Ways of looking at the pieces
Posted on | April 23, 2006 |
The past few days have been piled with small fragments. Tesserae. A jigsaw puzzle in a box. The deadline for the house is rapidly approaching: five weeks until our lease is up here. Five weeks to do: drywall mudding, paint, floors, kitchen, and both bathrooms.
My mother is here for a visit, and seeing her come towards me from across the wide foyer of the airport, I felt a lurch of familiarity and distance all at once. Her shoulders felt small when we hugged—smaller than the shoulders I perpetually remember from my childhood. It always takes us a few days to synchronize, our interpretations of each other always slightly off at first encounter.
Sitting on stools at the kitchen island we sweet mandarins and talk about her past, my childhood, our futures. Words that keep coming up: comparison, criticism, home, happiness, choice. Hearing her describe the threads of her biography (misplaced affection, intense shyness, an affair, a baby, and then she married my father: a man she hardly knew, but whose ideals she loved) makes me feel a bit like I’m a bird trying to swim in the lake of her perception.
She’s brought good chocolate: hazelnut and currant, and I nibble on it, hardly able to fathom the gap in perceiving that spreads out between us. But we find much to laugh at together, and she makes incredible food.
The second day of her visit she stays with Bean, while DH and I hang drywall for hours. We work at first like giddy high school sweethearts, saying goofy things, laughing, so happy to be together. Then we grow steady, a rhythm evolving. Our movements become synchronized: each moving one step ahead of the other, our actions overlapping only when necessary (to hold each piece of gypsum up; to wield the drill, dimpling screws into its papered surface.)
When I come home for dinner, my mother has done the incredible: the house is clean, Bean has been fed fresh cooked squash with brown rice, and all the laundry is done. To me this is an incredible feat. Most days the house limps by, in a state of constant neglect. The laundry is the worst of it, and my best friend knows me well enough to say, “Oh god, you must be really stressed,” after checking on the status of our clean towel supply— and finding none.
DH and I are a team with housework as with other things. We clean together, cook together, and neglect housework together. But we are also lucky that neither of us have particularly high standards of clean, or else we’d drive each other mad. My mother on the other hand: the domestic superwoman. I murmur my thanks between bites of succulent herbed chicken.
She doesn’t see her strengths: afraid to trust in her own innate power, she is terrified of finding a ‘real’ job. Work. Of creating a home that no longer has, for her, its customary center (my father). After Bean is in bed we try to talk about this. Try, though the words feel like they are weighted differently: meaning one thing to her, and another to me.
And then DH calls with low blood sugar, feeling off. Exhausted maybe, or worse, possibly. He’s type 1 diabetic, and every time he calls to tell me that his blood sugar is going low it feels like I’ve swallowed Draino and it’s making it’s way down my limbs, melting them. He doesn’t feel okay by the time he makes it home. The test strips read one thing but his body another, and he’s shaking (fear? or something worse?), so we go to the emergency room.
After a few hours everything returns to normal (we think he accidentally took extra units of insulin at dinner), and we are tear-drenched and grateful when we hear the first raw cries of a newborn baby entering the world a few doors away.
It shakes us up, in a good way. Sometimes this is needed. When working on a jigsaw you can look, and look, and look and not find the piece you need until you shake the box and let the pieces fall anew, and there it is. For us, this reminder: life is precious, sweet, and fleeting. No house, no deadline worth its loss. Stress, like a tangle of barbed wire, needs to be coiled and set aside.
So today we played. A late breakfast (omlets, jammy toast, iced lattes), and then went to a home expo where Bean batted at balloons and DH oogled viking ranges and slate roofing. Tonight, just the two of us got to take a walk along the empty streets of the city under one umbrella, our feet and knees freckled with raindrops, our bodies touching.
Comments
21 Responses to “Ways of looking at the pieces”
Leave a Reply
April 24th, 2006 @ 12:37 am
I think this is my favorite post you’ve written. Its pace, it’s gently metered information and slice of personal background, it just has such a simple and tender quality to it. The paragraph about working on the house had this intimate quality that made me think of the way we make love in good relationships: fun, silly, then serious and synchronized.
And I am so relieved that your husband is OK. It sounds like you made the right choice to go!
April 24th, 2006 @ 12:47 am
I find it like a dance, to describe me relationship with my mother; mostly, I avoid the subject, because to describe it one day would contradict my perception on another. We have a relationship that requires kid gloves. But I love her, appreciate her deeply. And I sense a little of the same polarity in your relationship with your mother, only poetically and tactfully described. I was moved by this.
I’m thankful that your husband was okay. I read your blog and I am reading a life shared, rarely a rant and mostly harmony of a partnering that I envy! You are good to reflect on the whole of shared efforts, to include the collaboration of neglect. THAT I can relate to
Insightful post, Christine. And I’m glad you get time away to enjoy time alone as a couple. Inspiring… I should try harder…
April 24th, 2006 @ 1:38 am
there are so many things I love about this post.
I just did not want it to end.
April 24th, 2006 @ 1:49 am
Glad he’s okay.
April 24th, 2006 @ 7:38 am
I’m glad he’s okay and that you took a day to breathe.
Your mom did just what I had hoped she would.
April 24th, 2006 @ 8:18 am
I’m glad he’s okay; half of my husband’s family is diabetic and it’s scary when it suddenly flares up like that. Glad you had a day just to relax.
