Done for the Week: Shit Happens, Once Again

Another short week.  And a huge bite out of the middle of it.  (See item #6 on the list below.)

I'm not sure I have more than my share of mini-crises, though I have been told that my life reads like a bad soap opera at times.  And here we are at the beginning of December, and my family is on its second baffling medical mystery and third fairly significant trauma since October.

The challenge for me is to respond each time with love and courage and flexibility--and not to completely abandon my life plan in the process. 

How am I doing?  Not great.  But not awful.

Done for the Week:  Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 2011

1. Biked twice--still recovering from injury
2. Read No Signposts in the Sea, by Vita Sackville-West
3. Continued to work my two part-time jobs
4. Published 2 blog posts
5. Continued work on current clients' projects
6. Spent 24+ hours in a clinic, a hospital emergency room, and the hospital with my son, ruling out Guillain-Barré syndrome
7. Spent a day catching up on lost sleep and recovering from stress
8. Meditated three times
9. Attended 1 yoga class
10. Went to my tap class
11. Watched one episode of Eureka with my son
12. Watched one episode of Boss with my husband
13. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Traitor to Memory aloud with my husband
14. Made Sunday soup
15. Saw my doctor for injury evaluation
16. Went to dinner with my husband
17. Did laundry 
18. Orchestrated hanging of our outdoor Christmas lights
19. Read draft of my husband's journal article
20. Took my grandson on his day-long birthday train adventure 
21. Printed out a copy of the Unschedule

A great deal of my energy last week was spent "rising to the occasion" of my son's frightening physical symptoms, which came on suddenly midweek.  Doing what needed to be done to shepherd him through the medical system and support him in enduring the necessary workups and tests and procedures, including approximately thirty attempted blood draws in his dehydrated state, was the most important thing I got done.  At this point, we don't really have an answer as to what caused his progressive numbness, or why it began to abate after 48 hours.  But the scariest things have been ruled out.  And he is back at school, though the ordeal has put him behind at the end of the semester.  We will continue to follow up with doctors, and hope to put the experience behind us.  And I have yet another chance to learn how to move forward from the periodic derailments that continue to visit my life.

Last week's focus goal was "to resume work on my novel."  Ahem.

It was once suggested to me, rather unkindly I thought, that the drama in my life, both good and bad, served the purpose of protecting me from the risk of failing (or succeeding?) at my most important work.  Never mind that the person making this suggestion didn't know me well; mistook for my "most important work" the work she thought I should be engaged in; and was most ultimately offensive in focusing on the adoption of my son as the great interruption she saw it for. 

I think it bears examining the pattern even a stranger, albeit a rather perceptive one, could observe in my bumpy history.  For whatever reason (Could it be the six kids my husband and I share?  my large, close extended family?  the dark intensity of my Irish-Catholic roots?  my embrace of a slightly offbeat lifestyle, grounded in the '60s? bad karma? psychological instability?), I seem to have a penchant for "coming a cropper," as they say, and for being blown off course in the wake of personal and family disasters. 

Perhaps I need to start seeing this stuff as, in Thomas Moore's words, "nourishing to the soul."  And perhaps I need to draw on all this unsolicited nourishment and develop a routine for righting myself in the aftermath.

So once again, I need to get back on the horse, and focus on resuming work on my novel.  I don't want to believe that I choose or allow the frequent big-deal interruptions to "my work," but I do admit that they have functioned, at times, to let me off a hook or two.  And I vow to get better at resuming my work, and my focus on it, in the periods of calm between the storms.  This week, I will try to make better use of what calm spaces there are, to more proactively protect my time, and to complete at least a chapter of my novel.

Done for the Week: A New Leaf on the Family Tree

My family contains one more person this week than it did at the beginning of last week--the first girl born into our extended family in many years.  I am ecstatic.  I am worn out.

