peevish mama

It was only a matter of time. I suppose I was pretty much asking for it with all this old mommy/young mommy BS I’ve been slinging – acting like I’m all cool and lucky and relieved to be out of the fray. Today, I got a huge kick in the gut courtesy of one weepy baby girl sitting on a yoga mat. Apparently, I am not at all cool and lucky and relieved to be out of the fray. Thwak!

Oof.

I’ve been feeling discombobulated this fall. My more yogi type friends tell me that autumn is a time of transitions and imbalances. My more pragmatic type friends tell me I’m too hard on myself.

I don’t know what’s up, but I do know this: my insides were aching today as I watched this little bean hiccup her tears away after her mama ran out at the end of yoga because she heard her crying. Her eyes were all shiny and she had that offended look on her face. She sat against her mama with her legs splayed out in front of her, taking shuddering breaths but visibly comforted. It was that easy. She simply . . .  so simply . . . needed her mama.

She reminded me of Devil Baby, yes. But she also reminded me what it was like to feel like a mama with my body. My innards, my cells, my arms, my breasts. Being a mother used to be such a physical, tactile thing. So much so, that it could get suffocating. I remember wondering: will I ever eat a meal without a baby in my lap or on my boob? Will I ever be able to stretch out in my bed?

But now. The ache. I’m not one of those women who’s going to get a baby fix with someone else’s baby. I wasn’t going to be able to cootchi coo this one and walk away satisfied. My body wants my baby. The realization that I will sooner feel that satisfaction with a grand child than with my own new baby is utterly sad to me.

I cried all the way home. It’s over. It’s so over.

I swear, I’m riding an exhausting, heady and soul satisfying wave of love lately. It’s only exhausting because apparently, for me, love involves a bit of carousing.

Over the last few days I’ve celebrated the election and the fact that our state was the FIRST of about 30 to shoot down a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Love Minnesota.

I’ve also attended my first Bat Mitzvah and was overwhelmed by Lady Doctor Poodle’s beautiful, poised, spiritual 13 year old daughter and the lovely way the Jewish faith celebrates this coming of age. Love the Jews.

I’ve danced in the beautiful kitchen of a new friend with a bevy of fabulous gay men and leggy ladies to again celebrate the Vote No victory. Love the Gays. Love dancing. Love champagne.

I recovered from said revelry by going to Sunstreet Breads with my kids in the morning and feasting on a fried chicken biscuit and gravy wonder of satisfaction and deliciousness. Always game for indulging mama’s need for some solid grub, my squirrels were good company on a gray Sunday morning. Chatty, mellow, hungry and funny they actually came up with a plan to watch a movie when we got home. Footloose 2 (ridiculous), blankets, puppy pile – all before noon. Love some hibernation.

And today, the snow flew. I’m feeling back to normal. Almost. But also very blessed right now. This is what I’m thinking for this winter: keep it simple, slow down, notice everything, be happy and celebrate life whenever I can.

Enjoy this beautiful song. I can’t get enough of her voice. Love is Won by Lia Ices.

In honor of our national election . . . get it? I know, LAME. But these guys are anything but.

I’ve been meaning to throw The National some Music Monday love forever. They are a long time favorite of both Dash and mine. Both albums, Boxer and High Violet, are on frequent rotation at our house.

Their music is, flat out, beautiful. And on this tense, gray, damp autumn day it sounds just about perfect.

Best holiday of the year. Hope you and your little peeps had a good one. Could it have been more gorgeous out?

For us, those golden years of all our kids trick or treating together are fast retreating in the rear view mirror. Seconds after I took this photo, Saint James was off, quite literally, like a bat out of hell to meet up with his buddy.

I stood there holding my camera watching his tiny gold lamé clad body and giant afro streaking away. He yelled love ya! without turning around.

What can you do? This is simply how it goes.

All good.

A couple years ago, when I was auditioning to write for Simple Good and Tasty, they asked for a picture. Of me. Jesus! I thought. What does my face have to do with anything?

