Monday, October 22, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
...In Which Nanny Was Nearly Sent Home After Friday Night Dinner
It's been a long week, and let's face it, people, it is almost always a long week. Therefore one would think that anyone living withing the confines of this household would know better than to cop an attitude at 8:30 on a Friday evening thus bringing to an abrupt end my near orgasmic food coma.
Let me back up. It was the end of a long week. I've been working my 50 hour per week job with my 10 hour per week commute and cooking some serious food for my not quite but almost ungrateful brood. On Fridays I do not cook. I am fed. And it needs to be really, really, really good. Tonight it was really, really, really good. It was, as a matter of fact, brilliant and deserving of it's own blog entry. But I digress.
Back up even further. For the last six months my life, along with every other family member in and out of this household has undergone a sea change. Like big time, life-altering, get your shit together or let the top of your head blow off life change. And people, I am tired. I am very, very, very tired. I need to regenerate my emotional batteries or I am going to accidentally eat a Chevy Suburban for lunch because it happens to veer marginally into my lane. Just imagine the indigestion and subsequent constipation, never mind the paperwork.
I am gearing up to have a first class melt-down. And nobody wants to see that, or it's aftermath. You don't even want to read about it. Trust me.
So after much conversation, delay, putting off, masticating and general gnashing of teeth I called my brother in NYC (you know, the one with the rock star life and no kids?) and asked him if he might just be willing to take my currently supremely neurotic sixteen year old daughter who is currently playing emotional chicken with her father who has subsequently contacted an attorney for the weekend so that I might spend my second anniversary alone with my husband at a yet to be determined location preferably across several state lines. That was one sentence. Amazing.
Anyway, Jack said yes and then NoMans told me Cletus was scheduled to take PSATs that Saturday morning and I'd just given her the major guilt trips letting her know just how important this was to her future as a successful something or other with a college degree that I probably can't pay for anyway what with the attorney and therapy and coaching fees to counteract her ridiculously co-dependent and enormously self-destructive relationship with her emotionally and possibly physically abusive non-child support paying father and I. Just. Lost. It. Right. There.
It was terrible and you don't want the details. I am still ashamed.
Finally, after much soothing by the husband and daughter we all decided that PSATs were over-rated in the Sophomore year and that it was far better for Alecto to get the hell out of Dodge the only weekend free for about six straight weeks, which also happens to be said anniversary and possibly the only weekend Jack could be counted on to actually be in town. And it was decided that Nanny would put Cletus on the train on Friday afternoon after Little Girl's gymnastics and we, NoMans and I, would leave town together from Stamford just as soon on Friday as I can get the auditors out of my hair.
So it's all fixed, right? Right. I come home from work, NoMans comes home from work and we make our 6:45 reservations at the very teeny tiny restaurant called The Old Schoolhouse in Cannondale Village (Wilton). They seat a maximum of 38 (I counted the chairs) and were booked solid. They were booked solid because the food, the space, the staff, the chef, the everything were brilliant. And I do mean brilliant. I shoveled the last possible morsel into my mouth nearly 90 minutes ago and I still feel bilious. We drove home peacefully and entered our domain at 8:30.
Nanny's vehicle was still in the driveway. Disturbing, as she's usually out trolling by now, but whatever, we're feeling fat, happy and benign. We can deal with anything.
Anything confronts us in the kitchen.
Nanny: What time are you planning on leaving next Friday?
Me: In the afternoon, from work, why?
Nanny: I want to go out.
Me: Blink.
Nanny: I asked Patrick (Little Girl's Daddy) if he could get here early on Friday.
Me: (OMG - you did NOT!) Well, you must understand that Patrick works in New Jersey. And he's freelance. Which means he's paid hourly. And this is going to really cost him to be here early.
Nanny: Blink. Well, I asked him and he said he'd try to be here by six.
Me: Blink. You're going to need to take Cletus to the train station.
Nanny: What time.
Me: Sometime in the late afternoon or early evening.
NoMans: Doesn't Little Girl have gymnastics?
And it went from there. I escaped into my bedroom and hyperventilated across the bed at NoMans.
Me: She did NOT just do that.
NoMans: Yes she did. And she doesn't come close to working the thirty hours per week she's supposed to.
Me: Blink.
NoMans: I'll talk to her.
Me: When?
NoMans: (taking my twitching, writhing, bugging out eyes fully into consideration) Now.
And out he went. He was back in about three minutes looking like the cat who has consumed half a chicken carcass I forgot to wrap right away.
I think he ate her eyeballs.
NoMans and I are going away next weekend. And THAT is the end of THAT.
Let me back up. It was the end of a long week. I've been working my 50 hour per week job with my 10 hour per week commute and cooking some serious food for my not quite but almost ungrateful brood. On Fridays I do not cook. I am fed. And it needs to be really, really, really good. Tonight it was really, really, really good. It was, as a matter of fact, brilliant and deserving of it's own blog entry. But I digress.
Back up even further. For the last six months my life, along with every other family member in and out of this household has undergone a sea change. Like big time, life-altering, get your shit together or let the top of your head blow off life change. And people, I am tired. I am very, very, very tired. I need to regenerate my emotional batteries or I am going to accidentally eat a Chevy Suburban for lunch because it happens to veer marginally into my lane. Just imagine the indigestion and subsequent constipation, never mind the paperwork.
I am gearing up to have a first class melt-down. And nobody wants to see that, or it's aftermath. You don't even want to read about it. Trust me.
So after much conversation, delay, putting off, masticating and general gnashing of teeth I called my brother in NYC (you know, the one with the rock star life and no kids?) and asked him if he might just be willing to take my currently supremely neurotic sixteen year old daughter who is currently playing emotional chicken with her father who has subsequently contacted an attorney for the weekend so that I might spend my second anniversary alone with my husband at a yet to be determined location preferably across several state lines. That was one sentence. Amazing.
Anyway, Jack said yes and then NoMans told me Cletus was scheduled to take PSATs that Saturday morning and I'd just given her the major guilt trips letting her know just how important this was to her future as a successful something or other with a college degree that I probably can't pay for anyway what with the attorney and therapy and coaching fees to counteract her ridiculously co-dependent and enormously self-destructive relationship with her emotionally and possibly physically abusive non-child support paying father and I. Just. Lost. It. Right. There.
It was terrible and you don't want the details. I am still ashamed.
Finally, after much soothing by the husband and daughter we all decided that PSATs were over-rated in the Sophomore year and that it was far better for Alecto to get the hell out of Dodge the only weekend free for about six straight weeks, which also happens to be said anniversary and possibly the only weekend Jack could be counted on to actually be in town. And it was decided that Nanny would put Cletus on the train on Friday afternoon after Little Girl's gymnastics and we, NoMans and I, would leave town together from Stamford just as soon on Friday as I can get the auditors out of my hair.
So it's all fixed, right? Right. I come home from work, NoMans comes home from work and we make our 6:45 reservations at the very teeny tiny restaurant called The Old Schoolhouse in Cannondale Village (Wilton). They seat a maximum of 38 (I counted the chairs) and were booked solid. They were booked solid because the food, the space, the staff, the chef, the everything were brilliant. And I do mean brilliant. I shoveled the last possible morsel into my mouth nearly 90 minutes ago and I still feel bilious. We drove home peacefully and entered our domain at 8:30.
Nanny's vehicle was still in the driveway. Disturbing, as she's usually out trolling by now, but whatever, we're feeling fat, happy and benign. We can deal with anything.
Anything confronts us in the kitchen.
Nanny: What time are you planning on leaving next Friday?
Me: In the afternoon, from work, why?
Nanny: I want to go out.
Me: Blink.
Nanny: I asked Patrick (Little Girl's Daddy) if he could get here early on Friday.
Me: (OMG - you did NOT!) Well, you must understand that Patrick works in New Jersey. And he's freelance. Which means he's paid hourly. And this is going to really cost him to be here early.
Nanny: Blink. Well, I asked him and he said he'd try to be here by six.
Me: Blink. You're going to need to take Cletus to the train station.
Nanny: What time.
Me: Sometime in the late afternoon or early evening.
NoMans: Doesn't Little Girl have gymnastics?
And it went from there. I escaped into my bedroom and hyperventilated across the bed at NoMans.
Me: She did NOT just do that.
NoMans: Yes she did. And she doesn't come close to working the thirty hours per week she's supposed to.
Me: Blink.
NoMans: I'll talk to her.
Me: When?
NoMans: (taking my twitching, writhing, bugging out eyes fully into consideration) Now.
And out he went. He was back in about three minutes looking like the cat who has consumed half a chicken carcass I forgot to wrap right away.
I think he ate her eyeballs.
NoMans and I are going away next weekend. And THAT is the end of THAT.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Dooce
I have been kicked off my own other blog site. I did this myself because I already posted there once today and I take issue with multiple posts in one day. There has to be some level of restraint or I'd be dumping the contents of my brain out all over the place all the time. This site is currently one of my outs.
What I really want is to do a blog review and it might have been better to have done this on the primary site but I think the blog in question already gets a fair amount of traffic and my little push probably won't make a world of difference.
During my blog surfing this one blog kept popping up linked on other people's sites. Initially it seemed as if there was some kind of relationship between the random blogs I surfed; after all, there are interwoven blog communities all over the place. What started to catch my attention was the fact that some of these sites had absolutely nothing in common. Except for this one link.
So I went digging. I do that. I kind of felt a little stalkerish but honestly, blogs (unless locked) are in the public domain. If you're going to post you might as well accept you're going to be read. By complete strangers trying to put puzzle pieces together and figure out what's what. Like I said, I do that.
What I found was far more interesting than the possibility of an unusual blog community. What I found was a woman who's been posting since 2001 and has managed to actually make a living at it. I also discovered she no longer takes comments or publishes an email address (well, sort of). If you really want to make contact you have to mail an actual letter, with a stamp and everything. That could be a problem as I'm no longer exactly sure where the stamps are or how much is postage for a regular letter? OK, that's not entirely true, but still.
So, without further ado, here she is:
http://www.dooce.com/
Sometimes you will see her linked to somebody's site as Heather, but most times it's just Dooce.
Dooce has an entire history on this blog and she's pulling no punches. You want to read about her intestinal difficulties? I believe Poop is it's own topic. You want to read the most amazing monthly letters to her currently 44 month old daughter? Well they're filed under Leta, Daily, Newsletters, and Parenthood with the added bonus of some of the most stunning photographs I've had the good fortune to view while waiting for a database to finish doing it's business (Poop! I yell at the database. Poop now!) (I last left off on the entries concerning potty training the dog Chuck and I have a sneaking suspicion I may find more such entries when I get up to the time when Leta might reasonably be expected to use the toilet.)
