Writing Keeps Me Honest. Parenting, too.

I thought about closing my blog down for a few weeks – saying “Closed for Repairs.” Internal repairs. External repairs. Repairs. There are so many things competing for my time.

Then I was packing my work bag – After my daughter had thrown a complete fit because I dripped water on a very important piece of paper she left lying in the middle of her bedroom floor – After I failed to keep my scowls and growls to myself – After I stripped the beds, threw sheets into the washer, and mopped the bathroom floor – the bathroom where the door knob had fallen off during a play-date the day before.

I was pulling papers out of my work bag, throwing them away, gathering all our bills into a rubber band to pay online at lunchtime because lunchtime in the office I share with other people is the closest I have lately to alone-time and for some reason I feel that paying bills requires this: Alone-time.

So there I was fuming, and I pulled out a set of stickers – those random stickers the school photographer sends home to up-sell families on stuff – those stickers that last  year or the year before were plastic bookmarks instead – those stickers you get whether you want them or not but if you don’t send them back to school the next day intact, you have to pay for them. Those stickers. I held my daughter’s Fall 2012 picture-on-a-sticker in my hand.

She and my partner had just left for school and the house was strangely quiet. I held my daughter’s picture in my hand and I knew that I was going to have to make it work – this blogging, writing, parenting, everyday living thing. I just knew.

See, I don’t know how other moms find time to write and make it funny. Or poignant. Or useful. Entertaining. Something someone else may want to read. I really don’t. I don’t know how they do this and raise their children into gentle loving people, too. And cook. And keep the house sparkly clean. And jog maybe? Some moms do that. I’ve seen them. But I don’t know how they do it. All that, and work every day for a paycheck, too? Impossible. Right? There is so much evidence out there to the contrary – so many mom bloggers having it all, or looking like they do anyway. These moms are not me.

I am not that mom.

I find parenting a tween hard. Really hard. You get all this hype about the Terrible Twos – which for us were idyllic really, and I thought my life as a mom was charmed – and you hear horror stories about the teenage years. But tweens? Angelic, right?

Here’s the deal:

One minute, my darling daughter is on my lap kissing my hand and holding it against her cheek, radiating love from every pore of her body.

The next, she’s screeching that I don’t understand her, that no one understands her, that it’s not fair when she’s been nice to me all day and it’s not her fault. She’s slamming doors and stomping out of sight because I suggested that writing “1/2″ as the answer for twelve consecutive math problems was not showing her best effort.

When she’s calm, we talk with her about big feelings, about how to express them without hurting anyone.

When she’s not, her big feelings bring out ours. I suppose it happens this way in every house along the block, but I only live in this one.

I remember stomping down the hallway hundreds of times in my parents’ house, slamming my bedroom door, turning the music up loud, but I don’t remember starting this young. I know for sure my mother never blogged about it.

So I thought about shutting this blog down today, saying, “Closed for repairs” or just “Closed.” I still might; I may need to. But not today.

I stood there with my little girl’s picture in my hand and I stuck it to the inside cover of my journal – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past nine years watching my baby grow, it’s this: When I focus on her, eventually I know what to do. Because – shhhhhh! – don’t tell her – but when it comes down to it, for better or for worse, my little girl’s raising me, too.

So I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but looking at her, I know I must write every week to keep myself sane. To be the best mom I can be. To untangle the knots of the week gone by. To find balance. To remain honest.

And maybe sometimes: To find out if any one of you has been here, too.

For Mother’s Day

Stories, stories, stories, stories, stories – I am full to bursting with stories – mine and everyone else’s – yet I reach for time to write them down and come up empty. I need to decide about Sunday, Mother’s Day. I browse the world wide web in the fifteen minutes I have to spare this week, and discover this fabulously scathing perspective from Liz at Rebellious Magazine, a recent cast-mate of mine in the Listen to Your Mother show. Mother’s Day is complicated for so many of the people I love.