I’ve got tons of pictures on my laptop, but as I scrolled through vacations, lazy days in the backyard, snowmen shots and birthdays, I realized I wasn’t actually in very many of them. My first reaction was to blame poor, hapless Doctor Dash. I swear, sometimes that guy does not know what dramas, unilateral brawls, injuries and slights have unfolded in the time it takes him to walk down stairs and say hello to me in the sunroom. He is a patient man. But also, there are a TON of pictures of him and he looks like a handsome devil in most of them. It’s totally unfair.

It’s like I don’t even exist! I railed.

What about this one?

UG! That’s hideous!

What about this one?

Humongous zit!

What about this one?

Next.

What about this one?

Could I look more olive green?

What about this one?

Double chin.

What about this one?

Fugly.

What about this one?

Horse face.

That is only a mild exaggeration. Turns out, there were actually some pictures of me, just none that I liked. And as I thought about it more, I realized I’m usually the one holding the camera, which makes it very hard to be in the picture. But if I am being completely honest with myself, there are also many times Dash might have offered to take my picture and I might have demurred. After all, I am far from picture ready most of the time. Make up, hair, outfit and mood rarely come together so that I’m jumping in front of the camera. I rarely put pictures of myself on this blog because it feels showy and self indulgent and also, post-worthy pics of moi are about as rare as hens teeth.

So when I read this LOVELY piece by Allison Tate over at the Huffington post, I thought Oh my god, she is SO right. She writes:

“I’m everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won’t be here — and I don’t know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now — but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.

When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don’t look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her — her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That’s the mother I remember. My mother’s body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn’t care that she didn’t look like a model. She was my mama.”

I just love that. The idea that your mama’s body is the vessel that carries the memories of childhood. The idea that our physical beings are beloved to someone, even if not to ourselves some of the time. I am all about women, mamas, being kinder and gentler to themselves and yet I’m not sure I practice what I preach.

So here’s a reminder, for you and for me – get in the picture, mama.

Words by Anaïs Nin hand lettered by artist Lisa Congdon via Explore.

Boy do I hope this to be true. If you had told me when I graduated from college, or on my wedding day, or when Saint James was born, that I would be “living the confusions” so vividly at age 42, I would have rolled my eyes. Or I would have opened my mouth to argue, then shut it for lack of words. Or I would have scoffed. Maybe I would have laughed. But I don’t think I would have believed you.

And yet, here I am. So confused. And confused about being confused. I thought that “settling down” through the various degrees of it that I went through (dating, law school, marriage, kids) might somehow settle the matter of what I was to do with myself. I thought my path and my life was set. What could be more time consuming and fulfilling, after all, than raising a family with your best friend? Shouldn’t I be content?

It turns out there’s that pesky matter of the self – that despite being consumed and used up and fully immersed and engaged, wrung out and sometimes completely exasperated – just keeps popping up and saying Hey, man! What about me?

Don’t hear me wrong. I am happy. But am I content? That’s what that wily, whiny, stubborn self keeps asking.

Fall has always felt like a time of new beginnings for me – surely a remnant from back-to-schools of yore. These days, it’s when I climb out of the messy sweaty frantic 24-7 sprint that is summer with my kids and get a chance to think about what I do, what I could do, what I should do. You know, besides being a mom.

I think all the time. I think when I’m shopping for food and cooking it in big pots. I think when I’m at yoga and driving my kids. I think in the shower and when I walk my dog. I think when I’m reading, when I’m writing. My brain feels like a beat up old tennis ball and I am just bouncing it, bouncing it, bouncing it against the garage. Over and over. And nothing changes. Nothing becomes clear.

Maybe this is part of the process. Part of the answer.

I fucking hope so.

I love this project by Leah Dieterich called thxthxthx. She calls it a daily exercise in gratitude and her ability to siphon out the smallest and most inconsequential things and moments worthy of thanks is just genius. I couldn’t stop reading. It’s funny, touching, silly, deep and honest all at once.