The little one who was in such a rush to get here has left some serious turbulence in her wake.  In the midst of her joyous and disruptive arrival, here's what I got done:

Done for the Week:  Oct. 10-Oct. 16, 2011

1. Continued 5K training with my youngest son, in preparation for his first race--Finished Week 7 of 9 Week Couch-Potato-to-5K program
2. Ran once
3. Read Murder Your Darlings, by J. J. Murphy
4. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
5. Published 1 blog post
6. Continued significant work on current clients' projects
7. Attended second week of four week Run Better class with triathlon coach Lauren Jensen
8. Became a grandmother for the second time, as my daughter's premature daughter entered the world
9. Became a live-in Nana to my four-year-old grandson
10. Gave nearly full-time support to my daughter and her family as they coped with early arrival of their baby, and my daughter's continuing health problems
11. Dealt with my daughter's acutely ill dog
12. Helped prepare my son to begin technical college later this week
13. Went out for happy hour and a movie with my husband
14. Did laundry
15. Continued reading Elizabeth George's A Traitor to Memory aloud with my husband

Last week's "most important thing," hands down, was supporting my daughter and her family through the premature arrival of her new daughter, and her own continuing health problems.   The baby was born early Tuesday morning, at 31 weeks, and though doing remarkably well, is expected to be in the hospital for at least another 3 weeks.  My daughter is dealing with two separate complications and a preexisting chronic illness, compounded by exhaustion and the aftereffects of necessary obstetrical interventions.  Her four-year-old is struggling with the temporary chaos and emotional distress that has beset his happy, stable home life.  We are all attempting to deal with the strategic demands of tightly scheduled twice daily visits to the NICU; my grandson's part-time preschool schedule; my daughter's medical appointments, including yet another specialist to be consulted for a new condition; hot and cold running relatives--the various members of our complicated extended family, all of whom want to help, to visit, to be part of things, and mostly on their own terms; and my daughter's serious need for rest.  


I have adopted the attitude I found helpful during my father's extended illness and eventual death a few years ago--that our circumstances currently are more like M.A.S.H. than like Happy Days, and we need to lighten our loads and keep bailing.  Low expectations, clear priorities, and a healthy sense of humor will get us through.  In the meantime, I cling to my nightly glass of red wine.  For the heart benefits, of course.



My focus goal last week was to "make some time for resting and taking care of myself and my home, and staying loose about how that will get done."  I did manage to get to my running class; to meditate in the middle of the night while my daughter was in preterm labor and I couldn't sleep; to squeeze in a couple of latte breaks; to vacuum several large dogs worth of yellow lab colored hair off my living room carpet; to read an inconsequential mystery novel; and to spend a pleasant evening with my husband.  If I had to miss three blog posts, abandon my novel, skip workouts, miss yoga and tap class and sleep and showers, I did the best I could.  

This week, we can probably better anticipate what lies ahead.  We are starting to problem solve, and to martial additional resources.  My new focus goal is to fit in three runs, in preparation for Sunday's race.  The rest will have to take care of itself. 

Acceptance Boot Camp

Life just keeps throwing me curves.  And you know what?  I don't think it's just me.

I was listening to musical artist Pezzettino today on the radio, describing the personal significance of her soon-to-be-released album entitled Pedestrian Drama.  I was particularly struck by her embrace of the adjective "pedestrian," in recognition that troubles and "drama" are common to the human condition.  We are not so special in our pain and confusion.  Or in our stress.  Or in our inability to stay any course without being blown off by unanticipated events.

And the whole curve thing makes me think of a workshop I attended recently, on the 10th anniversary of 9-11, where the main presentation was entitled "From Tolerance to Empathy."  Drs. Sam Richards and Laurie Mulvey, Co-Directors of the World in Conversation Project at Penn State, sketched a framework for moving into conversation that can bridge differences.   Participants practiced specific skills to facilitate such interaction.  

The highest level skill we dealt with on that occasion, in a mixed gathering of 300 Muslims, Jews, Christians, and "Others" like myself, was one they referred to as "steering into the curve."  The metaphor was taken from the advice to drivers negotiating slippery surfaces.  The idea is to go toward the  difficulty, instead of trying to jerk one's steering wheel in the opposite direction and risk making the situation worse.

So as new circumstances amend my plans and schedules in major ways--as at present with the serious health problems of one of my children--it seems like advice I can use;  steering into, not the health issues, but the chaos engendered by the changing needs for my support and care.  Kind of like riding the waves of labor contractions, instead of fighting for control.

Something I'll be working on for the next several weeks. . .

