Naked

I recently joked on Facebook that I think I’m pretty much done with my nudist phase.  It was a long-lived phase, and the truth is I’m not really done with it at all.  I just don’t live a life conducive to the kind of nudity I used to indulge in frequently.  No skinny-dipping in secluded lakes.  No prancing around the dressing room waiting till the last minute to get into costume so I didn’t get too stinky.  No being young and in shape-ish.  It gets harder and harder to align motive, means, and opportunity.

I still strive for emotional nudity, still aim, with those who pass (in)security clearance, to be vulnerable and clear.  This is not always the best idea, as I’m painfully finding out this week.  I am in relationship difficulty with someone I thought I was closer to than I am.

Awkwardly, this person knows about this blog and reads it.  Or did.  Is a warning email too much or does it simply assume too much?  I don’t intend this post as a secret/not-secret message.  I need an outlet for these feelings and thoughts and can only hope they don’t sound like a mash note, or worse, a guilt trip.

In my checkered past, there is a long list of people with whom I felt close, an instant-karma kind of connection, only to have the ground supporting the relationship shift suddenly, plate tectonics of the worst kind.  The earliest I remember this happening was in fifth grade, when I failed to get the memo about how Best Friends Forever savagely betray each other often move on to other Best Friends Forever with each new school year.  It’s happened many times since, with varying degrees of intensity, from the collapse of my first grownup love relationship to the natural flaming out of some of my less-well-advised friendships.  (Just because conversation is easy doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s enough in common to sustain a lifelong friendship.)  It may be happening now, with a friend I met fairly recently and connected with deeply.

To be sure, there are complicating dynamics in all these situations, and in my wounded state, I know I’m not seeing clearly the negative effects my intensity has on others.  I’m too clouded by how much it hurts that I mistakenly thought it safe to be vulnerable.

I guess if I’m willing to be naked before someone, I have to accept that the person might turn away.

Presents of mind

I slept badly last night and woke up today feeling truly blue and dreading being at home with the boys.  I know that when I am at my best, we are (together) capable of making a mundane day enjoyable — but when I am not at my best, I lack the confidence to know that the day will turn out ok.  Given my druthers, I’d have stayed in bed till late this morning, moped around in pajamas, and written stinky poetry in my journal.

Obviously my druthers were unavailable.

There is a part of the experience of being at home with small children that is about intimacy. My boys and I, we’re close.  We know each others’ habits and signals.  I know when it’s time to get them outside, or there will be murder in the air.  I know when they need structure and when they need space.  I know when they need to rage and when they need to be told to get over themselves.  And they know when I am starting to skid, and, sometimes, how to push the moment to its crisis.  They don’t necessarily yet use their powers for good instead of evil, and alas neither do I, consistently.

Our intimacy has its darker side.  Because I am incapable of putting on a smiley face, my kids are always going to know when I’m depressed.  I struggle with making our home safe for feelings, as the home I grew up in was not, at all.  At the same time, I struggle with the concern that I burden them with my own deep and volatile feelings.

Often the answer (if there is such a thing) is in the moment.  Today I would have preferred being a cubicle denizen somewhere, anonymous enough to toggle between misty and weepy all day.  (That is, if the lounging and moping and bad writing didn’t work out.)  Plan C — being with my amazing, adorable sons — turned out to be ok, though.  I tried my best to plow all the emotion I was feeling into something I could use.  I got very still and present with my kids, and not only did it help with the kids, it also helped me feel more confident to cope with what’s making me sad.  It was not a perfect day, but it had many more lovely moments than I dared to hope for when I woke up.

Little by little

Politicians speak of incrementalism as if it’s pure evil, probably because they know they’ve got to work fast before the pendulum swings in the next election.  Here in my world, though, tiny steps are wondrous — and necessary.

Although I am still capable of having a rotten day — and of feeling momentarily undone by it — more and more I am finding my center in my new role.  It helps that I’ve learned a fistful of recipes that I can reliably execute.  But beyond that, I’m learning to be interruptable.  I’m learning to lighten up a little and watch the clock less.  I’m learning to enjoy my childrens’ company and prioritize that enjoyment over mundane concerns like having a clean house and crossing things off my to-do list.  And when tasks have to get done, I am learning to include my children in the tasks.  Akiva responds very well to this habit and will assent to just about any request if we are already basically in harmony.  And what keeps us in harmony, by and large, is being present with each other.

When I am at my best, parenting is a spiritual practice for me.

Some adventures of late:

We have been walking to the bank and/or the post office.  We go through the woods.  We take our time and look at things.  It’s much more fun when I actually hear Akiva say in reference to an upturned tree root, “Oh cool!  That looks like deer antlers.  Awesome.”  And when Gideon asks to come out of the stroller, I just accept that the walk will take even longer, but that we’ll see even more things. In addition to the deer antlers, we’ve seen several mysterious slugs, the largest dragonfly this side of the Carboniferous, and several intriguing fungi.  (We desperately need to make friends with a mycologist.)

When I need to move them along, I make up a song and invariably, Gideon asks me to sing it again.

