day 2: scattergories

The days this season have been light, airy. The cold is crystalline, neither heavy nor dank. Life goes as life goes, not tripping forward not dragging behind. It is lived.

In casual chatter, life is often separated into “family-life” and “work-life” and, never named but always understood, “hobby-life.” Life is so much more than these, but I’ve never refused a game of categories.

Family life is grand. Our marriage has never been sweeter; not even those early honeymooned months compare. Bean is a treasure, one we do not and will never deserve, but we’ll delight in and foster him evermore. Boomer is our rock. And I am reminded: the grass is greenest where you water it.

Work life is nonexistent, except in the realm of possibility. No office job or traditional employment can ever ever tempt me to leave my son. I not only lack desire to leave him during the day, I have a great aversion to the idea. The one thing that drives me to imagine a career, to picture what is expected these days, is guilt: guilt for being financially noncontributing, guilt for my apparent selfishness in wanting to be my child’s primary caretaker, guilt for not being able to leave him when so many other’s can and do and even have to or want to, gilt that I am not being practical. Guilt is a base motivation, a dirty motivation, and I’d rather dispense with the feeling altogether; yet it lingers. So I seek a flexible job, and a convenient job; one that won’t require more costly training or similar investment. I fear such a job doesn’t exist, or at least is Holy Grail rare. I interview later this month at a company which knows my desires for telework yet does not offer it. Still they want the interview, still I accepted it. We’ll see what comes of it all.

As for hobbies: my lifting has suffered. This past week especially has been disastrous. I cannot touch my toes. I have about four unfinished knitting projects. I’ll be surprised if I even remember how to hold a bow. My music is amateur at best. I read, but they are throwaway novels. Do I remember the wave function of a particle in a box? Can I integrate over a cone? And my writing, well, you see what it is. Shambling. Rambling.

For all of this, I’m happy for the first time I can remember in a very, very long time. Yes, I am happy.

watch!

Advent: it is a time of reflection, of preparation, of yearning. My mission this season is to be alert to my conduct, aware of my thoughts, and diligent in my work.

Today was spent in leisure, as is characteristic of a true Sunday. I finished lighting the tree while bean took his morning nap in A’s arms. We strolled through town, stopping at the grocery store and our second favorite coffee shop. We played in the dog park, which was all the more wonderful due to unexpected company: my dad, maggie, and our new puppy cooper joined us in the fading sunshine.

“And now my watch begins.”

yesterday

Our unit seems to be growing boxes. Everywhere I turn, a new one has appeared. Christmas is certainly coming. But one of these was not a Christmas present. Following the fall, I purchased a Japanese mattress for sweet bean. It lays on the floor and makes falls far less scary. Unlike a crib I can still cuddle with him before he goes to sleep. And, it had arrived, and lay in wait in one of those boxes.

In another box were his sheets, flannel to keep him warm, painted with bears and penguins and bunnies and moose to keep him smiling. So, yesterday we paired the sheets with the mattress and tried out the new sleeping arrangements. It was wonderful. I slept for the first time since the fall, and boomer slept with us since the bean first arrived on the scene. It seems she also yearned for a Japanese floor mattress; nothing else would do. I woke this morning sandwiched between boom and bean and I really couldn’t be happier.

Also, lest I forget, I really do have the best dad in the world. We shared some time on the couch after he picked boomer up from the groomers (she had gotten into something that warranted stronger stuff than I had.) It was really lovely. Even though I never really do know what to say.

regrets

Sometimes, when I’m swiffing the floors or listening to music or lying in bed or breathing, my mind wanders to Austin. It’s 2012, the first day if classes. I’m sitting in the front left corner, closest to the door: my seat always and forever. First to enter, last to leave, there’s no reason for me to take that seat other than it was my place when my world was physics and the physics guys and the physics room. I rounded out an odd foursome of an endurance machine, a hockey player, and a guitarist who usually seemed high but rarely ever was. I am alone on this new adventure, but finally, after two long years of waiting, felt like myself again. Here is where I belonged.

I never made it to Austin, but that picture and its sentiment lingers golden in my mind. It was a logical choice and, according to the pros and cons list I drew up over two months, a good one. I was satisfied with the decision.

But when I let my guard down and that daydream arises, reality often stings.

My second regret: leaving Carderock so soon. What a stupid girl I was.

