Most Wonderful Time or Black Tuesday?

7:15 Everyone awake and almost dressed.

7:30 Hair brushed and tied (a wasted effort on Girl #2 who will yank out braids somewhere in between snack and gym); kids fed, photographed; everyone antsy.

7:50 Walk to school with Girl #1. A quick kiss outside the door and she’s gone -- a nervous bundle of new-school-outfit trying so hard to be calm.

8:00 Waiting on That Man to pick me up.
8:03 Waiting.
8:05 Kind of pissed.
8:07 Did he go to the wrong corner? Forget about me? Decide to take Girl # 2 to school all by himself and deny me the pleasure? Is he lost? Can’t find Giant Three Year Old’s shoes? Does he EVER listen?
8:09 Waiting. Wave to friends in cars. Try to look casual and relaxed.

8:10 That Man, Girl # 2 and Giant Three Year Old pick me up on corner to drive the three blocks to the next school where we will not a find a place to park.

8:15 Get dropped off. Walk Girl # 2 up to her classroom, send her off with a Hang Loose hand gesture; do not receive one back. Leave anyway.

8:25 Greeted by friends who have dropped off daughter; they serenade us with “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…”

8:35 That Man drops Giant Three Year Old and me at home. We are alone together again.

8:45 Self-satisfied sip of ice coffee (graciously purchased by thoughtful husband, the coffee that made him late; feel mild guilt for earlier crankiness); make list for the day.

8:50 Receive email from friend who calls today “Black Tuesday” -- I think she is sobbing on her keyboard.

8:53 Make note to self: figure out if I am more “Most wonderful time…” or Black Tuesday kind of mom.

9:30 Giant Three Year Old mosies into kitchen: “Well, that’s that. Let’s go pick them up.”

You can imagine what happened from there – pretty much the 30 minute intervals of peace and play and activity punctuated by “Is it time yet?” “How about now?” “Now?” And then, naturally, when it finally was time, he couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere, didn’t like the way his shoes felt, wanted to buckle himself (oh lord), and needed in some OCD way to get in and out of the car four times once we made it to the school to pick up Girl # 2. (This last effort would have had me perplexed and googling “compulsivity in preschoolers” but he saved me from that when he smiled, all nasty-like, upon his final exit, and said, “Mama, is this funny or pissed off?”)

Then it was onto the schoolyard and the gaggle of anxious parents of new Kindergartners sifting through the more seasoned school vets, all of them waiting for their kids to unload from the building. Everyone was neatly dressed and all of them, or most, were making the same kind of huggy-kissy love that comes with the first pick-up on the first day back at school.

Me? I slunk to the corners, sucking my summer sitting-on-the-beach-all-day-too-much-beer belly in and hunkered down by the stairs where my child would soon descend. I tugged at my t-shirt, held my son’s hand and realized how lucky I was to never feel this way all through school and wondered why I was feeling this way now.

A lovely woman came over, an almost-friend (you know that kind? the kind who should be a better friend and you’re always just on the verge of getting there but your spontaneous bumping-ins come at the worst times, like at the grocery store with three kids?) – that almost-friend greeted me so warmly, with such encouraging non-small-talk kind of talk that it was just the thing I needed to get over my first-day jitters.

My daughter came soon enough and was happy (read: exhausted) enough to escape quickly with me. And we did. Home to greet Girl # 1 who walks home. No homework tonight, but forms to fill out, and routines to begin, which we did, despite the coaching meeting I needed to attend at 6pm with all three in tow. (The meeting was outdoors. Seems good right? But Giant Three Year Old learned that stomping on bleachers makes an hellaciously gigantic noise.)

Off to bed with them. Me alone. That Man on a business trip. Nothing on TV. Time to get back to that earlier note to self.

