For the first time in my life I have a writing space that is lovely and all mine, even down to the earthy paint color. I feel very blessed to have a space of my own....and also obligated to not suck at writing because, you know, I have a whole fucking ROOM devoted to my practice. Being a student makes it feel so much more "way legit", as George would say.
Where is mama? Mama is in her office. Last door on your right down a long hallway in our big, big house on the edge of town.
The black desk looks pretty but it's spray-painted and the veneer is chipping, and also too small to sit at. One day I will add some wheels or height or better yet find a really sweet antique writing desk with spindle legs and ornate handles. We have so many clean-lined modern pieces in our home, I've enjoyed working in some more traditional pieces when I can. The office chair there is my favorite color: mustard. It is the perfect balance for my romantic desk and the Mad Men lamp.
The wall hanging is a Mexican vintage rug passed on to us by Uncle Payson, and it is one of my favorite textile pieces we own and too precious to put in a common space where we would undoubtedly stain or maim it in some fashion. Again, I adore the clean-lines, and color contrast--the cream and dark linear pattern with a few color splashes. I want to be wrapped in it when I die...semi-serious about that.
My book collection is small because I'm not a very heavy reader. Top-shelf is books from school since I began at Marylhurst a year and a half ago, along with some old journals and the better books from my hardcore domestic days: World of Baby Names has little notes written in margins when we were pregnant with all kids and making lists; The Naturally Clean Home has the recipes I used to make my own products when I cleaned houses for a few years; Raising Poultry in our chicken and duck days; and Vegan Delights only because it has a great recipe for "mock tomato sauce"--a few of us around here are sensitive to nightshades.
Where I actually sit and read and write and edit and click and drink coffee or wine depending on the hour, is the big blue chair. $20 at Deseret Industries, $10 for the matching ottoman. Serious score. The little table was Blake's grandmother's on his dad's side, Hedwig. It is topped with gold-embossed leather. Poetry notebooks, legal pads, The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, Mary Ruefle, and a pen or two live there today.
I have been collecting mother and child (or Mary and Jesus, depending on your enterpretation) art since I was a teen, and one of my favorites hangs above. Yes, that is my one and only belly cast on the wall, when I was round and full with baby George.
Across the way, my view from the chair, are French doors, big trees, mossy roofs, and bounding cats. An original Dali sketch I swooped from B. The typewriter has faded ribbon but the kids love to come in here and type their names or write me weird notes. The file cabinet holds old magazines and assignments. A vintage 60's dress with impressive embroidery hangs along with an old Chinese woven hat. The closet holds many more pieces I've collected since I was young. Sometimes a dress comes out to play but otherwise I just feel the need to be a keeper of days-gone-by fashion (that was my past major, you know.)
An essay from last term, chopped apart and reformed--on the topic of marriage, compassion, mental health, and rebellion. The closet door makes a fine editing wall. I hope to remove that one and breathe organization to a new piece soon. But that all depends on how much writing I get done in my little room.
To make my blogging month easier on me (I do have three kids and big dirty house and a long commute my kids' school and also am a student myself, you know) I am going to do some theme days. Simple Sundays is usually a picture and a blurb. Since I did a poem Friday I will do...yup, Poetry Fridays! (either mine or someone else's.) Now I am dubbing Monday "I heart..." Mondays, a long or short post about a random thing or person I adore. The rest of the days...well, I will just cross those bridges when I'm looking at them.
DeAnna at AT&T just made my day. If DeAnna didn't live in Colorado and also be sitting in a cubicle with a headpiece on, I would totally inappropriately offer to buy her a cocktail or a craft brew or a Stumptown coffee.
When we moved back to our old house in late May, we did not re-hook up the internet. One: because it felt so good to be Comcast-free (those filthy greedy bastards) and Comcast is our only choice up here since the previous owners sabotaged the Qwest/CenturyLink line...they literally dug it up in the front yard and sliced the wire. Two: we are all really bad at moderation (addictive personalities, both sides of the family) and the Netflix consumption in our house was Out Of Control. George would get up way early and go watch hours of obnoxious cartoons like Johnny Test before we woke up, and when we did he'd run up to us and karate chop us in the crotch and yell "Moron!" I tried doing a thing with the queue so that only mellow educational shows were available like 'How it's Made' and 'Word Girl' but then within a few months the older kids discovered Doctor Who and we all got hooked and no one respected the queue-only rule anymore. I saw almost all spontaneous creative play cease, and the arguing over the computer after-school scene seemed to repeat no matter how many solutions were agreed upon.