But then a little hand shakes me out of my meloncholies. I know all my decisions, however awful, led to him. And to my time with him. No amount of Texas sunshine can replace a single moment with him. I’d take a dirty diaper over hallowed halls any day.

I just wish my daydreams would wander into possible futures instead of possible pasts. The latter seems such a waste of time and saltwater.

mornings like those

My mornings have long been beloved treasures. They’ve shifted in form throughout my life, but from the beginning have been marked by a sacred peace.

I don’t remember the above at all, but I’m sure it was one of my favorite mornings when I was small. Karl was (and still is) the best big brother for whom a kid could hope. Snowball (that wise old bear) sits in that exact spot in bean’s crib.

A little bit older, I remember driving in the car, strapped into a carseat (but facing forward as big girls do) and looking out the window at the uniform flashing of streetlights across my vision. The factual timeline of my life tells me I was in Virginia, after I left Mama Piña but before I attended St. Matthew’s pre-K 3. Those morning were early (aren’t they all?) and the brilliant lights kept my mind off of the cold that seeped beneath my winter puffer, and the day ahead filled with really just wanting to be back home with my daddy and my mommy and Karl and patience and alex.

Then, Newport RI. Mom stayed home because la’M had arrived. So we snuggled under the covers until the sun came up and we walked to the bus stop, all of us together, Maddy in her bassinet and Karl and I in uniform plaid. We stomped on crunchy leaves and on rainy days brought our newspaper boats to float upon flooded-gutter streams.

Nebraska, oh Nebraska. We went to school so early; “morning care,” they called it. Karl was off being an almost teenager and I was left to entertain myself (mancala is fun even when you are the lone player) or I helped the aides set up chairs and sweep the floors. Sometimes my teacher, Mrs. Gold at the time, would come downstairs and gather me up to set up all the chairs in her classroom as well and erase the boards from the day before. She would let me draw on the boards too, as long as I left no evidence. The other children would have surely been jealous of such an allowance. I recall one morning in particular: as I moved to take down the second table of chairs, I chundered a mashed up rainbow of lucky charms down the my just-pressed uniform and onto the freshly swept floors. I felt so very bad; the aide helped me clean up and then Mrs. Gold collected me. Little did I know my dad was on his way to pick me up and take me home. I heard about it later that day and was so sad to have missed the chance of another car ride with him.

Washington mornings were most glorious in the summer. I was free. We lived on base, so I was allowed to wander and while wherever I wished. I climbed tall trees for plums, following their journey from hard and tart to sweet and soft to saccharine and mush. I squirmed through the blackberry bushes, brambling my elbows and knees but not caring one bit. I ran (slowly) and hid with the other neighborhood kids, playing epic games of capture the flag as every team’s favorite handicap. All this before my lunchtime siesta.

Those first years in Hawaii, I lost my mornings, even during the summer. Buses and traffic and frantic studying took hold of my life. Summers were…fleeting. And full of lazing about in pre-teenage angst. And teaching Henry phonics (I was not nearly so patient then.) But that all changed when I commandeered Karl’s surfboard and passed my driving test. Mornings were spent on patrol, catching waves in the pre-dawn twilight and then letting them pass me by as I watched gold flood the sky. To date these are my favorite mornings (aside from my current ones.)

Then the endless summer ended, and I was off to South Bend, Indiana. Mornings there were also mine. An early riser on a college campus is rare (aside from the swimming and crew teams) and often I would wait on the stoop outside of South Dining Hall to get my cereal. Heart to heart was my favorite, doused in (horror upon horror) soy milk. I would unfold the Wall Street Journal and read about this and that, usually in sports and art and maybe something on the front page. Slowly the dining hall would fill with bleary eyed students dashing through for a quick bite before their 8:30s.

Oxford mornings were even more mine. I rarely slept there, and if I did, went to bed at either 7 pm or 3 am. Either way I’d wake at 4 and go for a run or a swim. Then I’d shower, brazenly, never locking the door because what is life without a tasty bit of risk? I’d change into one of my four outfits and amble down the cobblestones to St. Alyosus where I’d pray and sing and cry because life made no sense at all, and neither did Topology.

Then the beginning of my early-twenties crisis (read all about it below below below): even these mornings were okay. I’d get to work earlier than early, 4:30 or 5, just so I could have some quiet time to myself and prepare for the dreaded day to come. I’d make my tea, breathe in the musty air, sigh at the windowless room, and boot up my computer for nine hours of staring at the seconds ticking by. But they were my mornings, and they were all that seemed to belong to me at the time, and I loved them for that.