Growing Up Chaotic

Looking back through the "annals" of my year old blog, I observe a certain preoccupation with the question of routine.  Alternatively, I long for routine; loathe it; seek it; undermine it; break it; escape from it; and construct and reconstruct it.  But routine is almost never a neutral force in my life.  It is not familiar enough for that.

When I was visiting with one of my sisters recently, we discussed our familial problems with routine.  Neither of us was certain why we were raised with so little of the kind of scaffolding that can support day-to-day effort.  But, for whatever reason, both of us grew into seat-of-our-pants, fly-by-night moms, and workers, and housekeepers, and friends.  We meet the most ordinary recurring tasks fresh each time, as if caught by surprise that bills need to be paid again, groceries shopped for, meals prepared, kitchens cleaned, laundry done, jobs reported to, projects accomplished, holidays celebrated, etc., etc.

Psychologists might look to circumstances of our family of origin to explain this missing limb.  Our father was a grossly overworked and overworking physician, who struggled with depression for as far back as I can remember.  Our mother's lively intelligence was subsumed in the challenge of raising five children, and pretty much single-handedly keeping the home fires smoldering.  There is an abundant literature about what kinds of adults emerge from parenting by alcoholics, depressives, and others whose painful realities limit their availability for functional parenting. 

My siblings and I could certainly have turned out worse.  We are more or less "intact" and relatively "normal," whatever that means.  We have our parents' love and hard work to thank for that, at least partially, if not their happy natures.

But none of us has a particularly easy time organizing our days, or our lives.  We do have a whole identity as creative free spirits, a point of pride that may compensate somewhat for the energy we waste in reinventing "solutions" to commonplace problems.

Some days, though, I'd trade this sense of ersatz superiority for a mindless trance that would lead me through my to-do list, and a certainty born of "the way we've always done it."

Way Off the Beaten Path, Again

Another late night, after another crazy day.  It seems that there are going to be a lot more of them in our immediate future.  I'm trying to learn to roll with it--but not to roll too far, too fast, or too erratically.  And not to lose sight of where I'm going.

Many of us experienced some pretty serious whiplash yesterday.  We began the day relaxing into the temporary euphoria of positive election results.  We shopped, cooked, paid bills, wrote blogs, walked our dogs, and caught up once more with the lives we've been putting on hold so often these past couple of months.

And then a very large bucket of cold water was delivered around dinner time, as roughly 7500 votes were "suddenly" discovered, reversing the outcome in the state's Supreme Court race more than twenty-four hours after our candidate had declared victory.

It's getting hard to remember the time when each day didn't bring one fresh outrage or another.  It's getting hard to remember my once relatively stable inner gyroscope.  

What good is a to-do list in a whirlwind?  


Like Scarlett, I intend to think about it mañana.  Unless the sky falls in.

Best Laid Plans Meet History-Making Occurrences

My elephant is in revolt today.  


It has thrown off my rider, who sits dazed, in the dust, wondering what happened.  And the pachyderm has plunked itself down right beside her, refusing to budge.


If you read my earlier post on the work of the Heath brothers, Dan and Chip, and specifically their book Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard--or if you found your way to their thoughts on your own--you may recognize the elephant and rider metaphor they borrowed from Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis).  The elephant, you'll recall, represents our emotional self and the rider our rational side.  And these two have to have a workable arrangement if we are to move forward, or in any intended direction, for that matter.


Watching in a somewhat--okay, a completely--obsessive state the various dramas unfolding around me these past days, at the state, national and international levels, I am left wondering about the sense of following my little plans, or even my relatively grander ones.  Events, it seems, defeats, changes, and even accomplishments can come flying in from left field.  


I suppose I feel a little like I remember feeling many years ago after viewing a documentary in my then-husband's astronomy class.  The film took the viewer from the vastness of deep space, with its black holes, red dwarfs and quarks, to the microscopic worlds of cell life, and micro organisms.  The photography was breathtaking.  And at the end, I experienced something like a case of the psychological bends.  I felt simultaneously infinitesimal and insignificant, and planetary and profound.  It was dizzying.


And I wasn't sure if it mattered if I roused myself to leave the seat from which I had watched the hour-long spectacle.  Ever.  But I did.


