Stream-of-consciousness and pink and legacy

I am sitting in my pale gray womb chair, feet propped on its matching ottoman, everything from the waist down blanketed by a corally-pink and white throw. It's a muted pink, not saccharine or sickly, but rather a nod to my love of the color, to the need I feel to sometimes throw a bit of not blue-gray-brown into my masculine'ish love child of a modern + mid-century home.

I've had a love affair with pink for as long as I can remember, and I am A-OK with that. There is really quite a diverse spectrum housed under the umbrella term "pink." Really, it runs the gamut from the blindingly neon to the loud but infused-with-purple magenta to the horrid, too flatly opaque Pepto shade through the perfect English roses and ethereal peonies to the pale-but-not-anemic lighter shades.

Hot pink, piglet pink, baby girl pink, Carnation pink (that disappointing Crayola hue that never seems to assert itself)...The list goes on, but suffice it to say that I am, mostly, a fan. 

Which is why I bought this throw that, in all honesty, matches almost nothing in my home but goes well enough with this chair (which is mine; I got it for my 40th birthday) and makes me happy.

The point of this early-onset tangent is a slight one. It's simply to place you just a touch, because tonight I am pooped and have retired to my chair and the quietude of my room early tonight.

Tom has been home since March 1 (he is enjoying a much-deserved vacation between jobs before starting his new role as CFO at a company here in DC on March 20) which has been both rare treat and alone-time zapper, the kids have had irregular school schedules due to various holidays, conferences, and the pending snowstorm which two hours ago meant a preemptive canceling of school tomorrow, and that behemoth mulch pile that both took many more days than expected to deal with AND is still not fully dealt with. Tonight found me mulching neighbor's yards, random neighborhood trees, and offering with exceedingly enthused madness "all the mulch you want" to anyone who passed by.

Life is so much about finding our rhythms, isn't it? For those of us who thrive on routinized days, from the highly structured to the more relaxed here's-what-I-might-do-around-mealtimes approach, for those who find structure imposed on them via children or career or other duties, the removal of that overlay can be both exciting and stressful.

What I have noticed is that in times of flux, the non-necessities and "luxuries" easily, too easily, fall by the wayside. Sure, the mulch juggernaut loomed, but what really beckoned was an empty page, empty pages ignored for weeks now. 

This evening, a friend mused about thinking now about the answer to 'what do I want the story of my life to be later, when I'm reaching the end and looking back?' And really, that's a great North Star to keep in mind. 

To another friend struggling with a shitty week I wrote, "Literally right now writing about the times in which 'normal' routine falls by the wayside and what gets left in its wake. I am seeing, literally now b/c I'm hellbent on writing even if its crap, that what is flotsam and jetsam in the wake are the things, like writing, that keep me sane. So clearly those things are wrongly labeled f & j and I need to more unapologetically value them."

Funny how sometimes all the roads lead you to a pale gray chair and a corally-pink throw and a glass of wine and the loving response to your kids and husband that "No, I'm off duty now. I'm on my own clock now. I'll see you tomorrow."

Thoughts big and small

I am bone-tired this morning. Even my heel-pads ache. I gardened, ran and worked out yesterday in addition to taking Jack to a trial French class, going to the market, and actively negotiating Wii usage for hours, so there's all that, but still. 

Last night, Tom and I made a simple but superb spring dinner last night and then sank to the couch like weights dropped in a stream.

springtime caprese

We finished Episode 1 of the new documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (based on the book by Siddhartha Mukherjee). Despite the heavy subject, it's really, really excellent. Toggling back and forth between past and present, it provides, through the sobering lens of pediatric leukemia, a thorough sense of the evolution of cancer understanding and treatment which is both fascinating and hopeful. You want to kiss the feet of the brave doctors who have persevered in the face of kids dying horrible deaths and then go hug your children and send gratitude for their health into the skies.

fava bean and mint puree; we slathered this atop griddled bread

I'm now sitting quietly on my couch, both utterly tranquil and stressed about how soon this peaceful solitude will end. T took the boys to swimming lessons about a half hour ago, so I gather I have just about 40 minutes left to read the paper and finish this post and my coffee. Naturally I know that's impossible, and while I will be happy to see the boys rush through our door and regale me with news of their progress and which Dum-Dum flavor each chose, it is mornings like these, when much of me wishes I had the whole day ahead of me and alone, that I feel so very stretched by motherhood.

yogurt chicken with aleppo and lemon, caprese salad, sauteed asparagus/english peas/Brussels sprouts and pecorino

Yesterday, after meeting Jack's French teacher and surveying the classroom, I hugged him goodbye and said I'd be back at the end.

"Je t'aime, Mom."

"Je t'aime aussi, Doodle."

