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When I'm not here, you may find me wandering the pages below. (If I'm a regular visitor to your site and I've left your link off or mislinked to you, please let me know! And likewise, if you've blogrolled me, please check that my link is updated: thisroamanticlife.blogspot.com. The extra (a) makes all the difference!)

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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Rude awakenings

At quarter after 11 on a drizzly Wednesday, O. pushes off my lap, where he's been climbing up and down all morning, and starts rubbing his eyes. My rendition of "This is the way the ladies ride," which I've been repeating for half an hour with all the associated bouncing speeds, has finally lost its appeal, and the tell-tale signs of tiredness are on both our faces.

For most of O.'s life, I've automatically kept an eye on the clock -- if it isn't time for him to eat, nap, or be changed, it's almost time -- and we both do better when he gets his needs met on a reasonable schedule. Of late, though, despite my attention to his usual signals -- half-mast eyelids, a sudden interest in cuddling rather than running circles around the sofa -- O.'s barely been sleeping during the day, and I have yet to figure out why.

I've grown skittish of his new quickness to wake. And resentful of every rumbling truck, yapping dog, and shrieking middle-schooler passing our door at certain times of day. Our walls are thin. While O. used to slumber through almost anything, the slightest disturbance now raises his banshee howls right away.

I know he's not fully rested. When he used to nap for three hours straight, he'd wake up babbling to himself and thump the bars of his crib with glee. His screams of distress complain of interruption, of the sudden, abrupt transition from a dream state to reality, almost like the indignant cries of an infant just born. I'd pity him more if his predicament didn't mean a similar disruption of my own work. I am inevitably writing -- I've stepped into that ever changing current of words and thoughts that will only be here in this form on this day now when, unexpectedly, I'm hurled from the stream onto the rocky shore again and someone has made off with my towel and shoes.

Today, though I'm tempted to hustle him off to his crib right away, I buckle O. into his high chair and put his favorite foods on the tray. It's hard to know if this is the right choice -- if I delay putting him down, am I missing that magical window where he'll naturally fall into his deepest sleep state, or if I don't, will I set him up to wake too soon because he's hungry? He seizes a pork rib, bone and all, and gnaws contentedly. That he has the patience for this tells me all is as it should be for now.

I take O. to his room an hour later. There's minimal protest -- a whimper or two as I leave him, but he's quiet in seconds. At last, I can sit and think, the blank page before me, only the slight hiss of air through the floor registers for company.

But I can't settle. Three delivery trucks motor through, engines thrumming. Our neighborhood school lets out, and children call after their friends as they head to the park down the street. It's not the noises themselves distracting me -- I've written in a college dorm that faced a local fire house and in an apartment under another inhabited by an old professor who thumped around with his cane at all hours. He'd swear in Greek every time he couldn't get his PowerPoint slides working for his next day's lecture, which seemed to be a frequent problem. No -- I only cringe now because I'm anticipating a rude awakening for O. and me, though I haven't even entered that meditative state I've been looking forward to.

This can't continue, I tell myself. You can't jump at every potential disturbance or you won't get anything done.

But there is no solution for this when I am both mother- and writer-in-residence. I laugh wryly at the idea of parenthood as a post one might apply for like a guest lectureship at a university. I enjoyed the visiting professors who rotated through my department when I was working on my MFA, but as they weren't permanent, the connections I made with them always felt tenuous and harder to guarantee. That certainly wouldn't be an ideal dynamic for me or O.

Still, I wish in this moment for a little less mother brain and more of the focus that only a particularly emphatic stream of profanity from the old man upstairs could break.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Conversation in a dressing room

It's unseasonably warm for October and the padded cloth baby carrier cocooning O. against my torso is making us both sweaty. But the consignment store I'm about to enter has no room for a stroller in its narrow aisles and I'm intent on dropping off the clothes my sister has helped me cull from my wardrobe in the last week. On her post-wedding visit, we sorted every last item I hadn't worn in several years to donate or sell -- by holding on to these pieces, she insists, I've been using up valuable real estate in my closet, fooling me into thinking I have what I need. "You owe it to yourself to have clothes that you'll actually wear," she says, pulling hanger after hanger from the rack.

I can't argue with her. I wear only a fraction of what I own, and by most standards, I don't own a lot. But I rarely consider what I want to wear on most days. Since O. arrived over a year ago, I've lived in yoga togs while at home. I tell myself it's a matter of practicality -- when I'm constantly cleaning up after a baby, now a toddler, having to avoid getting my clothes dirty is impossible. And during his precious sleep hours -- my writing time -- the last thing I worry about is how I look.

But some invisible finger always pokes me a little when I see how put together my sister is. Hey, the voice that goes with it says, why can't you dress like she does? If not all the time, at least when you're making your nth run to Target?

Half the problem, it seems, is that I can't tell what makes an outfit work. Starting with basic fit. At least four pairs of pants I model for my sister get an immediate rejection. One is in beautiful Italian herringbone wool, which I've had since my first year out of college. "Those legs," my sister says. "Way too wide." She's right -- even if the style might have been in ten years ago, I never quite liked how it looked on me but couldn't understand why. "You've got sad crotch too!" she adds with almost comical dismay -- the rise is too deep, and the extra fabric is sagging beneath me. I laugh. All of this adds up to a heavy look in the butt and thighs that is, in my sister's words, tragic. How did I not see it, though? I wonder. It's only clear now that she's pointed out the underlying issues.

The pants are tucked in with the rest of the items I hand to the girl behind the cash register at the consignment store. While I wait for the manager to screen them, I wander through the women's section on a whim. My sister and I took one day of her visit to shop a nearby outlet mall, with success -- she's helped me replace what I'm getting rid of with updated staples -- but we didn't find the skinny jeans she's insisted will be a versatile addition to my wardrobe.

I'm intimidated by the idea of anything that might grab my post-baby jelly belly in its unforgiving waistband, but I browse the racks. This'll be a long shot, I think. Most of what I tried on at the outlets fit in the legs but not in the seat -- it's as if my body's been cobbled together from different-sized parts. But I spot a pair that looks promising: clean tailoring without embellishments or flaps on the pockets, a rise that's not too high or low, and a really dark wash that will be long wearing. O. wriggles impatiently and cranes his neck to see what I'm looking at. When he can't turn beyond the limits of the carrier, he starts making noises of protest.

"Okay, okay," I say. I might as well try these on at under thirty dollars, and O. needs to stretch his legs.

I maneuver us into the curtained dressing room and quickly release O. from his straps and buckles. He sits on the built-in bench for a few minutes while I change. The legs on the jeans are too long, but the waist buttons at a good position -- no gut overflow. I'm not confident on what else I'm supposed to be assessing, though, having never owned skinnies. Are they like any other pair of pants? Will these bunch weirdly at the knees after I stand up from sitting down? Is there a teensy bit too much fabric in the butt? Do I buy the jeans regardless? They're less than half the price of a brand-new pair, but like all else in the store, they're final sale.

As I peer ambivalently at my reflection, O. scrambles off his seat and starts shaking the mirror, which is only propped against the wall, not fixed. He moves quickly to test an adjustable floor lamp in the corner then makes a dash for the curtain. I take one last look at myself, switch back to my own bottoms, and wrestle O. into the carrier before he escapes completely.

I check the time. It's hard to say whether my sister, who is several hours ahead of me, will be available, but I want her advice. If you can't reach her, it's not meant to be, I tell myself. I dial her number.

To my relief, I get an answer. "Ass and crotch," she says, when I've explained the situation. "Those are the areas that matter most."

"Yes," I say. I've already anticipated this, after her most recent assessments. "But what am I looking for?"

"Across the front -- is there whiskering?"

She's referring to that rayed wrinkling that occurs around the base of the zipper when the cut isn't right for the body, not the intentional dye fading on the same area to produce a certain look. I'm pleased that I remembered to check before I took the jeans off. "Only a little," I say, "but I think it's because the inseam is too long and my legs are uneven."

"Okay, we can alter the hems. How about the back pockets -- are they riding really low? Is there sagging?"

"No," I say, trailing off slightly. "I mean, there might be a little extra under the cheeks, but again, I think it's because the whole leg is bunching."

"You'll pull that down and scrunch at the ankles," my sister says.

"You're sure? I mean, this is definitely not a saggy ass or sad crotch problem, but I'm worried they'll pull up out of my boots and then do a muffin-top thing at the knees."

My sister pauses. I can't tell by her silence if she thinks this is absurd, hilarious, or plausible, but I trust her more than anyone else on such matters because I know she's taking my concern seriously. Then, "I've never seen that happen. How much are they?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Done and done. I think we can work with these for this season as a starting point!"

Her enthusiasm convinces me -- and just in time. O. utters a small blast of complaints that signals me to wrap this consultation up. I pay, then collect what the shop manager doesn't want from my closet clean-out.

