Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
Nearly every evening when I cook dinner my Chihuahua Betty White lurks beneath my feet, snatching up what I inevitably drop. There are few foods she doesn’t eat. Grains, vegetables, fruits, meat, cheese, she likes it all. Carrots are sometimes a no, but that’s about it. She even dines on non-food items fairly often, spending warm summer mornings snacking on the ants as they leave their underground lair, or gnawing on cat poopsicles in the winter until one of us catches her and shouts with disgust. She always looks at us with a mix of shame and wonder that we could deny her such a delicious snack.
She often presses her hard little head against my shins or calves when we’re in the kitchen together, just to remind me she’s there. Then she gets yelled at. She gets yelled at more than I’d like. I don’t want to trip and I fear stepping on her, especially now, because she’s getting old and fragile. Her legs twist with arthritis and she can’t jump on the couch or the bed without help anymore. Some days she hardly moves at all because she’s hurting so much, but she still manages to make herself a nuisance in the kitchen. If I’m honest, her pestering presence is a constant I find comforting. I like to see her half-bald head peeking around the kitchen island, tail aloft and with a half-wag. Will some shredded apple be flying from the sky today? Will mom or dad lean down to offer me a morsel of pork chop? I like things that are constant. So much of life is unpredictable and a little out of control. When I was a classroom teacher I enjoyed going over the schedule every morning because it gave me comfort: look at all the things we’re going to learn and accomplish today, my hopeful schedule said. It often didn’t work quite the way I wanted. Fire drills happened, a lesson went awry, someone threw up on their journal and I spent a quiet 30 minutes freaking out internally about the germs. But most days it did, at least in part. Betty is one of my constants. I got her a few months before I met my husband and about a week before my dad died suddenly. She accompanied me on miles-long walks as I tried to soothe my aching heart and quiet my mind, her happy tail a beacon; she pinned herself beside me in bed at night, keeping me from feeling as if I might spin off into the darkness. She greeted visiting friends and family with indelicate joy, sometimes peeing with excitement. When things got better, when my husband moved in, she accepted the shift in her role, just as she has with the arrival of my children. She eyes my daughter Ruby patiently when she toddles over to pet her, submitting to her awkward patting, and Ruby screams with excitement when Betty offers her a forbidden lick on the chin. I love the reminder of my little dog’s bald head on my shin. I love the way it says, “Hey, I’m still here. I still love you. Now give me some chicken.” Which I will, right before I chase her out of the kitchen.
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I used to squander ten minutes like I had it to spare, and honestly, I did. I was single, childless, footloose, able to eat chips and salsa for dinner and leave the dishes for days if I felt like it. Now, when I have ten minutes of spare time, I immediately cram it with some fulfilling activity. Here are a few of my
Since becoming a mother, one of my mottos has become “Some is better than none.” I can no longer go on my beloved hour-long walks or 45-minute jogs. There is not time or money for an hour and a half at the yoga studio or a morning to spend writing and staring out the front window. But I have ten minutes, and I’m going to use it, by God. Today has been full of reminders to pay attention. Not to work, not to technology, not even to my most beloved people, but to pay attention to the very ground under my feet, the birds who live at the periphery of my vision, the ants who tunnel through the backyard.
