Time's determined march

Leaves are changing color and falling, but the high temperatures and humidity persist. My habanero plant is flowering again; it is confused. Summer and fall are duking it out in the final battle for seasonal primacy.

I step from my bath, dripping and thoughtful. Epsom salts and heat help my achy back, the scar on which hasn’t faded over the years as much as I’d have liked. I am prone to all manner of irregular freckles and moles; some need to be removed, while others are simply physical manifestations of my idiosyncrasies and can stay and remind me of such. 

I study my face and its newer wrinkles, my belly and hips. My eyes look tired. Things everywhere are both taut and soft, as aging bodies are wont. Thinner here, fuller there.

It occurs to me that the seasons aren’t the only things fighting for supremacy.

I used to know everyone in the school pick-up line. But during the past two years, waves of new families have reached the shore, and now, I sometimes feel slightly meek and anonymous. Friendships are being forged, over children and similarities I may never know. 

I haven’t felt that way in a long time, and I’m not sure if I like it or don’t.  

My big boy will graduate this year and move to the older campus. I think I like that but nostalgia grabs my heart and makes me unsure. I glean comfort from the fact that even if I’m then just part of the crowd, my younger one will tether me to the special place for a couple years more.

A friend writes with disbelief, “I can’t believe you volunteer at school so often.” I reply, “I love it because not only can I give back but also I can see my children as their best selves.” I had never thought about that before and am again struck by the power of writing without thinking, of responding without editing myself immediately and repeatedly.

There is a lesson there.

I awoke this morning as might a furious storm, swirling and messy and vexed. My agitation could have been for so many reasons, or none at all. I cried, and cooked. I talked to a dearest friend and kept cooking. I poured my soul into my friend and my food. And, later, into my boys.

They were both darling and not, thankful and spoiled, perfect and ugly. My mind told me to run, my heart urged me to stay. Both were right. I am no longer interested in the not-rare arguments about, for example, how much of a body one will willingly bathe. But I am inordinately grateful to be the one asked for advice and trusted with deep secrets.

Finally, the pregnant skies have opened, releasing their watery savings with an unapologetic gush. The parched earth yawns, gratefully lapping up what is shared. Mud splatters, newly sown seeds are unmoored. Wild animals take cover, my domesticated ones snooze obliviously, comfortable and secure on blankets and in beds.

Time marches inexorably on, battling towards the future and against the past. I see it in the seasons, and on my body. In the wave of new faces and the six years that have flown by, a blip in a vast sea, since my family joined the school community we hold so dear. In my dog’s gray whiskers, and in my husband’s too. In the rain that pours down and my sons as they mature.

In the belief in tomorrow and the fresh start it holds.

Of moons and nerves, of good moments and dark ones

This evening just before 8pm, my ragtag crew piled into the car and headed to a point higher than the plot on which our house stands. Jack's class is studying China, and in anticipation of tomorrow's celebration of today's Moon Festival, he is to have observed the moon and his reactions to it throughout the past week.

Wednesday night was successful (just look at that photo Tom took!), Thursday was vetoed because of an overtired meltdown, Friday and Saturday nights were too cloudy to view anything, and although tonight is still overcast, the clouds were moving on the wings of a hasty wind. We figured we could glimpse something if we got to an elevated space free of trees.

Once at the triangular patch of grass at the intersection of Nebraska and Van Ness, we tumbled out of the car, plastic telescope and clipboard in hand. Tom was the only one not wearing pajamas. Jack was dressed in long-sleeve and pants orange-and white-striped skeleton jammies, with the shirt tucked in dramatically; I had on a matching set covered in hydrangea blossoms; and Oliver was, unsurprisingly, wearing a mismatched pair that included an inside-out shirt and bare feet. 

I'm certain we looked incredibly bizarre. But sitting in the grass as a cool breeze gusted, we glimpsed the gorgeous moon for a brief time and felt happy.

It was a blessedly tranquil moment during a weekend which has had quite a few highs but also some real lows. Perhaps all families with young children live their weekends on such a roller coaster. Some may be better suited or able to handle mayhem, cacophony and filibuster-scale chatter.

I, myself, wish we could disembark on occasion instead of being strapped in to the front seats on Friday at 5pm and forced to climb, loop and fall until Sunday after dark. I'm tired of being so enervated by simply experiencing a weekend.

That word connotes such leisure and relaxation. Weekend suggests catching up on sleep and togetherness, lazy afternoons and all-day pajamas if you like. 

We've got the togetherness and all-day pajama parts down pat, but leisure? Relaxation? Sleep? Time for individual pursuits? I don't know what the hell you mean. 

Even the peaceful lulls ask something: that a movie be turned on or that we adults put our own desires to bed or that we be waiting to pounce (and able to immediately relax) when the stars align and the kids play without calling to us for longer than fifteen minutes.