The drive home is quiet. I'm flushed from the heat and wrangling O., and as I turn up the air conditioning, I realize my heartbeat is running fast in my ears. I'm strangely elated. In spite of my doubts, my initial read on the jeans was good -- my sister's guiding appraisal only confirmed what I thought I ought to look for.

"Sad crotch," I mumble, remembering my sister's horror at the ill-fitting rejects now headed for donation. I start to giggle. While I usually never give this much thought to how I look at clothing, I imagine anyone listening to our conversation at the store would think I'm obsessed with the space between my navel and thighs.

There's something that's tragic, I think, laughing harder. But I'm happy to feel for once that I'm not a complete fashion idiot.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Buzzed

It is silent, except for a hushed drizzle I haven't heard in months. Summer is finally over. The whirlwind weeks leading up to my sister's wedding are over. I'm in the sweater I love instead of shorts and T-shirts stretched from too many rotations in the wash. I can stop tracking the million little things that any major trip requires and just sit, for the moment, without wondering what comes next.

I feel empty, as if I've been turned inside out and shaken thoroughly. The last twelve months feel as if they've been one nonstop, high-speed obstacle course and stillness has been almost unrecognizable to me. But here I am. There's been no time to pause for excitement, worry, frustration, even tiredness -- only fleeting acknowledgment of their presence before sprinting toward the next thing. Now it all floods in, jamming the connections. The heart and the head gasp in unison, like I've touched a live wire.

There will be time to sort it all out. I promise myself this even as the crackle of so many sensations leaves me buzzing. The year's biggest demands are finally past, and now --

And now what? asks the voice in my ear.

I don't need to know right now, I say. And that's the point.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Blind spots

It's the last Wednesday in August, and the packing list for my sister's wedding is growing by the hour. With our extra baby gear and my food allergies to work around, every trip feels like camping: we haul the edibles and other supplies in and hope nothing runs out.

"We should get an RV," D. has said more than once this week. "Seriously, we'd be able to go anywhere."

After this morning's slow progress on our plan, I'm almost tempted to say yes.

Thankfully, my other wedding to-dos are waning. I've written my toast and charted the day-of schedule we'll have to get O. through. My dress and his ringbearer togs are fitted. All I have left is to assemble a slideshow of the happy couple, finalize the reception games we'll subject them to, and figure out which purse to carry. Makeup, snacks, sewing kit, hair pins, band-aids, headache relief -- where to put it all? The diaper backpack's tempting but a poor match for stilettos.

I start gathering supplies for a test-fit. "Oh come on," I mumble -- I'm out of the meds. I was at the store last week but hadn't started the packing list yet, and I'm dreading the back-to-school crowds. But O.'s already at the door to our garage, begging to go out. I don't resist. If he's willing, there's no better time than now to get the job done.

Everything these days is a job, I think as I pull out of our driveway. We are halfway down the block before I wonder if I've closed the garage door. It doesn't matter, I tell myself. We'll only be gone thirty minutes. But these endless tasks, boxes to be checked off -- it's no wonder I feel dull. I can't remember the last time I did something for myself this summer. At least, not without needing to invest as much energy in arranging for a personal stand-in to cover my absence as I was supposed to reclaim in the first place.

Four turns, six stoplights. The route is busy, but traffic moves. O. babbles to no one in particular -- is he telling me what he sees? We've been waiting for words, but even at 18 months, he has none. At his last check-up, we got a referral for early intervention services, which will start after we return. I'm relieved. Between this trip and the last one we took in March for my mother's birthday, we've spent most of O.'s year thus far in planning mode. This wedding needs to be over just so I can focus again on him, to say words like car, truck, and bus instead of accommodations, airline tickets, and aspirin. "Ya ya ya ya!" O. exclaims. I can't help wondering if the outside demands we've been fielding all year have more to do with his delays than any other cause.

I park. There are no carts nearby, so I sling O. onto my hip and start trekking to the corral at the store entrance. As I reach the end of our row of cars, a red SUV comes roaring past the front curb. It blows through the crosswalk and suddenly it's turning head-on toward me. My body freezes. Run, you idiot, the primal part of my brain says, but it's as if the rest of me can't believe the driver hasn't noticed us. Or maybe I'm afraid if I move, he'll swerve the wrong way. "Hey!" I shout. He can't possibly hear me. He goes left at the last second, swinging just wide.

I'm fuming. There's no apologetic wave or even recognition, just the hot stench of exhaust. I consider walking back to the guy's car and demanding an explanation. But I know it's pointless. He's got a wife and a kid in the passenger seats. For whatever reason, on his end or mine, I just wasn't visible.

See me, I scream silently. I haven't felt seen, I realize, in a terrifyingly long time. The work of preparing to move a pop-up habitat for so many events in this year and the last is like a scrim -- it keeps me forever busy behind the scenes and is itself so easy to look past. Not that my reasons for being in this parking lot on this day are the guy's reasons for nearly hitting me. But that don't-you-know-I'm-here moment I had in front of his bumper -- more and more, it feels like an ongoing state of being.

O. squirms in my arms. All this time he's been quiet, and I look at him for the first moment in a long minute. He's watching me, trying to read my expression, which must be anything but reassuring.

"We're okay," I tell him. But I know we both need better.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Friday, August 22, 2014

On debris

Author's note: I wrote this in late June and never got around to editing it until this week! Chalk it up to what came out of the incident below -- lots of other writing and even more decline in my laptop's function. The latter's at the shop, so I'm working on borrowed technology until further notice ...

Yesterday, I sat down to write as I've been sitting down to write for several months since establishing something like a morning routine with D. and O. We have breakfast together and go for a walk, then D. leaves for his office and I entertain O. until he's ready to nap. On some days he shuttles happily from toy box to sofa to floor, sorting and piling various items with intentions only he understands. On others, he gets impatient and sweeps aside the entire mess -- a fallen tower of blocks, stacking rings that refuse to stack -- flailing his arms to remove every last offending piece. And then he starts from scratch, arranging the materials he was just rejecting toward whatever ideal his busy fingers want so much to create.

Most of the time, he finds his way, but I've been wondering lately when to step in during those moments of frustration to do more than comfort and redirect, as so many parenting advocates suggest. To teach him how to handle the disappointment without producing quite so much debris. For now, when play is no longer fun, I know it's time to give him a break. That's also where my nap time writing window fits.

My laptop had restarted in the middle of the night -- to install some automatic, unavoidable update the operating system insists on making once every few weeks -- and I'd expected that, given the warning messages it had been flashing the evening before.

What I didn't expect was that the essay I'd been working on over several weeks had been failing to save, thanks to a glitch with the software, for three days.

I'm sure the first thoughts I had after the discovery were unprintable. Silent, fuming, desperate, I considered my options. Rewrite it all? It was worth a shot. The draft that had saved was substantially different from the version that was lost. In a moment of clarity -- rarely do I have these, so ever more my dismay -- I'd drastically altered the direction of the essay, moving sections, reintroducing ideas where they made more sense. Those changes were gone. Sifting through the older draft, I could see the phrases that had triggered the shift in thought, could see fuzzy fragments of particular transitional sentences in memory that I'd begun working in, an essay in pieces that if only I could reassemble them --

Thirty minutes later, I might as well have been trying to rebuild a melting sand castle on a beach at high tide.

The words just weren't right. I was copying a badly damaged artifact without the benefits of the original moment of inspiration guiding my choices. I wasn't hearing the stream of thought, just listening to echoes and fighting a mounting swell of frustration instead.

The impulse to sweep it all aside -- much as O. would -- was suddenly a hard lump in my throat. But there was nothing really to fling, lost data being lost. I understood, though, the temptation of clearing something away, of needing to be rid of the mess that I was unable to right. After a few minutes, I gave up. If I couldn't sweep aside the damage, I could at least clear myself away -- to deal with my frustration without staring the creative disaster in its face.

O. is asleep again this morning. I have, perhaps, another hour to work at this unforgiving thing I do because I need and want to, in spite of all the challenges the act comprises, even without technological snafus. That I'm actually grieving the loss of this essay tells me it matters, that the work is essential, that scraping together the time at the cost of -- well, at the very least, certain household chores and anything else I can't do while O. is awake -- is better than any alternative.

But after looking at the essay yet again, even with fresh eyes, I know I won't be able to pick up where I'd left off. All frustration aside, I can't relocate the place in my consciousness where those particular words dwelled. So I'm going to have to start from scratch.