I assume that my elephant and rider will eventually patch things up.  They usually do.  In the meantime, I'm in the wind, following the current.  This evening, I was blown to the streets, to yell myself hoarse about "what democracy looks like," while the literal wind whipped my face, and my sign about trampling on workers smacked me in the head more than once.


Tomorrow, I will be in Madison.  And after that?  It seems we are all subject to forces we can't foresee.


Later, for our plans.

"Let's Be Careful Out There"

As we approach "the holidays" and their communal deadlines, "last minute" advice, warnings, deals, offers, opportunities, tips and strategies are blaring at us through every form of media with increasing frequency and volume.  

For example, this message, couched in dire language:  

It’s getting down to the wire for those of you (or rather, us) who haven’t finished buying holiday gifts. Sony Style is offering some last-minute deals on Vaio PCs with guaranteed delivery by December 24.

Or this, from The Financial Blogger:  

Last Minute Holiday Shopping Tips To Prevent Stress

Or this encouragement to retailers, from Retail Online Integration:

Despite the fact that Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Green Monday are behind us, the holiday shopping season isn't over yet for the millions of Americans known as "last-minute" shoppers. This group represents an opportunity for retailers to drive incremental lift this holiday season, according to an Acxiom report titled, Generate More Jingle This Holiday Season With Last-Minute Shoppers. 

It's nice to know, as I attempt once more to pull this whole annual production out of the fire, that I am a member of such a large and valued group, meriting our very own pricing structure and guidance, and counted on to save the bacon of commercial interests as the year draws to a close.  

Dr. Timothy Pychyl observed, in a 2008 blog post on "Holiday Shopping and Procrastination," that some shoppers purposely wait until the last minute as a strategy for reducing their gift-giving outlay, observing that prices tend to be reduced as the holiday draws nearer.  He does not lump these smart and daring shoppers in with those of us who just put off the ordeal of deciding what to give, feeling guilty about spending too much or too little, trudging to the stores and/or spending hours online in the virtual marketplace, eventually falling over in a financially depleted heap, eyes glazed over, sleigh bells echoing in our pounding heads.  About the first group, he says "not all delay is procrastination;" about the second, "all procrastination is delay."

As I head out this weekend to begin and complete my shopping, I will try to follow some tips, and take advantage of some deals.  And my purchases will be much appreciated, I'm sure, by retailers focused on their bottom lines.  I will fortify myself with the Mexican Spice Latte that has recently become my favorite self-bribe.  I will probably not make it past Chapter One of Elaine St. James' 269-page Simplify Your Christmas:  100 Ways to Reduce the Stress and Recapture the Joy. . .   I picked up this enticing little volume at a used bookstore with a feeling of hope, after a conversation with my daughter.  As a young mother and part-time high school teacher, she is struggling to resist the pull of the Christmas express, that runaway train of  lunacy that hijacks so many of our holidays.  I offered to let her read the book first.  She returned it within a day, having found its simplification approach anything but simple.  Did I mention it has 269 pages?

At this point, I have no option but to wade into the fray, and try to minimize the damage to my psyche and my checking account.  I accept the conditions I have created for the penance they represent.  Perhaps if I pay close attention to my suffering, I could actually learn not to let this happen again.  But after all these years, how likely is that?  

I can also use my time in last-minute shopping hell to practice compassion for myself and my wretched fellow travelers, as we circle the mall in search of deliverance--and a parking space within the same state.  As Hill Street Blues' Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to admonish his officers at the close of each roll call, "Let's be careful out there."  Only us nuts are out now.

Grappling with "O"

I'm starting to feeling like something's gaining on me again.  You know, that O-monster, OVERWHELM-MENT!  (I know it's not a word.)  And it seems I'm not the only one.


What is it about October?  In my family, there are a number of birthdays and anniversaries, in addition to Halloween hoopla, now with a new generation of masked marauders.  But the month seems traditionally to feature a noticeable uptick in meetings, events, campaigns, and preparations--maybe to get us in gear to go totally mad at "the holidays."  But could this annual mania actually be accellerating?  A friend of mine, never a layabout, told me recently that this is the busiest she can remember being in her life!  