We have gone to the Lowell Folk Festival to see a klezmer band.  I was nervous about being on my own with the kids in such a crowded and unfamiliar setting, but they were magnificent.  And the klezmer was so good, Akiva asked if we could go again the next day, which we did.

Of necessity I have had to take them to synagogue on my own these days.  Bill is working Saturdays, and the high school kid who usually helps us has been traveling this summer.  The boys stay with me during the short service, we go down for snacks so everyone can kvell over them, and then we leave early when the Torah study begins in earnest.  I will be glad when I’m able to bring some backup along again, but there is so much of value to be had from taking them, and I love the way they are embraced by the community, with all their age-appropriate disruptiveness.

I’m beginning to be able to enjoy the moments with my kids.

Frank McCourt

I was sorry to learn of Frank McCourt’s death.   I had been a fan of his writing, particularly Angela’s Ashes.  He had a way of writing in that sweet spot where pain and humor kissed.  Some of the set pieces in his first book — first communion, Teresa Carmody, the knee-trembler — still stay with me, many years after my having read it.  Plus, it had the second best ending I’ve ever read.  (Love in the Time of Cholera has the best.)

At the height of his fame, he made an appearance in a fundraiser for the Irish Rep in New York.  He and his brother, Malachy (formerly the famous one, for his recurring role on One Life to Live), played in a revue they had written.  It was a godawful piece, shoddily put together but great fun nonetheless.  The moment I remember was Malachy saying, “He used to be my brother.”

Senator, I’m no Frank McCourt, but while I could never imitate his singular voice, I do try to hold to that place where pain and humor can co-exist.  Early in my family’s ongoing transition, I wrote the following few paragraphs, which I didn’t have the courage to publish at the time, and which since lost its bite, if not its relevance.  I like it though, and here’s my perfect chance to post it, even if it will make me look like an idiot next to the amazing Frank McCourt.

Two weeks ago we were, by any standard, rich.  Not filthy rich.  (Our shower bar is from Linens ‘N Things and falls down just like everyone else’s.)  I believe the term is hamburger rich.  We had become accustomed to a nice lifestyle — not an extravagant one, but we had everything we needed and then some.  We were able to focus our attentions and time on our two (thank G-d) healthy children, the younger of whom is still a nursling, and on community service and volunteering.  Maybe you could call us the well-intentioned rich.  We weren’t conspicuous consumption, but we could eat out when we wanted.  Neither my husband nor I went to a job on a regular basis.  We were able to support our family through the interest earned on some investments in the stock market.

Maybe you can see where this is going.

Yesterday we learned that one of the main stocks in our portfolio — the jewel in the crown of our small fortune — was crashing.  Last night, until late in the night, we were up brainstorming about what two people with very few credentials who have never been in the grown-up job market could do to stave off disaster.  Bill has two undergraduate degrees, in music composition and mathematics.  I have a liberal arts degree, and a master’s degree in music.

Would you like fries with that?

As of last night, we simply don’t know what we have.  We don’t know whether the stock will rebound or whether the company in question will fold.  We don’t even know if Merrill-Lynch, which holds our accounts, will remain viable.  Things are changing so fast in the current economy, and there don’t seem to be any elevators going up.

Maybe we lost everything, maybe it’s just a rough week.

It sounds like a Hollywood formula, like maybe Green Acres without the farming talent or the laugh track.  It sounds like there’s a wide target on our backs for Schadenfreude, and maybe there is.

So.  At this late date, we’re about to find out what we are capable of.  May it be only good.

Although he is two, he is singular

The record will show that it’s been over a week since Gideon turned two.  It is testament to his energy, his rambunctiousness, his two-ness, that it’s taken me all this time to post a birthday tribute.

Gideon is a gregarious, charming, single-minded and thoroughly adorable boy.  When he is happy his giggles rise up like popcorn, and when he is insistent his decibel level is shocking, as in, “How can someone so small make so much noise?”  (He gets that last quality from his mother, poor fellow.)  When he is merely emphatic, he raises his voice slightly, purses his lips, and distorts his vowels: “I want some yoooooguuuuuuurt with hööööNEEEEEEY”.  An emphatic request tends to get results, once the laughter has died down.

He has a most unusual vocabulary, and some of his words defy orthography.  Blueberries are ba-loo-ba-lazies.  Strawberries are sa-babies.  It takes a finely trained linguist to distinguish between squirrel and challah, at least when Gidi says them.

He loves motorized vehicles, particularly dump trucks and garbage trucks.  He loves to go out for stroller walks to follow the trucks around.  He particularly loves to eat, and one of his favorite foods is chicken, as you will see below.

He is sweet and affectionate and sometimes when he is in my arms, he will grab the back of my neck, pull my face close, and give me a hundred kisses.  His first words upon waking up reflect his twin passions.  He either says, “Garbage truck!” or “Where’s Akiva?”

Here are some pictures I snapped on his birthday, as well as some I snapped the next day, when we celebrated with more family at a local park.

(Crossposted to wonderboys.wordpress.com.)

Tut, tut. It looks like rain.