Am I disappointed? Yes. But maybe there is something to be said for debris, and what can come of rummaging through it.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Ventilation

It's Wednesday, and the house I wake up in is still leaching heat from its thin walls after our first 90-degree day of the summer. The thermostat says it's 74, and the thermometer on the porch says 65, but the stagnant air both in and out feels warmer, heavier. Even as we throw the downstairs windows open to let the first floor draw breath, the atmosphere doesn't want to stir. D. puts box fans on the sills to get things moving, but there's no competing with the retained memory of the previous day's sun. We are headed for at least 80 again today.

I'm groggy as I pull breakfast together. We had all the upstairs windows open overnight with fans in those too, but the constant buzz and strangely warm breeze, like a giant's exhalations, make for poor sleep. We are spoiled, living in the Pacific Northwest, where summers are short -- the rest of the country has had its hot temperatures for weeks. But they have air conditioning, I mumble in my mind. For July and August, I will be on ventilation duty, drawing blinds or opening them, flipping fans to blow in or out, depending on the indoor/outdoor temperature differential. I wouldn't mind if it actually had a detectable effect on days like this.

I'm not the only one feeling the weather. D.'s brother, who recently moved up here to start college, has agreed to watch O. once a week for two hours in the morning to give me chore-and-errand time so I can write while O. naps. He calls shortly after we sit down at the kitchen table -- he has a migraine and won't be coming.

I resign myself to juggling O. and the paperwork I've put on my agenda. We are -- surprise -- trying to get an air conditioner installed, but the homeowner's association has a Modification Request Form for such things that's more daunting than a college application. I've bogged down at the section that asks for a description of the project. How much detail do I need to provide? Illustrate on diagram, it simply says, to scale. I'm no contractor, but I suspect just sketching in a box on our porch and labeling it "A/C" isn't going to suffice. There will be wiring and refrigerant piping and other small but significant parts that I don't know the first thing about, all of which will be connected in some way from the unit to the house.

O. scarfs his yogurt and cereal but pushes scrambled eggs away. Smart kid. He's not inclined to eat anything heavy after yesterday's heat. For the rest of the morning before naptime, he alternates between stacking board books in an empty Huggies box and chugging water from a sippy cup. I attempt to compose a description of the air conditioner project that addresses the design guidelines on the form, but every time I turn my attention to the directions, O. tries to climb onto the couch with me. I abandon the papers and my laptop, neither of which will benefit from an accidental splash or O.'s damp hands, and move on to sorting mail. O. takes all the unwanted coupons and grocery circulars and spreads them on the floor. Losing interest, he turns to the box fans. I grab his fingers just before he shoves them through the plastic grille at the blades he cannot see.

This is a new wrinkle, I think. Last summer, O. wasn't mobile enough to get remotely near the fans on his own. The rest of the day stretches out like a mirage retreating toward the horizon -- I'm not looking forward to being on this additional piece of ventilation duty.

He finally naps. I sit down to my real work. At least I can run the fans while O.'s asleep. But their drone is so loud that I can't hear myself think. I read and reread for twenty minutes a draft of an essay that is suddenly a collage of disconnected words. Sweat or write, I say. I can't bear the idea of losing this time to something as stupid as this noise, but not cooling the house means another day of the same. Stagnant progress or stagnant air?

I close the file, open a blank page, and give in to neither.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

The work-nap balance

Life's been busy.

I imagine I could start any post that way, but lately it's been a different sort of busy. Busy for just us, D. and O. and me. We've had a lull in travel planning and at last, we've begun finding time for other projects as a family. Outings. Home improvements. Social time with kid-friendly friends. Some tasks are more mundane -- like tweaking our household budget tracking system so that it's not so labor intensive -- but even that feels like a welcome change, a shifting of our attention back to our own home life rather than managing being away from it.

Of course, just as we were starting to get some hours back for all these neglected things, O. began sleeping less and exploring more. Walking and running have given way to climbing, banging blocks together has become building with them, and suddenly, he's in need of an adult playmate much more than before. Which is fun -- as D. was commenting to me the other day, you can now play with him as opposed to watching him play on his own. But all the random weekday tasks I used to do while he self-entertained are harder to juggle. You can't balance the budget while being asked to balance multiple stacks of blocks on your knees. (Believe me, I've tried.)

I'd started to feel a sense of panic whenever O. would nap, which was abruptly down to once a day. My mind was pulling itself in multiple directions during that window. I was supposed to be writing -- I'd told myself months before that I had to treat my work seriously if I wanted to stop second-guessing its value -- but I was also supposed to be researching bids for a new air conditioner and doing basic home care tasks that would take more time than was reasonable to put O. in the playpen for and, oh, how about showering too? Never mind attempting something for true leisure so that writing didn't have to be the sole activity to serve that purpose as well.

I'd sit down before the page and freeze. There was so much pressure to get something done during O.'s nap that I ended up expending more energy being frustrated by my sense of compressed time than using it toward building any sense of accomplishment.

After a few weeks of this, D. gently suggested that we try rearranging my routine a little.

The idea of asking for help hadn't crossed my mind. At least, I didn't feel I could justify asking D. to give up some of his own limited hours outside of work or our family time on the weekend to let me use it to scrub down our bathrooms and wash my hair. I'd looked at those tasks as things I ought to do while he was working or O. was asleep so we could make the most of our down time together. But he was right. Something had to come out of the nap window to return that time to what it was best intended for: putting one word in front of another, without worrying about whether I should be doing something else. I wasn't happy when I wasn't writing, and I needed to give myself a lower-pressure environment to let it happen in.

So we trialed a new schedule over the weekend. For the two hours after breakfast usually preceding naptime, D. hung out with O. while I did some chores and got properly clean, instead of speed-showering. Once O. was asleep, we both had a chance to work on our independent projects. And in the afternoon, we all got to be together for a little World Cup viewing, reading aloud, and stacking blocks on every surface imaginable.

The difference in my state of mind was almost palpable. At the end of the weekend, I didn't feel like an over-wound spinner's bobbin, just a properly tired person who'd done a fair amount of work in addition to taking care of O.'s needs. A reduced set of his needs, but certainly plenty to keep me feeling just as connected to him. And also D. Giving up the time we would have spent together in the morning didn't feel like a loss when it meant being less conflicted about using the time we did have later in the day.

We're now considering having a baby-sitter twice a week to cover the same two-hour morning window. If that works out, I suspect the dividends such help will pay in giving me semi-dependable work hours will be enormous. I know there will still be difficult days when I emerge from my time at the page with no more than a paragraph I'm truly happy with. But the panic that was setting in during the last weeks of ever-shrinking writing time is at bay now with the small but significant protections we're building in.

This just might work. Until O. shifts his routine again, of course, but now I know what I need -- and how making it possible is so very worth it.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Tension

A text message from my mother buzzes my phone. She tells me I need to start deciding where to stay in Boston for my sister's September wedding -- even though the official invitations haven't been sent yet, our relatives have booked nearly all the rooms blocked for our party at the hotel where the reception will be.

I consider the price point my mother gives me for a single bedroom there and laugh wryly. I'm not shelling out that kind of money. As it is, O. will have difficulty adjusting to the three-hour time difference and he's not going to be easy to wrangle during the festivities without adequate sleep. I'd rather pay for a suite at a less luxurious place with the same cash and ensure we'll all have a better chance at getting through the long weekend without having to manage a meltdown.

Against my will, my mind turns to the logistical puzzle this next trip promises to be. We've just dealt with the months-long planning process of getting ourselves to Colorado and back for a week of skiing for my mother's birthday -- a trip whose demands far outstripped any usual holiday visits we've made with O. -- and I hadn't intended to throw any resources at our Boston obligations until, say, July. But now I'm wondering how many days we need to be on the ground, how we're going to do two cross-country flights with a kid who can handle at most two hours strapped in a car seat before he's reached his limits. I see standoffs with the beverage cart coming already.

Research flights first, or hotel? My mind spins. I feel like a satellite caught in my family's orbit, destined either to burn up in the atmosphere or circle in the void for eternity.

I reach for my laptop, perched by the sweater I've been working on in fits and starts for D. Then I set it down again. The sweater's yoke, patterned with a geometric array of knits and purls, is perfect, except for one row I've noticed near the lower left of the chest. I've miscounted on the pattern, and everything from the center to the end of the row is shifted one stitch.

There's no ripping it out. Well, there is, but I've knitted the entire yoke, cast it off, and blocked it. Undoing all that work -- it's not worth it if I can find a simpler cosmetic repair. I consider using the same color yarn and just weaving fake stitches over the mistakes. I'm not satisfied with the solution, but I give in, threading a rusty orange length of wool onto a large tapestry needle. Push it under, draw it through, push it under, draw it through. If I had more patience to spare, I tell myself, I'd do this the right way, but the fact is I don't. All the more reason not to go hotel hunting this morning.