I've been reading from the beginning forward. It only took me a few months worth to realize that not only did her advertising change with each page but that the majority of her footer ads are based on probable keywords in the current post.
Amazing. Well, OK, maybe not so amazing, she was, after all, a web designer of some sort prior to being fired for blogging about her workplace, but still. Amazing.
Also, a wonderful read. Go to it and enjoy. (and don't miss the about page; very enlightening)
What I really want is to do a blog review and it might have been better to have done this on the primary site but I think the blog in question already gets a fair amount of traffic and my little push probably won't make a world of difference.
During my blog surfing this one blog kept popping up linked on other people's sites. Initially it seemed as if there was some kind of relationship between the random blogs I surfed; after all, there are interwoven blog communities all over the place. What started to catch my attention was the fact that some of these sites had absolutely nothing in common. Except for this one link.
So I went digging. I do that. I kind of felt a little stalkerish but honestly, blogs (unless locked) are in the public domain. If you're going to post you might as well accept you're going to be read. By complete strangers trying to put puzzle pieces together and figure out what's what. Like I said, I do that.
What I found was far more interesting than the possibility of an unusual blog community. What I found was a woman who's been posting since 2001 and has managed to actually make a living at it. I also discovered she no longer takes comments or publishes an email address (well, sort of). If you really want to make contact you have to mail an actual letter, with a stamp and everything. That could be a problem as I'm no longer exactly sure where the stamps are or how much is postage for a regular letter? OK, that's not entirely true, but still.
So, without further ado, here she is:
http://www.dooce.com/
Sometimes you will see her linked to somebody's site as Heather, but most times it's just Dooce.
Dooce has an entire history on this blog and she's pulling no punches. You want to read about her intestinal difficulties? I believe Poop is it's own topic. You want to read the most amazing monthly letters to her currently 44 month old daughter? Well they're filed under Leta, Daily, Newsletters, and Parenthood with the added bonus of some of the most stunning photographs I've had the good fortune to view while waiting for a database to finish doing it's business (Poop! I yell at the database. Poop now!) (I last left off on the entries concerning potty training the dog Chuck and I have a sneaking suspicion I may find more such entries when I get up to the time when Leta might reasonably be expected to use the toilet.)
I've been reading from the beginning forward. It only took me a few months worth to realize that not only did her advertising change with each page but that the majority of her footer ads are based on probable keywords in the current post.
Amazing. Well, OK, maybe not so amazing, she was, after all, a web designer of some sort prior to being fired for blogging about her workplace, but still. Amazing.
Also, a wonderful read. Go to it and enjoy. (and don't miss the about page; very enlightening)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Making the call
This belongs on Ophelia Dreaming but it goes hand in hand with Trust Fall so here it is.
Today I called the Norwalk Police Department and stammering a bit explained that I had been rescued on Monday by a 911 operator and that I'd googled 911 to death but found no indication of how to reach any of them, other than dialing 911. I didn' t even know where they were or what government body directed them.
The woman who answered the phone started out brusk. She must take awful calls all day long, because, you see, the number I dialed belonged to the Chief (that's what's listed!). She asked me when and where and when I couldn't give a street name but could give a rough time she searched the case records until she found me. She gave me a case number but she didn't really tell me about 911. She gave me the name of the White Haired Superman but not the name of the operator.
She was starting to warm up when I kept pushing about needing to say thank you. Then she said she'd transfer me to Communications. I thought maybe I was getting PR or something and they'd at least give me a supervisor's name to contact. Someone to write to.
A man answered the phone and I told him what I wanted. I gave him the case number and he said...
that was me!
And I started to cry. I should have known that voice anywhere and having been told I fell right back into his virtual arms. I told him everything. I told him how I felt making the call and that I'd called once so many years ago when I thought I was going to die and gotten a recording saying the service was not in place. I told him how it felt when he mostly found me by GPS, he told me how the technology works and how happy he was about it. He asked me about Cletus and I told him about vaso-vagal and how it was all OK. He told me to tell her to be well and not scare Mommy like that again.
I told him he saved my sanity and that I'd never been so scared in my life.
I told him thank you and it was wonderful.
Then I talked to the woman in the Chief's office again and found out that 911 belongs to the Police Department and that they all roll up to the Chief and that sending a letter is a wonderful thing to do for them and now I have names:
Jonathan Williams - the disembodied voice who found me and held me together
Officer Mark Kucky - the White Haired Superman who caught me
Chief Harry Rillings - who will receive a letter for both.
God, that was wonderful being able to do that.
Today I called the Norwalk Police Department and stammering a bit explained that I had been rescued on Monday by a 911 operator and that I'd googled 911 to death but found no indication of how to reach any of them, other than dialing 911. I didn' t even know where they were or what government body directed them.
The woman who answered the phone started out brusk. She must take awful calls all day long, because, you see, the number I dialed belonged to the Chief (that's what's listed!). She asked me when and where and when I couldn't give a street name but could give a rough time she searched the case records until she found me. She gave me a case number but she didn't really tell me about 911. She gave me the name of the White Haired Superman but not the name of the operator.
She was starting to warm up when I kept pushing about needing to say thank you. Then she said she'd transfer me to Communications. I thought maybe I was getting PR or something and they'd at least give me a supervisor's name to contact. Someone to write to.
A man answered the phone and I told him what I wanted. I gave him the case number and he said...
that was me!
And I started to cry. I should have known that voice anywhere and having been told I fell right back into his virtual arms. I told him everything. I told him how I felt making the call and that I'd called once so many years ago when I thought I was going to die and gotten a recording saying the service was not in place. I told him how it felt when he mostly found me by GPS, he told me how the technology works and how happy he was about it. He asked me about Cletus and I told him about vaso-vagal and how it was all OK. He told me to tell her to be well and not scare Mommy like that again.
I told him he saved my sanity and that I'd never been so scared in my life.
I told him thank you and it was wonderful.
Then I talked to the woman in the Chief's office again and found out that 911 belongs to the Police Department and that they all roll up to the Chief and that sending a letter is a wonderful thing to do for them and now I have names:
Jonathan Williams - the disembodied voice who found me and held me together
Officer Mark Kucky - the White Haired Superman who caught me
Chief Harry Rillings - who will receive a letter for both.
God, that was wonderful being able to do that.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Trust Fall
You told me.
You said, Momma, I do not feel right.
You did.
You told me.
And then you showed me.
Your body convulsed,
pitched forward in an act of violent
aggression
and the ancient ones spoke through
your once pretty mouth
tearing open a portal into the bowels of hell
and you told me everything there ever was to tell.
I dialed the sacred three numbers,
pressed send
and ordered up a lifeline
dial-a-prayer, if you will.
...and wondered, will it work this time?
In a haze of white static, frantic, grasping,
breathe for you
pull you forward toward me
instructions
good
I can follow instructions
please, sir, may I have another
Pull you forward toward me
turn you
grasp you
hold you
You are no longer in the body
that lies limp, damp and heavy against me
You are no longer available to tell me any damn thing at all
Elvis has left the building
and taken you with him.
And then your eyes flutter open
Do you see me?
And you are howling like the banshees, pressed to my heart
like the night you were born.
The lifeline is still in my ear
umbilicus from some tower in Bridgeport
or Norwalk or New York City
Just where do these operators sit anyway?
In the virtual land of Donotletmego
And he did not.
The white haired superman in the blue uniform
has an open heart
which he is presently wearing on his face
as he opens the door, reaches in, touches your shoulder and pulls you
away from me
just a little bit
toward his light
and you answer him with
your name.
You know your name.
And the lifeline tells me that I have done well
and that he is going to hang up now
and I know I have been successfully
passed
from the disembodied but very present man
to the very embodied and just as present other man
and the sirens wind their way up the hill
pulling up just ahead and all these people
just like the crash cart when your sister was born
and we have landed...
... freefalling in the ultimate trust fall
for an eternity
or just a moment
into the waiting arms of our humanity.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You said, Momma, I do not feel right.
You did.
You told me.
And then you showed me.
Your body convulsed,
pitched forward in an act of violent
aggression
and the ancient ones spoke through
your once pretty mouth
tearing open a portal into the bowels of hell
and you told me everything there ever was to tell.
I dialed the sacred three numbers,
pressed send
and ordered up a lifeline
dial-a-prayer, if you will.
...and wondered, will it work this time?
In a haze of white static, frantic, grasping,
breathe for you
pull you forward toward me
instructions
good
I can follow instructions
please, sir, may I have another
Pull you forward toward me
turn you
grasp you
hold you
You are no longer in the body
that lies limp, damp and heavy against me
You are no longer available to tell me any damn thing at all
Elvis has left the building
and taken you with him.
And then your eyes flutter open
Do you see me?
And you are howling like the banshees, pressed to my heart
like the night you were born.
The lifeline is still in my ear
umbilicus from some tower in Bridgeport
or Norwalk or New York City
Just where do these operators sit anyway?
In the virtual land of Donotletmego
And he did not.
The white haired superman in the blue uniform
has an open heart
which he is presently wearing on his face
as he opens the door, reaches in, touches your shoulder and pulls you
away from me
just a little bit
toward his light
and you answer him with
your name.
You know your name.
And the lifeline tells me that I have done well
and that he is going to hang up now
and I know I have been successfully
passed
from the disembodied but very present man
to the very embodied and just as present other man
and the sirens wind their way up the hill
pulling up just ahead and all these people
just like the crash cart when your sister was born
and we have landed...
... freefalling in the ultimate trust fall
for an eternity
or just a moment
into the waiting arms of our humanity.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The Gate Keepers
I am just irritated. I married a Jew. Granted, I know very little about the culture so I've got to tread with caution. We cannot go judging what we do not know. Or something like that.
I'll back up a little. I LOVE church. I love church of almost any type or flavor. That's because I didn't grow up with any church at all. When I was in the sixth grade I read the fabulous and wonderful book by Judy Blume called Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. If you missed it, I'm sorry, I don't have time to do a book review this evening, I'm supposed to be sleeping.
Ms Blume's book woke up a sleeping need or desire in me for the community or company of spiritual communion. I went to church. I went to church all over the town of Glastonbury. I ran the gamut from Catholicism all the way down the North East Protestant food chain to the Congregationalists. Later I met the Quakers and the Unitarians. Loved 'em all. Except for the Catholics, they pissed me off something awful when I got married and discussed the possible baptism of my babies, but I sure do like the ritual and pomp. Nice. Alter boys make me cry and all that (for the right reasons). I also met the raging Southern Baptists (just the African American branch, not sure if the other branches have any bearing) - Loved loved loved, them, and the Born Again Fundamentalists (ran screaming into the night). But I didn't meet many Jews. That's because they hide the Jews in Glastonbury (just ask my best friend Deeb, she's one of two, I think).