And here I am, out of work, in love, and still having some lovely mornings. They are no longer “mine”, but the sharing has made them all the brighter. Perhaps one day, that day will begin with a dawn patrol of the sweet morningtime swells, maybe emerson and I will go pick berries in our backyard, maybe I’ll even be in the car again, counting streetlights on my way to a job. I really cannot say. But whatever happens, I’ll always welcome the sun, and bid the moon farewell, thankful for that in between time.

mornings like these

Indeed, I thieved this phrase from the blessed minds of the insta-famous @morningslikethese. But my mornings are infused with the sweet enchantments and quiet peace that pervade their curated images.

We wake early, before the sun. Sometimes the clock reads 2:00, sometimes 4:44. It matters not; we perform our washroom duties and cuddle in bed, me half asleep, bean practicing whatever skill he learned the day before, boom curled up in the tightest little ball and A returning bean’s smiles in a daze as the minutes tick away, closer and closer to his departure: all of us waiting until the sun also rises.

Generally we bid A adieu before getting dressed. These days, bean is bundled in layers, for autumn’s arrived with brisk morning breezes. I’ve switched my summer uniform of lulu shorts with cozy sweats, though the camisoles remain. Boomer is gladly leashed, bean is wrapped up in one more layer, held warm against my chest, and we welcome the dawn in a stop and go dance that speaks of nothing really to do and nowhere really to be.

Bean used to fall asleep on these morning wanderings, but he’s begun to stay sleepily awake, seeing all there is to see. When we return home, he snuggles his head into my breast and has a quick snack before drifting off for a post-breakfast nap. I heat my oatmeal on the stove, full paleo guilt upon me, stirring and toppling the oats until warm and soft. Into a bowl it goes, where I drown it in coconut oil and wildflower honey and ceylon cinnamon. While my little ones dream, I spoon the simple pleasure with absentminded gratitude that these mornings are mine.

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quick thoughts on a life changed

well hello there interwebzzz

While doing banded squats and singing Raffi to my sweet six-week-old boy in an attempt to ward off his hysterical cries, I realize how entirely silly my life had been prior to bean’s arrival.

This…this exhausting, consuming, vexing, bewildering love…this is real.

All those resume-able ambitions and material pursuits seem wasted time, years spent looking in the mud for diamonds while the sunshine gleamed rainbows from above. My guilt over my failures and derelictions is squalor, buds of thought squandered on barren land.

Not that my life was completely absent of joy. I found it in the ocean, glinting off the waves as I learned their shape and song. I played with it when I sang and danced on stage, when I practiced piano day and night and night and day, when music was my philosophy and religion. I walked it on those early Oxford mornings, trekking the city parks and cobblestones from sunrise to church to class to sunset. I wrote it as I composed my thesis, as I scratched out mistake after mistake in optics and topology, as I was trapped in that paradoxical quantum-mechanical box. I exalt in it when I am weighed down by ever-heavier weights, feeling lighter with every extra kilo on that iron bar.

I feel joy in my dad’s smile, in my mom’s persistence, in my big brother’s hugs, in my sister’s wit, in my little brother’s unflappable innocence. I feel joy in my husband’s touch, in his glance, in those moments he listens and in the chances he takes, in the way he makes me laugh. I feel joy when I watch him read, when I watch his happiness, when I watch him be a great poppa, when I watch him live.

I have had a joyful life, but I focused on the wrong things and was dissatisfied. This little bean has replaced my lenses, and the world has become a Kandinsky of color and whimsy. The joyous times, though of short span in my young life, are in relief. Suddenly my life is beautiful.

I deemed this year my year of living: what life bean has brought to my life! These days, so unassuming, inscrutable from one to the next, are filled with such love and confusion it seems that I am wholly these. Love, my action; confusion, my state.