As I study the pattern's ins and outs, trying to figure out exactly where to overweave the new stitches, I can't help thinking about our week in Colorado. How my parents insisted they wanted us to be there, O. included, but hardly spent any time with him or us. How much effort we put into finding a baby-sitter long-distance and preparing to baby-proof a condo without having to ship our own safety gear or buy it just for a few days' use on site. How challenging my parents' dining preferences were with my food allergies and how we worked our own cooking and grocery shopping into the schedule so I'd be able to eat.

We'd anticipated all of that and decided ahead of time that we'd make this a vacation for ourselves, regardless of my parents' agenda -- we'd enjoy skiing together, even if the days were limited by our baby-sitting rotations, and we'd have fun being on a dinner "date" with my family on my mother's birthday, even if I couldn't eat anything at the restaurant. But then D. got altitude sickness and a head cold on top of it and by the time the week was over, he'd lost a third of our ski time and completely missed the big dinner in question.

I'm not proud of the way we handled those setbacks. After so much effort to turn a difficult trip into something positive for us, D. and I had a whisper-screamed verbal brawl late into one of our last nights in Colorado because we'd had it with the tension between us, built up over those months of dealing with my parents' requests. Extended family politics have, in the year since O. was born, been at the root of much of our growing frustration with each other. There are other stressors, to be sure, but we keep getting stretched thinner and thinner by the same primary forces we have yet to find a way to push back against together. Instead, we prey on each other's patience because it is easier than trying to appeal to my parents for the consideration they simply don't possess when it comes to their expectations of us.

These thoughts kink like yarn twisted too tightly on my needles as I attempt to oversew the first iteration of my offset stitches. For weeks I've been unable to move past them or, at the very least, push them aside. Now, I'm caught again, distracted again. This is why there are mistakes in my knitting in the first place.

The errant stitches are still just visible to me, but only because I know they are there, behind the camouflage I'm creating, loop by loop. They will always remain, no matter how carefully I match their tightness with the cover yarn.

I sit with my disappointment, unsure whether I should keep going. The act of mending is fitting for my state of mind, but it feels emblematic of all the bending and twisting I've been doing for little cumulative benefit. The yarn slackens in my fingers. This was meant to be a project to bring pleasure to both of us -- to me for the enjoyment of the process and to D., who had been searching for the perfect fall-weight pullover season after season. How had even this become about my family?

I pull the yarn taut again. This is exactly why I have to finish, I tell myself. I need something to feel like I've finally set it right, that I am not totally powerless.

The errant stitches slowly vanish beneath the new surface I weave, leaving their trail like a faint scar. I know I won't forget they're there, but I can at least keep the rest of the world from seeing them.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Sick day

O. wakes early from his morning nap, screaming in uncharacteristic distress. It's an hour from his usual rousing time, and from the sound of his cries, punctuated with coughs and splutters, I can tell he's as congested as I am. We've both been fighting a head cold since the end of last week, and so far, there's no sign of relief.

I abandon the hope of getting any writing done -- the essay that's been sitting idle for two weeks, the kernel of another that needs me to put notes on paper now, lest the shape of the ideas erode like sand sculptures in high tide. My head feels underwater anyway.

I usually eat a fast lunch before O. is ready to be fed, but his shrieks tell me he won't wait today. So I collect him from his crib. He doesn't realize I've picked him up -- he writhes and sobs and throws his head back, choking in between attempts to register his complaints. I press my cheek to his, damp and chapped by the work of his fingernails. No change. Only after we come to the stair landing, bathed in the flat light of a gray day, does he take note that he's been rescued. He looks at me, reproach in his bleary gaze, and hides his face in my chest as if the world is too much to bear.

I bring him to his favorite toy in the living room, a tower of plastic stacking doughnuts, and set him down. He grabs them right away and accepts this consolation. But as soon as I make tracks for the kitchen, he bursts into tears again. There will be no leaving him alone, it seems.

I try the high chair, but O.'s crying goes from aggrieved to furious, especially when I try to clean his dripping nose. He's relieved, though, to be strapped into the wearable carrier. From there, he watches me manipulate knife, fork and leftover pork chops for five minutes. I haven't eaten this way since he was only a few weeks old. The memory of that same furrowed brow nestled against my chest pulls at my heart -- O. turned one earlier this month. He is no longer a baby, but a toddler who is rarely content to be still. I've missed being able just to hold him, I realize, letting my chin rest on his dark hair. Though I wouldn't trade O.'s usual wiggly, giggly cheer for the cranky cuddler he's been today.

Still wearing him, I assess the leftovers in the fridge, none of which pique my interest. It's a mug cake day, I decide, and throw together cocoa, flour, and applesauce as O. begins to wriggle. "Hungry, little man?" I ask. He's not pleased to be put back in his high chair, but he's recovered enough to be distracted with cubes of avocado while I eat. Despite my stuffiness, I can still taste the dark chocolate, warm and just sweet enough on my tongue to soften my own edges. O. licks his fingers and I, my spoon -- at last, I can take a breath.

A hot drink beckons. And O.'s having no more of anything that holds him down, so I pop a bag of orange-spiced tea into the microwave and take him into the living room again to play. This time, the plastic doughnuts are only marginally more interesting. I manage to step away when the tea is done without O. protesting, though he notes my activities with an owlish glance. If he had spectacles, I think to myself, he'd be peering over them with disapproval.

I reach to set the mug on the half-wall behind the sofa, where it'll be out of his reach -- he's gotten so tall that the usual places on the end tables are no longer safe -- but it tips. In one bobble, the contents spill over cushions and carpet and now I'm ready for a cry. There's no way O. will let me address the mess in his current mood, but I can't leave it to stain. With a long sigh, I scoop him up in one arm and gather cleaning rags and soap in the other.

Of course, O. fusses when I put him back on the living room floor. By now I've steeled myself to ignore the tantrum I suspect is inevitable -- I'm out of tricks to redirect his focus, at least while I'm unable to attend to him directly. But as I tug on the arms of the sofa to work it away from the wall, curiosity overtakes O.'s dismay. He pads nearer to observe as I blot with the rags, pulling a cushion aside to get at the wettest parts.

This won't last, I think, as I climb over the seat back to assess the damage to the carpet. As soon as I kneel out of sight, he'll start up again. Just get it over with, I tell myself, and bend down in acceptance.

And then I hear a hoot of excitement. Followed by the scramble of hands and knees and the creak of sofa springs -- O. has climbed onto the seat frame, now low enough without the cushion for him to negotiate. He peers over the sofa back at me, thrilled by his accomplishment. Suddenly, he's all dimpled smiles and giggles of delight.

"So that's what you needed, huh?" I say, returning the smile, though mine is wry. He bounces and slaps the damp seat back, then, with some calculation, crawls to the edge of the frame. Before I can stop him, he lunges for the floor, landing face first in the cushion turned tumbling mat. He laughs at the novelty of it all, clambering back up to do it again.

I'll take it, I think, and I bend again to the task at hand.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

A forecast

Wednesday is my second day returning to routine after being away from home for eleven and hosting my mother for another six. The light's fading, O.'s about to wake, and I'm still in yoga togs. Not because I do yoga these days but because they're wash-and-wear and slightly more presentable than pajamas.

The day started with a rush to get O. up and fed before the fridge repairman was supposed to arrive -- but he was late and the morning was an exercise in waiting, half-resumed chores and plans for a much-needed walk held in limbo. That is what the first two weeks of this year have felt like, a suspension of progress. I'm travel-weary and stiff in the joints from being cramped for decompression time, mental and physical. Though, in the name of efficiency, I've tried to skip the post-holiday recovery phase -- the type that follows overexposure to my parents -- it's clear I need it more than ever. So here I am. Poking erratically with one hand at the keys, the other in a bag of chocolate.

I didn't think of writing as exercise, once upon a time, but after these weeks away from the practice, I know it's my form of meditation. I've missed it not because it's pleasurable -- hell, it's hard going most of the time -- but because I'm much worse off without it. Congestion of the mind is killer, and time with my family generates exactly the kind of cloud that stifles me, confuses me. I'm surer of who I am when I'm away from the voices that continue to try to raise me. For that reason alone, I don't think I remember starting any year with a clear head since leaving home -- most Januaries in my memory hold the spillover of December's return to old nests. Ones that are good for short visits but are, for longer, inhospitable.

I've always wanted the beginning of the year to be what so many people seem to enjoy -- a natural time to take stock of what's in store for us. I've peered into the months ahead, though, and it's looking extra foggy. It's a big year for family get-togethers -- more milestone birthdays, a wedding, and all the prenuptial events on top of the usual holidays. It would be an understatement to say I'm approaching all of it with trepidation.

But the year also promises to be an exercise in this exercise -- writing through it all. In recent years, I've dodged the page because I hated the truths about my family it forced me to examine. Can't you write about anything else? I wondered. Shouldn't you just give up on the subject?

