Holiday Greetings from Nine-Month-Contract Land

I'm a Donkey on the edge!

Back in November, I surveyed the approach of the holidays, the onset of bowl season, the ramping up of my husband's travel season, and the end to my four-day work-week on an 11-month contract. With all of the calm and clarity of a person anticipating the possibility of another mental breakdown, I sent an email off to my boss and the chair of the department declaring my desire for...no, the necessity of a modification to my contract. Either I work less or I look for another job. Boom.

If life was organized into collections of photo albums like it is on Facebook, then for me, the Spring of 2013 is the cardboard box of photos and negatives that got dropped in a mud puddle and then a toddler crawled inside and crinkled them all up. Every single thing was difficult. A quick peek back around February/March 2013 is funny-sad-bad.

I wasn't positive that this spring would be different, but I knew one thing. I didn't want to do that again.

It turned out that Spring 2014 was not the same soggy cardboard box of photos that Spring 2013 was, though when May ended I stumbled out of it feeling a little shocked and surprised.

Well. *Looks around at the lack of wreckage* That wasn't so bad. That actually went well. Brandon worked more local games, and I think that is the primary reason my head didn't implode.

There was also the shining beacon of The Future ahead: As of June 1, my 11-month contract at Ashland University turned into a 9-month contract.

After the first month of my new arrangement in which I had anticipated hours of free time spent with my family laughing and dancing in sunlight while Bob Marley sang "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and evenings cozied up on the couch with my man and my laptop writing the Next Best American Essay Collection, I am here to report that living in nine-month-contract land is not all that it is cracked up to be.

JUST KIDDING. IT'S AWESOME.

On Wednesday, I was off in nine-month-contract land checking email, because that's what I do from home when I'm not in the office, and Henry crawled up onto my lap between me and the computer, grabbed both of my arms and held them against his chest. He would NOT let me type. No matter how much I tried to break away, he just wouldn't let go. He thought it was SO funny, me chuckling and trying to type. 

"Now, Henry, let me just... if I can just finish this one thing... Just... Let go, Henry!" I said, for about twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes. That's how long I tried to do WORK from HOME on an UNPAID VACATION DAY while my son held my appendages hostage against his chest.

Here is the only trouble with nine-month-contract land that I can see, and it's all my fault: I still feel an obligation and necessity to work twelve months out of the year, to check my email and answer questions, even when I have a new administrative assistant I can delegate things to out of sheer necessity of NO TIME to do all the things anymore. I care a lot about my work, and I want it to be successful.

But Henry wouldn't let me work, so with a huge exasperated sigh I closed my laptop. This is where it gets really tough. Prepare yourselves for the horror of nine-month-contract land.

I took the kids to the pool.

We swam for a full hour with no pressing deadline to hurry up get out we need to go home to eat dinner and then bathe and then sleep. Normally, if I took the kids to the pool, we would go at 6 p.m. after eating the fastest dinner on earth, swim until 6:30, get out because it takes my children 30 minutes to move from the pool to our car, go home and take the baths that require 45 minutes of undressing and peeing and splashing and redressing, and then FINALLY bedtime. During that stretch from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m., I am in constant forward-thinking mode - hurry up and fill-in-the-blank so that we can hurry up and fill-in-the-blank. 

But Wednesday, in nine-month-contract land, there was no hurry up. There was only swim. Okay, you've had enough swimming? I guess we should get out then. Ho hum. Tweedle dee. Off we go. Meander and twiddle. Into the car. La dee da. Home again home again, jiggedy jig. At home, I made lunch at my leisure. 

Here, kids. Here is some food. Eat when you are hungry until you are hungry no more. The sun peeled back the clouds and the atmosphere warmed up, so, kids, why don't we go to the spray park? La la la. Off we go. Have some snacks, there's nowhere to be except here, right here, in nine-month-contract land.

On Thursday in nine-month-contract land, I worked from 7:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m., and sweetheart, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen me wanting to get all the things done before needing to be out of the office in nine-month-contract land for a week and a half. I am an administrative rock star. I administrate the heck out of work. Projects were zinging back and forth off the walls and into other people's offices; proofs zooming here, final versions swooping there, to do lists shot through the heart with check marks. At the end of the day, I kicked some checklist butt.

And today in nine-month-contract land, because I have an awesome husband with some fantastic friends, I spent nine glorious hours by myself. First, I left my phone downstairs and woke up when my body was ready to wake up. Ahh, I said, rolling over and stretching, is that daylight I see? Time to wake up, tra la, tra la! 

