Whirlwind Wedding Weekend

October 19, 2008 | awake,Be Married

 

My sentiments exactly….

Setbacks

June 4, 2008 | awake,Be Married,Be Merry,Because of God

Next week, I’ll have 8 months sober. As a good friend reminded me recently, once you’ve put in significant time working on something, it would be a mistake to toss it all away over an old pattern, or person, no matter how alluring.

The thing about paying attention and trying to live more honestly, is that you have more accountability to yourself. It’s a good thing, but it often interferes with that old fun of “following one’s heart” (translation: doing whatever the hell you want if it makes you happy).

I’ll not claim anything even close to improvement or clarity or life is perfect, but I will say that sobriety and following a spiritual program is something I cherish now… sometimes even more than having fun, or following my natural inclinations and instincts.

Plus? I’m getting too old for this shit.

Today at Babble: When Parents Talk ‘Street’ 

Dare

April 25, 2008 | Ask Me Something,awake,Be Married,Because of God,Blues,Reds

Sometimes I feel like a transvestite trapped in a straight woman’s body. Heels? They should be high high high. Makeup? Sparkly, heavy, and colorful. And dresses? Yes yes yes.

There has been much talk on the ‘sphere lately about women who deign to write personal things on blogs about their children, or feelings, or political beliefs… About how the act of creating art is so devalued and fetishised in our society that anyone who even dares use the word “art” or “muse” is chased with sticks.

Especially in a day and age where the Internet cloaks people in enough anonymity that they feel free to let loose their mean subterranean rage. Don’t believe me? Check out the rage this little opinion about $4 gas evoked…

Self-expression, whether sparkly gaudy makeup, religious beliefs, writing, or spouting opinions is a dangerous and necessary act. If one has the courage to speak from the heart, after the kids and the marriages and the mortgages tell us we better shape up and act like a lady (or at least act “mature), the pressure to keep it all tamped down is pretty strong. But let’s not fool ourselves, also scary as hell.

So today I dare you to do something that is from your heart. For you. Some small secret place you’ve been waiting to open up and tell someone about.

Do you dare?

If nothing else, go share her wonderful news!

The Veil of Secrecy

March 12, 2008 | Be Married,Be Merry,Reds

Mamma Loves recently discussed the taboo of writing about marriage. Many people (rightly) shy away from talking about anything but the good things about marriage for fear of recrimination, causing needless pain to others, or good old fashioned privacy concerns.

But whatELVIS, some things need to be discussed, people! And there are ways of writing through the questions and doubts without betraying one’s spouse.

Those of us feeling like lost lambs in the wilderness need the help and camaraderie of those of you who seem like you know what you’re doing.

I think the stakes get higher when married becomes married with children (obviously) and I don’t know about you, but I get a HUGE stomach ache every time I hear of another marriage failing, another child or children embarking on the two house tango… It’s easy to assume or worry that other people’s choices are thoughtlessly undertaken.

And ever since becoming a mother, I have zero boundaries about other children. If a child 1/2 mile away falls and skins his knee, or falls off his bike or rides her bike without a helmet, my gut is stabbed clean through. And I’ll tell you, now that I’m wide awake the pain is acute.

In any event, raising children and being in love seem like two quite distinct activities. Two things that I’ve never personally experienced concomitantly… In my world and heart, you are either cleaning the floor, or having multiple orgasms… never/ rarely both (metaphorically speaking of course).

Maybe arranged marriages are smarter after all?

***

Incidentally, I now have 5 months sober. Thank you to everyone for your loving support. It is definitely finally getting easier.

Marry Marry, Quite Contrary

February 29, 2008 | awake,Be Married

This article in the March Atlantic Monthly is stirring quite a controversy. In it, Lori Gottlieb declares that single women with children should marry whoever… The premise is “Mr. Good Enough” is a more realistic goal than “Mr. Right.”

I think this is akin to that Newsweek piece 20 years ago which claimed women of a certain age were more likely to get killed by a terrorist than marry. In short, a scare tactic to encourage women to wholeheartedly lower their expectations.

On the other hand, she does have a point. When does our desire for someone to help us raise the children outstrip our desire for someone to help us raise our roof?