How can you leave what follows you, defines you, whether you wish it to or not.

I don't know. But I suspect this year will offer plenty on the matter to think about.

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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Rude awakenings

At quarter after 11 on a drizzly Wednesday, O. pushes off my lap, where he's been climbing up and down all morning, and starts rubbing his eyes. My rendition of "This is the way the ladies ride," which I've been repeating for half an hour with all the associated bouncing speeds, has finally lost its appeal, and the tell-tale signs of tiredness are on both our faces.

For most of O.'s life, I've automatically kept an eye on the clock -- if it isn't time for him to eat, nap, or be changed, it's almost time -- and we both do better when he gets his needs met on a reasonable schedule. Of late, though, despite my attention to his usual signals -- half-mast eyelids, a sudden interest in cuddling rather than running circles around the sofa -- O.'s barely been sleeping during the day, and I have yet to figure out why.

I've grown skittish of his new quickness to wake. And resentful of every rumbling truck, yapping dog, and shrieking middle-schooler passing our door at certain times of day. Our walls are thin. While O. used to slumber through almost anything, the slightest disturbance now raises his banshee howls right away.

I know he's not fully rested. When he used to nap for three hours straight, he'd wake up babbling to himself and thump the bars of his crib with glee. His screams of distress complain of interruption, of the sudden, abrupt transition from a dream state to reality, almost like the indignant cries of an infant just born. I'd pity him more if his predicament didn't mean a similar disruption of my own work. I am inevitably writing -- I've stepped into that ever changing current of words and thoughts that will only be here in this form on this day now when, unexpectedly, I'm hurled from the stream onto the rocky shore again and someone has made off with my towel and shoes.

Today, though I'm tempted to hustle him off to his crib right away, I buckle O. into his high chair and put his favorite foods on the tray. It's hard to know if this is the right choice -- if I delay putting him down, am I missing that magical window where he'll naturally fall into his deepest sleep state, or if I don't, will I set him up to wake too soon because he's hungry? He seizes a pork rib, bone and all, and gnaws contentedly. That he has the patience for this tells me all is as it should be for now.

I take O. to his room an hour later. There's minimal protest -- a whimper or two as I leave him, but he's quiet in seconds. At last, I can sit and think, the blank page before me, only the slight hiss of air through the floor registers for company.

But I can't settle. Three delivery trucks motor through, engines thrumming. Our neighborhood school lets out, and children call after their friends as they head to the park down the street. It's not the noises themselves distracting me -- I've written in a college dorm that faced a local fire house and in an apartment under another inhabited by an old professor who thumped around with his cane at all hours. He'd swear in Greek every time he couldn't get his PowerPoint slides working for his next day's lecture, which seemed to be a frequent problem. No -- I only cringe now because I'm anticipating a rude awakening for O. and me, though I haven't even entered that meditative state I've been looking forward to.

This can't continue, I tell myself. You can't jump at every potential disturbance or you won't get anything done.

But there is no solution for this when I am both mother- and writer-in-residence. I laugh wryly at the idea of parenthood as a post one might apply for like a guest lectureship at a university. I enjoyed the visiting professors who rotated through my department when I was working on my MFA, but as they weren't permanent, the connections I made with them always felt tenuous and harder to guarantee. That certainly wouldn't be an ideal dynamic for me or O.

Still, I wish in this moment for a little less mother brain and more of the focus that only a particularly emphatic stream of profanity from the old man upstairs could break.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Conversation in a dressing room

It's unseasonably warm for October and the padded cloth baby carrier cocooning O. against my torso is making us both sweaty. But the consignment store I'm about to enter has no room for a stroller in its narrow aisles and I'm intent on dropping off the clothes my sister has helped me cull from my wardrobe in the last week. On her post-wedding visit, we sorted every last item I hadn't worn in several years to donate or sell -- by holding on to these pieces, she insists, I've been using up valuable real estate in my closet, fooling me into thinking I have what I need. "You owe it to yourself to have clothes that you'll actually wear," she says, pulling hanger after hanger from the rack.

I can't argue with her. I wear only a fraction of what I own, and by most standards, I don't own a lot. But I rarely consider what I want to wear on most days. Since O. arrived over a year ago, I've lived in yoga togs while at home. I tell myself it's a matter of practicality -- when I'm constantly cleaning up after a baby, now a toddler, having to avoid getting my clothes dirty is impossible. And during his precious sleep hours -- my writing time -- the last thing I worry about is how I look.

But some invisible finger always pokes me a little when I see how put together my sister is. Hey, the voice that goes with it says, why can't you dress like she does? If not all the time, at least when you're making your nth run to Target?

Half the problem, it seems, is that I can't tell what makes an outfit work. Starting with basic fit. At least four pairs of pants I model for my sister get an immediate rejection. One is in beautiful Italian herringbone wool, which I've had since my first year out of college. "Those legs," my sister says. "Way too wide." She's right -- even if the style might have been in ten years ago, I never quite liked how it looked on me but couldn't understand why. "You've got sad crotch too!" she adds with almost comical dismay -- the rise is too deep, and the extra fabric is sagging beneath me. I laugh. All of this adds up to a heavy look in the butt and thighs that is, in my sister's words, tragic. How did I not see it, though? I wonder. It's only clear now that she's pointed out the underlying issues.

The pants are tucked in with the rest of the items I hand to the girl behind the cash register at the consignment store. While I wait for the manager to screen them, I wander through the women's section on a whim. My sister and I took one day of her visit to shop a nearby outlet mall, with success -- she's helped me replace what I'm getting rid of with updated staples -- but we didn't find the skinny jeans she's insisted will be a versatile addition to my wardrobe.

I'm intimidated by the idea of anything that might grab my post-baby jelly belly in its unforgiving waistband, but I browse the racks. This'll be a long shot, I think. Most of what I tried on at the outlets fit in the legs but not in the seat -- it's as if my body's been cobbled together from different-sized parts. But I spot a pair that looks promising: clean tailoring without embellishments or flaps on the pockets, a rise that's not too high or low, and a really dark wash that will be long wearing. O. wriggles impatiently and cranes his neck to see what I'm looking at. When he can't turn beyond the limits of the carrier, he starts making noises of protest.

"Okay, okay," I say. I might as well try these on at under thirty dollars, and O. needs to stretch his legs.

I maneuver us into the curtained dressing room and quickly release O. from his straps and buckles. He sits on the built-in bench for a few minutes while I change. The legs on the jeans are too long, but the waist buttons at a good position -- no gut overflow. I'm not confident on what else I'm supposed to be assessing, though, having never owned skinnies. Are they like any other pair of pants? Will these bunch weirdly at the knees after I stand up from sitting down? Is there a teensy bit too much fabric in the butt? Do I buy the jeans regardless? They're less than half the price of a brand-new pair, but like all else in the store, they're final sale.

As I peer ambivalently at my reflection, O. scrambles off his seat and starts shaking the mirror, which is only propped against the wall, not fixed. He moves quickly to test an adjustable floor lamp in the corner then makes a dash for the curtain. I take one last look at myself, switch back to my own bottoms, and wrestle O. into the carrier before he escapes completely.

I check the time. It's hard to say whether my sister, who is several hours ahead of me, will be available, but I want her advice. If you can't reach her, it's not meant to be, I tell myself. I dial her number.

To my relief, I get an answer. "Ass and crotch," she says, when I've explained the situation. "Those are the areas that matter most."

"Yes," I say. I've already anticipated this, after her most recent assessments. "But what am I looking for?"

"Across the front -- is there whiskering?"

She's referring to that rayed wrinkling that occurs around the base of the zipper when the cut isn't right for the body, not the intentional dye fading on the same area to produce a certain look. I'm pleased that I remembered to check before I took the jeans off. "Only a little," I say, "but I think it's because the inseam is too long and my legs are uneven."

"Okay, we can alter the hems. How about the back pockets -- are they riding really low? Is there sagging?"

"No," I say, trailing off slightly. "I mean, there might be a little extra under the cheeks, but again, I think it's because the whole leg is bunching."

"You'll pull that down and scrunch at the ankles," my sister says.

"You're sure? I mean, this is definitely not a saggy ass or sad crotch problem, but I'm worried they'll pull up out of my boots and then do a muffin-top thing at the knees."

My sister pauses. I can't tell by her silence if she thinks this is absurd, hilarious, or plausible, but I trust her more than anyone else on such matters because I know she's taking my concern seriously. Then, "I've never seen that happen. How much are they?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Done and done. I think we can work with these for this season as a starting point!"

Her enthusiasm convinces me -- and just in time. O. utters a small blast of complaints that signals me to wrap this consultation up. I pay, then collect what the shop manager doesn't want from my closet clean-out.