Well then I up and married one. Poor guy. He's all lapsed and everything now too. I'm not claiming fault, I'm just noticing that yet again, without a woman in the household to direct the spiritual leanings a lot of men tend to fall right off whatever wagon they're on. I wonder about that. In any event, I did what I thought I ought to do. I tied in the seasonal Jewish holidays and the Christian holidays to the Pagan passages I happen to celebrate - um, that would be Winter Solstice and The Spring Fertility Rights; I give the rest a nod if I'm in the mood.
There is an extra series of events that is very harvest oriented. The two primary fall events are Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Atonement). Rosh Hashana (Shana Tova, all) began at sunset tonight. Beloved is in Wisconsin with his Ethanol farmers. I don't believe they have many Jews in the corn fields of Wisconsin and certainly no time or space to sit in Temple and contemplate the new year tomorrow while he's glad handing the farmers (pretty sure he ought to be ashamed of himself but I try to keep that to myself, he is, after all, my guy and a pretty good guy at that).
So I was IMing him this evening as Nanny ties up the phone line between 9 PM and 1 AM on a regular basis (and I'm pretty much ok with that as I don't like to use the phone much) and I mentioned he might like to go to temple on Yom Kippur and that I would go with him. This is an all day event. I can kind of make it to about noon and then I'm out of there and looking for a bacon sandwich (Amy, if you're reading this, I do beg your pardon). But I like it. I really do. For me it's about sitting in silence (and then not so silence) of community and examining who you are, who you have been and who you believe you want to be. I find it cleansing, honest and healing.
Howeveah....
We don't belong to any particular temple. He tried and tried to find one that worked for him and after running into the Humanistic Jews of Westport (HE ran screaming) I think he gave up. I didn't ask. Mostly because I just don't think about that kind of thing very often. So now he has no temple to go to. If he wants to go he'll be expected to cough up several hundred dollars just to pass the threshold.
Several hundred dollars. Maybe more.
It isn't that we can't but how the hell do they know that? This man comes looking for a spiritual home, grasping at the roots that defined his manhood and he cannot pass go without a substantial amount of money.
It is like this in many churches but this one takes the cake.
Before you start in on me, I've heard the reasons. I've heard. I've heard enough.
It saddens me. Yahweh, say it ain't so.
I'll back up a little. I LOVE church. I love church of almost any type or flavor. That's because I didn't grow up with any church at all. When I was in the sixth grade I read the fabulous and wonderful book by Judy Blume called Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. If you missed it, I'm sorry, I don't have time to do a book review this evening, I'm supposed to be sleeping.
Ms Blume's book woke up a sleeping need or desire in me for the community or company of spiritual communion. I went to church. I went to church all over the town of Glastonbury. I ran the gamut from Catholicism all the way down the North East Protestant food chain to the Congregationalists. Later I met the Quakers and the Unitarians. Loved 'em all. Except for the Catholics, they pissed me off something awful when I got married and discussed the possible baptism of my babies, but I sure do like the ritual and pomp. Nice. Alter boys make me cry and all that (for the right reasons). I also met the raging Southern Baptists (just the African American branch, not sure if the other branches have any bearing) - Loved loved loved, them, and the Born Again Fundamentalists (ran screaming into the night). But I didn't meet many Jews. That's because they hide the Jews in Glastonbury (just ask my best friend Deeb, she's one of two, I think).
Well then I up and married one. Poor guy. He's all lapsed and everything now too. I'm not claiming fault, I'm just noticing that yet again, without a woman in the household to direct the spiritual leanings a lot of men tend to fall right off whatever wagon they're on. I wonder about that. In any event, I did what I thought I ought to do. I tied in the seasonal Jewish holidays and the Christian holidays to the Pagan passages I happen to celebrate - um, that would be Winter Solstice and The Spring Fertility Rights; I give the rest a nod if I'm in the mood.
There is an extra series of events that is very harvest oriented. The two primary fall events are Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Atonement). Rosh Hashana (Shana Tova, all) began at sunset tonight. Beloved is in Wisconsin with his Ethanol farmers. I don't believe they have many Jews in the corn fields of Wisconsin and certainly no time or space to sit in Temple and contemplate the new year tomorrow while he's glad handing the farmers (pretty sure he ought to be ashamed of himself but I try to keep that to myself, he is, after all, my guy and a pretty good guy at that).
So I was IMing him this evening as Nanny ties up the phone line between 9 PM and 1 AM on a regular basis (and I'm pretty much ok with that as I don't like to use the phone much) and I mentioned he might like to go to temple on Yom Kippur and that I would go with him. This is an all day event. I can kind of make it to about noon and then I'm out of there and looking for a bacon sandwich (Amy, if you're reading this, I do beg your pardon). But I like it. I really do. For me it's about sitting in silence (and then not so silence) of community and examining who you are, who you have been and who you believe you want to be. I find it cleansing, honest and healing.
Howeveah....
We don't belong to any particular temple. He tried and tried to find one that worked for him and after running into the Humanistic Jews of Westport (HE ran screaming) I think he gave up. I didn't ask. Mostly because I just don't think about that kind of thing very often. So now he has no temple to go to. If he wants to go he'll be expected to cough up several hundred dollars just to pass the threshold.
Several hundred dollars. Maybe more.
It isn't that we can't but how the hell do they know that? This man comes looking for a spiritual home, grasping at the roots that defined his manhood and he cannot pass go without a substantial amount of money.
It is like this in many churches but this one takes the cake.
Before you start in on me, I've heard the reasons. I've heard. I've heard enough.
It saddens me. Yahweh, say it ain't so.
Monday, September 10, 2007
I am the fire
Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.
Damn.
Life is about struggle. Don't like that, do you? No, not much.
I have always struggled. There has always been a 'what next' sooner than I was ever ready for it. Right now my life is pretty much perfect. This is a problem.
Crap.
Other than the nanny adjustment, um, there's no battle to fight. Cletus Marie's father has been more or less shamed into at least leaving her alone (plus he'll give me some money every month toward her upkeep - woohoo - I don't give a rat's ass, I didn't need him then and I don't need him now). My job is my job; I can be a corporate power house in my sleep and my boss is too cowed to give me much more than, um, what I can do. My children are children. My garden is green. The deer seem to have vanished (?). My best friend has not had a psychotic break lately. (lately) My son is living his own life and I don't freaking have to look (!!!).
Crap.
Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
I curled into my husband on our bed this evening and wailed (in my most dramatic fashion)...
My life is meaningless.....!!!!
(wah)
Seriously. It made him nervous. This is good. It means he knows me.
Bonzai!!!!!!
What next?
(bahahahahahahahahahah)
Damn.
Life is about struggle. Don't like that, do you? No, not much.
I have always struggled. There has always been a 'what next' sooner than I was ever ready for it. Right now my life is pretty much perfect. This is a problem.
Crap.
Other than the nanny adjustment, um, there's no battle to fight. Cletus Marie's father has been more or less shamed into at least leaving her alone (plus he'll give me some money every month toward her upkeep - woohoo - I don't give a rat's ass, I didn't need him then and I don't need him now). My job is my job; I can be a corporate power house in my sleep and my boss is too cowed to give me much more than, um, what I can do. My children are children. My garden is green. The deer seem to have vanished (?). My best friend has not had a psychotic break lately. (lately) My son is living his own life and I don't freaking have to look (!!!).
Crap.
Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
I curled into my husband on our bed this evening and wailed (in my most dramatic fashion)...
My life is meaningless.....!!!!
(wah)
Seriously. It made him nervous. This is good. It means he knows me.
Bonzai!!!!!!
What next?
(bahahahahahahahahahah)
Friday, September 7, 2007
For Carol
Tonight I meant to have a moment of silence for CG's mom, Carol. Not working out so silent, is it? Go ahead over to this site CG Spiritual http://contrarygoddess.wordpress.com/(I'm hoping she won't mind) and have a read from beginning to end. There isn't much there yet as she just birthed this site a little bit ago.
What you will find is a woman's journey through the passing of her mother. She, CG, had what I would call the good fortune and great good sense to be cognizant and present in the final days and hours of Carol's life. Such presence often brings to mind the love and pain, filial conflict at it's best and worst of the mother-daughter or parent-child relationship.
I am nowhere near ready to lose my parents (way too much unfinished business) and yet I am of the age where this might reasonably happen today or tomorrow or twenty years from now. My husband has lost both of his plus a sibling. It is a powerful time we have in these last years as middle aged adults (hopefully) to examine ourselves and how we came to be and our parents, in their very own light.
Hugs and fairy kisses, CG, may the stars shine clear and bright on you and yours.
What you will find is a woman's journey through the passing of her mother. She, CG, had what I would call the good fortune and great good sense to be cognizant and present in the final days and hours of Carol's life. Such presence often brings to mind the love and pain, filial conflict at it's best and worst of the mother-daughter or parent-child relationship.
I am nowhere near ready to lose my parents (way too much unfinished business) and yet I am of the age where this might reasonably happen today or tomorrow or twenty years from now. My husband has lost both of his plus a sibling. It is a powerful time we have in these last years as middle aged adults (hopefully) to examine ourselves and how we came to be and our parents, in their very own light.
Hugs and fairy kisses, CG, may the stars shine clear and bright on you and yours.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
My father
I find it almost easy to write about my mother, even the hard parts. I find it almost unbearable to write about my father. I'm not close enough to even know why.
I spend what I consider a great deal of time with my father. I spend a week with him at the beach (and now we actually share a house) and week with him in Vermont while we ski (we have a timeshare, he has his house). I spend a few days at Christmas and a few days at Labor Day (except this year) going to the NY Ren Faire in Tuxedo. Yes, we all get dressed up and we all go together.
I don't spend much time with my mother at all and yet, the heartstrings are solid and secure.
My father makes me crazy. I must be looking for the way home. Still.
I spend what I consider a great deal of time with my father. I spend a week with him at the beach (and now we actually share a house) and week with him in Vermont while we ski (we have a timeshare, he has his house). I spend a few days at Christmas and a few days at Labor Day (except this year) going to the NY Ren Faire in Tuxedo. Yes, we all get dressed up and we all go together.
I don't spend much time with my mother at all and yet, the heartstrings are solid and secure.
My father makes me crazy. I must be looking for the way home. Still.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Airplanes
I lost my virginity on the floor of a modified Cessna 182 on or about my sixteenth birthday. I say on or about because I'm no longer certain when was what and that doesn't matter so much anyway.
Except he was thirty-two. I hear this is supposed to be a bad thing. I'm still looking for the bad but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see it. In retrospect, as a parent, the very thought is horrifying but then I'm not bringing my children up the way my parents brought me. Not in any way, shape or form.