I have been making a sincere effort to whittle, pare down, cut back and generally trim my list of obligatory tasks and projects.  But no sooner do I engage my recently developed "no" muscle than a patch of new demands crops up.  When I adhere to my resolution to take better care of myself, the result is that tasks are left over at the end of the day.  I dutifully move them to the next day, where they are joined by a fresh legion of to-dos.  


I definitely want to get off this ride.  


And where is all this stuff to do coming from, anyway?  It seems to bubble up from the ground beneath my feet, to slip through the cracks in my stone facade, to be carried like spores through the air around me.  It seeps in by email and Facebook posts, by text and voice messages on my cell and landline phones, by snail mail, and in almost every personal contact.  I can't leave a meeting or social engagement, it would appear, without trailing a host of things to see to.  Even church isn't safe.  And when my family members crawl out from their respective lairs--you guessed it!  More work for me.  "Mom, can you do me a favor?"  "Mary, did you take care of that thing we talked about?"  "Hey, Mary.  Can you look into getting Mom some life insurance?"  


Maybe I need to be more proactive about this whole thing.  Gear up for the task-off, assign lest I be assigned.  Or plug up the holes where all this accretion is getting in.  Lose the phones.  Quit checking the email.  Contract agoraphobia.  Or spray myself with some kind of work-repellant.  I imagine if I put my mind to it, I could figure this out.  


I know.  I'll put it on my list. . . . Or not.  

Honing My Tunnel Vision

Wikipedia defines tunnel vision this way:

Tunnel vision is the loss of peripheral vision with retention of central vision, resulting in a constricted circular tunnel-like field of vision.

^{Like it's a bad thing.}

^{Among the medical and biological causes listed for this affliction are:}

• Alcohol consumption 
• Hallucinogenic drugs
• Glaucoma
• Panic attack
• Severe cataracts, causing a removal of most of the field of vision
• Intense anger, due to the body being rapidly flooded with adrenaline and oxygen
• A bite from a Black Mamba and other snakes with the same strength venom

. . . and a whole host of other frightening conditions and circumstances.  The prudent author provides this caution:

When combined with piloting an aircraft, driving, crossing roads or operating heavy machinery, the consequences can be fatal.

For my purposes, however, I am most interested in the second of Merriam-Webster's definitions, particularly the last segment:

extreme narrowness of viewpoint : narrowmindedness; also: single-minded concentration on one objective 

As I move into my day with the trepidation that has become second nature recently, I am aware that the wide-angle lens that is my default provides too many hooks--what Buddhists call shenpa--to permit progress, let alone serenity.  I go into the kitchen to make my morning coffee, and I am greeted by my half-completed kitchen reclamation project.  I take up the New York Times puzzles that are supposed to stave off Alzheimer's, only to encounter a plethora of movie reviews that call me to cinematic retreat.  (And Friday is worse, because it involves hunting through two Arts sections to locate the elusive puzzles!)  I check my email and am reminded that I need to help save Senator Feingold, to renew my library books, to view my bills online, to send birthday greetings to my brother-in-law. . . . I wander into the bathroom and am greeted by the chaotic housekeeping of my sons.  Darn!  I forgot to raise them to be responsible citizens of a household.


And then there's my to-do list, growing like Topsy of late.  My husband intones, as he has been intoning for all the years that I've known him, that if I want to write, I have to do it first, and put it first.  He's right, I'm sure.  But then who's going to stock the fridge, clean up the dog barf, meet my work obligations, figure out why my car is making a throat-clearing noise, complete the shower repair that will get the kids to stop using our bathroom as they have been for the last few weeks, and . . .?  And when will I have time to finish reading the books I've started and the ones he's added to my pile?


My divergent thinking is getting me into trouble again, as is my ubiquitous respond-ability.  And the hooks of all my attachments.  So I aspire to tunnel vision, or maybe to the blindered state of horses in parade mode.  I had planned to spend part of yesterday devising a schedule, or as The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell (on Spaghetti Sauce and Happiness) would have it, schedules that would allow for all my have-tos and my need-tos and really-really-want-tos.  But I had mistakenly calendared my birthday lunch with my sister for today, when it was really yesterday.  Luckily she called from the road to tell me she was running a bit late--since I would otherwise have been about 24 hours late for what turned out to be a really special occasion.  So the work I ran out on, and the scheduling retreat are rescheduled for today.  