I know I cannot begin to imagine the brilliance of my future. I can hardly believe the magic of my present.

getting back on that (dead) horse

in the new year of 2013, i blogged once per day, every day. my original intent was threefold: to regain a sense of purpose in my daily routine, to form wispy thoughts into elegant phrases with growing ease, and to remember my days as worthwhile (whether naturally or cast in brannan lighting.) as the new year faded into the old year, my writings became scattered, rushed, whiny, with posts few and far between of which i was proud.

this year i shrugged off my obligatory tasks: daily writings, steady paychecks, clean food, consistent fitness, being nice for nice-ness’ sake… and what of it?

not writing everyday means it is much more difficult to write when i want to (see the last few posts: stilted, jaded, failing to capture that wide range of emotions that wring my heart.) not writing means i have more trouble remembering: my joy at the bean’s little kicks; the precise moment A convinced me, once again, that he loved me; our elation when we heard that sweet emerson is slowly making his way into this wide world, already at the +1 station (only 4 more to go); my belief that somehow boomer will know before we do when he’ll be born and my resultant insistence on monitoring her every leap and cuddle and aggressive growl. not writing everyday means my future self loses its chance of pouring over records of her past. she’s free to remember as she will. and with that freedom, as with any freedom, comes great responsibility. will she remember the happy times? will she forgive the sad? will she simply live in her present?

i cannot see the future; i am no sage. but extrapolating from this present KT, i believe the daily writings are beneficial. i must simply forgive myself when they are bollocks or crass or juvenile or trash, holding firmly to the belief that i will improve.

that loss of a steady paycheck: it symbolized everything i desired for three long years. i believed it would bring with it freedom. instead i experience fear and a deep sense of shame. i believed i would finally spend my days living. i find i spend my days much as i always did. i believed i would crow in elation at filling my seconds as i so chose, and i believed i would devote these to bettering myself. i feel stagnant, gripped by terror, desperately trying to keep breathing in the torrent of uncertainty surrounding me. is this a reflection of reality or my perception of it? was i so naive? i am being dramatic; there are certainly times i am incandescently happy. the question is: was the great sacrifice necessary?

it is made, so the only thing left to do is to make the most of it.

clean food, consistent exercise: i am brimming with excuses for my pregger state. i eat cereals and sugars because if i don’t, i fear i won’t eat anything at all. i tell myself i don’t have a strict pullup because i’m carrying a small child.  in fact it feels more as though i’m lazy and full of bs. all i want is bean’s health, and i know to get that i must maintain mine. sure it is difficult as the cravings and aversions rage, as my body begins to feel foreign; but it is never impossible. guilt weighs heavy: is he so small because of something i’ve done?

being nice for niceness’ sake made me feel like a good person, a person with whom noone should have any reason to quarrel. it never did work, and i always wondered: why? now that i’ve thrown it to the wind, i feel less a fake. but what is left? a person whom i don’t particularly like. a person who voices her petty opinions more often than not. a person who thinks to much of people, who thinks too much of what people think of her. a person who acts the hypocrite, though she stopped her feigned niceties to be exactly the opposite. a person in whom rages the war between the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and the philosophies of Ayn Rand. most of all, what is left is a person who is looking for a new shield against this world; a person who wonders whether it is better to stand naked a she came.

i suppose, in the end, everything has its good and its bad. everything is some mutable shade of gray, shifting in the changing light. everything is nonsense, and everything is truth.

KT

out

a story

our evenings together have been spent in an orgy of Vikings. the battles, the politics, the faiths, the cultures: enchanting. but the story is what keeps us watching past the witching hours.

in the show, lagertha often says that life is a story.

what is my story? what will i make of it? i build stories around my life, trying to make sense of it. i look back at the tragedies and connect them to the joys and the surprises and the wonder. i sit amidst my tears and worry if i’m too damaged to cultivate love: in myself, in others. was the happiness i felt untrue? it was so fleeting. have i diminished its existence because i forget what it is to be warm from within? in this desolate isolation, who is for me? are you there God? it’s me…

where am i going? where am i now?

sweet bean, where are you? where are your kicks and your somersaults and your dear hiccups? you are sleeping, i hope. sleeping as i wish i could sleep. sweetly. untroubled by terrors. a slumber unmarred by harrowing discoveries. i hope you are rocked by my breaths; they rack me so but within they must be no worse than a three foot swell. i hope you are lulled by the gentle sounds of my heart, which beats on however much it breaks.

frankly, i sometimes think it would be much easier to die. but i suppose that is the problem of writers and live-ers: the story is the living, yet it never turns out quite right. the discrepancy can drive one mad. quitting would be goddamn blissful.

another impossible bliss: sleep. it escapes me. how i wish i could fall into that darkness, joining my sweet babes, boom and bean.

alas, it is a David Foster Wallace kind of night.

dawn approaches. perhaps it will bring some peace in living. and with it, i hope, a happy chapter.

i love you bean. i love you boom.

KT

out