“Most wonderful time?” No. It was a great summer all in all, despite our lack of camps, and I already miss our lazy mornings and knowing them the way I did these last few months, even when they were pissing me off. Black Tuesday? No. I am happy to see them off and curious as to what will become of them this year. And after Thursday, when preschool starts, maybe I’ll get that haircut I am so desperately in need of, or just drive around for four hours, ALONE, in my car.

It is in some strange in between place that I find myself now. All gangly and misshapen and weird in my skin, as I felt this afternoon at pick-up, so I am when it comes to me as mom now. I’m not the mom of three under five anymore (to be pitied? to be helped?) and I’m not quite the mom of three who are all off to school and sports and friends’ houses (early empty nest? begging to have tiny bodies at home, sweaty heaps to cuddle up to?).

I think I am the gawky tweener of Momdom.

MOMifesto

Before I leave for three weeks, I send this along: something to ruminate on and debate. I've been sitting on this group of sentences for a while, but it still makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Maybe it will to you. Forget the stay-at-home vs. the working mom fight -- this is where the good punches fly.

****

PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD

This is what I have learned so far about the world from children: it is tiny and enormous. There are bugs more interesting than great books, and questions about bugs and eyelashes and sadness and electricity are never-ending. It’s all or nothing, and also all and nothing. It changes daily. You learn to go with it.

This is what I have learned about motherhood, stay-at-home motherhood: it’s a jungle in here.

As it was in the office, so it is behind the picket fence. The geography has changed but the scene is the same. The playground has become the office cooler, the PTO meeting has become the company picnic, and there is jockeying and one-upmanship all over the place. I never knew that when I left the career I built to stay at home with my kids that I would have to contend with another world of professionals. My greatest nemesis is no longer The Man, but The Mom: the Professional Mother.

The Professional Mother has a lot of company. She is one of the millions of women who benefited from every wave of Feminism. She picked a job she wanted, or thought she wanted, and she succeeded. When they told her as a little girl that she could be an astronaut, she believed them. She never got a free pass. She worked her ass off every step of the way and she became whatever her heart desired: a marketing director, a teacher, a filmmaker, a lawyer, a business owner, a nurse, a doctor, a banker, and even sometimes, an astronaut.

Maybe because she could do it all, or because she wanted so badly to do it, she became a mom.

Who knows what happened next? Either she couldn’t or didn’t want to keep doing what she was being paid to do, or maybe it was hormones or finances or love or who knows what, but she decided to quit. She gave it all up for the kid, the brood, the life.

As it turns out, the everyday life with kids is a sneaky life. It is mostly boring and rarely rewarding. For the most part, it’s spit up, crapped diapers, Legos all over the place and getting dinner not only made but also eaten. It is not like the magazine pictures or parenting books, or art: it is getting through one long endless day without going crazy.

The Professional Mother takes it all very seriously. Turning down a lucrative career, earned and fought for, is ridiculously hard for anyone. Why not make a career out of the life chosen at home? Why not up the ante on what you do, so that it’s easier to answer the question of old friends and colleagues: what do you do?

So, the Pro Mom engages her newborn in sign language, music classes (I did this once: it was mostly toddlers, always mine, running into padded gymnasium walls), and potty training before they can sit up. She considers co-sleeping, attachment parenting, and nursing on demand not an option but a requisite. She relishes an entire Baby Bjorn culture that literally glues the baby to the bod.

The Professional Mother of a pre-schooler or grade-schooler engages in activities so numerous that there are children less than six years old who have tried more hobbies in one week than I have tried in my whole life. There’s Spanish, team gymnastics, travel soccer, tennis, baseball, painting, ice hockey and lacrosse all weekend. And it’s not just one of these things – it’s all of them, at once. Her multi-tasking is without limit.

It wasn’t long after I became a full-time mom in the suburbs that I realized there was a pace out there that I couldn’t keep. As much as I desired, needed, craved to be busy, expressing that through my kids and with my kids was a disaster – for them and for me.