My drive to work aids me with this. I speed down the highway to the small town 15 miles from where I live, the town I despised when I went to high school there. It often smelled like fifty different kinds of manure when I was seventeen, and the smallness of it felt like shackles, not peace. Today, when I turn off the highway I catch a whiff of the manure. I slow down, notice the fat yellow and black bird balanced on the telephone wire, wishing I could remember his name. I pass Buttercup, the male horse I named prior to seeing his maleness. Never mind, he’s still Buttercup to me, placidly munching his feed morning after morning. I pass the shaggy black cows and calves, nosing at the grass or staring at my car as I drive by. I see the kestrel poised to drop into the field and catch an unseen mouse. It is still early enough there is a mist dissipating on the fields where the mouse trembles. The mesas to the north are blurred by the thin fog. I say hello mentally to the mommy tree, bending protectively over a smaller tree forever reaching up, up to the branches of the mother. As I turn toward my school I inhale the view of the national monument to the south, red rock rising from the earth in columns and swoops, nothing much to me as a teenager but all glory and gratification now. When we moved back I swore I would never get tired of this drive, of the views from my classroom window. I haven’t. This place, my home, is knitted into the fibers of my soul; every rock, every tree, every bird, remind me of my place. Morning…
I am suspicious of the peace and acceptance I feel as we return to school from Spring Break. I am wary of the good night’s sleep I had last night (6 hours of sleep, at least, uninterrupted by terrifying thoughts of the busy work week to come.) I observe myself from afar, marvel at this new calm. Later, of course, I will clench my teeth as my children turtle their way through getting ready, and the minutes tick down until we leave. I am fairly certain there is some important school task left undone that will send me into panic later today. Evening… I barely clenched my teeth as I loaded my children into the car. They tumbled happily into their grandmother's house and nary a tear was shed as I walked out the door. The day went by with only a few unexpected moments, and what is school if not a series of unexpected moments laced together with well-planned lessons? I remembered the important school tasks I needed to do and found there wasn’t time to complete them today. Yet I didn’t panic. I prepared everything to complete them first thing tomorrow morning. My lunch for tomorrow is already packed. I sip my evening tea and munch my Cinnamon Toast Crunch, feeling only a little bit overwhelmed. I’d venture to say I’m just whelmed, no over about it, were that a thing. Is this what adulthood feels like? The last day of any break is bittersweet. When I was a young teacher, I plunged into a deep depression the Sunday before I went back to work at the end of a break. Now I don’t mind the restoration of a schedule so much. I can accept the inevitability of the workday to come and take comfort in the fact that I like my job. Eighteen years of teaching has taught me the first hour will be a bit rough, then the kids will come. I'll be glad to see them, they’ll be tired and we’ll all spend a little time reconnecting . The day will begin to flow.
I’m still sad, however, to say goodbye to all the small, precious things I get to relish on these breaks. I just put my daughter down for her nap and we snuggled before I put her in her crib. Feeling her solid little body against mine and her fine soft hair brushing my chin is one of my greatest pleasures right now. I’ll miss the ease of these days, not needing to rush anyone out of pajamas, letting my son go an entire day without combing his hair, letting him play Legos for hours on end, having time to marvel at how much he’s learned since he started Pre-K this fall, hearing my daughter try all her new words, stopping to watch Peppa Pig with the kids after their nap. There is also the list of All the Things I Did Not Accomplish. It happens every break. I mentally list several amazing things I’m sure I’ll accomplish (cleaning out closets, learning to make homemade pita bread, making adjustments to my retirement account) and then I manage to accomplish exactly zero of those things. At least this year a good portion of the laundry is done, and the bathrooms are somewhat clean. The rest of the house looks like a disaster, but that’s a daily occurrence in a house with a preschooler and a toddler. We’ll pick it up after dinner and settle down for snuggles and stories. Tomorrow morning will be hard. The kids won’t want to get out of bed, they won’t want to rush through breakfast, I’ll be edgy and nervous about getting to school on time. It will suck, and there’s no way around it. Then the day will end, settle into the next, and we’ll be back in our routine. Before we know it, the ten weeks until summer break will pass, and we’ll be staring at ten weeks of freedom, to fill with more snuggling and swimming and art projects. I’ll make another impossible list to regret at the end of summer break, and then we’ll go back to school. It’s a cycle I’ve gotten used to, and I’m grateful for the little bit of sadness I’m experiencing this afternoon as I contemplate the next few weeks of school. It the price of a lovely spring break. I am not the biggest fan of St. Patrick’s Day. Generally speaking, I love holidays. They often involve food, one of the best pleasures on earth, and I’m game to celebrate just about anything. National Donut Day? Let’s eat donuts. Women’s History Month? Let’s read some feminist poetry and ponder the future we hope to offer our little girls while sipping tea. Cinco de Mayo? Hell yeah, let’s listen to mariachi while we eat too many tacos and drink some cold Mexican beer. I’m down with a good holiday.