Here is what will make me happy this Mother’s Day. Most of it, you won’t find on any shelf:

• Listen to what I say. Offer me love, warmth, food, and kind words.
• Do not rush me out the door.
• Do not try to persuade me into seeing things only from your point of view.
• Share your truth. Yours. Tell me it is yours. Own it. Understand that my truth may mirror yours. Or it may not.
• Do not force me into too-small spaces.
• Defend me to people who wish to attack.
• Offer to be strong. Leave room for me to be strong, too.
• Hear me – not only my words, but my gestures and the feeling behind them, too.
• Hot coffee. Good strong hot coffee. Stand-your-spoon-in-it coffee. Drinking this coffee with sunlight streaming across my face.
• A pen, paper, and a place to write – even if only for 3 minutes. Or 5.
• Hugs. As many as possible, please.
• A finished basement.
• One thing sometime in the day to organize or make right – laundry to fold, dishes to wash, boxes to stack – something with a beginning, a middle and an end. So I can feel satisfied when I’m through. Yes, it’s Mother’s Day and it’s my choice to feel a sense of completion.
• Fresh air. Trees. A walk in the woods.
• Food. Real food – like eggs, granola, yogurt, fresh fruit, soup, or spinach.
• Bedtime with my not-so-little girl. One-on-on time with a book or a journal. Or a foot massage.
• Belly laughs.
• Time away from electronics.
• Hearing your story. Hearing you tell it. From any angle. Whether or not it’s about moms.

And you? What would really float your boat this Mother’s Day?

An Unmarked Anniversary

I thought I would make it through April unscathed.

March, with spring break and family birthdays, came off swimmingly – and I entered April giddy about stepping into the spotlight for my five minutes of Listen to Your Mother fame on May 5th. My stepdaughter decided to come home for the show. She’s never seen me on stage. My mother had airline reservations for the first time in seven years, right on the heels of her quick jaunt to Vegas and her selling of my childhood home. And the sunflowers we planted from seed were beginning to poke out of their little environmentally friendly pot in our sunny back office.

Then, during a long weekend away, the sunflowers wilted and cracked on our windowsill.

And on the afternoon of the second-to-last day of April, the birds chirped while my youngest handled her homework outdoors — lighthearted, focused, remembering 7-times-6 without pause.

And ten minutes later, I, without warning, flew out of my house in a sudden temper with the dog on a makeshift leash, abandoning the half-done school project after my daughter ripped her paper to shreds and poked her palm with a pencil.

How quickly things turn on their head.

But I’ve handled that before. That temper. Her temper. Mine. She didn’t break the skin. I’ve responded calmly before. I’ve banned her to her room. I’ve taken sharp objects out of her reach. Yet, not this time. This time, I fled. (Yes, my partner was home when I made my escape.) Yelling my way out the door.

Why did I leave this time?

For twenty-eight years, without fail, I have lost my mind during the month of April. It is not rational, but it is predictable. And yet each April, I have fresh hope. So MUCH hope that I didn’t even warn anybody this year.

And I nearly made it. Really. I nearly did.

Then came April 29th, the day we all ate dinner on our Midwestern patios and posted pictures of our feasts on Facebook, neglected jackets, and smiled simply to be in the sun. I had one day left of this crazy month. I could feel it! I was high-fiving myself in the mirror – elated, you might even say.

Never mind that our basement flooded and all our downstairs belongings – including every single item of adult clothing and 95% of my daughter’s diversions and toys – were under dusty plastic tarps to protect them from the fix-it work underway.

Never mind that my mom, who hasn’t visited in seven years and might not come again for another seven, would miss the beauty of our basement guest space.

Never mind the health scare of a family member whose call caused my heart to skip a beat. Maybe two beats. Although said-family-member will really, truly be okay.

I was on the verge of exiting April without damaging anything but a tiny trio of sunflowers and for that, I was truly, deeply, wonderfully proud.