We’ve had something like monsoon season here lately.  I was lucky to miss two weeks of it while we were in Michigan, but today we have a reprise.  Akiva is going to day camp only on Mondays and Wednesdays this month, so I’ve got both boys at home today.  They were already driving each other wild by 9:30 a.m., so I decided that, rain be damned, we were going out to the woods.

Dressed in their rain gear, they look completely adorable.  And getting out of the house and into nature always improves things.  We listened to the sounds of the rain and the birds, broke open pine cones to smell their aroma, jumped in puddles, and left trail markers à la Hansel & Gretel.

After getting completely soaked, we came home, changed into dry clothes, and made hot chocolate.  Other activities of the day included greeting the trash collector with applause (he took a bow and beeped the horn for the kids, it was awesome!), reading Blueberries for Sal, and making whole wheat pretzels.

(Cross-posted at wonderboys.wordpress.com.)

The dignity of work

My friend Julie introduced me to the above phrase.  I see it in Bill as he daily grows into his job.  He takes the work seriously, puts all his sincerity into doing it well, and is beginning to make progress.  He recently made a sale (of one of his own pieces) that is going to help us enormously with the kindergarten tuition.  Every day he works the possibilities and learns more about plying his trade.

I thought again of the dignity of work this morning as Gideon and I were garbage truck groupies.  There is nothing Gideon loves more than the garbage truck.  Tuesdays are practically festival days here as Gidi watches out the window (in bad weather) or waits vigil outside.  Today I managed to get my baking done early and the weather was glorious, so we grabbed the stroller and went out to find and follow the garbage truck.

The gentlemen working trash duty caught on quickly and smiled and waved at us.  At one point we pretended to race.  I thought about how I had briefly wanted to be a trash collector when I was a kid (in those days we said garbageman), and how my parents dismissed the idea outright, allergic even to the thought.  My parents’ point was that the job would be messy, stinky, and unpleasant.  Long hours, rough conditions, hard labor; the kind of job one gets when one can’t do anything else.  (I liked the idea of wind in my hair being an everyday occurrence.  Still do.)

There is dignity in this work.  Our society would be much diminished in the absence of people who help get rid of the stuff we don’t want.  Plus, trash collectors make a steady living and are everywhere admired by two-year-old boys and others.

Flow it, show it, long as G-d can grow it

Akiva has a new look.  I never thought he’d do this.  I can easily divide the world into two types of people: those who think I should be glad (or, heaven forbid, that it was my idea) and the few people who get me and know I sighed just a tiny bit as I let my boy make his own choice.

Here’s my grown-up boy.  Age 5.

In case you’re wondering, those splotches on his face are not some dread disease, but rather evidence of the mud puddle in which he and Gideon were playing when I snapped this picture.

While we’re on the topic of hair, herewith a sneak preview of Gideon with a goatee, courtesy of the same mud puddle.

Clarinet update

After Tuesday’s events, Akiva didn’t touch — or even mention — his clarinet.  Then, Friday morning, he decided to try again.  Sadly I wasn’t home when he started getting a sound out of the thing.  Bill said the grin was transcendent.  He’s been playing a lot since and is discovering new sounds all the time!  He loves it, and so do I!

I do have some video, but there are two problems with it: the file type is incompatible with wordpress, and I can’t figure out how to rotate it so he’s vertical.  I posted it for a couple of facebook friends, and if you want to be added to the list of people who can see it on my page, let me know.  It’s about 10 seconds long.  No biggie if you don’t care to see it…

Gaudeamus ligature

Over the past week or so, I have been making arrangements through freecycle to get Akiva a clarinet.  I got word yesterday that an instrument was available, and coordinated with the giver to pick it up this afternoon while Akiva was at a birthday party.  The woman kindly advised me of what ancillary items would be needed and miraculously I was able to fit in an errand to the music store this morning to get reeds, a beginner mouthpiece, and ligature.  (The last is that thingy that holds the reed to the mouthpiece.  I didn’t know either.)

Total expense: under $15.

When I dropped Akiva off at the party, I told him I would come back for him after I made a freecycle pickup.  He wanted to know whether it was for him and me to share or just for me.  I told him that it was to be his alone, and something he would have to take care of very seriously.  Although I had hoped to keep it as a surprise, he wanted to know right away what it was, once it was clear that it was for him.

The smile: priceless.

I believe there was even a fist pump.  He asked if it could be his forever, and when I told him yes, the smile got even bigger.  You should’ve seen the smile.

After the party, I took the boys and the instrument home.  The party bag was instantly forgotten, and Akiva asked if he could be the one to carry the clarinet into the house.  (Permission granted.  I had a ton of other stuff to carry, including said party bag.)

Not a moment too soon, I got the instrument assembled and gave it a squeak.  I handed it off to the boy who had been fantasizing for two years about being Glenn Dickson.  He blew.  Nothing happened.  He burst into tears.  “Ima, nothing happens.  And the reed tastes bad.  Give it back.  I don’t like it.”

My precious baby dissolved in full-hearted weeping in my arms.  This may be the first time (but surely not the last) that something he really wanted to do didn’t come easily for him.  I just held him and held him, and told him that if he really wants to learn the clarinet, he will learn it.

Oh the perfectionism.  Wonder where he got that.