Month: August 2005

One Less Sunset

I went to pick up my 7-year-old son this evening, on the way to the pool. He’d spent the afternoon at his friend’s house, so while he was busy gathering his stuff, Friend’s Dad and I chatted in the driveway.

His yard is impeccable. He just built a deck in his backyard. I’ve seen inside their home and it’s lovely and meticulous, despite their two children. Everytime I stop by, he’s power-washing or mowing or trimming or building or painting. He began to lament the end of summer. “We haven’t even been anywhere,” he said. “We have a place up at Hood *Canal and we haven’t even spent a night.”

It seems like you have a choice. Would you like what’s behind Door Number One (House Beautiful, regularly dusted and maintained) or Door Number Two (Free Time, including sand between your toes and a sunburn on your nose). (Or, if you can find a paperclip in your purse, you can have what’s behind Door Number Three: Mystery prize!) Let’s Make a Deal!

I leave my house almost every day in some degree of disarray so my kids can cavort at the pool. Food drying on dishes or laundry waiting to be folded, dust on the coffee tables and a few toys scattered around for good measure . . . I can’t be bothered, really, for summer is fleeting. I want to live in a perfectly tidy house, I really do, but I just don’t want to be the one doing all the tidying. Especially with four kids wreaking havoc wherever they go.

My daughter spun around and around at the pool tonight, falling down in a dramatic heap. “I’m so busy!” she said, confusing “dizzy” with “busy,” but then again, maybe there’s not such a big difference.

Time’s flying! Get on board, quick! There is one less sunset at the beach as of tonight. Catch one while you can.

Experience No Longer Needed

Just when you get really good at something, you don’t have to do it anymore. For instance, I am an efficient diaper-changer. When the current daycare babies are no longer in my care, my diaper changing days will be pretty much over. All that practice and boom! No more need for my skills.

Years ago, I was very good at wallowing in my grief over infertility. I filled pages of journals with morose “why me?” sorts of writings. I could turn any situation into a cryfest–a dinner with friends and a pregnant teen turns up? My face would fall and I’d cry all the way home. I’m good at grief and feeling sorry for myself. Practiced and nurtured, one might say.

In high school, I excelled in all my studies, but math came especially easy to me. I never took another math course again after I graduated. My math skills are not just rusty–they’re like a stripped and stolen car, abandoned and now overgrown with blackberry brambles in a ditch somewhere. I remember algebra faintly, like a dream you can’t quite invoke when you wake up.

So, what are you good at that you never do anymore?

(Though, life is cyclical and I am not stymied by the math my boys are learning. And being a Grief Expert helps me empathize with people as they cope with loss–and I’m sure I’ll grieve more as my time on earth grows shorter. As for diaper changing? Someday there will be grandchildren. At least one can hope that I’m changing grandbabies and not my mother.)

You Might Want to Skip This

I remembered tonight the time I tried to talk someone out of getting an abortion. She was twelve weeks pregnant, ready to vacuum her uterus clean, while I was trying desperately to get pregnant.

I wonder if she still hates me.

I thought of my dad today. He’s been dead for almost sixteen years. Since he’s been gone, computers have become mainstream. He once built one from a kit–and programmed it with cassette tapes. He died before everyone had cell phones in their pockets and video cameras in their closets. There are a few mysteries. For instance, what ever happened to his handgun? I found bullets, but no gun. Also, what was in the locked briefcase that I willingly handed over to a woman friend of his–she told me it contained letters and pictures from her children to my dad. (He’d been a mentor of sorts to her children.) I never quite believed her and I wish I had pried the lock open instead of giving the case to her.

When the phone rang at 10:00 p.m. and he’d leave the house, where was he going? Who left roses at his grave every week for the first year after he died?

These are things I wonder.

I remember tonight that winter day in college when I rode in van full of my friends. We were taking a fellow student, our friend, to the airport. He’d been kicked out of Bible college for drinking with my friend, a girl of seventeen, who was underage. The underage part wasn’t why he was kicked out, though. Drinking alcohol was so against the rules at that midwestern college. I sobbed on the snowy days and for days after wept, wondering what just happened. He had been a potential boyfriend–we’d danced around the idea for almost the entire year before–and then he picked up my friend, the one who’d attended that college based on my recommendation–and they’d gone out, drinking.

Betrayal, loss, stupidity. That was a bad year for me and not such a good year for him, either. Our friendship flickered on and off for a few years after that and died a sudden death before my wedding. I wonder if he still hates me.

A local church just built a new building. The plan was to expand their existing food bank which served almost two thousand people a month, but not enough money came in for the project, so the food bank, which has existed for years, was shut down. I wonder what Jesus would think about that. I know people who’ve had to use food banks and sometimes, a food bank is what stands between you and your kids going to bed hungry.

What a cheery post! To bed I go, hopefully to dream happy dreams and not dreams filled with mysteries and faces of those who aren’t fond of me.

Light In, Light Out

My almost-year old daughter has begun protesting bedtime. A week ago, instead of turning off the light and stretching out in her crib without a fuss, she cried. Every bedtime since then has been an annoying, yet heart-wrenching portrayal of Girl Who Hates Sleep.

Actual tears roll down her cheeks and she cries, “I don’t want to go nighty-night in my crib!” Then she does that thing where you change the emphasis on each word.

“I DON’T want to go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t WANT to go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want TO go nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want to GO nighty-night in my crib!”
“I don’t want to go NIGHTY-NIGHT in my crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night IN my crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night in MY crib!”
“I don’t want to go nighty-night in my CRIB!”

After each recitation, I repeat after her. I’m trying to empathize. But the fact remains: she has to go nighty-night in her crib and her tears do not affect me. Much.

My husband put her to bed last night and his solution to her sorrow was a nightlight. He found one and plugged it in, but when he did so, he had to unplug her cassette player.

Tonight, she wanted music, so I unplugged the nightlight. For some reason, we can only plug in one or the other. (We have stupid outlets in our house.)

She cried–wailed, actually–when I closed the door and he went in to soothe her. He said she wanted the nightlight, so he unplugged the music and plugged in the light.

It’s one or the other around here, and not just lights or music. I can do one thing, but not everything. At least not all at once. And that’s why I feel like a rotten mother. Time’s ticking away and I can’t do everything I want to do with my children or by myself, either, for that matter.

This summer, I still want to go to the ocean. I need to visit my 99-year old grandmother. (She lives close by.) I keep thinking about driving up north to visit my dad’s grave–the sixteenth anniversary of his death is approaching. I’d hoped to catch up on my scrapbooks this summer. The weeds are maturing and dispensing even more weed seeds. We promised a trip to Wild Waves Waterpark. We have missed every single Concert in the Park and we haven’t been to the beach once.

Too much to see, too much to do, too much. I am frustrated.