Now if I can just find my blinders in the rubble that is my happy home, without tripping over too much shenpa on the way. . .

Acts of God and Such: Into Each Life. . .

This was my neighborhood yesterday evening, before the worst.  Local measurements of the "impact" range from 7.5 to 11 inches of rainfall in just two hours.  Really.


This morning, we are drying out, and bracing for more rain.  


Have I mentioned that my Mom and my sister and her family live in the New Orleans area?  Where they are keeping an eye this morning on Tropical Storm Bonnie.  Where Katrina is a fresh memory, and a massive oil spill still menaces sentient beings and their livelihoods.


Last night, we hosted a stranded teenaged friend, and a big-eyed five-year-old grandchild whose father couldn't get across town to collect him.  Water trickled through the basement, which has been home to our "master" bedroom since we made over our upstairs bedroom for my hurricane evacuee parents five years ago.  The flash flood "watch" (Did they mean the time we spent "watching" what sure looked to me like a flash flood?  First, while trying to make our ways home from various parts of the city in a rush-hour-turned-deluge, and later, after our staggered, and staggering arrivals, on TV, in between cable outages.), this flash flood watch extended way past my bedtime, so I chose to sleep in our first-floor study.  My husband insisted on joining his grandson in what we jokingly referred to as the "watery grave" suite downstairs.  Before retiring, we watched the city's mayor, police chief, commissioner of public health, and fire chief describe efforts to deal with the unfolding disaster, and beg people to stay off the streets.  Of course, that didn't help those who had been unable to get off the streets when the rushing water impeded their returns from work.   


And what about those residents who were warned against contaminated water in their basements, even as the tornado warnings bleated from their screens and radios, telling them to seek shelter in said basements?


At this point, we've survived "wave one" of what is expected to be a very wet weekend.  The forecast is for rain today, and more rain tomorrow.  Our damage so far is minor, compared to our neighbors down the hill.  This time around, our sump pump held.  (Actually, the last major flood that affected our neighborhood would have spared us too, except that our sump pump continued to function, all too well, after the clamp securing the "evacuation hose" came off.  Thus, the sump pump proceeded to pump water throughout the basement, to a height of about two feet in places.  Thus, my first introduction to FEMA--which some of my friends in New Orleans refer to as Fix Everything My Ass.)


Needless to say, yesterday's plans blew up before the day was over.  Plans for today are up in the air, contingent, reminding us to be humble in the face of nature and other "forces beyond our control."  I'm going to try to make up for the triathlon training I didn't get to do yesterday evening, when I couldn't get to my gym a few blocks and many, many gallons of water away.  If the gym, like our local high school, is bailing out, I'll try instead to make the also-interrupted trip to a distant suburb to pick up my new bicycle seat.  That too, depends on the state of the roads and the skies.  And it's hardly an emergency, since the bike shop where my newly tuned-up bike awaits pickup is located on a street a few blocks from here that was swallowing SUVs not twenty-four hours ago.  And I'm not overly anxious to venture out on my restored and upgraded conveyance in the promised downpours, anyway.


I can, and should, still meditate, and write, and clean.  And I will try to resist the state of torpor that can set in when work is so easily undone, and new and overwhelming tasks jump to the head of the list in these circumstances.  And to appreciate, as one of my yoga instructors likes to say at the end of class, "all that we have, and all that is yet to come."

Procrastinating with Children: Staying Flexible Without Getting the Bends

I am late getting this post up today because I HAVE TEENAGERS!  My three-day time log, on which yesterday was Day 2, will ultimately show that I have spent several hours over the last two and a half days actively mothering these two humans-in-waiting.  That total includes two and three-quarter hours in the middle of the night rescuing three young people from their own bad decisions.  Only one of them was mine, but since I was out there anyway, it seemed only civilized to toss virtual life preservers to the other two.  I'd like to say I believe any other mother would have done the same, but I'm not so sure.  My kids appear to be surrounded by others whose parents are "on leave" from parenting, for one reason or another.  