I exercised. No need to look at the clock-- there's nowhere else to be, sister. Just lift your weights. Just run on your treadmill. Then walk back home, because no one is waiting for you, so you don't need to drive the quarter-mile to and from the gym, there's all the time in the world. Take as long as you want in the shower. Drink some coffee. Switch a load of laundry. Type a while on the computer. No hurry. No worries.

All of that anxiety back in May about whether or not we could make it on two-months-less pay, and this is what I get? Relaxation and sunshine with my family?

What a waste of emotional energy.

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." - Mahatma Gandhi

Instructions for Crazy

Who is that crazy person in my last blog post?  Woah.  She's crazy, isn't she?

She hasn't completely moved out, but I think I've at least stashed her polka dot and pinstripe clown suit in the closet for a couple of days.

AWP was restorative.  I slept a lot, ate good food, and had great conversation with some amazing women and a few good men.  I sold books and talked about writing and reading and slept.  Sunday morning, I ordered breakfast in bed and wrote for three hours until it was time to check out and fly home.  And then I played with my children and saw my husband who was not a mirage but the actual thing in flesh and blood not tucked in skype or my phone but the real deal, and it was very good.

The crazy person in me still feels a little unstable, still cries easily and flinches when something unexpected happens.  My eye still twitches.  But we have a few strategies to manage her now, I think.  Here are your instructions, Crazy:

#1: Take life cut into triangles drizzled with maple syrup.  If you try to jam that big of a piece in your mouth like that it'll make you gag and that's just gross, so cut it into bite-size pieces, and make sure it's sweet.  Get up fifteen minutes earlier, for God's sake, and slow the morning down a smidgen.  Start the day with a Word so it sticks to your hips like the pancakes.  Get everyone off to their respective destinations, and then breathe because you're at the day job and the day job has manageable to do lists, meetings, phone calls, goals and instant gratification.  The work day does what it's told and doesn't talk back because you're the boss (well, of your work day, anyway) and that's what work days do, they do what they're told, that's right uh huh you know it.  Then return everyone to their destinations of origin for food (home-cooked if you're able, and if not, don't beat yourself up, they won't die from that cheeseburger... at least not today), baths, and bed.  Try to make bedtime stories and prayers and songs happen.  Try.  And then breathe again, take a few hours to drink a glass of wine, write, read, and listen to quiet music.

#2: Sneak in some exercise here and there because you know how good it feels to get a good sweat on.  Even if it means skipping your lunch break to get to the gym, do it.  Just do it.  You can even drop the crew off at the childcare station after work, even though you feel guilty about all of this childcare but hey, better to have a sane mom some of the time than a crazy one all of the time.

#3: Be content with adequate for once.  Be content because nobody is impressed with 150%... they think you're crazy AND YOU ARE.  Those looks are pity, not awe.  Those looks are, dude, you're crazy.

#4: Cancel the spring soccer practices and games.  No one is going to miss it, not even for a minute, and baseball is right around the corner, when your husband's crazy schedule loosens up, and you won't have to tote the gang into the rain on Saturday mornings alone.  Lyd might be sad for about ten seconds and then she'll be over it and on to coloring and dancing and laughing and light.

#5: Don't substitute another weekly activity for the one you just cancelled, i.e., no swimming lessons, gymnastics practices, dance, ballet, tap, piano, karate, etc. you crazy person just let it go so you can enjoy your children for more than the minutes they are sleeping silently in their beds.

#6: The laundry can wait until Saturday.

#7: The dishes can wait until... there aren't any more clean ones.

#8: Don't shut down and shut out your friends and family, even though it's tempting to hole up, burrow in, and battle through alone, even though it feels safer and warmer under these covers.  Coffee is good.  Wine is better.

#9: Even though he's on the road and working, call and text your husband, who loves you and misses you, and believe it when he says it because it's true and you know it's true that this is just a season and crazy will end one day in the foggy not-so-distant future that feels a million years from here.

#10: Read instead of watch TV.  Write instead of scroll through Facebook.

#10: Sleep, you dimwit.  You need it.  After all, you just made two #10s.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

For fun--

What I'm Reading: Grace Notes by Brian Doyle (which is awesome. read it.)
What I'm Writing: a lyric essay on miscarriage, which is so inspirational I can hardly stand it.
What I'm Drinking: the last of a bottle of merlot and a large cup of water.
What I'm Listening To: Norah Jones, "Painter Song"

The Table of No Return

I just finished going through the stack of papers that have accumulated since Thursday on the table of no return.  Surely you have one of these--it's the counter/hutch/bureau/table/drawer where the mail, bills, newspapers, checklists, kids' drawings, homework, and other stuff that needs your attention goes when you need to clear off the dining room table to eat, or just regain sanity for thirty minutes or so.