Don’t get me wrong, pre-school is a life saver and we’ve dabbled in soccer and ballet and the dreaded music class, but never more than one of those things a week. Truth be told, it was way too much work for me to drag a baby and a pre-schooler to stand outside a 45-minute “class” for a 1st grader. Instead, I just blare the IPod at home: dance, gymnastics, music class. There you go.

Did I nurse each child for fewer months than the one before? Yes. Do I consider crayons and construction paper and pretty much no guidance about what to do with those things (‘cause Mommy’s on the phone) a good, learning day? Yes. Do I make cereal and cereal bowls accessible to my tiny kids and expect them to make due some mornings? Yes, I do. Do I feel bad about all of that? No, I don’t.

I think.

My soapbox is wobbly I admit, and the doubts creep in. I doubt my exhaustion after a day of homework and housecleaning. I wonder since I didn’t drive to five activities is my tiredness, well, less than? Will Harvard reject my child because she didn’t speak French fluently by 9? And now that I don’t have a nursing baby to lean on (literally), is it my convictions that still make me pass on more than one activity per week? Or my laziness?

The Pro Mom exacerbates my undoing. Even on the days when I’ve whipped up homemade play dough or read the same book six times in a row – at dinnertime! -- she is out there. She is out there tapping endlessly into her Blackberry the schedules of her accelerated children to remind me that no matter what I do, or don’t do, I am not doing enough.

The Professional Mother doesn’t aim to be mean spirited. Maybe we brought this culture of competition onto ourselves. When I was in college, we good, smart feminist girls waged a minor rebellion – one of many that stood to pit us against old-school feminism. It was okay to be sexy, we said, to like men and wear mascara and short skirts. We were confident in our sexuality as a tool, not a limitation, and we took advantage. Marriage was okay and motherhood too. We would indeed have it all: respect and hot pants, babies and promotions. It would be different for us. And it is.

We forced ourselves over the line in a lot of ways. We supported each other, hired each other, built businesses, built networks, made changes and money together. But when we made the biggest decision of our lives, to trade the cash and achievement of our former selves for a colicky, bundle of ridiculously cute panic, we forgot in the process where we came from. Maybe it was the distance from the shackles of our past or the cool comfort of our modern success, but somewhere along the way we forgot what essentially gave us the idea that we could be superwomen in the first place: each other.

Our mothers before us? They shoved us outdoors, they handed out hot dogs like vitamins, and they never attended or arranged a single pre-school graduation. The lucky ones schemed a life for themselves in between the wife-being and the child-rearing so that when the chance came, unexpected or anticipated, they seized it. If there was a bad guy or a naysayer, he lived in the house or on the TV. For her, the girl next door was a partner and confidante. A lot times, she was the one whispering, “Go, girl, go.”

For me, the girl next door is confused a lot of the time. Her degree on the wall and a gaggle of kids in her hallway, a husband late to dinner, a house half done, a host of parties to attend, she is never quite sure if she lives in world of content or discontent. She is never quite sure that any of the rhetoric is true: that she is indeed doing the most important job in the world.

The Pro Mom implodes her doubt and confusion. She creates a coping mechanism that is a schedule so mercilessly rigorous, so chock full of child work that her billable hours far outnumber any corporate power player. She doesn’t so much swallow her resentment and isolation, she creates it—and passes it along like some grown-up girl game of Telephone. The Pro Mom creates a culture of perfection, a stratum of achievement, that is impossible to maintain. Mostly, it’s not a lot of fun.

Where did our girl network go? Why does it only seem to exist in dinners dropped at the door when a new baby arrives? Why does it evaporate when the real work begins? Why has the camaraderie of our earlier feminist experiences backfired in the moment of our most feminine experience?

Maybe feminism has failed. There are those among us who still don’t truly value the role of Mother, plain old just getting the job done Mother. And most of them are mothers.