The drive home is quiet. I'm flushed from the heat and wrangling O., and as I turn up the air conditioning, I realize my heartbeat is running fast in my ears. I'm strangely elated. In spite of my doubts, my initial read on the jeans was good -- my sister's guiding appraisal only confirmed what I thought I ought to look for.

"Sad crotch," I mumble, remembering my sister's horror at the ill-fitting rejects now headed for donation. I start to giggle. While I usually never give this much thought to how I look at clothing, I imagine anyone listening to our conversation at the store would think I'm obsessed with the space between my navel and thighs.

There's something that's tragic, I think, laughing harder. But I'm happy to feel for once that I'm not a complete fashion idiot.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Buzzed

It is silent, except for a hushed drizzle I haven't heard in months. Summer is finally over. The whirlwind weeks leading up to my sister's wedding are over. I'm in the sweater I love instead of shorts and T-shirts stretched from too many rotations in the wash. I can stop tracking the million little things that any major trip requires and just sit, for the moment, without wondering what comes next.

I feel empty, as if I've been turned inside out and shaken thoroughly. The last twelve months feel as if they've been one nonstop, high-speed obstacle course and stillness has been almost unrecognizable to me. But here I am. There's been no time to pause for excitement, worry, frustration, even tiredness -- only fleeting acknowledgment of their presence before sprinting toward the next thing. Now it all floods in, jamming the connections. The heart and the head gasp in unison, like I've touched a live wire.

There will be time to sort it all out. I promise myself this even as the crackle of so many sensations leaves me buzzing. The year's biggest demands are finally past, and now --

And now what? asks the voice in my ear.

I don't need to know right now, I say. And that's the point.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Blind spots

It's the last Wednesday in August, and the packing list for my sister's wedding is growing by the hour. With our extra baby gear and my food allergies to work around, every trip feels like camping: we haul the edibles and other supplies in and hope nothing runs out.

"We should get an RV," D. has said more than once this week. "Seriously, we'd be able to go anywhere."

After this morning's slow progress on our plan, I'm almost tempted to say yes.

Thankfully, my other wedding to-dos are waning. I've written my toast and charted the day-of schedule we'll have to get O. through. My dress and his ringbearer togs are fitted. All I have left is to assemble a slideshow of the happy couple, finalize the reception games we'll subject them to, and figure out which purse to carry. Makeup, snacks, sewing kit, hair pins, band-aids, headache relief -- where to put it all? The diaper backpack's tempting but a poor match for stilettos.

I start gathering supplies for a test-fit. "Oh come on," I mumble -- I'm out of the meds. I was at the store last week but hadn't started the packing list yet, and I'm dreading the back-to-school crowds. But O.'s already at the door to our garage, begging to go out. I don't resist. If he's willing, there's no better time than now to get the job done.

Everything these days is a job, I think as I pull out of our driveway. We are halfway down the block before I wonder if I've closed the garage door. It doesn't matter, I tell myself. We'll only be gone thirty minutes. But these endless tasks, boxes to be checked off -- it's no wonder I feel dull. I can't remember the last time I did something for myself this summer. At least, not without needing to invest as much energy in arranging for a personal stand-in to cover my absence as I was supposed to reclaim in the first place.

Four turns, six stoplights. The route is busy, but traffic moves. O. babbles to no one in particular -- is he telling me what he sees? We've been waiting for words, but even at 18 months, he has none. At his last check-up, we got a referral for early intervention services, which will start after we return. I'm relieved. Between this trip and the last one we took in March for my mother's birthday, we've spent most of O.'s year thus far in planning mode. This wedding needs to be over just so I can focus again on him, to say words like car, truck, and bus instead of accommodations, airline tickets, and aspirin. "Ya ya ya ya!" O. exclaims. I can't help wondering if the outside demands we've been fielding all year have more to do with his delays than any other cause.

I park. There are no carts nearby, so I sling O. onto my hip and start trekking to the corral at the store entrance. As I reach the end of our row of cars, a red SUV comes roaring past the front curb. It blows through the crosswalk and suddenly it's turning head-on toward me. My body freezes. Run, you idiot, the primal part of my brain says, but it's as if the rest of me can't believe the driver hasn't noticed us. Or maybe I'm afraid if I move, he'll swerve the wrong way. "Hey!" I shout. He can't possibly hear me. He goes left at the last second, swinging just wide.

I'm fuming. There's no apologetic wave or even recognition, just the hot stench of exhaust. I consider walking back to the guy's car and demanding an explanation. But I know it's pointless. He's got a wife and a kid in the passenger seats. For whatever reason, on his end or mine, I just wasn't visible.

See me, I scream silently. I haven't felt seen, I realize, in a terrifyingly long time. The work of preparing to move a pop-up habitat for so many events in this year and the last is like a scrim -- it keeps me forever busy behind the scenes and is itself so easy to look past. Not that my reasons for being in this parking lot on this day are the guy's reasons for nearly hitting me. But that don't-you-know-I'm-here moment I had in front of his bumper -- more and more, it feels like an ongoing state of being.

O. squirms in my arms. All this time he's been quiet, and I look at him for the first moment in a long minute. He's watching me, trying to read my expression, which must be anything but reassuring.

"We're okay," I tell him. But I know we both need better.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Friday, August 22, 2014

On debris

Author's note: I wrote this in late June and never got around to editing it until this week! Chalk it up to what came out of the incident below -- lots of other writing and even more decline in my laptop's function. The latter's at the shop, so I'm working on borrowed technology until further notice ...

Yesterday, I sat down to write as I've been sitting down to write for several months since establishing something like a morning routine with D. and O. We have breakfast together and go for a walk, then D. leaves for his office and I entertain O. until he's ready to nap. On some days he shuttles happily from toy box to sofa to floor, sorting and piling various items with intentions only he understands. On others, he gets impatient and sweeps aside the entire mess -- a fallen tower of blocks, stacking rings that refuse to stack -- flailing his arms to remove every last offending piece. And then he starts from scratch, arranging the materials he was just rejecting toward whatever ideal his busy fingers want so much to create.

Most of the time, he finds his way, but I've been wondering lately when to step in during those moments of frustration to do more than comfort and redirect, as so many parenting advocates suggest. To teach him how to handle the disappointment without producing quite so much debris. For now, when play is no longer fun, I know it's time to give him a break. That's also where my nap time writing window fits.

My laptop had restarted in the middle of the night -- to install some automatic, unavoidable update the operating system insists on making once every few weeks -- and I'd expected that, given the warning messages it had been flashing the evening before.

What I didn't expect was that the essay I'd been working on over several weeks had been failing to save, thanks to a glitch with the software, for three days.

I'm sure the first thoughts I had after the discovery were unprintable. Silent, fuming, desperate, I considered my options. Rewrite it all? It was worth a shot. The draft that had saved was substantially different from the version that was lost. In a moment of clarity -- rarely do I have these, so ever more my dismay -- I'd drastically altered the direction of the essay, moving sections, reintroducing ideas where they made more sense. Those changes were gone. Sifting through the older draft, I could see the phrases that had triggered the shift in thought, could see fuzzy fragments of particular transitional sentences in memory that I'd begun working in, an essay in pieces that if only I could reassemble them --

Thirty minutes later, I might as well have been trying to rebuild a melting sand castle on a beach at high tide.

The words just weren't right. I was copying a badly damaged artifact without the benefits of the original moment of inspiration guiding my choices. I wasn't hearing the stream of thought, just listening to echoes and fighting a mounting swell of frustration instead.

The impulse to sweep it all aside -- much as O. would -- was suddenly a hard lump in my throat. But there was nothing really to fling, lost data being lost. I understood, though, the temptation of clearing something away, of needing to be rid of the mess that I was unable to right. After a few minutes, I gave up. If I couldn't sweep aside the damage, I could at least clear myself away -- to deal with my frustration without staring the creative disaster in its face.

O. is asleep again this morning. I have, perhaps, another hour to work at this unforgiving thing I do because I need and want to, in spite of all the challenges the act comprises, even without technological snafus. That I'm actually grieving the loss of this essay tells me it matters, that the work is essential, that scraping together the time at the cost of -- well, at the very least, certain household chores and anything else I can't do while O. is awake -- is better than any alternative.

But after looking at the essay yet again, even with fresh eyes, I know I won't be able to pick up where I'd left off. All frustration aside, I can't relocate the place in my consciousness where those particular words dwelled. So I'm going to have to start from scratch.

Am I disappointed? Yes. But maybe there is something to be said for debris, and what can come of rummaging through it.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Ventilation

It's Wednesday, and the house I wake up in is still leaching heat from its thin walls after our first 90-degree day of the summer. The thermostat says it's 74, and the thermometer on the porch says 65, but the stagnant air both in and out feels warmer, heavier. Even as we throw the downstairs windows open to let the first floor draw breath, the atmosphere doesn't want to stir. D. puts box fans on the sills to get things moving, but there's no competing with the retained memory of the previous day's sun. We are headed for at least 80 again today.