It would have been the first April since my mom’s attempts on her own life nearly three decades ago that I had not lost my mind. Crazy-me used to stay two or three weeks. This year, she hung out for twelve hours. Maybe fifteen. Twenty at the most. Progress. Right?

Here’s the thing: My mom’s good. She’s fine. She’s delightful. She went to VEGAS, for heaven’s sake. She’s selling a gorgeous house in Silicon Valley so she can move in with her partner. They dote on our kids, adore our family, and they’re coming to see us – in fact, they’re here right now.

It’s just that the aftershocks simply.won’t.go.away. No matter how hard I push back. No matter how many times I lock the door.

After twenty-eight years, therapy, writing, and professional success, after climbing back into the spotlight and managing homework and projects and behaviors and moods – so many moods – in my home for so long – I still snap. Over nothing!

When I came home, my little girl, who is really my heart walking around outside my body (I heard this somewhere and can’t get it out of my head) approached me warily and said to me right away, “You were gone a long time.”

“I was, Honey,” I replied. “I was gone a long time.” She read me the paragraph she’d been working on, and gave me a big long hug. “I didn’t know how to handle myself,” I admitted quietly. She nodded, but she was concerned.

I was back, but still shaky.

Next year, I may want to light a candle. Or release butterflies. Or something. To mark spring – to mark the month of April – to invite Crazy-me in, where I can dance with her and make her tea instead of pushing her out into the cold, giving her blisters, making her sad. If she’s coming anyway, I might as well make her feel at home. Don’t you think?

*  *  *

Dedicated to those who mark an anniversary which is not cause for celebration.

*  *  *

Again with the dog?

Yup. It’s darn hard working towards 30 new poems in 30 days – gotta work with what I know best, and right now? It’s dogs.

Dachshund Dreams

When my dachshund dreams

– green field running dreams, leaping

in the air dreams, squirrel-chasing,

tongue lolling, going on a tear dreams –

When my big-eared, brown-eyed,

funny-toothed dog dreams –

snarling a ferocious warning,

growling at a burglar, a workman, the

mail carrier coming up our front steps –

she kicks me

again and again and again

and I wake.

*

She doesn’t mean to,

but big dreams are for kicking,

she tells me. They are.

*

Big dreams, strong dreams,

gotta love dog dreams.

I could use a few of my own.

I’ll fall asleep again soon,

I know,

witness magnolias bloom

and so

I let my sleeping dog lie.

*

Big dreams are for kicking

wide open, undisturbed.

I’ll give her that, my

short-legged, big-hearted girl.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Dog Days

Sprinkled in sunlight
(the first time in months),
I sit on my in-laws’ front porch.
One dog lies down here;
the other eats grass
to prepare for the long ride home.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Choices

It’s because I wrote about pen and paper last week, isn’t it? … that today I am starting right here on the screen. Just writing. Whatever it is that comes to mind. Untangling . . .

Like this cat. I want to be this cat.

Today, I am the cat.

Cats don’t premeditate. Cats don’t plan. Cats pounce. Cats hunt. Cats eat and drink and cover their business with a whole lot of sand. Or not. Cats lay in the sunniest spot, licking their fur. Each moment is new. Immediate. Definitive. Hungry? Thirsty? Playful? Bam.

I had a director once who gave me what she called “one freebie” during the run of each show. She gave me a freebie so when I had an off-night, missing cues or failing to connect with my fellow actors once or twice or many times, I wouldn’t spiral through the next few nights wallowing, pondering, willing myself to go back through each choice until I’d fixed it in my mind – as I am prone to do – but rather, I’d shrug it off and say, “Well, there’s my one.” And move on.

I’m prone to ponder. That’s the truth. Why? Too many . . .

Choices

Date night or blogging?

Alone or together?

Chocolate or licorice? (Read our LTYM Chicago spotlight posts to learn who chose which.)

Sleep or watch TV?