If I “missed” the registration date for a camp I can’t afford anyway, then I apologize to my children in advance. If I avoided the countless other activities that might make my kids smarter or nicer or better, than I apologize for that as well. But if the proof is in the pudding -- my daughter does a perfect cartwheel, self-taught in the grass, the other not only marches to her own beat, but bangs the drum herself, and my son, he can make friends with anyone -- then the pudding is all right with me. I know I am qualified and educated: I have no need to prove that through my kids. They are not, never were, never will be, My Job.

There will never be a moment when I see the world as unwritten upon as I used to when I was a kidless kid. But when I find the calm in the middle of my amateur mom day, in between the heart attacks and heart aches and volunteer work and laundry and the guilt about never quite doing enough for any body at anytime that is so much a part of that day, I don’t use up the peace and quiet on my kids. I do the best that I can do – for me.

With Kidz Bop in the background and a plastic golf club in the gut, there are not a lot of thoughtful silences anymore. Most of the poetry I write is cheap haiku – but write, I do. I make business plans after midnight all the time. I try to have reasonable conversations about politics when I find something newsworthy on the ‘net. I gripe to my sisters and my friends about the drudgery of everyday doing and I hope against hope that I will find one open ear who will honestly gripe back to me.

I am grateful that I made my new girl network, all the ones who tell their truths, who cry sometimes, who whine even, who make plans like me, schemes like me, and the ones who have come to believe that this life, after all, is good enough. I am grateful for those who give me who they are and take me as I am.

But I regret that this loose knit web of secret holders, who for the most part don’t even know each other, is such a small part of my life. I regret that this is who we seem to be now, a disparate coffee klatch endlessly seeking a home.

Still, I have a great suspicion that secrets like mine are being shared all over the place, on streets like mine, in towns like mine, with friends like mine, even by Professional Moms.

In the end, the world remains tiny and enormous. Children ask a million questions because there are that many. There is more than one answer. You don’t need to be a Pro to know that.

Does Not Equal Ego

It's occurred to me that some of you readers might have been confused by earlier "posts" by people other than me. Some of you even honored me by wondering if I was writing it all in another voice. Not true. It's just that sometimes my gals send something via email that is too good or too funny not to share.

This is one of those, from the in-town Annie:

"Had the bad judgment to allow a sleep-over last night with a kid (I adore) as mischievous as my own. Tired. Decided yesterday after 2 months of "no gym" I could make up for it in one hellacious workout. Threw my knee out and every muscle in my body is screaming mad. Cannot straighten my arms; my biceps are so pissed off.

Woke up to a roll of paper towels rammed in the downstairs toilet. Yeah, other stuff in there too. Tried to take out the recycling with my crippled arms, barely made it down the stairs to a driveway FULL of broken glass. (When the hell did that happen?)

Phone calls: TEN before 8:45. (Never let on that you are an "early riser". People love that.)

Labored onto laundry (ouch any day of the year). You know those HUGE Tide dispensers I never buy? My economy minded husband bought me one last week. It fell off the table today, and the spout broke off. Five gallons of laundry detergent on the floor.

Realized that my "house-cleaners" (these generous and loving and kind people who show up every two weeks with fear in their eyes) were coming today. So was the upholstery guy. Bad dogs into cages. Kids out of the house. Me off to chiropractor and massage therapist so maybe, maybe I can hold a cup of coffee tomorrow morning, or sit on the toilet perhaps?

Need to get better. Turtles to hunt. Fish to catch. Kids to spent time with chasing and loving the summer as it speeds by."

The theme of her email, so similar to my own rants, makes me realize that we all sit in the same boat.

(I use this metaphor, though lame, because this entire small town smells like seaweed tonight. The salt is so strong and murky in the air that even the seagulls are confused: they land in my yard, which is a few blocks -- but a half million dollars -- away from the ocean.)