I just wanted a little respite so we broke the news that we would take the summer off from the internet. We weren't total assholes though, we still had data on our phones, we bought tons of second-hand DVD's for unlimited movie watching, and I bought the kids an old school Nintendo with Legend of Zelda, Tetris, Mario Brothers, and Pac-Man.
That was cool for about a week.
Yet, being back at our old house felt amazing, and the kids when they woke up or came home from wherever, would listen to music, draw, craft, cook, run around in the backyard and make up games. <------just like I remember them doing before there was internet streaming!
I am not anti-technology by any stretch and I don't blame technology for destroying the minds of our children. I believe one day that our existence will look remarkably like Star Trek: The Next Generation. And to get there we need to get our hands on the sharpest, most brilliant technology and become absolutely fluent in it's use and understanding especially our children--because they will be the one's developing it as we pass on (clutching our super antiquated smartphone devices that will be the equivalent to an 8-track player in our old age.)
Over the summer, we had our challenges. Trying to purchase pre-sale Nine Inch Nail tickets at exactly 10am on the dot from an iPhone is not the most relaxing experience. But I knew that going back to unlimited internet and youTube and video streaming would again smother the imaginative play and creative practice that the kids had developed for themselves again. I know our limits. I want the kids to learn to self-moderate, but I also know Blake and I's personal struggles with excess and that we do better when we some limitation around how much we get to manage.
So the solution was to add a mobile internet device to our cell phone plan and with 10GB a month to play with, all shared between us and for use on the home computer. That meant that we could all still use email, and looking things up on Safari, use our favorite apps like Instagram, and do homework assignments...but not enough to add Netflix or cruise youTube or play computer games.
The first two months went well and we kept within the allotted data plan. Then, when Blake's mom passed away in early October suddenly I was at "ground control" at the computer booking flights, doing research, and making Skype calls to Blake's uncle (Ilya's brother) in India. Also our computer was being very slow and the hard drive didn't have enough space to even back-up our phone's so I had my brother-in-law Michael come out and update the computer and install an external hard drive which ended up being a huuuuge data-suck. We blew the entire 10GBs in a week. I anticipated this and we knew that we would just pay $15 each gig we went over--it would just be that kind of month.
Yesterday, was supposed to be the first day of our new billing cycle. But when I read our device box it said that we were still adding data to the current cycle with 0 days left--we were broaching 20GB total. I explored my account online today and noticed that yesterday was indeed the start of a new cycle and that the data we had used so far yesterday and today was being included in that new cycle--but last months cycle went just over 20GBs. Looked like a day of double billing might be happening, so I called AT&T to see what was up and to increase our data plan to be better prepared for random extra usage.
That's when I met DeAnna. DeAnna, when I told her I was confused about the double-billing, was appalled at the thought I might be getting charged unfairly. DeAnna was also extremely sympathetic to my data usage being so over our limit, although I hadn't even told her why. At first she thought to make things right she would credit me back $30 to cover the 2GB used over the last few days just to be safe then, she decided "that AT&T would want me to be happy" and she just went ahead and took away ALL $150 of over-usage charges. Just because.
It was then I became weepy and confessed what an extremely hard month it has been with the death of my mother-in-law and I can tell you that DeAnna, oh goddess of empathy, could feel my pain! DeAnna herself had lost her father on St. Patrick's Day....he had had some health troubles but was thought to have his heath back on track and released from his hospital stay, feeling great, on a Thursday but he just dropped dead on Saturday morning. She was shocked. DeAnna and I both agreed that our extremely safety-conscious culture had left most of us very detached from the realities of death and unprepared for it's finality. DeAnna and I were mutually sorry for each others losses.
Then before she let me go, DeAnna wanted me to know that my daughters account had a $10 dollar subscription on it, some navigation program, charged monthly--no, I did not!--so she back credited that two months and removed it. She said sometimes that the salesperson at the store adds it on when the phone is first purchased and gets a commission. She felt ashamed that another AT&T employee might participate in such an unsavory practice and on behalf of AT&T sincerely apologized. Oh, sweet DeAnna.
So DeAnna, generous angel of customer service, this one is for you....