Lovely. And just too tempting to pipe in.

Dear Rain:

Thanks showing up and giving me permission to hole up inside without feeling guilty. Plus, you smell awesome.

xo,

peevish

Dear Coffee:

Even though I ignore you the rest of the day, you are consistently faithful to me in the morning and for that I thank you. You wake me up, you make me happy and most of all, you make me feel super industrious. Together we get the shit done that I would never have the motivation to do later in the day. You rock.

Love,

peevish

Dear Vino Blanco and iTunes:

I don’t think I could cook dinner night after night without you – especially you, iTunes. My kitchen would be a lonely place without you both.

Your friend,

peevish

Dear Devil Baby:

Thank you for being the first of my kids to indulge my love of Annie the Musical. Watching you concentrate with your ears to learn the words to Tomorrow almost made me cry. Hearing you riff and scat your own version while you put toothpaste on your toothbrush was even better. I hope you always find a way to make music.

All of my love,

peevish

Dear October:

Thank you for Halloween and harvest moons. Everyone loves September, but I love you because you are a little dark.

Muah,

peevish

Dear Sugar Maple that I See Every Morning:

You are a stunner. Not sure if anyone has ever told you that, but oh.

Yours,

peevish

Neil Young sounds like these Autumn days we’re having. He sounds like heartache and a slowly retreating sun distilled into music. I love him. Always have and always will. I listened to a lot of Neil Young when I was young and I feel like it let my heart glimpse what it would feel like to be older. It still works like that for me. There is no one like him.

In this video from 1971, Young plays Heart of Gold and tells the audience it’s a new song. Can you imagine? He also fusses around pulling different harmonicas out of various pockets, making small talk – just the stuff that makes a live performance so compelling.

Enjoy.

I’m not exactly sure when I became an old mommy, but I am sure that it has happened. Maybe it was when Saint James became a middle schooler. Maybe it was when my Devil Baby went off to kindergarten. Or was it even before that? When she was potty trained? Or when she refused to be carried around on my hip anymore? Surely, a fiendish toddler hell bent on running on her own juice shouldn’t eject one out of young mommy hood prematurely. Surely, all that chasing and cursing and eyes in the back of one’s head has to count for something.

The transition from one to the other happened without anybody noticing, including me. But now that I’ve noticed, I can’t help but wonder at it. The young mommies are the ones pushing strollers, anxiously waiting for their kindergartners to come streaking out of school while holding a baby on a hip, maybe a dog on a leash. They look tired, perhaps, but they can handle it. They are young.

The old mommies either do not bother to pick up their kids at school and let them take the bus, or more likely are waiting in the car ready to peel out to make it to soccer or violin or Irish step dancing on time. The old mommies don’t look tired unless they happen to be hung over. Which is good because they are old.

Also, the old mommies are assiduously trying to avoid any eye contact with the young mommies. It’s not because we don’t like the young mommies, it’s not because we don’t think their babies are cute. It’s because we are scarred from our memories of being young mommies. Not enough time has passed to soften the edges of those exhausting years with a golden patina.

The young mommies, mired so deep in relentless baby raising and toddler chasing, don’t even realize how hard it is. The old mommies didn’t either. But when one emerges from it and starts to feel a bit of relief from the constant physical hands-on work, one suffers a bit of PTSD. An old mommy shudders when she drives by a park and sees a young mommy pushing a baby on a swing, staring off in the distance or making desperate small talk with another young mommy. An old mommy can spot a “playgroup” from a mile away and it hurts her heart a little to remember how much she used to look forward to her playgroup. How polite and chipper everyone was. How relieved she was when someone told the truth about something.