Annie-in-town is in my boat despite the fact that her youngest is older than my oldest. She’s in there nonetheless. She's been chastised, berated even, for what other people see as her chaotic life. But she knows who her kids are, and who she is, and I do too. After all, aren’t we all – with big kids, or babies or teenagers -- aren’t we are all just bailing water, paddling along, trying to figure it out the best way we can to keep the ship afloat?

That’s why I include this stuff here, these brilliant messages from other people, to prove the point, to myself most of all: I am not alone.

Lori McKenna

One of the coolest women I know gave me the tickets. So, I traveled, what with depositing the kids at their reluctant grandmother’s house and then from there to the city where she was playing, about 6 hours in one day. I remember traveling this way for rock shows for work, and also for Dead shows. That Man met me there, after doing his own two and half hours on the road. He was late as always, but he was eager. Most men would not be so game. It’s a bonus for us both that his passion for music – and taste – equals mine. And I love her songs, and he knows that, and as it turns out, he loves what I love.

So we hooked up, two unencumbered grown-ups, in some town we had never been before and found ourselves in a standing-room-only crowd listening to Lori McKenna. Lori McKenna is the singer-songwriter, who of all the favorites that I have either worked with or worshipped, staked her claim in my heart and held on so tight that I will, even now, drive all that way just to see her. She is, after all, just a mom, like me – so if she can, I can.

People say she writes about all things “domestic” and to some degree, that’s true. It’s also a lazy critique. She is domestic (duh -- five kids, suburban Massachusetts housewife, married at 19), but to assume that every one of her songs is about that? It makes the domestic in me (who also married young, has three kids, lives in suburban Mass) close to crazy and downright offended. Listen like I have to every song she has written: this isn’t Cascade and Calgon -- this is poetry, plain and simple.

Just listen to “Falter” or “Pieces of Me” or “One Man” or “Swallows Me Whole” or “Ruby’s Shoes” or “Bible Song” or “How To Be Righteous” or “Monday Afternoon.” You’re a mom? You’ll hear yourself. A dad? You’ll hear yourself too. A human being? Yeah, she’s got something for you, too.

Her story is true and compelling, and so the publicist in me knows why it makes sense to talk about it. She finds a way with five kids and a high-school sweetheart husband in a small town like mine (yours?) to make music. She wears the same clothes as me. She loves Target like me. And somehow, when the time comes, she makes a space in her life to let her poems creep out.

After all the life I’ve lived (which so far has been quite massive frankly), this woman has the one thing I still want. It’s not her rock n’ roll life I covet – I’ve been there, I left that – it’s the balls she’s found to get up and tell it that I envy. So, it’s no surprise that when I feel compelled to explain or exclaim in words the way I do, it’s usually her singing in the background that I hear.

As the night in Northampton wound down, and after I hounded that poor woman for a picture of us both together (sickeningly embarrassing looking back), I remembered how much I missed that feeling, the one I had as a kid for the musicians who ultimately changed my life: Elvis Costello, The Cure, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Band, the Grateful Dead, Nirvana, The Jayhawks, Morphine, Wilco, Josh Rouse, Johnny Cash, Kristen Hersh.

God, I thought, here I am all kinda grown up, and still laid down like a kid by a great song and a guitar -- and loving it. When she hauled her own equipment out the door, in an old sweatshirt zipped over her sexy top, and flung that stuff into the back of her minivan (!!), I was sold for good.

When it was time to go, I held my husband’s hand so I could yank off the too-cool-sneakers that were blistering my feet and walked home barefoot to a hotel where we would spend the night without our kids, her music still echoing in our ears, our beer-buzz lingering like the one we had when we were teenagers falling in love.

It occurred to me then that nothing changes that much after all. What you loved when you were little, you’ll probably love when you’re old. I haunted record stores once; now I plunder ITunes. I have always loved music and songs, and well, not to be sappy, but I have always loved him too, and I still do.

And I love Lori McKenna.

I Don't Want To Stay Here

As in, “Mama, mommy, ma – Idunnawannastayheeere!”

