Mammaphonic

Tonight was my night to hostess Book Club.  Our book, Mamaphonic, edited by Bea Lavendar is a collection of essays written by artists of various genres.  I was given the book when my first was born in 2004, by my dear artist teacher friend and mother-mentor Beth.  I chose the book for several reasons.  One, it was a different genre then we have read before.  Two, the short stories may lend themselves to be finished while not-so-much watching the kids in the park.  And, three, I wanted to read it again, nine years later.  The conversation of the Club offered mixed reviews with one consensus, there were only a handful of stories worth processing.  Overall, the summary of our collective motherhood journey of fitting in our own time doing whatever we do is an ever evolving experiment.

    Upon closing the door and turning out the porch light, I began to contemplate my own journey from the first read to the second read of this collection of essays.  Before I earned my identity as mother, I had given up.  I lost two babies in my tenth week with a year between each.  Another year had passed.  I had processed the mourning through paintings and journals entries.  Then scooted them in my shadows with a shaky confidence.  I was going to be an artist.  I would spend my summers free of teaching and seek out galleries for representation.  Putting all my business of art in order was cathartic.

    Portfolios were all in order and ready to start pounding the pavement in the "big city."  October.  I was pregnant.  November, the baby was still there.  December, she was still there.  We shared the news she was still there, and my world started to spin.  My art world that is.  Just like some of these mothers in this book, I was faced with deciding how I was going to fit it all in.  Teacher-artist-wife was a piece of cake.  Four roles, how would that work out?  Long story short, I chose Mother-wife-artist.  Given the opportunity to stay home and paint was a grand opportunity.  I knew that I could not be the teacher I wanted to be and be the artist I wanted to be all the while changing diapers and purée fruit and veggies.  

     With slight reverence, I slide into the role of stay-at-home, just for one year.  That year was grand.  Just me and the baby.  There were spaces for me to create.  Pockets of time to just do what I wanted to do.  Daughter spent most of her first six months swaddled like a burrito in the portable crib in the basement I called my studio.  We walked through the cemetery nearby and strolled all through the neighborhoods between 15th and 1st Street and Main Street and Sunset.  I could draw you a map.        I may not have been very productive or inspiring during this time, but it was our time.  It was a time I waited for her to be old enough for going to the pool and dipping her fingers in paint without them going right into her mouth.

     We moved from the two bedroom.  We had room for another.  And, so he came, a surprise.  Two babies, one mom.  At first they consumed me with one napping every three hours and the other giving up her two nap schedule.  Art? What art?  Hand quilting fit in the spaces.  Not awe defining, just simply making something. Once a day napper and a twice a day napper.  What was art?  A sketch book doodle, a journal entry, a lullaby e, a poem, those were the art of mothering. A few feeble paintings were sketched out in the wee hours of the night between toddler bed training and the next nursing session.  This was their time.  Not mine.

     As they grew and became mobile, they stopped putting everything in their mouths.  So I set up a table in my studio and we did stuff.  I am not really certain what all that stuff was.  Watercolors, crayons, chalks, drooling on the paper, eating the home-made play-dough, and toddling over to distract me.  But, I made stuff in the spaces.  I made enough to stay in my art co-op and brought them in to my sittings at the gallery.  This worked until they were not just mobile but fast movers. I no longer trusted them around the work of the glass blower and gave up my membership.

    I was a mom-wife-occassional artist until one of them was going to school three hours once a week.  Awesome!  Then two kids going to farm school together, the same time, out, gone, my house, my space, silence.  Bites of two hours and thirty five minutes to be in my space, to think.  My time to create increased as the year passed to the next.  This allowed me more time to dedicate to them when They weren't in school without the distraction of creation.  I knew I would get me time, it was scheduled.  These are my favorite years with my children.  Life was grand and ticked by like a well engineered clock.