My other near adult has needed many hours of help over the last couple of weeks, looking for a car he can afford; haggling with unscrupulous car dealers (playing sane cop to my behind-the-scenes crazy cop husband, as I tried to help my kid get a fair deal and a drivable car); and processing his decision to spend a few more months working to save money and preparing himself to enter the school that has accepted him.  It looks like he will end up with the car of his trimmed-back dreams, and I will end up with. . . a fairly severe sleep deficit.


But really, I wouldn't have it any other way.  These tag-end children are the ones brought to me in my second marriage by flukes and miracles, the ones I had no right to expect.  And I am proud and happy to be their mom.  I feel pretty good about who they are and who they are becoming, and about all I have learned along the way.  And I just plain (mostly) enjoy their somewhat quixotic company.  


However, my triathlon training schedule for the week is in tatters; my cleaning campaign is in retreat; my meditation routine has been curtailed; and I have the energy of overcooked linguini.  So I am going to give myself "props," as my kids would say, for continuing to keep the commitments I made 19+ and nearly 17 years ago to love and protect these nascent people; for being clear about my priorities; for being mature enough to roll with the permanence of changes; and for recognizing the need today to engage in some needed R & R for myself, with other tasks taking a back seat.  


This too shall pass, and I'll be saddened when it does.  I have passed on to my daughter, now a mother herself, the not-so-literary poem I clipped from an Ann Landers column when she was young.  Its sing-songy lines have stayed in my head all these years since, and though it's unlikely to be anthologized, the thought at its core still compels me.

TO MY GROWN-UP SON

My hands were busy through the day;

I didn't have much time to play

the little games you asked me to. 

I didn't have much time for you.

I'd wash your clothes, I'd sew and cook,

But when you'd bring your picture book

And ask me please to share your fun

I'd say "A little later, son."

I'd tuck you in all safe at night

And hear your prayers, turn out the light,

Then tip-toe softly to the door. . .

I wish I'd stayed a minute more

For life is short, the years rush past.

A little boy grows up so fast.

No longer is he at your side

His precious secrets to confide.

The picture books are put away,

There are no longer games to play,

No good-night kiss, no prayers to hear.

That all belongs to yesteryear.

My hands, once busy, now are still,

The days are long and hard to fill.

I wish I could go back and do

The little things you asked me to.

                            ~ Author Unknown


Though the portrait of mother and child is dated, and the language somewhat quaint, this poem can still bring tears to my eyes.  And it reminds me to be in these final moments of parenting minor children.


But I also need to remember, better than I have sometimes done, that my life, too, is flying by, and deserves my attention.  The things I neglect to do for myself, the opportunities I decline, can also leave me with regrets.  I, too, am a child of the universe, as are my children, with my own birthrights and promise.  And no one left to see to them but me.  I can't fill every minute with mothering.  In the spaces in between my children's needs and crises, I must return to my first responsibility, which is to myself.  I don't want my "empty nest" days to be "long and hard to fill."  I have to miss my children when they are gone, and their childhoods, but I don't have to miss myself.  So if now is the time to enjoy living with my kids while they are still at home, it is also the time to continue growing my own life.  


As soon as I get some sleep.

The Politics of Housework

The men in my house don't look anything like the FDR types pictured here.  But despite my best efforts to cajole, bribe, instruct, and plead, they still exhibit this mentality.  Housework is something they "help out" with, at best.  And housework is something that gets in the way of the work I consider mine.


This week's focus goal is 

to make my home that of a happier woman.  So I can be.

This means that I am once again struggling with the politics of housework. 


I am dismayed, when I allow myself to think about it, that my life has taken a shape my younger feminist self would have found inconceivable. Its neo-traditionalist contours are not so very different from the domestic imprisonment that hobbled my highly intelligent, college-educated mother in the '60s and '70s. To be sure, the language and understandings of my marital partnership are more "evolved," reflecting an acceptance of the equality of rights of women and men. But the practice has never lived up to the words. 

The reasons for this are many, including an incredibly complex family structure of yours, mine, and ours kids; my exposure to radical feminist mothering philosophy and lifestyles through my study of midwives; the family-unfriendly environment of academia, in which I had planned to continue working; my husband's super-absorption in work and lack of basic skill (not to mention interest) in housekeeping tasks; my closely spaced last two children, who comprised my second family, and their particular needs; and, of course, the perfectionism that made it difficult for me to operate comfortably in two rival spheres.  But whatever the reasons for our present division of labor, I have never accepted its necessity or rightness.  It is not as it should be, not legitimate.  And I can at least claim to have married a man and raised young men who agree with me about that.