We have rules, social mores, if you will, that we apply given our circumstances. But what happens when the cultures clash so thoroughly that the mores just can't jive, no matter how you twist or turn or spin them about?
I was a young adult in the body of a child. Puberty came late (some would argue that I'm still waiting). Children don't jump out of airplanes. If you are sixteen years old and you are exiting the body of a 182 at 9 grand you are not a child; I don't care what the rest of your life looks like. You are not a child or you are dead. That doesn't mean I wasn't a child. It just means what it means. Conflict, you know?
I like to say it ruined me for boys my own age except it didn't. I just never learned how to talk to them or maybe they just never could talk to me. I imagine I might have been marginally daunting. All this skydiving and no talking and me the ice queen because I hadn't learned to speak yet.
What I do wonder though, finally after all these years, is what on earth was he thinking?
Then, and only then, I stop and say ewe. But I still can't find the wrong or bad on my end and you know what? Maybe that's OK.
Except he was thirty-two. I hear this is supposed to be a bad thing. I'm still looking for the bad but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see it. In retrospect, as a parent, the very thought is horrifying but then I'm not bringing my children up the way my parents brought me. Not in any way, shape or form.
We have rules, social mores, if you will, that we apply given our circumstances. But what happens when the cultures clash so thoroughly that the mores just can't jive, no matter how you twist or turn or spin them about?
I was a young adult in the body of a child. Puberty came late (some would argue that I'm still waiting). Children don't jump out of airplanes. If you are sixteen years old and you are exiting the body of a 182 at 9 grand you are not a child; I don't care what the rest of your life looks like. You are not a child or you are dead. That doesn't mean I wasn't a child. It just means what it means. Conflict, you know?
I like to say it ruined me for boys my own age except it didn't. I just never learned how to talk to them or maybe they just never could talk to me. I imagine I might have been marginally daunting. All this skydiving and no talking and me the ice queen because I hadn't learned to speak yet.
What I do wonder though, finally after all these years, is what on earth was he thinking?
Then, and only then, I stop and say ewe. But I still can't find the wrong or bad on my end and you know what? Maybe that's OK.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Motherself
It is very easy to hold our parents into the light and tell ourselves how we were ruined. The truth is not so simple. Life lifes, we do what we do and our parents do the same. My mother was and is a remarkable woman and I've spent years trying to come to terms with that.
I've been working lately at trying to get under the known and find this woman. I'm trying to do this because I don't see much of her anymore and I can hear the fatigue in her voice and her writing. My mother is the gonzo dream somebody once said I might be. To read her is to be transported to whatever she is experiencing, at lightspeed.
My mother is eating the entire bag of M&Ms at once. My mother is the freight train that just took out your front yard. My mother is a navy blue suit and high heels in a 911. My mother is 140 mph on two wheels. My mother is the horse breath and the horse mind and the horse soul and body. My mother is dog shows and dressage rings. My mother is the ballet or Rocky Horror (take your pick) at midnight. My mother is ginger muffins at daybreak before heading to work because her daughter weighs 80 pounds at 5'6".
My mother is often elsewhere which equates, in the mind of the child, as not here.
Once, when I was maybe twelve years old, I was very, very sick. Very, very sick means I had a fever above 104 and woke up that way in the morning. My mother had to make a choice. Back in the seventies two things had not occurred yet (and I'm not sure they have yet). The first is that fathers still had nothing to do with children. The fact that I was sick had no bearing on my father's schedule. I'm not even sure he registered the fact. The second is that no matter how talented or necessary, women did not stay home from their jobs to care for sick children. As a matter of fact, many working women never even acknowledged having children if they meant to keep their jobs and did anything past administrative work (that was NOT what momma was doing, momma was writing code and disseminating information, same as I do today).
Momma felt my forehead, pursed her lips and then told me to stay home. She went to work. My little brother, he would have been ten, popped a thermometer in my mouth because he said I was all red. He had trouble reading it and I was no help but eventually worked it out. He called Momma at work. Momma said, give her three aspirin and make her drink lots and lots of water. Baby Bear did just that. He also didn't go to school that day. He sat by my bed and fed me aspirin and water all day long.
By sevenish, when Momma came home, my fever broke.
We all read this and think of this in terms of the child and we wonder, how oh how could that child have survived? Well I have to tell you, the child was perfectly fine. No joke, perfectly fine. The mother, though, the mother. What hell did she live through that day and many others?
I've had a few like that but nothing like what my mother experienced. Nothing. I don't know how she did what she did.
Remarkable.
I've been working lately at trying to get under the known and find this woman. I'm trying to do this because I don't see much of her anymore and I can hear the fatigue in her voice and her writing. My mother is the gonzo dream somebody once said I might be. To read her is to be transported to whatever she is experiencing, at lightspeed.
My mother is eating the entire bag of M&Ms at once. My mother is the freight train that just took out your front yard. My mother is a navy blue suit and high heels in a 911. My mother is 140 mph on two wheels. My mother is the horse breath and the horse mind and the horse soul and body. My mother is dog shows and dressage rings. My mother is the ballet or Rocky Horror (take your pick) at midnight. My mother is ginger muffins at daybreak before heading to work because her daughter weighs 80 pounds at 5'6".
My mother is often elsewhere which equates, in the mind of the child, as not here.
Once, when I was maybe twelve years old, I was very, very sick. Very, very sick means I had a fever above 104 and woke up that way in the morning. My mother had to make a choice. Back in the seventies two things had not occurred yet (and I'm not sure they have yet). The first is that fathers still had nothing to do with children. The fact that I was sick had no bearing on my father's schedule. I'm not even sure he registered the fact. The second is that no matter how talented or necessary, women did not stay home from their jobs to care for sick children. As a matter of fact, many working women never even acknowledged having children if they meant to keep their jobs and did anything past administrative work (that was NOT what momma was doing, momma was writing code and disseminating information, same as I do today).
Momma felt my forehead, pursed her lips and then told me to stay home. She went to work. My little brother, he would have been ten, popped a thermometer in my mouth because he said I was all red. He had trouble reading it and I was no help but eventually worked it out. He called Momma at work. Momma said, give her three aspirin and make her drink lots and lots of water. Baby Bear did just that. He also didn't go to school that day. He sat by my bed and fed me aspirin and water all day long.
By sevenish, when Momma came home, my fever broke.
We all read this and think of this in terms of the child and we wonder, how oh how could that child have survived? Well I have to tell you, the child was perfectly fine. No joke, perfectly fine. The mother, though, the mother. What hell did she live through that day and many others?
I've had a few like that but nothing like what my mother experienced. Nothing. I don't know how she did what she did.
Remarkable.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Momma wore combat boots
My mother wore combat boots. I love saying that. Unfortunately nobody gets the reference anymore. If I did my homework I would be able to tell you exactly when sport parachuting took off in this country but that would be subjective anyway since most people think it still hasn't and, well, I've got news for you, it has.
Sometime in the sixties I think; or at least that's my frame of reference. I was a little bitty thing out there on the field with my even littler brother in Portage, Michigan. There was a club called Pegasus and my dad was a professor at Western State and he and a bunch of students started this. I don't know why. Viet Nam maybe. Go figure. They were all there and then not and then back and then in between in the air.
My momma jumped out of a plane because it looked like a good idea, I suppose. Or because my daddy did it and she wasn't one to be left on the ground like a cheer leader or a campus wife or anything like that. She tells me that she made that one jump and it scared her so bad she decided she was going to keep doing it until she stopped wanting to shit herself on exit (my words, not hers, she would never).
My momma just kept on jumping because here's the thing, fear goes freaking NOWHERE, unless you're an asshole and then you deserve what you get. The thing is, you've got a choice, you can make friends with fear or you can struggle. Momma made friends. Weren't too many women making friends with fear like that, way back then. Back then. Sounds funny to say but it feels like yesterday.
In 1970 we left Michigan and came east to be Yuppies. Certified and everything, I swear my parents had papers. Left teaching, joined Corporate America and away we went! Had to find a jump club though, didn't we? I thought everybody's parents jumped out of planes and maybe they just went to different drop zones but I also thought pot was legal and my parents just perfered beer and until I was thirteen my world was perfect. Oh.
I'm still trying to work that one out.
Momma was competant. That's saying a lot. Not many skydivers are what I'd call competant. Most are what I'd call suicidal idiots, or clorox in the gene pool. Or something. Some are stellar. My brother was and is stellar, but he's another story.
I made my first jump the day after I turned sixteen, back when you still could jump out of a plane at sixteen if your parents felt like signing the waiver. I would have done it on my birthday because my birthday was a Saturday but the winds were too high. I had to wait until sunrise on Sunday and then the winds dropped and out I went.
Momma drove me to the bar that night, all covered in dropzone dirt and feeling like the world was on fire (which it was) and Momma said, Heather Mary (that's my name), if you can do this, you can do anything. Any. Thing. Ever. That is required of you.
All my life. My momma wore combat boots. And yes I can. No matter what it is.
Sometime in the sixties I think; or at least that's my frame of reference. I was a little bitty thing out there on the field with my even littler brother in Portage, Michigan. There was a club called Pegasus and my dad was a professor at Western State and he and a bunch of students started this. I don't know why. Viet Nam maybe. Go figure. They were all there and then not and then back and then in between in the air.
My momma jumped out of a plane because it looked like a good idea, I suppose. Or because my daddy did it and she wasn't one to be left on the ground like a cheer leader or a campus wife or anything like that. She tells me that she made that one jump and it scared her so bad she decided she was going to keep doing it until she stopped wanting to shit herself on exit (my words, not hers, she would never).
My momma just kept on jumping because here's the thing, fear goes freaking NOWHERE, unless you're an asshole and then you deserve what you get. The thing is, you've got a choice, you can make friends with fear or you can struggle. Momma made friends. Weren't too many women making friends with fear like that, way back then. Back then. Sounds funny to say but it feels like yesterday.
In 1970 we left Michigan and came east to be Yuppies. Certified and everything, I swear my parents had papers. Left teaching, joined Corporate America and away we went! Had to find a jump club though, didn't we? I thought everybody's parents jumped out of planes and maybe they just went to different drop zones but I also thought pot was legal and my parents just perfered beer and until I was thirteen my world was perfect. Oh.
I'm still trying to work that one out.
Momma was competant. That's saying a lot. Not many skydivers are what I'd call competant. Most are what I'd call suicidal idiots, or clorox in the gene pool. Or something. Some are stellar. My brother was and is stellar, but he's another story.
I made my first jump the day after I turned sixteen, back when you still could jump out of a plane at sixteen if your parents felt like signing the waiver. I would have done it on my birthday because my birthday was a Saturday but the winds were too high. I had to wait until sunrise on Sunday and then the winds dropped and out I went.