    In and out of years, in and out of time, we have travelled to far and strange places as a unit of three. Yes, there is a fourth, a co-commander, but during the day, it is us.  This past year they were both in school full time.  I had lots of time to create in and out of all the stuff of life that gets in my way. We found time to make stuff together on weekends and after school.  I have ambitions of teaching both to sew in spite of having to finish most everything that is started.  Each has evolved into the studious painters with the help of "real art class"in school.  I also started teaching after school once a week and hope they learned more then how to sharpen two dozen pencils and stack stools at the end of class.  My Daughter still draws her portraits with the eyes on the fore head, but Son does not.  He must have been listening more then I thought when he was giggling with the other first grader in the class.  Daughter can tell a story with her images.  I wonder what will come of her unicorns as she matures as an artist.

  Yes, when they are in school, art, yoga, therapy, volunteering, doctors appointments, and coffee Fridays all squeeze in to a week.  Yet, I longed for full days not crowded with to-do lists.  Now, that it is summer break again, I have travelled full circle.  There are not nappies needing to be changed nor fruits to be puréed (unless lunch is a smoothie, of course.). There are camps to be driven to, pools to go to, chores to get done, play dates to arrange, and stuff, lots of stuff, to be picked up.  Every night I rake the house.  I like it that way.  But, sure enough, each time the kids walk through a door, any door, the leaves of stuff blow right back in smothering my sanity and diminishing my time.  I know, poor me, sounds like a personal problem, blah blah blah.  Oh, the time to create sits in my head and waits.  It waits for the moment when both have disappeared on their bikes to trole the neighborhood.  All the while, I long for them to be home as I force myself to set down my rake and head up to my studio.  I have grown a lot the past several years letting the leaves collect in the corners with the cob webs to grasp my time in between the noise.  My prince and princess have as well. When they come home from their wonderings, I don't have to put down my paint brush.  At least not right away.  No, not until my most honest critiques have told me to use more pink and neon green.

     The second time I read Mammaphonic, I discovered different stories, the ones by moms with older kids.  Writers, artists, and musicians trying to hold their doing in their fists, finding spaces, balancing.  Everyone balances their life in their own way.  Yet, it is all the same finding the space for your doing whatever we are all so busy doing in amongst all the chatter of have-to-do.

     

Keeping

So I am digging through my  change pocket in my wallet hoping to find fifty cents.  Instead, I find two teeth.  This starts me thinking about the things I keep.  There are the obvious ones like quilts handed down to me from my mom's family and one from Hubby's family.  I finally found the right Mission style library cabinet to show them off last year.  A silver tea set because it was my great grandmothers.  It is packed neatly away in a bin hopefully maintaining its shiny self with the lack of oxygen.  Then there is a dozen dolls.  Two were my moms and others ones she made me when I was little.  Did you know she used to sell hand made dolls at craft shows in Dallas?  They are so lovely.

        I pay for the ice cream, chocolate fudge, breaking a twenty.  I hate to do that when all I needed is fifty cents.  Now, I have a wad of my dollar bills to contend with.  I stuff my cash in my pocket to deal with later and catch a drip of ice cream as I head back to the theater.  It's our anniversary.  Thirteen years.  There is something worth keeping.  I think of the memories kept in our albums.  I think of the memories of emotions and and contemplations stored under the bed.  Tightly wrapped canvases.  There is a nude self portrait under there.  I sleep on top of her.  Four years ago, I had just a couple of weeks to record my thirty-three year old body, my 34-Ds.  The left is bruised with three biopsy scars, swollen, angry.  I only gotten my "sisters" recorded before they were tossed in the biohazard bin and samples shipped to the Mayo Clinic for testing.  The face, tummy covered in stretch marks, and hair was done during the six weeks before my hair fell out two days before my second round of chemo.  The background is red, and i am releasing butterflies from my right hand which is really my left.  A record of me before all the surgeries.  It is worth keeping.

      I stealthily slink into the darkness of the movie theater and squint to find Hubby.  The seats are almost full now.  I wiggle through the row and slump down in my saved chair trying to lick another spot of ice cream dripping on my thumb.  Hubby smiles at me.  I feel like I am 22.  I meet this guy when I was twenty two.  Fifteen and a half years later, he is bemused because I "had to have" my chocolate even after he took me to this super healthy vegan restaurant.  Yin and yang here folks.  Yah, he's figured me out.  Worth keeping.  I am sure glad he has kept me.