In raising boys, I had hoped to improve on the previous generation of men's behavior and competence with respect to the necessary work of making and keeping a home.  If words, and repetition, and various training methods were effective, I would have succeeded.  But I didn't count on the in-their-face example of a powerful male, and my own battle fatigue.  So having read and tried* several methods, employed various charts and systems of rewards and consequences, and lectured endlessly (according to my kids) on the subject of women's entitlements and men's responsibilities, I still find myself most days up to my knees in other people's stuff and left-behind messes.   

The responses I have tried to this ongoing household disaster have included:  1) nagging--not my favorite, or anyone else's, and anyway, not effective on any more than a momentary basis; 2) doing it all myself, with whatever voluntary help emerges--this approach leaves me smoldering with resentment, and also very tired; 3) giving up, and trying to work around the squalor--but then I am mired in chaos, and CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, aptly named by Pam Young and Peggy Jones (the self-styled Slob Sisters) in their book Get Your Act Together:  A 7-Day Get-Organized Program For The Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed); and trying, Against Medical Advice, to reinstitute past systems that have worked for brief periods--this strategy flies in the face of previous experience, or seen another way, expresses eternally springing hope, not delusion.


One of these past systems was to disallow my children's guests from visiting until said offspring pitched in to make the house presentable.  As time has marched on, however, "presentable" got redefined to meet the standards of other teenagers, mostly males, and I became more concerned about my kids' needs for social contact with reasonable associates where I could have some oversight.  If I had counted on embarrassment to dissuade them from trashing the bathrooms guests would need to use, or the bedrooms they would close themselves into, or even the refrigerators they would raid, I had misplaced my trust.  My kids are either so secure (and so male) that they assume they will be seen as the cool people they actually are regardless of the wet towels and discarded clothing on the floor, the toothpaste in the sink, the unscoured toilets, etc.; or they are so supremely lazy that they can't be bothered.


I have also tried posting clever "reminders" where family members and guests alike can see them.  For example, over the counter that noone can apparently remember to wipe off, this sign:  

Dear Human and Porcine Occupants,

Thanks for leaving this area covered with food remnants, beverage spills and coffee grounds.   

Sincerely, Mortimer Mouse & friends, Abigal ("The Queen") Ant & Associates.  

 And this, over the toilet:

VITAL AUXILIARY INSTRUCTIONS

LIFE SEAT IF STANDING TO USE.  WHEN FINISHED, RETURN SEAT TO DEFAULT POSITION.

The Management Thanks You For Your Cooperation, As Our Maid Service Has Been Terminated!!!

And a far ruder version, when this one didn't work, specifying aim requirements and threatening exile to the neighboring gas station facilities for noncompliance.

But at this juncture, in response to my own mental health concerns, my priority is results.  I plan to do whatever works to return my home to a state I can live in, with or without help.  I am not above, though I might be beyond, nagging, charting, signage, bribes or embarrassment--which by the way, didn't work with me when I was a non-male teenager.  (My mother once brought a priest into my bedroom to dispel his notion that I was a mature and spiritual being.  I got up the next day, in the midst of a profusion of belongings and refuse, and began writing a short story about the scene!)  


I will do what it takes--though in the interests of the marriage I value, with all its imperfections, I will refrain from employing what my husband calls the Lysistrata tactic. 


If I, and most other women I know, have lost this battle, for this generation, I hold out hope for the next.  But I am breaking out of this stalag of untidiness, and reclaiming the ordered and aesthetic pleasing ground I've lost in the process.

---

* In searching the library catalog for the titles of books I remember reading, I find they seem to have been superseded by one I wish I’d read, called Chores without wars : turning dad and kids from reluctant stick-in-the muds to enthusiastic team play, by Lynn Lott, Riki Intner.  Their 2005 edition, Chores without wars; turning housework into teamwork, drops the name-calling and the culprit identification for a more cooperative approach.  I prefer the first subtitle.