What a soulful love that little boy is. I want to give him every opportunity and walk alongside him as he forges ahead in life. But that giving tends to tip the scales away from time to pursue my own interests and goals. In the most unequal of moments, I feel as if the early years of motherhood strongly suggest I put huge swaths of my life on hold. Daily. For a long while. 

I don't resent that, but it compounds the challenges of motherhood which are already great.

Friday night antipasto dinner with strawberry lemonade in wine glasses. Festive!

Children are not goals. I have hopes for my boys, sure. But other than feeling confident that I'm raising terrific humans, I don't derive from mothering them the sense of accomplishment I do in finishing an essay or laying that last bag of mulch. Nor do I feel I should, for children are people not pursuits.

the antipasto platter

At times it is utterly thrilling to feel yourself subsumed by something, but in other moments, it's discomfiting. As if a force beyond your control is reeling your soul away to an unknown land. Do you know what I mean?

a pile of zucchini-feta fritters

I love my boys with such fierce desperation. Yet within that cocoon of love I sometimes feel bits of myself slipping away, as if on a boat that's loosed its moors. I don't feel I can push back on them in the way I do T or friends; not yet at least.

Surely this is one reason so many people speak of parenthood in terms of sacrifice. I'm not totally comfortable with that word in this context, except in the most denotative of ways: there are, literally, sacrifices made (financial, for example).

But, I chose to have children, so it seems unjust to then burden them or our relationship with the guilty connotations of words like job and sacrifice. And so for now, I find my way, in moments stolen and planned, in the words swimming through my head and committed to the page. And I am grateful for it all.

A newly flush wellspring?

I became aware, just two days ago, that the wonderful camp at which the boys will spend the next month ran longer each day than I'd thought. 8:10am drop-off, 4:45pm pick-up. Unless I'm out of town or they're with their grandparents, we've never, and certainly not regularly, spent that much time apart. And because this camp is 25 miles away from home, out in MD, they are a real bus ride away. When Jack was five -Ol's age now- you couldn't have paid me to send him off for so long. I'd have looked at you like you were certifiably insane if you'd even suggested the idea to me. I mean, the first time Tom and I left Jack with grandparents for the weekend, we recorded a DVD for him and instructed the gramps to play it. More than once. It's possible they laughed at us. The way I am laughing at myself, now. In any case, you see what I'm saying. Sending him to camp, on a school bus, for a LOT of hours would not have happened.

So here I am sending them both off for some old-fashioned day camp fun. It sounded like such a good idea when I registered, and they were beside themselves at the open house we attended. Farm animals! A war canoe! Creeks! Dirt! Canoeing! Tending plants! New water bottles! And I was envious of the fun I knew they'd have. Downright covetous because I wanted to hold chickens and commune with goats all day too. I felt like such a courageous mom, enabling my boys to have this adventure together.

And then this morning came, and we rounded the corner of a city street and saw the big white school bus (why don't school buses have seat belts?!) and counselors I didn't know from Adam, and my heart started to pound just a bit, and my stomach talked to me quietly. I put a brave smile on my face and walked the boys to the bus, and I swear to you, quicker than you could blink they were on that bus finding seats together. I planted myself near their window, all blowing kisses and carrying on about missing them. And they tolerated me in an extremely loving fashion. As I took my first steps back to the car, I could tell they didn't even notice. They were just so excited and open and willing to brave an unknown. And I burst with pride and called my own mother to tell her that my little boys were on a school bus all by themselves and she burst with pride too.

Then I realized that I had EIGHT and change hours to myself. And that I'll have that again tomorrow and the next day and the next.

And that maybe I'll be able to breathe a bit, to slow my pace, to tell Hurry to shove off. Perhaps I'll be able to finish up on all the to-dos I've let languish and then invest myself in the activities I've been pining to do but haven't felt able to prioritize. Maybe the wellspring that's sourced my writing font will run rapid again, the bottleneckers, Stress and Busy, no longer rude obstructionists of which I'm quite tired.

Maybe I'll have time to miss my boys, maybe even time to feel a bit lonely in my blissfully quiet home. Perhaps I'll reclaim the stasis that enables me to be the kind of mother I really want to be, with real energy rather than pretend, with some of the lightness that's been softly tamped over the past few months.

As the hours passed today, I felt the benefit of this time for myself and the promise of more tomorrow. I talked to several friends on the phone, sent flowers to a birthday girl, walked Percy -twice!- got some work done for the boys' school, dealt with one pile of "important" crap. I felt Calm seep in and wash my brow with its cool hands. I day-dreamed while pitting cherries. I made a jam plan for tomorrow. And when the late hour drew near, I hurriedly put on a bit of make-up and some sandals so I could take my loves out for a celebratory dinner and dessert. They tumbled off the bus, filthy and happy and pooped. We got caught in a torrential downpour and laughed for two hours straight. It felt really good.