      Oh, the things we all keep.   There are heirlooms, maternal hand-mades, recipes from Great Grandmother Letha, quilts Great Grandmother Ruth made in the latter part of her life, wedding photos, oil paintings from high school and ones that journal my life journey.  None of it has value to any one else.  Sometimes it is a secret the little things we keep.  Shhh, don't tell anyone I still have the mix tapes from my high school boyfriend.  Do you have a cassette player?  No?  Shucks.  I have rock collections and jars of seashells I spent hours finding in Monterey, Carmell, Half Moon Bay, Cayucos, Pismo Beach, Hawaii, and Cozumel.  There is one hiding in my jewelry box that our scuba dive guide gave me in Hawaii on my honeymoon.  I clutched that thing all the way through ascending to the surface.  It is little.  I wasn't supposed to take it.  I think our guide knew I would take it.  It doesn't matter now, that was thirteen years ago three days from now.  When I look at it...smile.  Well, I kept it.  

     I don't know what will come of the teeth in my wallet.  One is Son's first tooth.  The other is Daughter's ninth.  They lost them just weeks apart.  Son lost his the last day of school.  daughter lost hers up at my parents cabin while we were fishing at the lake.  Being displaced from home in both cases, Tooth Fairy placed them in my change pocket in my wallet.  She just might leave them there for a bit, wrapped in their love notes.  They make her smile knowing she is walking around with her children's DNA.  Oh, sometimes it is very strange the things we keep.  Or is it?

Fathers Day

Woohoo. What a ride.  Fathers choice, we took the kids and Husband's sister down Brown's Canyon near Beuna Vista.  These class 3 rapids were quite the step up from the cold float trip on the Colorado last year.  I have rated this stretch of the Arkansas River about a half a dozen times at different river levels.  Peaking two days ago, this was a blast.  Husband ran these rapids as a guide when he was a young pup just settling into Colorado about twenty years ago.  He remarked on how the rock formations he knew had changed over the years.  Our guide and the one in the other rafts was definitely full of tall tales.  The kids believed every word, even the story that the Sevens rapids series was created when there was a double decker train track running through and it toppled in the water creating a stairs step of rapids.  Tall tale or not, these were my favorite.  The kids liked Zum Flum pictured above.  It was also good to have Husbands Sister along for the ride. 

     

Test 7.75

Lately, life has been a series of signs.  When I look up at a digital clock, it is 11:11, 5:55 or 3:33.  In one day, I run across blogs on the same topic as a friend just chatted with me about.  And, I met a stranger in the elevator who was going down, but went up when I called the elevator from the fifth floor.  Then down, and back up when I noticed I forgot my latte on the fifth floor. then down to the second floor where I departed.  We chuckled at the weirdness of the elevator farce and pondered the meaning of its occurrence.  Well, we made each other laugh, we agreed.

    I have yet to determine the breadth and purpose for all the poking to get a clue, listen harder, observe more.  What I do know is I am being tested by some little beings in my life.  Yes, my free-range chicks are nestled in their beds and look like angels.  Okay, well, actually, they talked me into allowing a slumber party of two on the trundles.  It is only ironic they chose to sleep in the same room and giggle themselves asleep when they were fighting and hitting each other all afternoon.

     Earlier today, they went out riding their bikes around.  They came back.  Then out again.  Then returned. And then, packing water bottles they announced they tried friend A and friend B who were busy so they were trying friend C.  Okay, call me when you there.  I change out the washing machine and drier, wipe up lunch, look outside, move things from point A to point B....I am getting a little nervous.  Seems like they should have called by now or returned if friend C wasn't home.  Ring, the call.  Phew.  

      Letting go of your children as they seek independence is bittersweet.  I was glad to see them go so bravely, glad for the silence, the cease fire, and worried whether they would know what to do if a stranger put them in danger all at the same time.  Did I teach them enough?   Were they listening?  My chicks returned home right before dinner so proud of themselves for stretching the apron strings.