Momma drove me to the bar that night, all covered in dropzone dirt and feeling like the world was on fire (which it was) and Momma said, Heather Mary (that's my name), if you can do this, you can do anything. Any. Thing. Ever. That is required of you.
All my life. My momma wore combat boots. And yes I can. No matter what it is.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Balance
I listened to a man speak for an hour today and when he was finished I knew where I was and what I was about, at least in the moment. He is a man of significant courage, or balls, if you will. If he is to be believed he has come up out of the coal mines, attended universities on football scholarships, worked for IBM where he discovered who he was and who he could be and then built an empire. A couple of them, actually. I believe. You are, as he states so beautifully and succinctly, your results, and that is all there is to that.
I've been in the working world for, let me see, a lot of years. From small businesses, large businesses, start ups, technology, insurance, technology, technology, services, technology and now this, Print. But still technology. After all, bidness is bidness no matter what you make or sell it's about the game called the bottom line and I am almost always about technology even if it is operational, finance, or analysis. But the truth is, I freaking LOVE the game called The Bottom Line. I live and breathe for it and have lost limbs, lives and marriages over it. I am the bottom line.
At the company where I grew up, the high tech corp which has since been swallowed up by Mr. E., I was as passionate about my job as anybody you'd ever come across. Passionate and earnest. Oh so very, very earnest in everything I did. In the end when I found out that not everybody was earnest or honest or passionate about the bidness I was stupid heart broken and disillusioned and crawled off into a hole to re-evaluate my life and all that.
I wish, I do so wish, that this man had come along when I was thirty and malleable and I would have jumped right on his football bus and who knows what would have happened? But that's not what happened. He came along now. Now when I am middle aged and tired and so very untrusting. And the most terrible thing, you know, I believe in his vision. It's a game plan I could get behind, align myself with and just, you know, take off. Don't you know.
I have hardened into a shell of unwillingness and now find myself gnawing at my own self restraint and wanting to bust out and be thiry-two again and on fire.
Well so maybe I will come to the party after all. Forty-three or otherwise.
I've been in the working world for, let me see, a lot of years. From small businesses, large businesses, start ups, technology, insurance, technology, technology, services, technology and now this, Print. But still technology. After all, bidness is bidness no matter what you make or sell it's about the game called the bottom line and I am almost always about technology even if it is operational, finance, or analysis. But the truth is, I freaking LOVE the game called The Bottom Line. I live and breathe for it and have lost limbs, lives and marriages over it. I am the bottom line.
At the company where I grew up, the high tech corp which has since been swallowed up by Mr. E., I was as passionate about my job as anybody you'd ever come across. Passionate and earnest. Oh so very, very earnest in everything I did. In the end when I found out that not everybody was earnest or honest or passionate about the bidness I was stupid heart broken and disillusioned and crawled off into a hole to re-evaluate my life and all that.
I wish, I do so wish, that this man had come along when I was thirty and malleable and I would have jumped right on his football bus and who knows what would have happened? But that's not what happened. He came along now. Now when I am middle aged and tired and so very untrusting. And the most terrible thing, you know, I believe in his vision. It's a game plan I could get behind, align myself with and just, you know, take off. Don't you know.
I have hardened into a shell of unwillingness and now find myself gnawing at my own self restraint and wanting to bust out and be thiry-two again and on fire.
Well so maybe I will come to the party after all. Forty-three or otherwise.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The cold hard facts of maternal fears
The true horribleness of having a near perfect stranger in my house landed good and hard last night. What occurred is not so much the unbearable thing as my response mechanism - and I was fine, nothing bad happened, nothing bad got said and I am fairly certain no body parts were lost.
I should probably state right up front that I believe if you bring a nineteen year old into your house you're going to have to deal with nineteen year old behavior or assumptions, one way or another and that no matter how much screening you do in advance you never really know what you're going to get until you've got it. Same goes for dogs and horses too, by the way.
I was not comfortable with her request to go to Hartford on Day three of her arrival because we were very specifically told that these three days were very important in terms of family bonding and orrientation. I sat on her request, which was made a few weeks in advance of her arrival stateside, for a few days and stewed over the expressed desire versus the possible price and decided it would be all right given that school didn't start right away and she technically wouldn't be on duty immediately.
I was also not comfortable with her inability or unwillingness to accept the inevitable travel difficulties involved in moving by public transportation from one county to another. The trains run in and out of New York all day and most of the night but they only go as far as New Haven because that's pretty much the outer most limits of a survivable commute. After that you've got to either bus or pick up Amtrak which is not a commuters line at all, no matter what they'd like you to think. There's also the added confusion of working out how to make the ten mile trip to the train station in the first place. If you come home on Sunday night you can leave the car at the station but if it's going to be there come Monday morning it's just as likely to be towed before 8 AM as the overbooked and over reserved lots fill up.
The long and the short of it was I let her go and she was going to ride to the city by herself, meet up with her friend and then they'd make their way to Hartford on Sunday, find a hotel or motel and come back Monday morning. I didn't ask her how she was going to find or pay for a Sunday night hotel in Hartford. I just let it go, I do not need another late adolescent to parent, I'm still recovering from the boy.
It was a relief to have the house back at least momentarily. I'm really not so good with people in my personal space and I know this is going to take some getting used to. For example, she needs to learn to feed herself unless there's a meal being put on the table and that's only guaranteed if it's Monday through Thursday evening. All bets are off and you're on your own otherwise unless you are six years old and then I will make sure you're fed. I don't mean to sound harsh, I know it takes time to learn about a family and adjust but I think her mother did her laundry and fed her three meals a day if she was home. She'll get used to it or be hungry I think.
Last night the phone rang at 10 PM. First conversation when I get back home (which won't really be until Wednesday as I've got business engagements that will keep me out late both tonight and tomorrow) is about how late you can call. 10 PM is generally too late as I really ought to be well on my way to out cold by then. So she calls and I make my husband take the call because I am just not in the mood to be even remotely nice and I think, if you are calling this late, something is wrong and you are going to inconvenience me horribly and I have visions of driving the 75 miles to Hartford or where ever to rescue her sorry self because she has not found a room and the last Amtrak train leaves Hartford for New Haven at 8. Also, she simply would not consider coming home before the bloody bitter end because all the best bands are at the end. Whatever.
Husband says, yes, yes, well all right, we'll leave the front door unlocked (she has, for some reason, refused to take her house key because the girl will be home on Monday to let her in). He tells me that she and her friend from the city have met up with someone who is giving them a ride home and he heard male voices and the friend from NYC will be spending the night.
WTF??? Shrieks the voice in my head and then all hell breaks loose and I'm sitting there silently freaking the hell out over this, my stuff, but still:
This is the safe home of my daughters that I have worked very hard to create and maintain. You have met someone strange at a concert and he, out of the goodness of his heart, is going to drive you all the bloody way from Hartford into the woods of Weston because he's nice? And then let you and your friend walk through my safe front door and not follow? You will be lucky to make it home alive. You will be lucky to make it through my front door alive. You will be lucky to make it through the night with any skin on your body at all.
We discuss this, he and I and are of a similar mind having grown up in this part of the country and being a damn sight old enough to know better. I pour another glass of wine that I really should not be having and we watch bad television and wait until 11:30 when we hear the car door in the drive.
We go to the living room and wait. My oldest daughter is still up and I ask her if she should go to bed and she asks if I need her to and then I just say that I don't and it's all right but I am shaking inside.
Our house is a split level ranch with an expanded foyer. This means when you walk in the front door you feel as if you are in this rather grand entry way which is all Italian marble and intricate mosaic and chandelier (I'm working on getting rid of some of that but it's still quite too much for my taste) and you are immediately at a disadvantage if someone is waiting up those six stairs and staring down at you and even more at a disadvantage if those two someones are sitting just out of sight and you hear only the disembodied voices welcoming you home.
Only the two girls walked in the house and the door shut behind them. I stiffled the impulse to rush to the bedroom window to see who was in the car or not in the car. We chat briefly and I tell her that we stayed up to be sure that she is all right. The girls are visibly nervous and they should be. I did not meet the friend before hand and I would not have a stranger, male or female, come into my house at night without speaking first. Not with my girls in the house. Not with anyone in the house, quite honestly.
We go to bed and that is the end of it for the time being.
I am going to have to tell her what I thought and I am going to have to do it in such a way that she hears me. This is not about a nineteen year old getting her panties in a bunch because I do not trust her. Trust her to what? Put my children at risk? I know that I have superimposed my own fears onto the event but, as it turns out, that is my job.
I should probably state right up front that I believe if you bring a nineteen year old into your house you're going to have to deal with nineteen year old behavior or assumptions, one way or another and that no matter how much screening you do in advance you never really know what you're going to get until you've got it. Same goes for dogs and horses too, by the way.
I was not comfortable with her request to go to Hartford on Day three of her arrival because we were very specifically told that these three days were very important in terms of family bonding and orrientation. I sat on her request, which was made a few weeks in advance of her arrival stateside, for a few days and stewed over the expressed desire versus the possible price and decided it would be all right given that school didn't start right away and she technically wouldn't be on duty immediately.
I was also not comfortable with her inability or unwillingness to accept the inevitable travel difficulties involved in moving by public transportation from one county to another. The trains run in and out of New York all day and most of the night but they only go as far as New Haven because that's pretty much the outer most limits of a survivable commute. After that you've got to either bus or pick up Amtrak which is not a commuters line at all, no matter what they'd like you to think. There's also the added confusion of working out how to make the ten mile trip to the train station in the first place. If you come home on Sunday night you can leave the car at the station but if it's going to be there come Monday morning it's just as likely to be towed before 8 AM as the overbooked and over reserved lots fill up.
The long and the short of it was I let her go and she was going to ride to the city by herself, meet up with her friend and then they'd make their way to Hartford on Sunday, find a hotel or motel and come back Monday morning. I didn't ask her how she was going to find or pay for a Sunday night hotel in Hartford. I just let it go, I do not need another late adolescent to parent, I'm still recovering from the boy.
It was a relief to have the house back at least momentarily. I'm really not so good with people in my personal space and I know this is going to take some getting used to. For example, she needs to learn to feed herself unless there's a meal being put on the table and that's only guaranteed if it's Monday through Thursday evening. All bets are off and you're on your own otherwise unless you are six years old and then I will make sure you're fed. I don't mean to sound harsh, I know it takes time to learn about a family and adjust but I think her mother did her laundry and fed her three meals a day if she was home. She'll get used to it or be hungry I think.