There's a guilty satisfaction in sweeping up all of the papers off of the table and dumping them in a neatly shuffled stack on another hard surface.  They look organized, all tapped into a rectangular packet of Scholastic order forms, Market day, school pictures, and permission slips.  Breathe it in, yes, you are accomplished.  Yes, your dining room table is clutter-free, yes, yes, you can eat without worrying about spilling water and crumbs on your daughter's homework, and yes, it's true, you will forget about the forms so strategically arranged on the hutch.

Tonight's table-of-no-return surfaced a field trip permission slip, a moms and muffins invitation stapled to a book fair flyer, a school pictures order form, an evening event registration form for Lydia, and Lydia's homework.  And that was just the stuff that needed my immediate attention, never mind three newspapers no one read, coupons I meant to snip and take with me grocery shopping this weekend, a new hotel rewards card for Brandon, fifty sketches of our family in varying colors and sizes, a dozen oversized Handy Manny coloring book pages, papers with L-Y-d-i-a and M-O-M and y y y y y y y y y y y (Lydia needed to practice her y's), an old invoice for afterschool care, a checking account statement, three unopened envelopes, the Y schedule and the Kroc Center schedule, and a newsletter each from Lydia and Elvis's schools. 

Since Lydia started school, I have been experiencing minor anxiety attacks each week (i.e. SOCCER! Ah! LUNCH! AH! Pick up Lydia! AH! Soccer pictures! Ah! Library books! Ah! Gym shoes! Ah! Pick up Lydia! Ah! SOCCER! Ah! Soccer! AH! Lydia! AH! Brain! Ah!).  Does this end?  Someone tell me, will there come a day in the next twenty years of our lives where we do not panic that we've forgotten some minor yet critical component of our children's lives?

I should amend that last sentence - where I do not forget some critical component of my children's lives.  Brandon does not seem to have this problem.  Brandon remembers to pick up his daughter from school and remembers to remind me if I need to pick her up.  Brandon texts me from out of town to pack up the soccer mom van.

People, something needs to be done about the table of no return.  It's a reflection of the state of affairs in this house, and I'm feeling rumpled up and crinkled around the edges.  Every sheet of paper seems to shout MOM!!! LOOK AT ME!!! WE NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS OR ELSE YOU WILL BE CONDEMNED TO THE OUT-OF-TOUCH PARENT CORNER!!!  ATTEND THIS EVENT!!!  CHAPERONE THIS FIELD TRIP!!!  BUY THESE BOOKS SO YOUR SON'S CLASS GETS MORE BOOKS!!! THEIR FUTURES DEPEND UPON YOU, MOM!!!

Table of no return, it is Sunday night.  You are empty.  The forms that need my attention have been strategically relocated to the coffee table of immediate action, next to my wine glass and a pen.  Let's get to work.  There are future shelves of no return to fill with extra wallets of a goofy preschooler and a series of Fancy Nancy books.  Better to buy them now than to pay to have them on-loan for all of eternity from the library.

Confessions of a Tubal Ligation

It's been a week since our newest, and last, son - Henry Delbert - arrived safely into the world via c-section.  He is absolutely beautiful, perfectly content and as predictable of a baby as I've experienced.  Ever since we became pregnant with Henry, I've been coming to terms with this being our last baby - treasuring every little bump and kick in spite of heartburn and general discomfort during pregnancy, and now, as each day passes and Henry grows (and cries, and hiccups, and chirps, and poops, and sleeps, and stretches, and eats), I find myself experiencing similar bittersweet emotions about this phase of life coming to a close. 

Brandon and I decided this would be our last baby almost before we were pregnant with him.  I have to admit that I love being pregnant, and I love having babies, in spite of the discomforts that come along with pregnancy and c-sections.  We planned on having my tubes tied several months ago, though in my heart I could only commit to being 95% sure this should be it.  After all, I'm 28.  Most of my friends and acquaintances my age aren't even considering starting families until they are safely out of their twenties, and here we are, putting a stop to the baby making business?

However, last night as I was feeding Henry, I realized that we've been trying to make babies, recover from losing babies, or birthing babies every year since we got married.  I've been pregnant every year since 2004, counting my three living and breathing miracles as well as four miscarriages.  It has been a long season of baby-making, baby-losing, and baby-birthing, and it feels good to be done.  I will remember this period of life as one of significant growth, spiritually and emotionally, and rejoice in all that has happened in these seven years.  All good things must come to an end, after all, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to carry these babies - for my three children, Lydia, Elvis, and Henry, and for the lost babies.  God carried us through some very difficult chapters of our marriage the last eight years, including those miscarriages, and though walking through those valleys was probably the hardest time of our lives so far, it also taught us a lot about God and our relationship with Him.