We have a 20-something writer at Strollerderby and her perspective on it is quite radically different than mine.

******

For a laugh today, check out Cracked’s Top 40 most inappropriate children’s book covers…. (this is one of them)

Between Light & Dark

February 26, 2008 | Ask Me Something,awake,Be Married,Reds

Part of the twelve step program I’m practicing includes a “fearless and thorough” moral inventory of one’s life. If you’re past the age of 20 and have a pulse, this can be a daunting prospect, though the details of the inventory aren’t as important of the practice of it.

Its essence is the consideration of one’s own responsibility in every single relationship or significant event in one’s life. Reflection not as terrified clothes-rending remorse, but as a sober and serious accounting of one’s past actions and their impacts on the lives of those around you.

The next step is to talk these things through with another human being, anxiety over which is far worse than the actual experience. In any event, this list of things to be sorry about, become aware of, leaves me feeling in a funny limbo between light and dark.

Dreams of flying and of meeting up with ex-husbands and boyfriends happen nearly every night and I awaken at times wondering where I am, which part of my life I’ve surfaced into… Sometimes the dream person and I are laughing over our hard times (in retrospect only are they amusing), sometimes they’re yelling my faults out to me so that I wake up curled in a ball of misery.

And so it goes.

In the end I wonder who it is I’ve been dating and marrying all these years. A darker part of myself? Someone to punish and excoriate after loving lightly for awhile? If it’s true that wherever you go there you are, then I mate and date over and over again with the same person, the same man.

Someone who loves me in part, scorns me in part, but someone who can never know and never understand, because I won’t let him in.  I simply don’t know how.

traveling heart

February 16, 2008 | Be Married,Be Merry,Because of God

i’m in tucson arizona this week visiting my parents in their 55+ mobile home park. i’ve often declared my refusal to travel anywhere with young children, and while the flight here somewhat proved my point, and the cranky transition to a different crib was rough for v, a few days in we’re actually getting some rest and having fun. this landscape is so vastly different than my green, watery, rainy, cloudy home that it feels somewhat like mars. mars with piped in latino music and pinata parties in brown grounded parks. everywhere brown and hills and cactus (“pactus” according to v).

transitions abound at home… so getting away, achieving a change in scenery seemed wise.. if only for the novelty factor. i’ve always craved novelty but lacked the adrenaline need to jump from planes (as some like) or race the bulls in pamplona. change of scene usually fits the bill, and if i can bring my children along (where their fun with grandparents means i get time to myself), then i forestall that weird displaced homesickness i suffer from when i travel without them.

as it turns out, one can be quite a gypsy spirit and still be mother to three young children. this is something it took quite awhile for me to come to terms with. despite my sassy mommy lingo, i felt weird fighting wanderlust when they needed me so much at home.

they’re getting older now. older! finally! they can keep themselves entertained and even slightly fed (if necessary) and only one left in diapers. as i approach 40, 40 40 40 40 40 40!!!, i have some time to consider my options. will i travel to london? go with michelle to a spa? go on a solo retreat to a beach somewhere? will this pit of dread leave once the day and the age has finally been achieved?

for now, things in my life are stable. the children are happy. i’m getting moreso. the larger questions that have plagued me for so long sit in a sort of hibernation.. until my brain and spirit get clearer and stronger. i still have little to no understanding about what makes a relationship, a marriage, happy. but perhaps i’m not one of those who comes to these things by anything but the long way. i dream that someday i might be kissed by that particular bird of happiness. until then, i have a way of life that is good enough.. happy enough for me.

last week, i had the good fortune to visit my sweet college friend and her beautiful family in rhode island. here is a picture of a marriage that works… and i of course observed it closely… like an anthropologist… or an arctic explorer… or someone who hasn’t a clue.

Legacy

November 21, 2007 | awake,Be Married,Blues,Every Mama Needs...

We’re separating, which either means we’re resetting a bad cycle of anger and recrimination, we’re ending the marriage, we’re hanging on for dear life, or we’re merely hedging against inevitable divorce. The meaning and implications vary from minute to minute. The only clear thing is keeping life as regular and predictable for the three girls as possible, keeping them busy with school, and their familiar surroundings, and apart from the turmoil in our relationship.