Comma or semicolon?

Boys or girls?

Install drain tile in the basement, or wait-and-see ’til it rains again?

Domestic or international?

Chocolate espresso beans, or spicy salty pretzel mix?

Pick-up or let it ring?

The chicken or the egg?

Ice cold white wine or mellow red?

Wash first, or wear it straight from the rack?

Ice cream or cake?

Pink or black?

Left or right?

Plastic or paper?

Walk or drive?

Hands on the podium, hands by my side, hands on my hips, or arms outstretched?

Every day, every nano-second, something new to decide.

But not today!

Today, I am the cat, batting dust particles around in this one shard of sunlight.

Unhurried. Immediate. Instinctive.

Slowly closing my eyes. Opening them again.

This is the life. My cat life. Mine.

It is delicious.

while time waits

Time waits at night sometimes

with our books open side-by-side,

my reading glasses perched

partway down my nose,

my daughter absorbed

in the adventures of Greek gods

and goddesses and humor.

*

Time waits at night with

bookmarks firmly placed

between our pages.

*

Time waits tonight

while I sink into pillows.

She lays her head

next to mine. It’s been

months now since she chose

to lay this way with me.

Usually, I sit briefly

in her pink chair

while she settles in.

I’m lucky if she allows me a kiss

before I go.

*

Tonight, she reaches for my hand

and holds it between hers.

“Am I perfect? Am I

The kid you wanted?”

she asked me earlier.

“You ARE the kid I want.

I can’t even remember

what I wanted way back when

because I have you, and

YOU are the kid I want every day,”

I told her. We are both quiet now.

*

Time waits tonight

while she holds my hand

to her cheek

long enough

for both of us

to settle in

and then

she allows me a kiss,

blows me one in return

even, as I stand.

*

And so the night,

this deep sleeping night,

begins. While time waits.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Fat Pen

Fat pen, like reading

glasses, puts a finer point

on maturity.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Wet Dog Wings

The map just out of reach,

reading glasses in a case shut tight,

I have to wing-it tonight,

pray these mud-filled wings take flight

but who will guide me home?

*

I cannot do this on my own,

not in this wind. And yet I rise

higher and higher until I see nothing

on the ground. Nothing familiar.

Are you trying your wings, too?

Pray these sodden words take flight

and find you.

*

Shake it out. Shake it out. Shake it out.

It’s only poetry, like wet dog wings –

something to say and I’m saying it or

nothing to say – I can say that, too,

and well. Can you? Shake it out.

*

Together, let’s flap our way

to the story of something that matters

and fly. High. Like geese.

*

Soaring, soaring, soaring.

With so many of us, we can make it

a long, long way. Pray these wings

will carry you and carry me

until we can all be found

to circle ‘round the place,

seen or not yet seen, we call home.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Listen

It was the first time

my baby girl

looked right through me

like I wasn’t there,

the first time I ordered the dog off

the bed and she wouldn’t budge.

*

It was the second

necklace I tried with my new dress,

the one that made clear

my worst features, like

the extra skin I’ve grown this winter

on my upper arms.

*

It was coming out to five hundred people

from the stage –

as if I hadn’t come out,

publicy and privately,

five hundred times before.

*

It wasn’t that.

*

It was being on stage with a script in hand.

It was aiming my voice towards the mic.

It was walking in a way that wouldn’t rip

my new dress. It was jitters for opening night.

*

It was reading my story on stage.

It was my stomach plummeting.

*

It was the sensation

of applying eyeliner

backstage before the show,

my hands shaking.

*

It would dissipate

the moment I stepped into the light.

But when I stepped out again,

would it return?

Listen to Your Mother Chicago plays at the Anatheneum Theatre on May 5^th. I’ll be on stage in a bright, block-colored dress, along with some beautiful and powerful writers. We’ll be sharing stories on motherhood – being mothers and having them. Click here for more info, or to buy tickets.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.