Do you know that by 9:30 this morning, after I'd made beignets and hung out, I'd listened to Jack try to engage me in conversation about the periodic table for upwards of ninety minutes? People, I wasn't capable of managing that in college (I'm not joking; I was a ghastly chemistry student), much less on a Sunday morning. I'm also not super interested, as I feel confident that I know as much about carbon and iridium as I'd like. 

So, I armed him with two dictionaries and a wikipedia page, and asked/pled/demanded that he study by himself while I did some work for class. Suffice it to say that did not work, and I felt both defeated and angry. Pissed. Because a brain can only take in so many insistent requests for needs other than its own before starting to fritz out. 

Ol, meanwhile, had taken every toy out of every bin and tried on and then discarded every costume. Tom and I were tripping over plastic tools and MagnaTiles and Lego men and toothpicks and acorns and books. And the house looked like it threw up in itself. And I just could not take all of that input. I can't. 

By the time we reached the little patch of grass where we stationed our observatory tonight, it was roughly 13 hours after our day began. Jack, armed with two shiny new reference books, was still talking about the periodic table, and Oliver had just eaten half the noodles off my plate even though Tom took them out to dinner earlier. 

I was happy in that grass, but getting there felt Herculean. It's hard to balance all the various energies needed to parent well, maintain a marriage, stay connected to friends and self and keep your heart open enough that despite fatigue and frustration, you're at the ready to appreciate the golden moments in which lovely memories are made. 

It doesn't feel possible sometimes. The moon hides, the grass is scratchy, you never knew what ytterbium was in the first place. 

Straddling two selves

Many who attended and relished #BlogHer15 are writing now of reentry. Of recovering from the fatigue of being "on" during the conference (even though we certainly wanted to be just that) and dealing with long trips home. Of feeling somewhat misplaced, no longer in a community in which there is a sort of shorthand and a great deal of acceptance and understanding.

In one of her summations, I think my friend, Alexandra Rosas of Good Day Regular People, said it best: "You don't want who you are when there, to disappear again."

I am lucky to have many good friends and a family with whom I am close. I belong to two writing groups that nourish me, and as an at-home mom, well, suffice it to say that I'm not lacking in the quality-time-with-my-children department. I'm active in my community, and I feel I give back regularly to it. And, my cat. Enough said.

So what's tugging at my heart right now? What feels slightly off-kilter even in the midst of all this richness?

It's that the "me" I am when I'm there doesn't often feel possible when I'm here. In the three days since I returned home, I've felt the there me constrict dramatically. It's visceral at times, the sense of being pushed and pulled from a large room in which I bloom and breathe easily into a tiny one, down the hall and to the left, in which the air must now be shared by many. The sense of disappearing.

In that cramped chamber, as I make lunch and ice bruises and listen to that infernal Gummy Bear song, I hurriedly scribble ideas and desires onto any bit of paper I can find, hoping that when finally –but when?- I unearth them once more, they will still mean something. That I will be able to summon the spark of creativity, of insight, of depth that birthed them and find the time to lay hand on pen, pen on page. That I will tease from my clues, the message I wanted to share.

In many ways what is powerful about doing things like attending conferences is that it legitimates claiming time and space. "I'm registering, paying, traveling and will be learning" feels valid in a way that "Kids, I'm gonna go write for a while now. Cheerio!" sometimes doesn't. I think it should, but it just doesn't. 

Nor is it all that feasible. I don't know many parents whose kids truly entertain themselves for hours on end, even if they're allowed to go full zombie with a screen. Something will run out of batteries, someone will fall, a fight over Legos will surely ensue, never-ending hunger will need to be fed. Likewise, I'm an at-home parent for a reason: to stew in the wonder of loving, tending, guiding and remembering. And, apparently, to be beaten in Battleship by these two kiddos. 

Please note that Oliver is dressed as wonder woman but also has voldemort's wand within easy reach. he is always both sides of the coin. hah!

It takes time to really think through something and then craft a piece about it. It takes time to consciously read a good book or magazine, to ingest the words rather than skimming them so distractedly that they never enter one ear, much less leave the other. It's lovely to cook a dish without worrying if I inadvertently added a cup of salt instead of flour because I was also filming a Magna-Tile explosion. 

Alone time is any parent's rarest commodity. But it is in that time that I not only remember who but also pursue and refine all that I am beyond Mom, and so it is especially precious. 

My mother asked what my favorite part of Big Boy Week was (the annual week that the boys spend in Louisiana with her and my dad). Without hesitation, I said, "the luxury of being on no schedule. Of being able to be spontaneous. Of being able to let responsibility go. Of being able to open myself up to myself, and to see where that takes me."

I love my children with something that must approximate feral instinct. And yet.

Like a brilliant, low-slung moon sinking too quickly into the horizon, I feel there me receding into the folds of memory. Even though I wouldn't trade the sources of this dilemma for the world, the frizzled middle sometimes feels agonizing. How to live in both worlds, as a friend wondered. How indeed.