     Later, the real test started.  I am not sure exactly why I take the brunt of all intense feelings Son has, I don't even know why he was so mad today.  I think it had something to do with me not making what he wanted for dinner.  (I am not dumb.  I know there is way more to the story then that.). He comes into the kitchen were I am singing and making dinner.  "I am running away. You are the worst mom ever.  No one loves me here."

     "Okay, it is getting dark, you might want to grab a jacket.  Where do you think you might go?  The park has bathrooms and a pond.  You might want to grab a fishing pole.  Love you."

     He stomps towards the door grabbing his hoodie off the rack.   Sister looks at me bemused.  "Just go with it," I whisper.  "Start giving him stuff to bring."

   She smiles, grabs a backpack that had water bottles.  "Here you might want some water.  Oh, and some snacks."  She keeps bringing him things, a Smurf figure dressed like a clown, his favorite near, a jacket, who knows what else.  Each time he trudged towards the exit, she'd say, "uh, you forgot this."

    Well, sure enough he packed it all in his pack and headed off.  I watched for him to pass the back window.  He didn't..  I started getting a sick feeling in my tummy.  What if he gets hit by a car?  What if he gets nabbed by a bad guy.  What ii he doesn't come home?   I turn to the stove top, a good place to hide your face once your eyes begin to well up with tears.  

     Daughter pats me on the back and asks if I am crying.  I tell her about my what-ifs.  I tell her that I try so hard to love him and show him, but I still don't know why he acts like this.  She tells me some very wise words.  She tells me he is still hurt from when I left for ten days last fall for the surgery. She says he is mad about the cancer.  And, that he was so little when it started he doesn't remember me without it.  Then she consoles that he probably went to the "hill."  I text my friends who live over there to tell me if they see him.   Sister pops out to check on Brother.  He has come back.  I am relieved and still crying gator tears in the spaghetti sauce.  Wasn't there a movie about a woman crying her emotions in soup or something?  

    I feel a little arm reach around the middle of my legs as I am getting broccoli out of the fridge.  I turn, he just looks at my puffy, tear full eyes and gives me a hug.  No words.  He runs back outside.  I guess I passed the test.  I am just not sure who is the grader.

    My children are pushing my limits this summer.  Some are so frustrating I want to spearmint.  Other times make me so proud.   We are working on cutting the apron strings.  I would just like to ask one thing.  can I have apron strings made of bungee cord?  I send them out in the big bad world, knowing they will pop right back.

The Summer Secret

We started a gratitude jar.  Wait let me back up.  We fed the homeless.  Wait, need to back up some more.  I saw the Secret.  Wait, further.  Okay, let's begin with the start of summer break.  As a stay-at-home mom, summer break is like a weekend that won't end.  For two weeks, I have managed to fit in housecleaning, grocery shopping, organizing, weeding, mending, meal making, meal cleaning up, teaching, and a number of other tasks in pockets of time between the pool and  "Mommy, I am bored."  I went into summer naively thinking that this was the summer my angels would learn to do chores without grumbles and reminders.  Well, it turns out my little ones are more like free-range chicken then those in a nesting box.

      Much emotion has erupted in their lives as they transition from the world of structure, friends, fun and, hopefully, interesting new things to be learned.  The catalyst, as in most households, seems to be Mom.  Yes, dear Mom won't let me eat dessert every night.  Dear ol' Mom makes me go to bed when the neighbors are still playing outside.  Dear Mom changed the plans.  It's her fault we can't go to the pool. (Um, yes, it is my fault for driving over something and getting a flat tire, please forgive me.). 

       Though I try to steer the energy of our troop towards the positive, it seemed to be cycling down the tubes.  Where did I screw up?  Why are they so unhappy?  Why is it my fault for every frustration?  And, dang it, why don't they help with the dishes while whistling a little tune like Snow White?  Road block after road block as I desperately try to make our time positive.