Last night the phone rang at 10 PM. First conversation when I get back home (which won't really be until Wednesday as I've got business engagements that will keep me out late both tonight and tomorrow) is about how late you can call. 10 PM is generally too late as I really ought to be well on my way to out cold by then. So she calls and I make my husband take the call because I am just not in the mood to be even remotely nice and I think, if you are calling this late, something is wrong and you are going to inconvenience me horribly and I have visions of driving the 75 miles to Hartford or where ever to rescue her sorry self because she has not found a room and the last Amtrak train leaves Hartford for New Haven at 8. Also, she simply would not consider coming home before the bloody bitter end because all the best bands are at the end. Whatever.
Husband says, yes, yes, well all right, we'll leave the front door unlocked (she has, for some reason, refused to take her house key because the girl will be home on Monday to let her in). He tells me that she and her friend from the city have met up with someone who is giving them a ride home and he heard male voices and the friend from NYC will be spending the night.
WTF??? Shrieks the voice in my head and then all hell breaks loose and I'm sitting there silently freaking the hell out over this, my stuff, but still:
This is the safe home of my daughters that I have worked very hard to create and maintain. You have met someone strange at a concert and he, out of the goodness of his heart, is going to drive you all the bloody way from Hartford into the woods of Weston because he's nice? And then let you and your friend walk through my safe front door and not follow? You will be lucky to make it home alive. You will be lucky to make it through my front door alive. You will be lucky to make it through the night with any skin on your body at all.
We discuss this, he and I and are of a similar mind having grown up in this part of the country and being a damn sight old enough to know better. I pour another glass of wine that I really should not be having and we watch bad television and wait until 11:30 when we hear the car door in the drive.
We go to the living room and wait. My oldest daughter is still up and I ask her if she should go to bed and she asks if I need her to and then I just say that I don't and it's all right but I am shaking inside.
Our house is a split level ranch with an expanded foyer. This means when you walk in the front door you feel as if you are in this rather grand entry way which is all Italian marble and intricate mosaic and chandelier (I'm working on getting rid of some of that but it's still quite too much for my taste) and you are immediately at a disadvantage if someone is waiting up those six stairs and staring down at you and even more at a disadvantage if those two someones are sitting just out of sight and you hear only the disembodied voices welcoming you home.
Only the two girls walked in the house and the door shut behind them. I stiffled the impulse to rush to the bedroom window to see who was in the car or not in the car. We chat briefly and I tell her that we stayed up to be sure that she is all right. The girls are visibly nervous and they should be. I did not meet the friend before hand and I would not have a stranger, male or female, come into my house at night without speaking first. Not with my girls in the house. Not with anyone in the house, quite honestly.
We go to bed and that is the end of it for the time being.
I am going to have to tell her what I thought and I am going to have to do it in such a way that she hears me. This is not about a nineteen year old getting her panties in a bunch because I do not trust her. Trust her to what? Put my children at risk? I know that I have superimposed my own fears onto the event but, as it turns out, that is my job.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Tired
I couldn't decide on which site tonight's entry belongs so here it is. Today is one of those days that I am unbearably tired. This is when I start looking at balance and trying to figure out where I am out of alignment and how I need to offset the deficit, or something like that. It almost always comes down to me trying desperately to be in control, or at least maintain the illusion of control. Takes up a fair good amount of psychic energy.
In the mean time I am drinking wine and eating leftover raspberry cobbler on the screened porch that looks out onto the swamp and hears the peepers in the spring and tree frogs in the summer.
I did a lot of work many years ago with one of those horribly cultish but remarkably useful transformational groups where 'coaching' is painful at best and traumatic most times. I guess I do prefer the 2x4 method of communication. Control and surrender were my two big boogies. Maybe it comes from being a type A latch key kid but I'm pretty damn well convinced that the fate of the universe, at least as it pertains to me and mine, rides securely and completely on my shoulders.
Has its uses but puts me in a nasty kind of box, doesn't it?
I read somewhere once that if you really want something you have to be willing to not have it. If you're completely vested in a thing and can only see one straight line toward the goal you're just as likely to get knocked off the path and come nowhere near what you wanted in the first place.
All good in theory but what happens when it's about your child?
I don't know. Just floundering this evening, I guess. Might be really helpful to be able to say, God, could you make this thing happen for me and mine? But that's never rung true for me in any case. I guess my relationship with God is such that He or She or whatever expects me to get on with it and work it out.
Sometimes though, sometimes I am unbearably tired.
Please, no footprint in the sand responses. I'll gag and then cry from the futility of it all.
In the mean time I am drinking wine and eating leftover raspberry cobbler on the screened porch that looks out onto the swamp and hears the peepers in the spring and tree frogs in the summer.
I did a lot of work many years ago with one of those horribly cultish but remarkably useful transformational groups where 'coaching' is painful at best and traumatic most times. I guess I do prefer the 2x4 method of communication. Control and surrender were my two big boogies. Maybe it comes from being a type A latch key kid but I'm pretty damn well convinced that the fate of the universe, at least as it pertains to me and mine, rides securely and completely on my shoulders.
Has its uses but puts me in a nasty kind of box, doesn't it?
I read somewhere once that if you really want something you have to be willing to not have it. If you're completely vested in a thing and can only see one straight line toward the goal you're just as likely to get knocked off the path and come nowhere near what you wanted in the first place.
All good in theory but what happens when it's about your child?
I don't know. Just floundering this evening, I guess. Might be really helpful to be able to say, God, could you make this thing happen for me and mine? But that's never rung true for me in any case. I guess my relationship with God is such that He or She or whatever expects me to get on with it and work it out.
Sometimes though, sometimes I am unbearably tired.
Please, no footprint in the sand responses. I'll gag and then cry from the futility of it all.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Living in my mother's heart
How do we get so far away from our parents? How do they get so far away from us?
There was a time when I think I didn't talk to my mother for two or three years. I up and left my husband which somehow translated to up and leaving my mother. If I were to be perfectly honest, I up and left everyone. When I started to put it all back together, after being pretty damn close to completely out of control (as if I had ever been in control) everything had changed.
My mom was my champion. I grew up in upwardly mobile middle class suburbia with two working parents; I was of the first generation of the latch key children. I was difficult and prickly and either unwilling or unable to fit any particular mold. Most of my childhood was solitary. My mother has a PhD in something or other. I have nine million credits toward two completely separate degrees and refused to graduate with either.
It was the mothers of the South Glastonbury Pony Club who made sure I had a suitable pony or a horse. It was my mother who made sure I kept the horse. It was me who let the horse go when we moved to Fairfield and couldn't find a stall to rent for under $600 per month (this was in 1981!) It was my mother who called at 3 AM from Seattle to tell me she had two arab quarter crosses and was bringing them home to me rough broke. I was twenty and had been horseless for four years. I finished breaking and did the rudimentary training. It was my mother who fine tuned the babies. It was me who put my husband on the horse and my mother who made him get off. It was me who, pregnant at 22 with a pathetic income, marginally employed husband and unfinished degree, wanted to buy a house in Fairfield County. It was my mother who came up with a way to buy the farm and a way for me to work out how to keep it.
And we moved in lockstep for eight more years.
It was me who was headstrong and walked off the path. It was my mother who narrowed the path.
There was a point in time, when I was introducing my mother to my possibly third husband when she looked at me and said, this is just a side show, you know that, right? All she wanted to know was that I wouldn't be having any more babies. Not that I couldn't take care of my babies, just that I couldn't stay with my husbands. When I told her my eggs were dead as doornails and he'd had a vasectomy she said I could keep him for awhile if it made me happy.
Strangely enough, after she got done being mad at me for leaving him, she hated my first husband and horsenapped my horse right off his farm (he was holding my horse hostage, in a way, so that maybe I would come back). I still have this brand new equestrian saddle bought just for that horse that never got broke in. He was my last horse and that saddle is still in my house. That horse is not.
She accepted that my second husband was completely inappropriate but maintained that I'd made my bed and needed to lie in it; we're still Calvins at the root. She chastised me for leaving him in the same breath that she asked how I could live with him. If I tell her that I struggle in my third marriage she tells me to give ultimatums and when I laugh and say, this is perfectly normal adjustment of two people from different backgrounds with multiple children learning to live together she tells me the world is ending.
She lives on a farm and I live in a swamp. I am not concerned about the rodents my rat terrier ferrets out from under the deck or in the swamp. She tells me, in all seriousness, that they carry the plague.
My mother cut the road through Burma in the corporate world. Her father cut the real one with the real Calvary (you know, like with horses) in WWII. She is for sure his daughter. My mother wrote code in her sleep and navigated the treachery of women in the workplace, with a career and a family. My mother wrote poetry and stories in the closet of her mind and showed them to no one. I found them in a moment of kismet and have never let them go. I painted larger than life murals of dragons and forests on my bedroom walls. My mother cried when I didn't go to art school.
I wear my mother's shoes and remember never to cry in public. I irritate her beyond belief when I don't follow the same rules because the world has shifted. My mother looks at the application programming I do and pronounces it hogwash. I remember to thank God that my mother explained binary when I was twelve and I never forgot. She's a crazy cross between unwilling and recalcitrant St. Louis debutant and horse whisperer. She is happier with dirt under her nails and fourteen dogs in the house. I write thank you notes on engraved paper because it is the right thing to do given my current circumstances. My mother wants to know where the hell I ever got that idea and would rather I ran the stationary off on my printer.
When I was bleeding a slow death into the sheets and convincing my husband it all would pass, it was my mother I called all the way in Ohio and told about my white fingers and blue gums. It was my mother who kept me on the land line and called my Connecticut doctor from her cell phone and ordered me to the hospital immediately. I was running on empty and maybe four hours from dead.
She wants me to be safe.
I cannot be safe and alive at the same time.
It is an uneasy peace but it is peace all the same.
It is my mother I want when I am unbearably sad.
There was a time when I think I didn't talk to my mother for two or three years. I up and left my husband which somehow translated to up and leaving my mother. If I were to be perfectly honest, I up and left everyone. When I started to put it all back together, after being pretty damn close to completely out of control (as if I had ever been in control) everything had changed.
My mom was my champion. I grew up in upwardly mobile middle class suburbia with two working parents; I was of the first generation of the latch key children. I was difficult and prickly and either unwilling or unable to fit any particular mold. Most of my childhood was solitary. My mother has a PhD in something or other. I have nine million credits toward two completely separate degrees and refused to graduate with either.
It was the mothers of the South Glastonbury Pony Club who made sure I had a suitable pony or a horse. It was my mother who made sure I kept the horse. It was me who let the horse go when we moved to Fairfield and couldn't find a stall to rent for under $600 per month (this was in 1981!) It was my mother who called at 3 AM from Seattle to tell me she had two arab quarter crosses and was bringing them home to me rough broke. I was twenty and had been horseless for four years. I finished breaking and did the rudimentary training. It was my mother who fine tuned the babies. It was me who put my husband on the horse and my mother who made him get off. It was me who, pregnant at 22 with a pathetic income, marginally employed husband and unfinished degree, wanted to buy a house in Fairfield County. It was my mother who came up with a way to buy the farm and a way for me to work out how to keep it.