This has been the perpetual complaint, the perpetual wail in fact, of the Giant Three Year Old today. Apparently, time alone with me has lost its luster for him. His sisters were both out with friends; one will even be gone until morning on a sleepover. The extent of his adventures were a couple of neighborhood visits and a trip to the library. Apparently, it wasn’t enough. My face and this place are intolerable for him now.

(Just ask the neighbors: they were victim to his vocal opinion most of the day. I am grateful to live on a street where this nonsense passes with some sympathy. Afterall, the sight of me chasing the screaming wailing kid down the sidewalk, screaming “Idunnawannastayheeere!” might have alerted the authorities in some ‘hoods.)

His displeasure is nothing new really. In the past, he has found our car to be insufficient. He would prefer any giant truck, and since I would prefer a Mini Cooper, I feel his pain. Our house has also not met his needs – it is “old” he says, which is true, more than 100 years old in fact, but I think by old he is not expressing his genius in antique architecture, but instead implying that hanging out within these walls is passé. He’s over it.

He is a classic third child. He was born into a house of siblings – they were barely three and four when he was born – so naturally, he has grown up used to the constant presence of people in his life. As a result, he alternates between loving the game-playing and chatter of us and wanting to escape from it all. When the girls were home only three days after the end of school, he implored, “Why are they still here?”. Now, five weeks later, it destroys him when they leave.

He’s my riddle, such a funny joke, and I never know what to do or what to make of him. He can play for hours making voices for a million inanimate objects alone and wanting no one, or switch to the raging social monster of today, incapable of finding anything worthwhile that involves being here, alone with me or himself.

“Idunnawannastayheeere!”

That Man suggests a nap for him, which almost makes me choke on my ice coffee. I have considered locks on his door and used a host of bribes, but for the last few months that Big Boy will only snooze when we are in the car, about ten minutes away from Target or the grocery store or wherever it is that I cannot legally or ethically let him stay alone. Since I do prefer him alive actually and would rather not be splashed across the front page of the Globe or in jail, I haul his half-asleep ass out and carry on.

(Still, don’t you believe the world would think more kindly of the parent who left her sleeping baby or toddler outside the grocery store than the one who left her kid outside the Casino? Neither is good people, I get that. But c’mon: priorities.)

I digress, and that’s a good thing (and the strange and welcome benefit of writing it all down…)

I concluded this wretched day the way… well, maybe not the way some Professional Mother would, but the way I would. I threw some ravioli in a bowl and sent him to watch TV in another room. His eyes were still puffy from his most recent distress (having to leave the neighbors at 6:00pm – late by any standards I think) but he was quiet. In that moment, he was the beautiful green-eyed, long-haired, long-lashed hunk of a Giant Three Year Old that I love. He said “sanks Mom” for the grub, sniffled, and then squeezed my leg. It wasn’t quite sorry, but for now, with him gone and not screaming in my ear, I’ll take it.

I don’t care if he spills the food or if he eats any of it. Also, if he returns, food uneaten and whining for ice cream, I will, just for today, give it to him.

Sue me. I don’t fucking care, because today, after this day and the way I feel now, when I don’t really want to be here either, his ice cream eating might buy me the ten minutes I’ll need – to breathe, to remember he’s just three, to remember he is the last baby I will ever have.

It’ll be the ten minutes I need to find my way back to loving this shit.

She's Old Afterall

I planned to post something different, but because it's my sisters birthday, I will delay the egomania.

She has always hated my poetry ("can't you write something happy?" she says) and would probably prefer a new pair of shoes.

Anyhoo, no shoes, but happy I hope, and Happy Birthday nonetheless:

Sister:

When I was little
I watched you
walking behind you:
how you moved,
how people looked at you.
I haunted your room
when you lived there
and more after
you left.

It’s not so simple, leaving.

I still can’t talk back to you
the way I want to
but I won’t take a dime
for a message now
or be conned into a backrub either.