You see, an old mommy remembers how monotonous it can be to be a young mommy – how isolating and lonely it is at times. And so we avert our gaze and concentrate on the business of being an old mommy, which is pretty fun because we get to rush around, being really busy getting our gigantic, smelly, interesting kids all the places they need to be. Old mommies are on the fly and relish the mobility after so many years of being stuck – by naps, schedules and the all around pain-in-the-ass-ness of having to buckle people into carseats.

We old mommies imagine that we look stylish and windblown as we rush through the hall to pluck a child for an orthodontist appointment. We have time to wash our hair, after all. We are experts at setting up complex multi-family carpools and smile knowingly at the van load of pre-pubescent boys rapping in back. Maybe we wave at the young mommies killing time after school at the playground, but we’re probably too busy typing the address of that soccer field in Chanhassen into our iPhones.

Obviously, this is a caricature of two stages of motherhood, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that time and hindsight expose those early years for what they were: tiring.

I wonder if the moms of high school and college age kids are looking at us right now, shaking their heads at our preposterous calendars and all our DRIVING. Maybe they’re laughing at us because we don’t know what it is to have to buy gallons upon gallons of milk every few days. Maybe we only think we’ve smelled smelly cleats. Maybe we have no clue what it is to deal with teenage angst, attitude, rage or euphoria. Try sex, drinking, drugs on for issues they may scoff at us. Try having your child hate you.

I bet I look quite the fool driving with my windows down and my music blasting and my car full of polite seventh graders. I bet I do.

Check back in 10 years.

I’m a sucker for a good documentary and this one looks great. Musings, meditations and analysis of the most basic thing we all want: happiness.

The question of what makes you happy is a good one to ask and answer for yourself. The question itself kind of makes me happy because it’s a reminder that yes, we have some control over this. And frankly, half the battle is simply reminding yourself to look and then knowing where to look. It’s all around us – begging to be noticed so it can work its magic on our souls.

It’s the Jewish New Year and it’s also the new school year, so in celebration of new beginnings, here are some of mine in no particular order:

1. Loud music

2. Dancing

3. Feeding my family

4. Watching my dog romp with another dog

5. Soccer goals

6. My book club

7. A great pair of boots or jeans

8. Knowing that my siblings are finding their loves

9. When cousins get to hang out

10. Doctor Dash making pizza in a frilly apron

11. Two for one bloody marys and the ladies that go with them

12. The change of seasons

13. Children singing

14. Yoga

15. Tiny dancing

16. Cool graffiti/street art

17. Salty cured meats

18. When Saint James roams for hours on his bike with his buddies . .  and then comes home, winded and happy.

video via Cup of Jo

You know the saying about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts? What if each part is SO great that it’s hard to imagine what might happen if you sum it to anything at all? That’s how I felt going into this concert on Saturday night. I felt like anything could happen.

David Byrne and Annie Clark are a match made in heaven. Cerebral, off kilter, deeply musical, borderline geeky and profoundly cool – it is no wonder and also lucky happenstance that they ended up collaborating with each other. I think a lot of people thought that this was David Byrne’s way of launching a protégé, of holding up a worthy newbie and saying pay attention people – I am passing my baton of awesomeness to this woman! But I think their partnerships is more balanced than that.

He is the elder statesman (still smooth as silk despite a small paunch that was revealed when he took off his blazer) and she is young, but they seem like equals with a true creative relationship. Clark brings as much to the table as Byrne and that is an INSANE thing to say when you’re talking about DAVID FREAKING BYRNE! And not for nothing, there’s no baton passing happening. Byrne is not going anywhere.

Their album, Love this Giant, is heady and challenging. I gave it a few listens in advance of the show and there is nothing easy about it. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the concert. They had a giant brass band moving in carefully choreographed routines behind and around the two of them while we were blown away by giant sound, ethereal vocals and confounding lyrics. But the chaos started to take form and settle into these really cool songs that made sense to the ear. After that beautiful show, the album sounds way less obtuse. I’ve got it on repeat.