And we moved in lockstep for eight more years.
It was me who was headstrong and walked off the path. It was my mother who narrowed the path.
There was a point in time, when I was introducing my mother to my possibly third husband when she looked at me and said, this is just a side show, you know that, right? All she wanted to know was that I wouldn't be having any more babies. Not that I couldn't take care of my babies, just that I couldn't stay with my husbands. When I told her my eggs were dead as doornails and he'd had a vasectomy she said I could keep him for awhile if it made me happy.
Strangely enough, after she got done being mad at me for leaving him, she hated my first husband and horsenapped my horse right off his farm (he was holding my horse hostage, in a way, so that maybe I would come back). I still have this brand new equestrian saddle bought just for that horse that never got broke in. He was my last horse and that saddle is still in my house. That horse is not.
She accepted that my second husband was completely inappropriate but maintained that I'd made my bed and needed to lie in it; we're still Calvins at the root. She chastised me for leaving him in the same breath that she asked how I could live with him. If I tell her that I struggle in my third marriage she tells me to give ultimatums and when I laugh and say, this is perfectly normal adjustment of two people from different backgrounds with multiple children learning to live together she tells me the world is ending.
She lives on a farm and I live in a swamp. I am not concerned about the rodents my rat terrier ferrets out from under the deck or in the swamp. She tells me, in all seriousness, that they carry the plague.
My mother cut the road through Burma in the corporate world. Her father cut the real one with the real Calvary (you know, like with horses) in WWII. She is for sure his daughter. My mother wrote code in her sleep and navigated the treachery of women in the workplace, with a career and a family. My mother wrote poetry and stories in the closet of her mind and showed them to no one. I found them in a moment of kismet and have never let them go. I painted larger than life murals of dragons and forests on my bedroom walls. My mother cried when I didn't go to art school.
I wear my mother's shoes and remember never to cry in public. I irritate her beyond belief when I don't follow the same rules because the world has shifted. My mother looks at the application programming I do and pronounces it hogwash. I remember to thank God that my mother explained binary when I was twelve and I never forgot. She's a crazy cross between unwilling and recalcitrant St. Louis debutant and horse whisperer. She is happier with dirt under her nails and fourteen dogs in the house. I write thank you notes on engraved paper because it is the right thing to do given my current circumstances. My mother wants to know where the hell I ever got that idea and would rather I ran the stationary off on my printer.
When I was bleeding a slow death into the sheets and convincing my husband it all would pass, it was my mother I called all the way in Ohio and told about my white fingers and blue gums. It was my mother who kept me on the land line and called my Connecticut doctor from her cell phone and ordered me to the hospital immediately. I was running on empty and maybe four hours from dead.
She wants me to be safe.
I cannot be safe and alive at the same time.
It is an uneasy peace but it is peace all the same.
It is my mother I want when I am unbearably sad.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Safe and Righteous -- or -- Vulnerable and Willing
I am up waaaayyyy to late tonight. There will be no righteous running in the morning either, not at this rate. So. I've decided this is most likely the secrets blog of my three sites. Not that I hold much back on the main site or the other subsidiary site either (silly little Ophelia), but still, here's where very few holds are barred or something like that. Where else will I talk about rape and step-mother hate?
One thing I noticed was that when I gave myself permission to have a secrets site I suddenly didn't have as much need to rant about what I consider the really bad stuff. Hmmmn. Is that because it's been temporarily rendered harmless or because I know people read it? My guess is a little of both, permission and publicity.
I have a secret today. I've had it eating at my insides for a week and I just need to spit it out.
Here goes.
(drum roll please, there's ever so much guilt and shame rolled up in this one)....
My fifteen year old, nearly sixteen year old daughter is driving me out of my ever loving mind.
There. I said it. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Except for the fact that I rescued my daughter from her abusive father three months ago and somehow think this relationship suddenly has to be perfect.
How could it be perfect? She's been manipulating her divorced parents for most of her life and now we are suddenly glued to the hip 24/7 and life should be perfect.
k, here goes... (my snivel for the week)
I am a bad bad bad bad bad and evil mom. I get emotional and don't manage to process her needs every single living second of the day and periodically (it's rare these days but happened last week) take her head off at the abdomen leaving bloody entrails flapping in the breeze and...
She, being my daughter truly and completely, responds in kind.
Oi.
Take two passionate, powerful, strong and wilful women and put them nose to nose and look out Hiroshima!
I love my baby girl up one side and down the other in more ways than I can write or speak and yet, today, today, if I had not remembered that I'd punished her most by removing my affection and obvious out pouring of daily love, would not have thought to stop the madness by wrapping my arms around her stiff and angry body, pulling her back into the safety net of mother love and thus diffusing nearly all the noxious static that had precious little to do with she and me in the first place...
One thing I noticed was that when I gave myself permission to have a secrets site I suddenly didn't have as much need to rant about what I consider the really bad stuff. Hmmmn. Is that because it's been temporarily rendered harmless or because I know people read it? My guess is a little of both, permission and publicity.
I have a secret today. I've had it eating at my insides for a week and I just need to spit it out.
Here goes.
(drum roll please, there's ever so much guilt and shame rolled up in this one)....
My fifteen year old, nearly sixteen year old daughter is driving me out of my ever loving mind.
There. I said it. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Except for the fact that I rescued my daughter from her abusive father three months ago and somehow think this relationship suddenly has to be perfect.
How could it be perfect? She's been manipulating her divorced parents for most of her life and now we are suddenly glued to the hip 24/7 and life should be perfect.
k, here goes... (my snivel for the week)
I am a bad bad bad bad bad and evil mom. I get emotional and don't manage to process her needs every single living second of the day and periodically (it's rare these days but happened last week) take her head off at the abdomen leaving bloody entrails flapping in the breeze and...
She, being my daughter truly and completely, responds in kind.
Oi.
Take two passionate, powerful, strong and wilful women and put them nose to nose and look out Hiroshima!
I love my baby girl up one side and down the other in more ways than I can write or speak and yet, today, today, if I had not remembered that I'd punished her most by removing my affection and obvious out pouring of daily love, would not have thought to stop the madness by wrapping my arms around her stiff and angry body, pulling her back into the safety net of mother love and thus diffusing nearly all the noxious static that had precious little to do with she and me in the first place...
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Confessions of an Evil Step-mother
Oooh, here it comes. There's a site out there (and I'm sorry I don't have the link to it handy because I haven't bookmarked it even though I should have because I'm fascinated by it) called Secrets or something like that. People send their secrets on a postcard and they get posted. I think they even made a book out of some of them. Some of these secrets are pretty horrifying like the woman who wrote in to say that she'd given her cat bleach so that she had an excuse to go back to the cut vet. Yikes! But by and large the others are what fall into the realm of 'normal' (don't even get me started on the realm of 'normal', just accept it today, OK?). This got me thinking I have a secret and I'd really like to get it out in the light of day. Secrets can be awful things. And I don't mean the kind of secret like the last post. That falls squarely into the category of family tragedy that we try not to talk about in public. This one's different.I am an awful step-mom. There, I said it. Honestly, I love the little buggers but I just can't stand them. They drive me out of my ever loving mind. And what's worse is when they are in my house my husband reverts to similar lunacy. I can't think of what makes me madder.
Here's what I hate about my step-sons:
- They have almost no boundaries or regard for people around them.
- They behave exactly as they please regardless of how it affects anyone else.
- If you say something the response will most likely be "so?"
- They are completely unaccountable and often find it funny that this upsets people.
- They remind me of their mother who has often been the bane of my existence.
- They cause my husband no end of grief from the guilt of not being with them.
- Any attempt I have made to have a relationship with them has been sabotaged by their mother immediately following the visit in question.
- When they do things to me that I find unacceptable their father's first response is to deny it and the second to defend it.
I could go on, but what's the point? I have another list as well, this is the one that keeps my head above water:
- They were and are raised very differently than I or my children.
- I am not their mother nor do I need to be.
- If I can't get along then I ought just take myself out of the equation and let them and their father be.
- This has nothing to do with how I feel about their mother and I really need to keep those feelings separate.
- I do not have to do anything I don't choose to do.
- The issues I do have need to be taken up with their father, my husband, and left at that. It's up to him, not them, to establish boundaries if I cannot.
- They are just kids, people, human beings and deserve to be treated as such.
- There are moments when I actually like both of them very much. Just strangely never at the same time.
I could go on, but what's the point?
It has made me stop and think though, what is this all about? Really it's about feeling like a victim. Like I don't have any control over what's happening to me or mine. It's about my own personal guilt for having someone else's Dad parenting my children on a daily basis. None of that changes that fact that to me, and here's the important part, to me they are just awful children. That's my experience and it's valid. They are just awful. To other people they are just fine. And here is where the worlds collide and guilt occurs.
You know, I bet there's another story about Snow White and Cinderella. Kind of the same way, after having read Wicked (Gregory McGuire and never mind the Musical) I can never not feel for the wicked witch.
There. I've said it.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
p.s.
And if you really don't get it about that last post and conflict and everything else, read the blog header.
oh.
I've had a glass of wine, it makes me feel calmer. That doesn't mean I'm any calmer, I just feel that way. I launched this site so that I would have a place to 'be' without feeling as if I had to 'be reasonable'. I have, after all, been WAY TO F$%#ING REASONABLE for way too long. And yet, I am very uncomfortable letting myself drift, flail, fall, stumble, LEAP into the realm of unreasonable.
Whew. That took effort.
I feel whinny. I hate feeling whinny. It's small and useless and yet, I do feel whinny. I hate that about myself. <= note, perfect example of self pity.
I am afraid to LEAP into unreasonable because I am afraid to let go of my very carefully crafted and nearly mastered illusion of control. There. I said (wrote) it. Here comes the equation!!!!
To let go of control is to be out of control
To be out of control is to be vulnerable
To risk vulnerable is to risk harm
To risk harm is to die
else
To be out of control is to risk error
To risk error is to risk punishment
To risk punishment is to die
else...
It's all hogwash but it drives me, what can I say?
Maybe if I could just add that that one last else statement that might wrap up my theoretical If / Then statement...
Nope, not working. I am still in a glut of pity party wallow badness. Ewe, I stink to high heaven right now; unclean, unclean, unclean (blah, blah, blah).
okhereswhati'mreallyupsetaboutrightnow
My son is pulling at my heartstrings but has declared himself my mortal enemy because I have tossed him from his mother's home and supported his minor sister in escaping from their father and this is all just way too much to bear. How can you choose to save one child if it means letting the other fall as he may? When one child has done grievous harm to another WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO???!!!