I've written about this before, something like "I highly recommend dating your spouse." Blake and I got married fast, got pregnant on the honeymoon, and never dated regularly after having kids. When things got especially rough, it became clear we were more familiar with each other as that other annoyed parent in the house, than, you know, like actually fully formed and ever-changing individuals. After a decade of this and my own need to develop a other-than-motherly identity for myself, we made the commitment to go out together once every week or two. Yes, this means actually securing childcare which can be a pain. But once we pushed through the awkwardness of "hey, wow, uh, hey...so, guess what the kids did today!" we began to get comfortable being that cute married couple snuggled at the counter seat near the kitchen (we discovered we both liked this compared to tables at nice restaurants) and we found we could actually catch up on conversational shit we needed to catch up on regarding the week OR we could just talk about food and music and plans without being interrupted twenty million times by kids.
I love date night. Even if I'm low energy and have been hacking up phlegm for a week (like this week--ugh) I just like being with my sweetie and visiting new places and looking at his cute face.
So tonight it was ramen at Boke Bowl, Star Trek pinball at Bunk Bar, and a cruise through Buffalo Exchange (no luck there though!)
Of all the days to have a box of ashes delivered to your house, I think the Day of the Dead is the most appropriate.
Blake's mother passed away four weeks ago. We've been steeped in the process of losing a parent for the first time. It was not expected but he was able to get to her, and say goodbye, to give her comfort.
On Halloween, he was given the news that his mentor and friend Father Daniel Jensen passed away over the summer quietly in the Maryknoll in upstate New York but no one had informed him. Father Dan married us in Mexico under the shadow of the great El Castillo at Chichen Itza twelve years ago. He was a Catholic priest who lived among the Maya for thirty years, not to convert but to appreciate and serve within a culture he adored. Blake and him had bonded over their mutual admiration for pre-Columbian art and ritual.
Exactly twelve years to the day of that ceremony, Blake held his mothers hand as she passed through the veil. And today, the day we have adapted for our own ritual of honoring the memory of those we love who have died, her remains came in a US postal service box: a knock and a signature and pass off.
Death is as crisp and real as the sound of fall leaves under my feet and stirring in the streets. Fragility is in the air.
if a reach in the form of a video from 1992 sent via email at 1am is
all i have, i will have to take it. she's down below and we haven't
even gotten started yet. he's asleep and i haven't had my second glass
yet. i don't want to wake any one but apparently this is my hour of
feeling. i mustn't disrupt.
i, alone in my bubble of ear buds and
toasty laptop and peanut butter cups, from the edges of bodily self and
in toward the center: this day, these people, this life, my life, how hungry
to tell how it is, in some ways, like your
life. shhhhhhh...if i wake this bubble of words might break. i will
have to turn out the lights (although i should) and i know its late and i
have boxes to pack (and a life to unpack) and meals to prepare and phone calls to make and
details dormant that have not even occurred to me yet, all on the
plate of tomorrow. because i have not closed my eyes, tomorrow hasn't
happened, and the whole of what is mine, and possibly yours,
seeps into me now that everybody's chest rises heavy and i alone am here
pressed up against the night mirror and all that batters my ethereal
tissue and how i am not enough to you, the baby of you, both of you, cut
from one maddening duvet. do we even remember the child? I will be the
first to say in the breath-space that at times i do not remember, i am
so overwhelmed by present that the cotton of my blankets feel worthy of a
line, and i wonder how i might reach her right now because the morning
will come and i will be stiff and young again, or he will turn in our bed and
squint at the light and the words will stop coming from me the way they
do now, like a spell broken across the heather sheets. so desperate and
lovely we are in the night.
Beauty lies in the belly--
the accommodation,
the trepidation,
The foundation.
Children change us from the inside, flesh to flesh,
Then enter the world and change us on the outside,
streak our hair and deepen our faces,
And continue to transform us beyond the surface,
the most inward of spaces
where lovers could never touch,
Remodeling our entire hearts,
down to the nails.
Sewn into them, our seeds of sorrow and surrender,
of navigation and delight,
That will thresh out of their fiber every day they step on Earth.
Mothers, they stand by, in the sticky dirt
They bind together the pieces that no one else can bind
for they don't have the same quality of breath.
They are the framework that holds together,
and gives birth,
To humanity's tiny masterpiece.
The mother is the language,
and the child her poetry.