My dislike of St. Patrick’s Day has nothing to do with Ireland or Irish people. Although I’m not even a bit Irish, I can revel in some Irish culture. I love the literature Ireland has to offer, and my favorite mystery writer lives there; I like Irish food just fine, and I’m always happy to lift a pint; don’t even get me started on my beloved Irish musicians. They can do ballads like no one else, and I’m a girl who likes to be sobbing by the end of a good song, even if I was perfectly content minutes before. Irish musicians know how to do that to a person. My dislike has everything to do with two American traditions observed on St. Patrick’s Day: pinching people who aren’t wearing green and excessive consumption of green beer, which often leads to excessive amounts of green vomit. When I was seven, we stopped at the grocery store my dad managed before he dropped me off at school on St. Patrick’s Day. I was super proud of my outfit that day: a smart red turtleneck and grey circle skirt, with matching grey cable-knit tights and black mary janes. No green, of course, because red was and is my favorite color, and I don’t like being told what to wear. One of the clerks at my dad’s store gave me a little pinch and teased me about my outfit. I was livid. How dare she fail to recognize the brilliance of the red turtleneck and grey circle skirt! I was trying to look like a small secretary, which this woman clearly couldn’t recognize, and instead chose to focus on me wearing the wrong color? No thank you to that. The clerk didn’t know how she’d enraged me, but my dad could see it and chuckled, which only fueled my rage. I was near tears by the time another clerk gently pressed a shiny shamrock sticker to my turtleneck, which didn’t enhance my outfit but did save me from a few pinches, aside from the ones given by Petey, a classmate who claimed I wasn’t wearing enough green. Petey and I were not on friendly terms for the rest of first grade. As far as green beer goes, well, gross. I am no teetotaler. I am incredibly hypocritical, as I spent many a St. Patrick’s Day carousing with friends drinking whiskey and non-green beer. But I never threw up after those celebrations. I’d like to say this is because of my superior ability to wisely limit my alcohol consumption, but it’s because I am truly, deeply afraid of vomit in all its forms. Your vomit, my vomit, my kid’s vomit, that idiot at the end of the bar’s vomit: it is all horrifying. Yes, I know, no one likes puke, but it terrifies me in much the same way snakes and airplanes terrify others. I freak out. Not a small freak out, a full-blown, ugly-crying, hands-shaking, heart-racing freak out. Holidays that involve drinking massive amounts are not my favorite. I’m relieved to be done with the years of Fourth of July, Halloween and New Year’s Eve when I felt obligated to go out even though I was terrified the whole night. I can spot a drunk about to toss her cookies from a half-mile, and when I do, stay out of my way, because I’ll be in a full sprint. I would much rather have snakes thrown on me while flying than have to be near someone who is puking. And by near I mean within a two-mile radius. I get nervous if I hear one of my neighbors down the block has a stomach bug. I’m nervous even writing this, that’s how scared I am of throw up. Writing the words scares me. (Side note: This phobia has made teaching elementary school and mothering two little ones interesting. I think it highlights the depth of my love for my career and my kids that I’m willing to put up with near-weekly panic attacks in pursuit of what I love. Also, I need therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.) This St. Patrick’s day I acquiesced to the spirit of the day by putting on the dainty emerald earrings my husband got me a few years ago. I dressed my daughter in a green and blue sweatshirt and my son chose his own outfit: head-to-toe clashing shades of green. He looks adorable. I don’t want to dampen his enthusiasm with my humbug spirit. We will be going out for Indian food tonight while my kids hang out with their grandma, but only because a date night is rare and we want to revel in food we can’t eat with the kids. Maybe I’ll read some Irish poetry and cry to a few Damien Rice songs before the day is out, just to honor a little bit of what I truly love about Irish culture. Just don’t come near me with a green beer, thinking to pinch me for not wearing enough green. I will bitch slap that mug right out of your hands and run. I knew in the same way I knew when I first met my husband. I eyed you from afar for months, just as I stalked him online for weeks before our first date. A small spark in my mind whispered “Yes, yes,” the moment I slipped my feet into your soft grey foot beds, in much the same way I felt myself settle into my most comfortable self in his presence. I knew we would walk many miles together, you and I, just as my husband and I will walk together through life, sometimes arguing about whether we should eat at the fancy French restaurant or the taqueria. Taqueria will always win, just as you will always outstrip the black high-heeled booties.
