we go there it's often a glorious day, and the walking is lovely and it's such a beautiful family outing that I'm filled with joy there, and I feel a disconnect that I don't know whether I should be happy or sad about. Is it good when the pain doesn't hurt you so badly anymore? But does that mean I miss her less? I can't interpret this because it's too large to think about. But the stone does not make me sad anymore.

Later this evening, we gave the kids a treat of pizza and movie night. I roasted sweet red and yellow peppers and made a tasty vegetable pizza, and we watched "The Muppets Take Manhattan". As Miss Piggy is boarding the train and waving goodbye to Kermit, she waves her purple silk hankerchief, and drops it. It flutters on the track as the train rumbles off into the darkness.

Oh! Liam says, straightening in his child-sized wicker rocking chair.
Oh, no. Miss Piggy lost her thing. She lost her thing.
His face is a look of concern, he sees Kermit pick it up, but he's worried for Piggy.

Why is it this that makes me cry instead? Greg and I locked eyes over his little blonde head, and we both started to cry. Big, fat tears fell onto our laps. Liam looked up at Greg.

Why are you crying, Daddy?

And how do you answer that? I'm crying because you're sweet and sensitive, because you're caring and empathetic, I'm crying because I love you so much, and because every day that I love you I'm reminded that I was only given one day to act upon the love that I had for your sister, and I wonder how my love for her would have morphed and grown and changed as I watched her grow, as I now watch you? I'm crying because you're here, and she's not. I am crying because you are such a beautiful little creature and you're mine?
I kissed his silky hair, and took Aoife's hand. And felt happy and sad all at once.

Resolution

It has to be said, today at 6:43 , that this morning after 8 hours of sleep I arose just past five o'clock. The rabbit hadn't fallen over and had eaten his food (I've postponed the death visit to the vet, hence). I unpacked the four bags, sorted and folded the clean laundry, and started the dirty laundry. I cleaned up my room, swept the downstairs, and made the lunches. The bathroom floor has been washed.
The day is open to me now, and I feel full of promise. It is truly amazing what a good night's sleep can do, along with axing some of the things off your list that are dragging you down. I'm now skipping off to re-organize and sort the playroom in the few moments I may (or may not) get before my sleeping children arise. Then we'll read books, eat the cinnamon buns we baked yesterday, and begin the day anew.
Hurray!

If I were a teenager right now, I would be absolutely convinced that I was very fat and had no friends.

What is it about the way a darkness sometimes just sits over you and makes you feel like you cannot climb out of some funk that's settled?

Today, it's just busy-ness and clutter and a chill in the air and very crabby kids. We arrived home late last night after a glorious weekend in southern Quebec with my Grandad. We walked the crisp roads, went for short boat rides that delighted the children, and enjoyed lots of good family time with Grandad and my aunt and cousin. But then, the homecoming. There are bags to be unpacked, backed up laundry to be washed, and absolutely no groceries. I now babysit on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays which means I can't get to the grocery store until Thursday at the earliest. Oh, wow. Looks like beans and... beans? What else can you get from a can that already exists in my sparse pantry? It could be worse.

Then there is the bunny, Simon. Simon has been with us through it all, coming onto the scene over 13 years ago when Greg and I first lived on the same hall at Middlebury. He is now beyond geriatric, and when we returned home last night, he had fallen over and couldn't get up. He has a huge, fatty tumor on his neck that has turned his head sideways, he now (as of this weekend) can't walk, he can't get over to drink his water, he isn't eating. It's clear Simon's time has come, except that he hasn't died. So he's lying there on a pee-soaked towel, with poop stuck to his little furry bum, dehydrated and exhausted, his little cateracted eyes glazed over. I have spent the past 24 hours bathing him, giving him drinks of water with a dropper, hand-feeding him things he really loves like prunes and bananas. I brought him out onto the lawn this morning, he just lay there, curled up, almost, without nibbling or moving.

So there is this minor trauma, the pet that just won't die, and I feel terrible because I wish he would. I can't bear the thought that if he doesn't, in his current state, the responsible thing for me to do is to call the vet in the morning and to drive him over there so they can put him out of his misery. I know I have to do it, he is in such terrible shape. I think of him, this formerly tidy, neat creature who never had a smell or any dirt or anything on him. He was so fastidious, and he now can't move to wash himself, or to pee in his litter box, and he's miserable. I say minor trauma not to undercut the value of his little life, as he has been a loyal and true pet for us, but simply that compared to other losses, his shall be more easily surpassed than others.

So that's the bunny, and his situation is certainly dire, and then there are the kids. Their situation is being remedied right now by a good long sleep, they were tucked in by half-past six tonight. We'll hope for a solid 12 hours. The no-napping in our house just means slightly tenser moods. Basically after about 11:45 am mostly my kids yell at me and cry all afternoon... okay, saying this is really getting close to me being fat and having no friends. Let's rephrase: Today it felt like they yelled at me and cried all afternoon. Truly they didn't. But that's how it felt. Their nerves are a little shot after a long weekend and a longer drive, and so are mine. Some days are like that.

But I read an amazing book, if I wasn't feeling lazy and comatose I'd add it to my list; it's called People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Shivery delicious. I loved it. Now I'm starting Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It is so intriguing I think I might have to go curl up and read under the covers right now.

The best thing about days like today is that you know tomorrow will be better. All of my experience being grumpy has taught me that there's no way to get out of a tailspin of the grumps except to just go to bed and have a nice, long sleep. So good night.