        Then it dawns on me.  I am trying.  That is the problem.  Okay, so it didn't come to my in a lightening strike of epiphany.  No, there were the subtle messages, road blocks.  Sometimes, it takes quite a few.  And, if you still aren't getting it, then you might get the privilege of getting hit in the head

        Last night, I turned on my TV.  We now have some sort of gizmo were you have to search for shows.  I haven't quite figured it out and morn the days of just watching whatever was given to me to watch at that moment in time.  Now, I have to make a decision.  But, not last night.  I turned it on and The Secret, the movie, was there.  Just there in the front of the line of suggested shows.  Ding.  Ding.  Watch me tonight.  Get a clue.

        I have read the book, and several others around the same concept, in the past.  The idea is basically around the Law of Attraction.  The movie rotated through a variety of modern thinkers speaking about the history of the concept, the reasoning, and how to put it to practice.  Yes, I know this.  Negative thoughts attracts negative energy.  Positive begets positive.  What you put out is what you receive.

       So, today, I minded my peas and Q's.  Or, was it carrots and my two J's?  I would try to catch myself when we were going down a negative path.  Flip it.  I'd try to flip it to positive.  This is not any easy task.  Baby steps.  One elbow blow at a time.  My wonderful, intelligent, creative beings in my charge, you are so awesome and helpful.  (Play it on repeat)

      There is a lot of work to be done.  But, we will get there.  Tonight, after swimming, I missed our turn.  I pulled into the grocery store parking lot to cut through to the back road and back up onto the road I had missed towards our home.  The kids were tired and grumbling.  In front of us, on the corner, was a family of five.  They had a cardboard sign.  I couldn't read it.  Two girls about my kiddos age, a mom, a dad, and a baby girl.  I pulled past them and suddenly thought, "We need to make them dinner."  After consulting the tired chicks in my backseat, we decided exactly what we would bring them.  We flew in the house, collected our items, made sandwiches, all things that didn't need refrigerating, and loaded in the car.  No arguments.  No tears. Very little talking.  Just doing.

      At the parking lot, we parked and got out.  Daughter takes the sack of food, Son follows, and I say, "Here is some dinner."  The family beams.  Without looking what we had given them, the father says thank you.  I choke on my tears.  There was just this weird and awesome feeling inside all of us.  I can't explain it.  I have given change to other folks sitting on the corner with a cardboard sign.  But, this time was different.

     Driving away, Daughter bemuses, "I put a piece of paper and a colored pencil in there because I thought the girls would like that." We came home.  While I was cooking dinner, our neighbor mowed the remainder of our lawn. I had tried to mow for Husband while he was away on business.  I was only able to make a Mohawk in the middle as I made two passes around the edge before the thing ceased and would not start up again.  ( actually, should I admit I had the young man across the street get it started in the first place.  Ergo, I was too embarrassed to go ask for help again so I quit.)

      The kids were so excited.  "We gave the family food tonight and our neighbor mowed our lawn.  See it works.  You get what you give."  And, no, I had not talked to them about the Secret, they came up with that on their own.  Or maybe it is from years of listening to messages.

      Tonight, before I sent them to Lalalamd, I showed them the gratitude jar.  Anytime they want, and at least every night before bed, they are to write one thing that makes them feel good.  Neither of them hesitated a second before scribbling out a thought, folding the paper and placing it in the jar.  I couldn't resist, after writing mine, I peaked at theirs.  Both said they were thankful they could give the dinner to the family.

       So we move into summer learning a new way of living.  How do you teach your young ones to become great adults?  A concrete anthology is yet to be written.  For me, I will continue my journey of acceptance.  I accept my children use me and each other as personal emotional punching bags because in us, they are safe. My children are wonderful beings.  And, I will attract their positive energy with mine.  I will have strength and endurance to live freely and mindfully while modeling my knowledge in practice for my free-range chicks who are always watching. The chores will get done joyfully.

PS. The first step of the Law of Attraction is to change your sentences to what you want to happen, to the positive.  I will live well to my eights.  Yep.