You tell the world I haven’t quite given up on looking good with your smart black leather and dainty buckle, just like my husband tells the world we’re still cool with his worn punk rock t-shirts. Your sturdy soles and firm arch support let everyone know I don’t have the time or the knees for heels anymore, just as my husband’s sturdy hand on my back reminds me to turn off the bedside light because I don’t have the youth to handle late nights reading anymore. You are as comfortable with jeans as you are with a cute striped pencil skirt, and I can depend on you to carry me through the ups and down of bad outfit choices, just as I can depend on my husband to drive high mountain passes while I cling to my door in terror. My husband will balk at your price, but I will point out I am forsaking all other black shoes for you, just as I forsook all others for him. I will bag up those tacky heels and matronly faux alligator-skin Mary Janes now that you’ve come into my life, just as I joyfully gave up men who sought nutritional advice from animal spirit guides and told me I smiled too hard. We belong together, you and I, just as my husband and I do. By the time our relationship ends, you will be scarred and will probably smell awful. I hope the same will not be true of my husband, although he can produce some frightening smells after a meal involving beans. You will be worn at the heels and it is likely your straps will have been repaired at least once. I am going to wear the life out of you, much like I sometimes exhaust my husband with endless questions while menu planning and needs for reassurance when our children are sick. These relationships are rare and meant to be cherished. In the end, it doesn’t take much to live a happy life: a good pair of shoes and a kind man get me most of the way there. I read the practice of being grateful will bring lasting happiness. This isn’t true. Happiness doesn’t last, it is ephemeral and disappears with the necessities of life: grief, boredom, monotony and dissatisfaction. Always dissatisfaction.
Gratitude leaves its mark, though. Every day I pray, give thanks for all the things I’m grateful for: abundance, my good husband, two healthy children, the way the light hits the mountains differently every day, the way the mountains remind me of my insignificance. I am a small thing in this world. The mountains will stay the same even as I fall with my brokenness. They will be there when I get up, work on healing, feel happiness again. There will always be the changing light on the mountains. This is something to be grateful for. In the early afternoon sun of an almost-spring day my children play in the yard. I race over the dead grass with my son, leaping and yelling and shooting our imagined enemy. We pause at the playhouse where my daughter jabbers on the broken phone to her uncle, toddles to the window where I squat, waiting for her, leans out to give me a kiss then pulls the plastic shutters closed and giggles. I sit in the grass with them and dig in the dry dirt, noting how filthy their clothes are getting and letting it go. The sun is so warm on my back and these two are intent on their purpose, not needing shovels or tools, digging away with stick and hand. Sometimes gratitude is like this, if I practice it enough. Not even a thought, but the surest understanding that this is what I longed for, and I feel instead of know. It is the sustenance that will keep me during the broken times, the vision of my daughter’s serious face as she pours dirt on her legs, my son as he tills the soil and tells me of the magical things he will plant, his golden eyes alive with wonder; it is the respite I think I will find in an overprice vacation but find out here instead, in the dirt of our backyard. It is the thing I need more happiness. I have a weakness for cookbooks, especially cookbooks with beautiful photography and interesting narrative. Some of the best food bloggers are amazing food photographers, and a lot of them are publishing gorgeously addictive cookbooks. Many of them are decent writers, too, giving glimpses of the best parts of their food lives, funny little stories about their adventures in the kitchen or the backstory to a beloved recipe or food.
I recently checked out such a cookbook, by a young woman named Molly Yeh. Her cookbook is dishearteningly beautiful and well-written, some parts of the narrative accompanying the recipes so hilarious I laughed until I cried. Molly Yeh might be approaching thirty. It’s hard not to be jealous of so much talent at such a young age, but I remind myself she worked hard to create the food blog and cookbook in the first place. The talent she has didn’t manifest the recipes, photos and stories magically. She made choices that gave her the opportunity to make something beautiful and offer it to the world. Also, she’s very talented. So, what? I say these things to myself as I would to a student, trying to convince them of the ways they can learn from such an inspiring artist. Because I feel like one of my students when I look at her book: deeply jealous. I want to stomp my feet and flip off my sweet tender hopes. I am on the verge of giving up. This woman is in her twenties! I’m very far away from my twenties. Thank God, truly, but still, my twenties are getting dusty with forgetting. I wasted a lot of time in my twenties. I was so shallow and lost. I was too stupid and too scared to try to create anything beautiful in my twenties. I went to crappy dance clubs and became a secretary instead. At least I was brave enough to quickly realize I was a terrible secretary and a mediocre dancer at best, and I became a teacher, which I wasn’t so good at in the beginning either but my students and I loved each other and we all learned in spite of me and that was