savagemama

A few nights ago we set an alarm to wake us up as the lunar eclipse was in full swing. I woke up before it went off. I opened the curtain to the moon in full shadow. I could hear Eliza stirring so I scooped her up and brought her to the window.

“I want to show you something,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“Look at the moon,” I told her as I held her in front of the window.

“Where?” she said. I pointed up toward the roofline we could see from the window. She stood, both hands on the windowsill looking into the sleepy darkness.

“I just want to lay with you,” she said. [Read more]

This time of year, chaos seems to be the catalyst that drives us from one day to the next.

Yesterday looked like this:

I woke up at six and wrote a freelance story before the kids woke up. When they did I filled juice cups, made cinnamon toast, dressed them in layers and got them in the car by 9 a.m. I dropped Eliza off at preschool staying long enough to work a puzzle with her, then grabbed the two two year olds I watch one day a week and ushered them toward the car. With three little girls I went to the post office, then the grocery store, then finally retreated to my house.
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When I was in graduate school a friend and I drove from Oregon to Montana for a little vacation. It was the summer between our two years at the University of Oregon and we needed a change of scenery. We weren’t really sure what we were doing in school, with our lives so we loaded up my car that September and drove straight toward the fire season of 2000. U of O is on the quarter system and we didn’t have to be back in Eugene until nearly October so we made the best of our mid-twenties angst and set to the road. In the weeks before we left I remember getting emails from Jenny catching me up on her trip to see her parents, her brother. Often they’d end with a simple M O N T A N A lest we forget our end of summer of road trip.
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Really, can we ever be thankful enough? Can we say it too often? Can we spell it out too many times? I don’t think so.

This year, I’m thankful for a lot of things but here are just a few.

I am thankful for Seth. When you clear away all the complications of our life together, I still like walking down unfamiliar streets in beautiful cities with him. There’s no one with which I’d rather share a plate of mussels steeped in bacon, cilantro and garlic. I am thankful he still takes pictures of me when I’m not looking. I am thankful I wake up to him. Every day.
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Cooper looked up at me with big hazel eyes and said, “I want a snack at your house.”

“What was that?” I said.

“I want to go to your house,” he said.

This sweet little guy, who lives a few blocks away, that I pick up from preschool on Wednesdays along with Eliza and Logan, the daughter of a dear friend, caught me off guard today. I knelt down, ran a hand through his blond curls.

“I’ve got popcorn and hot chocolate,” I say. “Let’s go?”

He nods yes and heads toward the door.

If you had told me 20 years ago that I would have a house full of kids, mine and those who belong to other people, I wouldn’t have believed you.
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Today I got down on my knees with a bowl of hot soapy water. As I cleaned vomit off my daughter’s car seat I started talking to Erica Jong out loud on my front porch.

Jong, a novelist, writer of non-fiction and second-wave feminist icon, asks in this Wall Street Journal op-ed published this weekend if attachment parenting is creating a prison for the modern woman. Is it, she asks, victimizing the baby-wearing, cloth diapering types and drop kicking them right back to 1950s? She calls the whole culture of modern motherhood a giant step backwards. She calls breastfeeding and sleeping with one’s baby into question, she even takes a few stabs at adoptive parents and Dr. Sears himself. To Jong, apparently, no one is sacred.
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My neighbor Matt roasts the coffee I drink every morning. My other neighbors, Tim and Lindsay, make the soap that Eliza and Lucille fight over in the tub each night. Martin and Joellen, who are neighbors with each other, bring us this coffee and soap once a week through their local grocery delivery business. When I can save my pennies I go to Matt’s wife Amy’s boutique downtown and buy myself a pair of jeans that make me feel hip. On the rare occasion that I have an hour to kill like I did today, I go around the corner from Amy’s boutique to Garth’s bookstore, sit on the floor and read. His band played at our wedding and he doesn’t seem to mind.
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Sometimes, I just miss my husband. Even though we live in the same house, share a bed, eat from the same table. Still, I miss him.

So often we move around each other: he steps to the right so I can get the peanut butter out of the cupboard for Eliza, he steps left so I can get the milk out of the fridge for Lucille. I move back so he can get around me and wrangle the dogs back into the house when they’ve escaped. I stand on the toilet, two little girls at my feet, so he can get his toothbrush from under the sink. We move in the same space but we are accomplishing an endless list of tasks, meeting the needs of our children until we fall, exhausted, into bed at night. We talk in passing about important things. I think we are both seasoned professionals in the twenty-second sound bite.
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Yesterday I had what my friend Jess calls an honest conversation. With my clothes.

A blisteringly honest conversation.

These things, I’ve found, are never easy.

After my little mid-afternoon, I-pick-up-the-kids-in-two-hours come to Jesus I have to say, I learned a few things.

First of all, when pants do not fit, they are uncomfortable. Not a newsflash, really, but for some reason I had to relearn this. I found a few pairs on the small side that have been hanging in my closet lonely and untouched since the Clinton Administration. I found two post-baby pairs that remind me of nothing but dripping milk. These were the first things to go.
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Find TV – CBS. SC is beating AL

This is the text I got last Saturday afternoon from my dad. It was a little jarring on two counts. One: He doesn’t text. Two: My alma mater seemed to be beating the number one ranked team in the country in college football.

R U crazy? I texted back.
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