My secrets,
for them you are insatiable.
But yours are all locked up
and nothing I do or say
will change it either way.

I am all grown up,
like you,
with no one to push around,
or tell on,
or teach.

There are myths
that people make up.
But mostly:
it just hurts sometimes
to be part of a family.

You taught me that.

It’s just a little bit
that a little sister
can say or do.
What you expect from me
and when the mood strikes
get from me --

A good song, a cheerful voice,
and the proof that we are all
okay.

Bombs Bursting

Catching up after That Man was home for FIVE WHOLE DAYS over the Fourth, which was great, a culture shock in some ways, but ultimately, really nice for us all. Lots of family beach outings ensued, and soccer in the back yard and movies, and That Man being helpful with all things domestic. But lest you think me/us perfect in some, um, perfect kind of way, there was also much boozing that kept the grown-ups laughing and carrying-on. And there were fireworks. Which I chatted through.

So now life is back to post-holiday normal, and by that, I mean messy house, less than nutritious dinners, a whining three year old and That Man gone again on a business trip.

Did I mention that I have forgone camps this summer? The notion started one crabby morning at the end of the school year, when lying in bed, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to go nowhere today? Wouldn’t it be nice to do nothing?”

(Note to future self: not ALL thoughts are meant to be acted upon.)

But the notion hung on (and the bank account confirmed) and so the mantra “no camps will be good for us all” remained the mantra. My kids want to be with me most of the time, after all, so until they don’t, let’s go for it. Let’s spend some time without distraction. I’ll practice what I have preached too often: kids need to learn how to play – with nothing, with grass, or dirt, or a pad of paper and some tape.

It is grand ideas like these that make one realize how much bigger the word “practice” is than “preach”.

So... I find sneaky ways amidst the not so gentle admonitions of “I am not here to entertain you, remember?” to get my proverbial ya-yas out. My glue gun works wonders with fabric (I can’t sew), so after trips (with all three kids – fun!!) to FancyPants textile store ($109 a yard?? who buys that?) and Wal-Mart (with a trip to the pool along the way), I get my voila! I also get some burned fingered tips, but the two-day transformation is complete -- apparently only for me, as no one said a word about the living room re-do. But that’s beside the point.

The brussel sprouts, given to me by Annie in tiny 2-inch pots, are gigantic now — a not-so-subtle reminder that summer is underway and maybe even passing faster than we think, but mostly an awesome architectural feature in the garden. Which needs weeding and pruning. Maybe tomorrow.

Right now I need to disinfect the musty towels, gather up all the toys and garbage and what-not that is splattered across my driveway, remind my son not to pee in the trash can (wicker one, no less), empty the dishwasher, fill it up again and see if I can find two kids’ shoes that match.

And figure out what to do tomorrow.

Goodbye to Anger

I wrote this, and I need to be done with it.

Anger:

Rage is such a silent thing
most of the time.

But inside the blood and guts,
the tissue and bone,
of every good decent human being
rage looms.

It’s a threat of a threat,
and a chance that the chance might come
to take over: become
an attack
a scream
a thrust of some violent words or
fists or who knows what.

The urge bows down at the feet of our humanity.
It only needs one lazy toe
to let go.

You fuckinloudmouthedbitch
justshutup.

For instance.

>>>>>>>>

I wrote that desperately.

I am less desperate now, for reasons that partly include this place: it has never been a bad idea to write "it" down.

So the anger is becoming an old friend and like all old friends, it feels funny to let go, but I do.

(Not funny ha-ha, like the Gigantic Three year old who, newly-potty trained opened up the front door of our house, dropped trou and pissed all over the steps for every neighbor to see. Not funny in that way.)

By funny, I mean the funny that happens when you sit up and see how fruitless all your anger has been. That kind of funny, as in -- wait, that was wierd: I wasted so much time.

So guhbye to that. Buh - bye. See ya. So long. Bye.