almost enough. These kinds of things could bring on a midlife crisis but as I mentioned earlier, I was shallow and lost in my twenties (and a good portion of my thirties) so I’m all crisised out. I’m also pretty happy with my life overall. I could do with fewer piles of laundry and more time to read, but that has always been the case. After I drag myself out of the corner where I’m pouting I apply more of my teacher coaching to myself. What can I learn from this cookbook author? How can I use her creation for inspiration? She doesn’t follow a lot of rules, I notice. She follows her passions. Her writing is honest and well-crafted. She’s created her life, and from the outside it’s a beautiful one. It’s also probably pretty challenging. She took the initial boredom and loneliness of moving from New York City to a sugar beet farm in North Dakota and turned it into art. Over and over I get this message from artists I admire: if you want to create something you have to fight for it. There are no excuses for not creating it. You have to put in the time. You have to carve out the time, at 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. and any minute in between you can grab. Like I tell my students, there is only do or do not, as Master Yoda says. There isn’t kind of. It’s a blatant and incorrect rip off of dear Yoda, but it often works on my kids and, sometimes, even me. I read the cookbook at night, study the photos and the recipes. I don’t want to create a food blog or a cookbook. I just want to write. I want to put something good I’ve created into the world. I’d love to publish books and make a living writing someday, but I am also a realist. That’s probably not going to happen. I have to acknowledge part of the reason that’s not going to happen is because I squandered a lot of my youth being a bit of an idiot instead of doing the work. I wasted time being afraid. I wasted time being lazy. I wasted time being sad and hating myself. It’s resulted in a lot of empathy and some good writing material. I also learned a lot from that time, about what I need to do and how I need to be to maintain some level of contentment and peace. Writing is something that brings me peace. It also infuriates me, but if I work through it I get to the peace part eventually. The truth is, a lot of people, including this young woman, are way more talented than me. Some of them are also doing jack squat with their talents, just like I did. I’m trying not to do that anymore. I’m not always the best at sticking with things, as evinced by the nearly completed shawl stuffed in my bedside table, the half-finished short story collection, and the 3/4 finished master’s degree hanging around at Regis University. I know I’ll return to my writing again and again, because I have all my life. I’m old enough now to realize I’m going to die someday, sooner rather than later, and I don’t want to have lived in this world not trying, at least, to contribute something I created. Besides a crooked shawl and two beautiful children, that is. But none of those things are finished yet. And neither am I. I have every Friday off this school year. When my daughter was born, my husband and I decided it would be best to live with a tight budget so I could be with our kids more while they’re little. I’ve patched together a couple of different roles at my school and I get to work part time.
It. Is. Awesome. Every Friday feels like a gift. My daughter and I drop my son off at preschool and we have the whole morning to ourselves. I had so much time with my son, but with the second child it just doesn’t happen. So, Friday mornings are our time. We often pick up a few things at the store, maybe do some yoga together, maybe draw or go for a walk. Yesterday she joined me to do dishes, one of her new favorite activities. When she saw me filling the kitchen sink she asked, “Bubbles?” I nodded my affirmation and she ran to a kitchen chair a, grunting as she tried to pull it closer to the sink. I helped her haul it over and she climbed up, plunging her chubby hands into the water before I could even roll her sleeves up. We stood together quietly, me staring out the window as I soaped and rinsed the dishes, she grabbing suds and squeezing them in her hands. Occasionally I narrated what I was washing or told her what was going on outside the window. “There’s our kitty, Lola,” I told her, “Sunbathing.” “Lello?” she asked, rising on her tiptoes to glance out the window. She went about her work seriously, as she so often does when playing. She stirred the bubbles with a tablespoon and grabbed the dishcloth to scrub it. By the time I drained the sink, her sleeves were soaked. As the water disappeared she smacked the last of the bubbles. I looked down at her fine, soft hair, her head bent in concentration and her arm reaching for bubbles. “Thanks for being mommy’s helper,” I told her. She danced happily on the chair. I braced myself for the rage that would soon ensue as I removed her from her task. She yelled a little bit when I set her on the floor, but was quickly distracted by the promise of a snack. We sat together eating in the early spring sun coming in through the back door. “Lello?” she asked as the cat sauntered in, and giggled when Lola stretched and yawned at my feet. “Are you my best girl?” I asked. “Noooo!” she yelled, then grinned and tilted her head at me. On our way to pick up my son she dozed off in her car seat. We drove in silence to his preschool. When I pulled her out of her car seat she snuggled her head on my shoulder and continued dozing. I brushed her hair out of her eyes and kissed her cheek. She sighed and settled deeper into my arms as I walked into his school. Like I told you, Fridays off are awesome. |
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