There is no question in my mind this arrangement has long since become a source of familial anxiety and untenable stress. Add to that new sobriety and the usual challenges of raising three young children, and the family pot is boiling over, burning, and setting off screaming fire alarms.

Should our marriage ever recover from this and our family reconvene, it will be a heartening and inspiring story. It will give people power over their sense of futility and courage in the face of doubt.

But right now we have no such story.

B will leave for awhile, still seeing the girls regularly. I will stay with them in our house, which is warm and safe in the winter, spacious and light with pretty colors and double-paned windows.

I’ll watch them run around the kitchen island, the familiar pattern tracing an invisible path on the silly fussy hardwood floors. We’ll talk over the matters concerning 5 year olds at breakfast — the Christmas play, whether the tooth fairy will leave another $2, what they want for their birthday — and I’ll look at them closely and see this time as a flicker that I cannot grasp or cling to but merely watch float by, already gone. If I close my eyes and open them, they’ll be beautiful laughing 16 year olds rolling eyes and avoiding my presence, but knowing I’m there. They’ll talk on the phone, they’ll argue about curfew, they’ll treat me like beloved wallpaper.

But will they love themselves? Will they feel that they’re beloved? When I look at their sweet faces with small traces of their babyhood still visible around the soft chins and chubby hands, I can see that this is the most important thing I’ll ever do. That failure here will haunt me. I have been given these amazing girls.

What riches!

And how would someone treat such a gift…

I’ve so often joked and pattered on about the problems and challenges of parenting… the drag of it all. But in the last weeks, I really understand that all that hip chat is hiding the essential truth of my life today. I love my daughters more than myself. More than my husband. More than life.

But it is also true that I am completely blinded by the instinct to protect and could be overreacting and using this as an exit strategy for a marriage about which I’ve had ambivalent and negative feelings for a long long time.

Whether this is courage or folly will be revealed…

#44

Custodial Parent

November 17, 2007 | awake,Be Married,Because of God,Blues

I share joint custody of the twins with their father and his lovely wife. Ours is not a particularly unusual arrangement these days. Though B and I have the twins most of the time (they go to their dad’s every other weekend), it’s a little like having a back-up team. When our team flags, they come in for relief and advice and perspective. We all share love and concern for the twins and as a group make quite a successful parental pod. I won’t deny that having a grillion parents and grandparents and two homes must at times get confusing for the twins, and the long-term impacts of this arrangement have yet to be seen. But even with that, I’m convinced the girls are lucky because they have so many people (legions!) who love and cherish them.

When I married B 3 1/2 years ago, I longed for a happy ending. A safe and loving home for my daughters and myself. I was partly making up for what I saw then as their deficient life — one with a single mama and a single (at the time) daddy, who were still angry at each other and unable to put them first. I was searching for a port in the storm and I found one. For awhile.

My mistakes this go-round have been many and grave. The biggest one being not recognizing that my neglect and abuse of the marriage would ultimately doom it to rocky shoals.

This doesn’t justify the manner in which the twins have become recipients of marital frustration. Not. One. Bit. Children are innocent and need protection, care, and love, regardless of how low down and struggling we feel.

I will pay, have paid, for my mistakes…but not today.

Today I have a reprieve and am feeling serenity and gratitude my daughters and I have a loving extended family, a home, a port in the storm no matter what happens.

It comes with us now, wherever we go.

#39

Girls, Girls, Girls

November 5, 2007 | awake,Be Married,Be Merry

This weekend my girl D and I drove to Vancouver B.C., cosmo town for cosmo girls, for a few nights away… We talked, we spa-ed, we shopped, we ate (especially me), and we did not drink.  The concept of vacationing without drinking seem(ed) completely ridiculous until recently, but it really worked out pretty well.

I fantasized about red high heel boots and enjoyed looking around immensely but did not buy anything but books…

Me and the puddins were happily reunited Sunday evening over lasagna, oatmeal, salad, and toast… and I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be the mama in this house..

Day #27