The therapist says I did the right thing and if I didn't that family services would have an awful lot to say about it if they ever found out oh my god i let my boy go please god help me i cannot reconcile this awfulness...
It happened the day after Christmas. It being just one of many but this is a biggie. I slept in, exhausted from the sensory overload of having my nearest and dearest fill up my home for two straight God Forsaken days (I love them but I have no protective layer). When I woke up my Dad and his wife were reading the paper and my brother and his were gone home without a good-bye (we're OK like that) and my step-boys were downstairs watching something and my youngest with her dad elsewhere and my oldest, my oldest, waiting for momma to wake up so they, she, he could tell the truth.
In the night he reached up into her bed and under her shirt and he touched her in a way that no one should ever touch anyone if they are not fully and complicitly intimate and if they ARE NOT YOUR @#$@#$ BABY SISTER and they were 20 and 15 respectively and my whole world came apart right then and right there. How awful to say that. Her whole world came apart. His whole world. Do not say he does not matter because even though we want to rip his testicles through his nose he does indeed still matter. And yet, yes, my whole world came apart.
Never mind the niceties of having to wrap up the visit with Dad and Step-mom and send them on their way back to Vermont with lots of it will be OK this kind of thing happens and you know you should never have put them in the same room and teach her some self defense and
OHMYFUCKINGHOLYGODWHATDOIDONOWISTHISHOWMYMOTHERFELTAFTERIWASRAPED
ANDSHESATOUTSIDETHEBATHROOMAFTERICAMEBACKFROMTHEHOSPITALWHILEIWASHED
AWAYTHEBADDDDDBADDDBADDNESSANDKNEWATSEVENTEENTHATICOULDNEVERMAKE
ITBENOTSONOTINAMILLIONYEARS
I sent him out of the house to his father's indefinitely until my girl was ready to see him again after I let her scream and yell and pound his chest and oh! oh! oh!
We went to a movie, me and my girl and somehow I had little girl too? We saw that night at the museum movie and through the whole thing I tried to work out how I might live through this enough to catch my girl and save her
I cannot save my girl. There is no saving anybody.
But there is love. And oh god I do.
Whew. That took effort.
I feel whinny. I hate feeling whinny. It's small and useless and yet, I do feel whinny. I hate that about myself. <= note, perfect example of self pity.
I am afraid to LEAP into unreasonable because I am afraid to let go of my very carefully crafted and nearly mastered illusion of control. There. I said (wrote) it. Here comes the equation!!!!
To let go of control is to be out of control
To be out of control is to be vulnerable
To risk vulnerable is to risk harm
To risk harm is to die
else
To be out of control is to risk error
To risk error is to risk punishment
To risk punishment is to die
else...
It's all hogwash but it drives me, what can I say?
Maybe if I could just add that that one last else statement that might wrap up my theoretical If / Then statement...
Nope, not working. I am still in a glut of pity party wallow badness. Ewe, I stink to high heaven right now; unclean, unclean, unclean (blah, blah, blah).
okhereswhati'mreallyupsetaboutrightnow
My son is pulling at my heartstrings but has declared himself my mortal enemy because I have tossed him from his mother's home and supported his minor sister in escaping from their father and this is all just way too much to bear. How can you choose to save one child if it means letting the other fall as he may? When one child has done grievous harm to another WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO???!!!
The therapist says I did the right thing and if I didn't that family services would have an awful lot to say about it if they ever found out oh my god i let my boy go please god help me i cannot reconcile this awfulness...
It happened the day after Christmas. It being just one of many but this is a biggie. I slept in, exhausted from the sensory overload of having my nearest and dearest fill up my home for two straight God Forsaken days (I love them but I have no protective layer). When I woke up my Dad and his wife were reading the paper and my brother and his were gone home without a good-bye (we're OK like that) and my step-boys were downstairs watching something and my youngest with her dad elsewhere and my oldest, my oldest, waiting for momma to wake up so they, she, he could tell the truth.
In the night he reached up into her bed and under her shirt and he touched her in a way that no one should ever touch anyone if they are not fully and complicitly intimate and if they ARE NOT YOUR @#$@#$ BABY SISTER and they were 20 and 15 respectively and my whole world came apart right then and right there. How awful to say that. Her whole world came apart. His whole world. Do not say he does not matter because even though we want to rip his testicles through his nose he does indeed still matter. And yet, yes, my whole world came apart.
Never mind the niceties of having to wrap up the visit with Dad and Step-mom and send them on their way back to Vermont with lots of it will be OK this kind of thing happens and you know you should never have put them in the same room and teach her some self defense and
OHMYFUCKINGHOLYGODWHATDOIDONOWISTHISHOWMYMOTHERFELTAFTERIWASRAPED
ANDSHESATOUTSIDETHEBATHROOMAFTERICAMEBACKFROMTHEHOSPITALWHILEIWASHED
AWAYTHEBADDDDDBADDDBADDNESSANDKNEWATSEVENTEENTHATICOULDNEVERMAKE
ITBENOTSONOTINAMILLIONYEARS
I sent him out of the house to his father's indefinitely until my girl was ready to see him again after I let her scream and yell and pound his chest and oh! oh! oh!
We went to a movie, me and my girl and somehow I had little girl too? We saw that night at the museum movie and through the whole thing I tried to work out how I might live through this enough to catch my girl and save her
I cannot save my girl. There is no saving anybody.
But there is love. And oh god I do.
Friday, June 29, 2007
needs to be
do not look this horse in the eye
just yet.
come up on him sideways and let him
breathe in your ear and hair
a minute
before turning to glance
hoofward
at least respecting his need to be
respected.
just yet.
come up on him sideways and let him
breathe in your ear and hair
a minute
before turning to glance
hoofward
at least respecting his need to be
respected.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
in the earth
in front of this screen i sit
and contemplate the rain that goes on behind
my back while i am only looking
here
today it seems that i know
more than i often know
that i need to heal myself
running takes the edge off
but playing in the dirt goes soul deep
i can smell the earth and the ozone
and would much rather weed
than code
today.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
wednesday after a meeting with H
i am
terribly frightened
most of the time
unless i am angry or something less than
honest with myself
i don't know if
it's lack of common sense or why
i would put up this fight
anyway
when it is so much
easier
to not
not
not
face the day.
I am on the witness stand. I am eighteen or nineteen years old. My father is in the courtroom. There is a class field trip to the courtroom why are they in here? I see only young girls not much younger than me even though there might be boys I only see the girls it is so so so so so hard to breathe and I think only of not crying and I think this is the first time I could not breathe and now it is like this a lot.
The man asks me questions and I answer the questions as I was raised to do straight forward and honest and you just speak the plain truth, ma'am. It is hard to do this because I am distracted by my heart throbbing in my veins and my shaking legs and my guilt.
The man asks me questions and I answer the questions I don't hear anything else but later in a room with my dad he tells me that was not good someone has made a mistake and the evidence is denied and there is only my word and nothing else and I am just small and full of shame.
My dad tells me that our friend will take care of this if I want but I don't think he really means that but I ask him anyway how our friend would take care and it's about what I expected. That is not who I want to be and suddenly I want very much to believe there is a god even though my dad does not believe there is a god or he's got a lot to answer for! says my dad and I latch onto maybe there is a god and God will just take care of this and I do not have to go back in that room
and say what the fat man did to me face down on the white carpet dirty hair because i have to finish a paper and no time to look nice i am alone in the house no dog no dad no mom no brother i am so small and i don't want to die and there is a recording when i dial 911 even though schools have told me all my life i think to dial this number in case of emergency and it is an emergency and there is only a recording
i am so full of shame.
I have been on the witness stand two other times in my life, both for divorces. Both times I thought I'd like to die but did not. There was no reason for this because everything was worked out before hand and we were only presenting to the judge. I made a big mistake about ten years ago and now I have to go back on that stand and it's not going to be a nice time and it's not going to be an easy time and there are going to be some pretty horrible things said and I know this is the right thing to do. I know.
but i am so full of shame.
terribly frightened
most of the time
unless i am angry or something less than
honest with myself
i don't know if
it's lack of common sense or why
i would put up this fight
anyway
when it is so much
easier
to not
not
not
face the day.
I am on the witness stand. I am eighteen or nineteen years old. My father is in the courtroom. There is a class field trip to the courtroom why are they in here? I see only young girls not much younger than me even though there might be boys I only see the girls it is so so so so so hard to breathe and I think only of not crying and I think this is the first time I could not breathe and now it is like this a lot.
The man asks me questions and I answer the questions as I was raised to do straight forward and honest and you just speak the plain truth, ma'am. It is hard to do this because I am distracted by my heart throbbing in my veins and my shaking legs and my guilt.
The man asks me questions and I answer the questions I don't hear anything else but later in a room with my dad he tells me that was not good someone has made a mistake and the evidence is denied and there is only my word and nothing else and I am just small and full of shame.
My dad tells me that our friend will take care of this if I want but I don't think he really means that but I ask him anyway how our friend would take care and it's about what I expected. That is not who I want to be and suddenly I want very much to believe there is a god even though my dad does not believe there is a god or he's got a lot to answer for! says my dad and I latch onto maybe there is a god and God will just take care of this and I do not have to go back in that room
and say what the fat man did to me face down on the white carpet dirty hair because i have to finish a paper and no time to look nice i am alone in the house no dog no dad no mom no brother i am so small and i don't want to die and there is a recording when i dial 911 even though schools have told me all my life i think to dial this number in case of emergency and it is an emergency and there is only a recording
i am so full of shame.
I have been on the witness stand two other times in my life, both for divorces. Both times I thought I'd like to die but did not. There was no reason for this because everything was worked out before hand and we were only presenting to the judge. I made a big mistake about ten years ago and now I have to go back on that stand and it's not going to be a nice time and it's not going to be an easy time and there are going to be some pretty horrible things said and I know this is the right thing to do. I know.
but i am so full of shame.
Never mind, worked it out
I've been trying to work out how to communicate with the Contrary Goddess for weeks and only now, after posting a cry for help, worked it out. And I'm in technology?
Help?
Maybe someone can help me. I have two other blog sites, both are very easy to access, sign into and identify. This one, not so much. I actually set this site up so that I could leave comments on other blogger.com sites. The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to sign in to comment on another site. My site is called Alecto Alone. My nickname is Alecto. My user id is my yahoo email address. So none of these has been accepted as a login user name and password combination. Which is it?
Friday, June 15, 2007
hmmmm
I am looking for a new home like an animal that senses some level of danger or just wants a safe place to rest it's head. Perhaps I am reinventing myself again?
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