April 24th, 2006 @ 8:59 am
I liked the rhymth of that post…but when I got about 1/2 way down and you spoke of DH and his diabeties my heart lept into my throat. My husband too is diabetic…type 2 but severely insuline dependant…(5 needles a day)….and when he wakes me up in the middle of the night because he is crashing…or when we are out and he starts to feel not right…like drinking liquid Draino…..I understand all too well.
I am glad that DH is ok and I am also glad that you are blessed with the visit of what sounds like a wonderful MOM. Hope you have a good and productive week.
Give us some house pictures soon!!!!
April 24th, 2006 @ 9:18 am
you have really found your words…
that was an amazing post…
from the description of
being with your mom
and the mixed bag of emotions
that can come with that
to the draino feeling/fear with DH…
wow.
April 24th, 2006 @ 9:58 am
What a great post. I got teary when I read about DH and the insulin scare. It’s such a precarious balance and most times it’s all manageable but as you said, stress, pressures….it definitely will take its toll. My kitty was diabetic and it was an amazing dance to make sure his sugars were in balance and trying to figure it out with a being that can’t speak.
I’m SO glad DH is better and that you’re having a great visit with your mom. We’re out west visiting my dad and it’s wonderful to be with family.
April 24th, 2006 @ 10:38 am
I was very moved by this post–just reveling in the magic of the mundane moments. I am glad the hospital trip ended with joy over new births instead of complications for your husband. Visiting your blog for a while…but I had to comment on this one and say thank you for expressing your “small fragments” so fully–your mindful perspective (and the words themselves) keep me reading along.
April 24th, 2006 @ 10:54 am
So glad to have you back posting - so understandable why you didn’t for a few days. wonderful post…beautiful words.
my mother and i understand eachother best when we live in different states … her in FL, us in GA, OH, and wherever next. it’s a funny thing when you try and help a parent through some pain or fears, almost like the roles have been reversed. going through this a few times now, i know that it is awkward at times, but fulfilling to be there for someone who has always been there for me. and it is so nice that your mom can be there for you in this stressy time and you were able to talk to her, even just a little about her fears.
glad DH is ok. i have hypoglycemia and need to keep my sugar up and know how scary it is when your brain just stops working and you can’t think to just eat something - nothing like diabetes, but i empathize with you. glad you were able to relax a bit - you need it.
April 24th, 2006 @ 12:26 pm
the images this evokes…you are painting your life with your words with this one. the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship. swimming in her perceptions…yes, this is something i know as well.
and that fear about your husband’s health. oh i am so glad he is fine. it can be so scary…but the cries of the newborn reminding you it is all okay. beautiful.
sending you moments of peace and light my dear.
April 24th, 2006 @ 12:54 pm
This was so beautifully written. My mother and grandmother visit and clean my whole house too, which is a little frustrating because I’m a bit of a neat freak, but their standards and mine are totally different. They wax the hardwoods and clean out the stove grills. I can’t fathom that kind of attention to detail. I’ve decided our mothers come from a different era, in which women didn’t have as much access to art supplies and writing groups and the Internet. The house was their hobby.
April 24th, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
What a lovely post, revealing so much and yet not TOO much. I cannot wait for the day I hold a book by YOU YOU fabulous YOU in my hands. I would buy twenty and be like Oprah and hand them out to all my friends.
The mother/daughter relationship can be such a delicate balance, and yet I think we all long for our moms to do just what your mother did - to swoop in, help us with our disasters, restore order.
You made me laugh with ‘we neglect housework together’. Us too! I truly don’t know what I’d do with a husband who demanded a spotless house, the only thing to do would be to hand him a sponge and tell him to get busy, baby. And I’m so glad your man is okay, but nothing like a little hospital visit to be thankful for the good health and blessing you have.
April 24th, 2006 @ 3:25 pm
thank you for passing on the imporant lesson you learned this week.
April 24th, 2006 @ 3:27 pm
Hurray for moms! (and I don’t just mean yours, I mean YOU, too). Your writing just blows me away. Honestly. Every time.
April 24th, 2006 @ 3:55 pm
So glad things are ok. Please give my love to your mom! I’m going to be travelling to Pocatello, ID for work tomorrow, so I’ll be one hour closer for a couple days. Then in Chicago next week (M-S) so even closer. Hope we get a chance to talk soon. I’ve been thinking about all of you a lot, and send my love and huge hugs of support.
April 24th, 2006 @ 11:20 pm
I haven’t had the chance to read in so long, and today you post the most beautiful, moving post I have ever read. You never cease to amaze me.
I’ll be thinking of you and your move over the next few weeks. Try not to stress too much. Soon the boxes will be unpacked and you’ll be home, in every sense of the word.
April 25th, 2006 @ 10:24 am
Wow. You are so observant. I feel like we’re all blessed by your writing, Christina. By the way, have you read the book by Christiane Northrup called “Mother-Daughter Wisdom : Creating a Legacy of Physical and Emotional Health” — it’s a good read. You last two posts made me think of this book.
April 25th, 2006 @ 5:22 pm
Glad to read from you again… what a week you had! Wishing you luck with your move - it will all work out and you will be settled in before you know it. Can’t wait to hear all about everything:)
May 8th, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
i loved hearing the synchronisity of you and your husband doing drywall together. so poetic.
i am relieved he had you all to take him to the emergency room. that must be frightening when it happens. he is blessed that you love and nurture him so.