I'm groggy as I pull breakfast together. We had all the upstairs windows open overnight with fans in those too, but the constant buzz and strangely warm breeze, like a giant's exhalations, make for poor sleep. We are spoiled, living in the Pacific Northwest, where summers are short -- the rest of the country has had its hot temperatures for weeks. But they have air conditioning, I mumble in my mind. For July and August, I will be on ventilation duty, drawing blinds or opening them, flipping fans to blow in or out, depending on the indoor/outdoor temperature differential. I wouldn't mind if it actually had a detectable effect on days like this.

I'm not the only one feeling the weather. D.'s brother, who recently moved up here to start college, has agreed to watch O. once a week for two hours in the morning to give me chore-and-errand time so I can write while O. naps. He calls shortly after we sit down at the kitchen table -- he has a migraine and won't be coming.

I resign myself to juggling O. and the paperwork I've put on my agenda. We are -- surprise -- trying to get an air conditioner installed, but the homeowner's association has a Modification Request Form for such things that's more daunting than a college application. I've bogged down at the section that asks for a description of the project. How much detail do I need to provide? Illustrate on diagram, it simply says, to scale. I'm no contractor, but I suspect just sketching in a box on our porch and labeling it "A/C" isn't going to suffice. There will be wiring and refrigerant piping and other small but significant parts that I don't know the first thing about, all of which will be connected in some way from the unit to the house.

O. scarfs his yogurt and cereal but pushes scrambled eggs away. Smart kid. He's not inclined to eat anything heavy after yesterday's heat. For the rest of the morning before naptime, he alternates between stacking board books in an empty Huggies box and chugging water from a sippy cup. I attempt to compose a description of the air conditioner project that addresses the design guidelines on the form, but every time I turn my attention to the directions, O. tries to climb onto the couch with me. I abandon the papers and my laptop, neither of which will benefit from an accidental splash or O.'s damp hands, and move on to sorting mail. O. takes all the unwanted coupons and grocery circulars and spreads them on the floor. Losing interest, he turns to the box fans. I grab his fingers just before he shoves them through the plastic grille at the blades he cannot see.

This is a new wrinkle, I think. Last summer, O. wasn't mobile enough to get remotely near the fans on his own. The rest of the day stretches out like a mirage retreating toward the horizon -- I'm not looking forward to being on this additional piece of ventilation duty.

He finally naps. I sit down to my real work. At least I can run the fans while O.'s asleep. But their drone is so loud that I can't hear myself think. I read and reread for twenty minutes a draft of an essay that is suddenly a collage of disconnected words. Sweat or write, I say. I can't bear the idea of losing this time to something as stupid as this noise, but not cooling the house means another day of the same. Stagnant progress or stagnant air?

I close the file, open a blank page, and give in to neither.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

The work-nap balance

Life's been busy.

I imagine I could start any post that way, but lately it's been a different sort of busy. Busy for just us, D. and O. and me. We've had a lull in travel planning and at last, we've begun finding time for other projects as a family. Outings. Home improvements. Social time with kid-friendly friends. Some tasks are more mundane -- like tweaking our household budget tracking system so that it's not so labor intensive -- but even that feels like a welcome change, a shifting of our attention back to our own home life rather than managing being away from it.

Of course, just as we were starting to get some hours back for all these neglected things, O. began sleeping less and exploring more. Walking and running have given way to climbing, banging blocks together has become building with them, and suddenly, he's in need of an adult playmate much more than before. Which is fun -- as D. was commenting to me the other day, you can now play with him as opposed to watching him play on his own. But all the random weekday tasks I used to do while he self-entertained are harder to juggle. You can't balance the budget while being asked to balance multiple stacks of blocks on your knees. (Believe me, I've tried.)

I'd started to feel a sense of panic whenever O. would nap, which was abruptly down to once a day. My mind was pulling itself in multiple directions during that window. I was supposed to be writing -- I'd told myself months before that I had to treat my work seriously if I wanted to stop second-guessing its value -- but I was also supposed to be researching bids for a new air conditioner and doing basic home care tasks that would take more time than was reasonable to put O. in the playpen for and, oh, how about showering too? Never mind attempting something for true leisure so that writing didn't have to be the sole activity to serve that purpose as well.

I'd sit down before the page and freeze. There was so much pressure to get something done during O.'s nap that I ended up expending more energy being frustrated by my sense of compressed time than using it toward building any sense of accomplishment.

After a few weeks of this, D. gently suggested that we try rearranging my routine a little.

The idea of asking for help hadn't crossed my mind. At least, I didn't feel I could justify asking D. to give up some of his own limited hours outside of work or our family time on the weekend to let me use it to scrub down our bathrooms and wash my hair. I'd looked at those tasks as things I ought to do while he was working or O. was asleep so we could make the most of our down time together. But he was right. Something had to come out of the nap window to return that time to what it was best intended for: putting one word in front of another, without worrying about whether I should be doing something else. I wasn't happy when I wasn't writing, and I needed to give myself a lower-pressure environment to let it happen in.

So we trialed a new schedule over the weekend. For the two hours after breakfast usually preceding naptime, D. hung out with O. while I did some chores and got properly clean, instead of speed-showering. Once O. was asleep, we both had a chance to work on our independent projects. And in the afternoon, we all got to be together for a little World Cup viewing, reading aloud, and stacking blocks on every surface imaginable.

The difference in my state of mind was almost palpable. At the end of the weekend, I didn't feel like an over-wound spinner's bobbin, just a properly tired person who'd done a fair amount of work in addition to taking care of O.'s needs. A reduced set of his needs, but certainly plenty to keep me feeling just as connected to him. And also D. Giving up the time we would have spent together in the morning didn't feel like a loss when it meant being less conflicted about using the time we did have later in the day.

We're now considering having a baby-sitter twice a week to cover the same two-hour morning window. If that works out, I suspect the dividends such help will pay in giving me semi-dependable work hours will be enormous. I know there will still be difficult days when I emerge from my time at the page with no more than a paragraph I'm truly happy with. But the panic that was setting in during the last weeks of ever-shrinking writing time is at bay now with the small but significant protections we're building in.

This just might work. Until O. shifts his routine again, of course, but now I know what I need -- and how making it possible is so very worth it.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Tension

A text message from my mother buzzes my phone. She tells me I need to start deciding where to stay in Boston for my sister's September wedding -- even though the official invitations haven't been sent yet, our relatives have booked nearly all the rooms blocked for our party at the hotel where the reception will be.

I consider the price point my mother gives me for a single bedroom there and laugh wryly. I'm not shelling out that kind of money. As it is, O. will have difficulty adjusting to the three-hour time difference and he's not going to be easy to wrangle during the festivities without adequate sleep. I'd rather pay for a suite at a less luxurious place with the same cash and ensure we'll all have a better chance at getting through the long weekend without having to manage a meltdown.

Against my will, my mind turns to the logistical puzzle this next trip promises to be. We've just dealt with the months-long planning process of getting ourselves to Colorado and back for a week of skiing for my mother's birthday -- a trip whose demands far outstripped any usual holiday visits we've made with O. -- and I hadn't intended to throw any resources at our Boston obligations until, say, July. But now I'm wondering how many days we need to be on the ground, how we're going to do two cross-country flights with a kid who can handle at most two hours strapped in a car seat before he's reached his limits. I see standoffs with the beverage cart coming already.

Research flights first, or hotel? My mind spins. I feel like a satellite caught in my family's orbit, destined either to burn up in the atmosphere or circle in the void for eternity.

I reach for my laptop, perched by the sweater I've been working on in fits and starts for D. Then I set it down again. The sweater's yoke, patterned with a geometric array of knits and purls, is perfect, except for one row I've noticed near the lower left of the chest. I've miscounted on the pattern, and everything from the center to the end of the row is shifted one stitch.

There's no ripping it out. Well, there is, but I've knitted the entire yoke, cast it off, and blocked it. Undoing all that work -- it's not worth it if I can find a simpler cosmetic repair. I consider using the same color yarn and just weaving fake stitches over the mistakes. I'm not satisfied with the solution, but I give in, threading a rusty orange length of wool onto a large tapestry needle. Push it under, draw it through, push it under, draw it through. If I had more patience to spare, I tell myself, I'd do this the right way, but the fact is I don't. All the more reason not to go hotel hunting this morning.

As I study the pattern's ins and outs, trying to figure out exactly where to overweave the new stitches, I can't help thinking about our week in Colorado. How my parents insisted they wanted us to be there, O. included, but hardly spent any time with him or us. How much effort we put into finding a baby-sitter long-distance and preparing to baby-proof a condo without having to ship our own safety gear or buy it just for a few days' use on site. How challenging my parents' dining preferences were with my food allergies and how we worked our own cooking and grocery shopping into the schedule so I'd be able to eat.