Personally, I think it’s flattering that they decided to kick off this tour in Minneapolis. From the moment they took the stage they were pretty much saying We’re doing this, people! Keep up! - also super flattering to an audience. And when I say flattering, I really mean lucky. We were lucky to be there, plain and simple.

I didn’t expect this to be a standing-up show and I’m so glad it was because we got to dance. How could you not in the presence of those two freaky dancers? I. Love. How. They. Move. Annie does this robotic shuffle that allows us to shelve her fashion model looks, for a moment, so that we can fully appreciate her art and her virtuosic guitar playing. David Byrne moves just like David Byrne. He simply dances – it’s a physical manifestation of his music, his body’s way of translating the songs. They are both without guile and clearly doing nothing to conform to anyone else’s idea of what something should sound like or look like.

They are both true originals. I’m so glad they found each other. Take a look at Who from their album and listen for those horns –  a simultaneously charming and bad-ass third voice on Saturday night. But you’ll see it’s Annie and David you can’t stop watching. I want more.

I love the beginning of the school year. Maybe it’s a residual feeling from my youth, but it always feels like a fresh start. New kicks, new box of crayons, new teacher, new tries for new things. I sense that my kids feel it too. Despite the protestations at the end of the summer, they seem game. They’re popping out of bed in the morning and bubbling over with stories in the evening (the girls are, anyway). Things are still settling into place – we’re all figuring out what to do, where to go and when, how to do it.

New this year is my drive to Saint James’ school at the crack o’. This is my view every morning. Sometimes those big red shoes slide off the dashboard and the sun visor goes down so he can check his hair, but mostly this is what I see. I drink my first cup of coffee, we listen to music, few words are exchanged.

Dash doesn’t understand why I didn’t pay for the bus to take him and I still might when the snow flies. For right now, though, I like this view a lot. This is found time with my kid. Last year, we were both asleep at this hour. Now we get fifteen minutes of hanging out blissfuly devoid of carpool boys, gnarly traffic and chatty younger sisters.

Saint James doesn’t realize it, but I’m gathering up these little blocks of time and I’m making a little pile and then I’m going to build something. And I think it’s going to be good.

Now that many of us are finding the time to actually have a thought . . .

Via Lydia

So, Saint James has started a new school this year and by the end of the day, I am just beside myself to hear how it’s going. I wonder about him constantly, as he navigates new hallways with strange kids and (egads!) high schoolers looming about. I wonder about his teachers. I wonder who he sits with at lunch. I wonder how he even finds the lunchroom. I wonder if he knows where to go for soccer. I wonder if he bought a planner at the office. I wonder if he’s met any kids.

Today was his first day. But I managed to stuff a whole lotta wonderin’ into one day.

And then Doctor Dash gets to pick him up while I’m on girl duty, so I miss any minivan confessions that might have occurred. When I FINALLY get to see my son, whom I’ve been wondering so much about, I get the total brush off. He is nothing but a monosyllabic sweaty middle schooler who just HAS to get his homework done before soccer.

Sheesh.

So Dash offers to fill me in, escorting me into the sun room, but I pick a fight, so peeved am I to be left out of EVERYTHING. And so he says forget it and walks away. Leaving me as I am. Still wondering about EVERYTHING and knowing NOTHING.

Twenty minutes later, I’m on the laptop and in walks Saint James and the first thing he says is: my religion teacher is a triplet!!! Like it’s the best thing ever. I sit up at attention, think better of it and slump back down, careful to keep my laptop open. You know. So I don’t look too interested. I don’t want to spook him.

And he starts to talk. And he answers my questions. And I find out everything. And I’m left wondering nothing.

All I had to do was back off.

I have finally accepted the fact that it is impossible to go to Target just ONE time during back to school season. It has never, ever happened and it never, ever will. No matter what you do, no matter when you go, no matter how many lists you bring with you, you will never ever EVAH kill multiple birds with one stone. There will always be that stretchy book cover that brings you back.

It takes many stones. Many, many stones.