Now that the decision is official, and permanent, I am surprised at how relieved I am to be closing this chapter.  I am sad at the finality of it all, but every month with any sort of delay or abnormality won't be plagued with the anxiety of whether or not I'm pregnant.  I can claim back my three c-sectioned body (once it heals).  We can plan our future vacations knowing we will need one roll-away bed in our hotel room and space for three car seats in our vehicles.  It is finished.  And a brand new season is beginning. :)

Measuring Rings

Settle your shifting vision on the maple stump
your son is standing on, growing out
of all your ancient history. The past keeps repeating
in new rings, health you measure by breadth.
You count the number of times you’ve grown
out of the fire, the layers of heartwood healing
over scars, new branches jutting from woundwood.

Do you see the little man stomping his feet
on this stump, laughing? Stop searching
for ways to hollow out your trunk. It is hard
to distinguish redemption from regret; you must see
the heartwood for what it is – dormant, but solid –
here only so you have something to grow on,
matter to attach your sapwood.

The present flows directly from the past.
As every second dies, a new one stumbles in
to stand on the back of the last. If the sun
indeed will rise to warm your town again,
you’ll take this trail tomorrow, but it will never
be the same – you cannot pilfer this moment
in your pocket to pull out a year from now.

Without the bouncing toddler on the stump,
there is no playful coaxing down, no upward-
reaching hand, no march down the sidewalk.
Every dead and living branch you’ve wished away
would erase this knot, this casual miracle
sprouting light with every hallowed breath.

The New Landscape

The New Landscape


I've bundled branches, sawed stumps low,
cut down in twenty minutes
what took years and years to grow.

What do you think the neighbors know
about the severed limbs that jut
from bundled branches, their stumps sawed low?

The taxus and squared boxwood woe
the push and pull as the hand saw cuts
down what took them forty years to grow.

A younger resident, I want to show
ambitious feats to hide my ruts
I left from bundled branches, stumps sawed low.

Even though the overgrown are gone, I know
I will remember every butt
of what took forty years to grow.

So leave the Rose of Sharon shoots to show
a fragment of the past, stubborn infant
witness to the bundled branches, stumps sawed low –
I, too, am a remnant of what took years and years to grow.

Sydney Cast in Shadow

Sydney Cast in Shadow


The garden stroll before a matinee ballet
birds of paradise gawking these palms this lushness
this pristine park dustless alley
these streakfree storefront windows
this cloudless painless blue this skyline
etched with geometric concrete waves
jutting saucer tower arcing bridge
sailboat-speckled placid harbor this paper bag
soaked in grease from fish and chips

Me too far away to see
my blurred face bare legs fingers tugging skirt hem
neverending steps the opera house
perched at cresting point behind me

This map too small in scale its cartoon skyscrapers
outlandish fountain dozen golden arches architecture
arc and angles exaggerated too whimsical
to accommodate the shadowed blocks we walked
cabs we didn't wave sweaty footprints pressed to sidewalks
heels in hand this vast gap between where we were
and where we hoped to be.

Easter Saturdays

Easter Saturdays (tentative title because I stink at titles)


Cars full of people split the swamp where my creek flows.
They must not ponder, pause, stare at hollowed logs,
branchless trunks and wonder about the end of winter,
spring still a whisper in the trickle of cold water through the culvert.

What does all this dying mean, this surrender
after striving for three seasons? Grasses have been shedding
locks for decades, climbing out of caskets, grow and grow
over all their flawed history. We are all eating ourselves,

regurgitating what we thought was digested,
disposed and left behind. But it heaves back,
the crunch of gravel chip and seal, the steady rain falling
after having traveled the culvert just yesterday,

when I straddled the guard rail, cold metal creasing my thighs,
watching every season of my life die and be reborn.

Lydia

Lydia


*Poof!*

Cascade Valley

Look, my daughter, the pine tree
dropped its seeds, and here
a fragile sapling braves the forest floor.
This used to be a birch tree
but maybe lightning sliced it,
wind heaved its heavy breath against it
and now the trunk is rust.
Sticks used to flirt, flare
their skirts of springtime buds,

but now we throw the broken limbs
into the rushing floodwaters to see
how quickly we could be carried away.
We are always a hair too close
to the edge, send pebbles skittering
into the river. Let's find our way back
from this spring rage, out of the valley
that catches what used to cling above.

Climb this mountain with its muddy paths,
deer trails, tread marks, hoof prints,
decomposing oaks - we are not the first
to grow and fall. But see the way the leaves
return to earth, the way the dust collects.
Crocus blades emerge from crumbling stumps
as if this growth does not take more than soil,
light, and rain. Reach down, my child,
bring a pine cone home to show
how miraculously we are carried.