We'd anticipated all of that and decided ahead of time that we'd make this a vacation for ourselves, regardless of my parents' agenda -- we'd enjoy skiing together, even if the days were limited by our baby-sitting rotations, and we'd have fun being on a dinner "date" with my family on my mother's birthday, even if I couldn't eat anything at the restaurant. But then D. got altitude sickness and a head cold on top of it and by the time the week was over, he'd lost a third of our ski time and completely missed the big dinner in question.

I'm not proud of the way we handled those setbacks. After so much effort to turn a difficult trip into something positive for us, D. and I had a whisper-screamed verbal brawl late into one of our last nights in Colorado because we'd had it with the tension between us, built up over those months of dealing with my parents' requests. Extended family politics have, in the year since O. was born, been at the root of much of our growing frustration with each other. There are other stressors, to be sure, but we keep getting stretched thinner and thinner by the same primary forces we have yet to find a way to push back against together. Instead, we prey on each other's patience because it is easier than trying to appeal to my parents for the consideration they simply don't possess when it comes to their expectations of us.

These thoughts kink like yarn twisted too tightly on my needles as I attempt to oversew the first iteration of my offset stitches. For weeks I've been unable to move past them or, at the very least, push them aside. Now, I'm caught again, distracted again. This is why there are mistakes in my knitting in the first place.

The errant stitches are still just visible to me, but only because I know they are there, behind the camouflage I'm creating, loop by loop. They will always remain, no matter how carefully I match their tightness with the cover yarn.

I sit with my disappointment, unsure whether I should keep going. The act of mending is fitting for my state of mind, but it feels emblematic of all the bending and twisting I've been doing for little cumulative benefit. The yarn slackens in my fingers. This was meant to be a project to bring pleasure to both of us -- to me for the enjoyment of the process and to D., who had been searching for the perfect fall-weight pullover season after season. How had even this become about my family?

I pull the yarn taut again. This is exactly why I have to finish, I tell myself. I need something to feel like I've finally set it right, that I am not totally powerless.

The errant stitches slowly vanish beneath the new surface I weave, leaving their trail like a faint scar. I know I won't forget they're there, but I can at least keep the rest of the world from seeing them.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Sick day

O. wakes early from his morning nap, screaming in uncharacteristic distress. It's an hour from his usual rousing time, and from the sound of his cries, punctuated with coughs and splutters, I can tell he's as congested as I am. We've both been fighting a head cold since the end of last week, and so far, there's no sign of relief.

I abandon the hope of getting any writing done -- the essay that's been sitting idle for two weeks, the kernel of another that needs me to put notes on paper now, lest the shape of the ideas erode like sand sculptures in high tide. My head feels underwater anyway.

I usually eat a fast lunch before O. is ready to be fed, but his shrieks tell me he won't wait today. So I collect him from his crib. He doesn't realize I've picked him up -- he writhes and sobs and throws his head back, choking in between attempts to register his complaints. I press my cheek to his, damp and chapped by the work of his fingernails. No change. Only after we come to the stair landing, bathed in the flat light of a gray day, does he take note that he's been rescued. He looks at me, reproach in his bleary gaze, and hides his face in my chest as if the world is too much to bear.

I bring him to his favorite toy in the living room, a tower of plastic stacking doughnuts, and set him down. He grabs them right away and accepts this consolation. But as soon as I make tracks for the kitchen, he bursts into tears again. There will be no leaving him alone, it seems.

I try the high chair, but O.'s crying goes from aggrieved to furious, especially when I try to clean his dripping nose. He's relieved, though, to be strapped into the wearable carrier. From there, he watches me manipulate knife, fork and leftover pork chops for five minutes. I haven't eaten this way since he was only a few weeks old. The memory of that same furrowed brow nestled against my chest pulls at my heart -- O. turned one earlier this month. He is no longer a baby, but a toddler who is rarely content to be still. I've missed being able just to hold him, I realize, letting my chin rest on his dark hair. Though I wouldn't trade O.'s usual wiggly, giggly cheer for the cranky cuddler he's been today.

Still wearing him, I assess the leftovers in the fridge, none of which pique my interest. It's a mug cake day, I decide, and throw together cocoa, flour, and applesauce as O. begins to wriggle. "Hungry, little man?" I ask. He's not pleased to be put back in his high chair, but he's recovered enough to be distracted with cubes of avocado while I eat. Despite my stuffiness, I can still taste the dark chocolate, warm and just sweet enough on my tongue to soften my own edges. O. licks his fingers and I, my spoon -- at last, I can take a breath.

A hot drink beckons. And O.'s having no more of anything that holds him down, so I pop a bag of orange-spiced tea into the microwave and take him into the living room again to play. This time, the plastic doughnuts are only marginally more interesting. I manage to step away when the tea is done without O. protesting, though he notes my activities with an owlish glance. If he had spectacles, I think to myself, he'd be peering over them with disapproval.

I reach to set the mug on the half-wall behind the sofa, where it'll be out of his reach -- he's gotten so tall that the usual places on the end tables are no longer safe -- but it tips. In one bobble, the contents spill over cushions and carpet and now I'm ready for a cry. There's no way O. will let me address the mess in his current mood, but I can't leave it to stain. With a long sigh, I scoop him up in one arm and gather cleaning rags and soap in the other.

Of course, O. fusses when I put him back on the living room floor. By now I've steeled myself to ignore the tantrum I suspect is inevitable -- I'm out of tricks to redirect his focus, at least while I'm unable to attend to him directly. But as I tug on the arms of the sofa to work it away from the wall, curiosity overtakes O.'s dismay. He pads nearer to observe as I blot with the rags, pulling a cushion aside to get at the wettest parts.

This won't last, I think, as I climb over the seat back to assess the damage to the carpet. As soon as I kneel out of sight, he'll start up again. Just get it over with, I tell myself, and bend down in acceptance.

And then I hear a hoot of excitement. Followed by the scramble of hands and knees and the creak of sofa springs -- O. has climbed onto the seat frame, now low enough without the cushion for him to negotiate. He peers over the sofa back at me, thrilled by his accomplishment. Suddenly, he's all dimpled smiles and giggles of delight.

"So that's what you needed, huh?" I say, returning the smile, though mine is wry. He bounces and slaps the damp seat back, then, with some calculation, crawls to the edge of the frame. Before I can stop him, he lunges for the floor, landing face first in the cushion turned tumbling mat. He laughs at the novelty of it all, clambering back up to do it again.

I'll take it, I think, and I bend again to the task at hand.

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

A forecast

Wednesday is my second day returning to routine after being away from home for eleven and hosting my mother for another six. The light's fading, O.'s about to wake, and I'm still in yoga togs. Not because I do yoga these days but because they're wash-and-wear and slightly more presentable than pajamas.

The day started with a rush to get O. up and fed before the fridge repairman was supposed to arrive -- but he was late and the morning was an exercise in waiting, half-resumed chores and plans for a much-needed walk held in limbo. That is what the first two weeks of this year have felt like, a suspension of progress. I'm travel-weary and stiff in the joints from being cramped for decompression time, mental and physical. Though, in the name of efficiency, I've tried to skip the post-holiday recovery phase -- the type that follows overexposure to my parents -- it's clear I need it more than ever. So here I am. Poking erratically with one hand at the keys, the other in a bag of chocolate.

I didn't think of writing as exercise, once upon a time, but after these weeks away from the practice, I know it's my form of meditation. I've missed it not because it's pleasurable -- hell, it's hard going most of the time -- but because I'm much worse off without it. Congestion of the mind is killer, and time with my family generates exactly the kind of cloud that stifles me, confuses me. I'm surer of who I am when I'm away from the voices that continue to try to raise me. For that reason alone, I don't think I remember starting any year with a clear head since leaving home -- most Januaries in my memory hold the spillover of December's return to old nests. Ones that are good for short visits but are, for longer, inhospitable.

I've always wanted the beginning of the year to be what so many people seem to enjoy -- a natural time to take stock of what's in store for us. I've peered into the months ahead, though, and it's looking extra foggy. It's a big year for family get-togethers -- more milestone birthdays, a wedding, and all the prenuptial events on top of the usual holidays. It would be an understatement to say I'm approaching all of it with trepidation.

But the year also promises to be an exercise in this exercise -- writing through it all. In recent years, I've dodged the page because I hated the truths about my family it forced me to examine. Can't you write about anything else? I wondered. Shouldn't you just give up on the subject?

How can you leave what follows you, defines you, whether you wish it to or not.

I don't know. But I suspect this year will offer plenty on the matter to think about.