We survived the Megasnowmagodzillawinterweek that was February over here. Just barely. Now we March through Mud Month with our best sparkly light-up galooshes. We endured a few cabin-fever days where we were actually stuck inside the house. Beast had just gotten back from a ski vacation in Tahoe and apparently that was as much snow as she needed this winter, because she REFUSED to go out in it. So indoors. Just indoors.
I can't tell you how much I rejoice every day that preschool is open again. I love my Chayita, but kid-creature cannot be contained in a single person or a single location. If we're at home I must be carrying her (or holding her by the feet and spinning her around or letting her stand on my head and touch the ceiling OR hiding in a closet with her on my shoulder OR balancing her on a giant ball OR....). If we're home we NEED to go out. If we're out, we must talk about where we're going. As in "where we going mommy?" The entire time. Even when we're already somewhere. As soon as we're one place we must be somewhere else. If we're at a store it's MOMMY BUY SOMETHING. If we've bought something, then where are we going next? It had better not be home. WHAT ARE YOU DOING MOMMY? WHAT'S ON THE CEILING? WHAT ARE YOU WEARING ON YOUR BUTT MOMMY??? WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE TOILET MOMMY????
Naptime is my sanity respite, hanging on for just a few more bloody months. You'd think naptime was some kind of euphemism for execution. Despite her penchant for twenty million questions, Chaya also likes to keep it mysterious when it comes to any actual expressions of misery or pain. Which adds to all kinds of fun ambiguity.
If any other individual is around suddenly it's NO MOMMY and I'm banished to another room or told to leave the house with the occasional "I DON'T LIKE MOMMY ANYMORE." Mommy is learning to... uh... share mommy's loved ones? Trying to teach Chaya perhaps about sharing and taking turns even with friends and family.
Rejection is rife. But if it's just me, I'm on. All the time. And if I'm not on and Chaya's off somewhere by herself not wanting me around... there's a reason. And it's nefarious.
Needless to say letting her run off some energy with her very good friends (all of whom are a single gestalt entity named Dita in Chaya's vocabulary) is necessary for us both.
And having a weekly date night in which Chaya gets to go out with Pam and I get to see my husband while NOT either being banished or lovingly drooled upon and face smacked while the adorable pixie yells "MOMMY are you distracted" is increasingly vital.
Though I admit sometimes the preschool "break" makes me feel even more restless and listless when I'm not cramming in all my myriad appointments (more medical testing on the GI stuff, more PT on the physical stuff, more massages, more guided whatever for anxiety - yadda yadda yadda) into those time slots. Just enough time to stare into the abyss and realize just how tenuous my sense of self cohesion is these days. I'm very tired, but I'm increasingly moorless. The half seconds of restless stillness make that more apparent.
Last Friday between two appointments I waded through pleasant conversational diversion between a woman just 6 months pregnant and another with an 8 year old. An interesting journey along my personal spectrum. Both grappling or having grappled with the balance of work and life. One so full of wonder and joy and curiosity. The other also full of these things but in a very different way. One knows the wonder of holding a universe inside herself. The other knows they never told us what the heck was gonna happen to every system of our bodies and how friggin' psychically transformative it would all be in ways that have nothing to do with "really loving a little person"
I really relate to this essay from the New York Times by a mom of a three year old:
"Meanwhile, my life accrues a substance and meaning increasingly unknown to me, independent of the selves I construct and perform. I see how we live out our lives in the habits of our days. I write, I run, I mother. I am less and less sure of who I am even as the self I built up in adolescence and early adulthood has been given back, a complicated reward for surviving my daughter’s babyhood."
I've run across several articles mentioning a study showing that identity and self-esteem take a huge hit in motherhood for a majority of women (in the no shit territory of finding for sure). It drops during pregnancy, bumps after birth and then declines steadily through the third year. They didn't look past 3 years so hard to say statistically what comes next. I like to think it slowly gets better. I like to think.
I asked a friend if we were experiencing midlife crises and if so could I be the one to get a ponytail (working on it - pretty well long enough again for a very feral one). But we'll leave it at "mom-life crisis" for now, as I dabble in all the cliches of that experience.
Sometimes ... occasionally I feel like I put the most fun, intriguing, flirtatious and vivacious parts of myself into making Chaya and now they aren't in me anymore but running around my legs screaming and pulling all the presence from me.
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| Case you wonder where the table drawing started |
Sometimes I feel outright invisible when I'm with my daughter. Sometimes - I am an introvert - I don't mind that. Sometimes... hey look at me! I'm here too!
And sometimes I feel fabulous, fun, blessed, etc. It's always a mix.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood. (Henry Miller)
After weaning and various rounds of hormonal whatevers I've felt like I've gone through puberty all over again a few times. This phase is a little different. More like I've hit my early twenties again in all their raging existential desperation and raw existential energy. Am I doing something productive with this energy? Um, getting a cute new Goodwill wardrobe and dancing around by myself to music at 5 a.m. counts right?
No, I'm not currently looking for a new job (yet - there are some uncertainties that should linger the rest of the year which make it inopportune time which in itself is kind of the maddening limbo of life these last years). Honestly part of me is so anxious to do so and part of me just feels more exhausted at the idea. I'm definitely not pregnant, no matter what random things Chaya claims. But things evolve and so do people.
And our little family unit evolves and extends its tendrils into the big FUTURE.
It was a huge thing for me to find St. Paul's, where I feel loved and accepted and appreciated. It's a different kind of huge for us to have found Beth Israel in B'ham. Chaya's Jewish heritage is particularly important to both of us realizing how small a minority the Jewish community really is and how much it is still threatened today. Andrew's heritage is also something I've long sought to learn more about, but until Chaya was incarnate it was not something he was much compelled to share. Perhaps still in a more insular "this is who we are" to Chaya, but I want to know who they are too so it still matters.
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| Holla Challa from Chaya! |
We've started taking Chaya to a wonderful program called Tot Shabot, and are being pulled a bit more into the rest of the community now The synagogue is so vibrant and full of families. The commute makes it a little harder to envision full participation in all the options they offer, but if it were closer I admitted to Andrew I would even consider converting, which sounds more facile than I meant. But not as facile as saying "my man JC and I are in an open relationship" so there's that.
Meanwhile, we started potty training in earnest again. After some progress in the past, Chaya had gone on a potty strike a few months back. Andrew suggested it was time for some more concerted efforts. We landed on stick on tattoos and frequent breaks. Chaya's doing ok with a lot of effort and guidance. She's pretty well covered in dinosaurs and frogs now, though it's going to be a looong haul before the transformation is complete and I'm certainly prepared for another regression in our little growth-sput-cha-cha.
And in the greater scheme of things, we are barreling down towards April. Things are happening in April. Things that we've been anticipating in months. Mysteries abounding. Things that have put other things on hold. Things that will open up space for a whole lot of change to come fairly quickly... maybe. Lord really knows. But the space will be open.
And we are going on our first grown-up trip. Andrew will be representing EI at a conference in Washington DC and we're going to have a little mini-honeymoon weekend beforehand. Not necessarily the first place I'd choose, but I like DC and have some roots there for my time in Annapolis.
Maybe I'll find my younger self back there. And, uh, say hi?
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