{my topography}

Heat dumb

So my sister has shamed me into blogging, telling me I suck at updating and that I’m basically a miserable failure in the regular posting department. Yeah. Well. Not much to update about due to the fact that I’m MELTING. It’s suddenly summer here. The grass is knee high and I seem to have allergies. It is 90 degrees and humid and my brain feels too large for my skull.

See aren’t you glad I’m updating?

At night when Bean invariably crawls into bed he very much resembles a cross between a hot water bottle and a colt: all legs and heat. Typically I take a knee or a foot to the eye at least once a night. He seems to think sleeping perpendicular to me is fun.

Other than heat and sleep deprivation, I’m limping my way through my last full week of school. We’re doing everything we can to keep cool, but thanks to 1970s inspired public school architecture, my classroom is south facing and flat roofed. By mid-afternoon the classroom thermomiter read 92 degrees. Yeah. So. Where was I? Melting brain? How can anyone possibly expect anyone to accomplish anything in such conditions? Much less seven year olds who are hankering to be outdoors. They look at me with hot cheeks and sweat on their upper lips, and I can tell that all the words I’m saying about place value are just floating somewhere between us in litte clouds of moisture and heat. They nod, but they don’t hear me.

I’m still crossing my fingers; trying to remember that everything is good right now. Spain in a week. A gorgeous dress. Pretty shoes. Friends I haven’t seen in so long. INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL. Then graduate school. Life is good. But still, I can’t help wanting what I don’t have. More on that when I’m feeling like being less mysterious. And less melty-brain like.

Oh, and does anyone have any recommendations for making sleep more tolorable in the heat? We have a fan, but being all prissy and noise sensitive, it basically is sound torture all night long for me to listen to it whirr back and forth. I try sleeping with a pillow over my head, but then the heat, well. You get the idea. Anyone know some really good earplugs?

Enough. Hope everyone is happy and well and lovely and possibly less heat-stupored than I.

Scraps

It is somehow already Thursday. I am like salt in a shaker, scattered haphazardly over the things of my days. Small scraps that I want to remember.

***

Coming back to the classroom I put a jar full of tulips by my desk, and smiled when it was the boys who noticed. A little girl came in with a Tupperware of salamanders for our terrarium. A boy who constantly pushes my buttons looked like he was up to no good, so I swung by his table and discovered he was writing: You are the best teacher in the world on a heart he’d drawn in marker.

Also: we’re studying matter, and we’ve been having the best conversations.

Me: What do you think matter is?
Kid: Maybe whatever it is, the person who invented it is named Matt?

Me: Matter is anything you can touch or feel.
Kid: If it’s anything we can touch or feel, do we eat matter?
Kid: Do we breath matter? We can feel air, so we must!
Kid: Matter is ANYTHING.
Kid: If matter is EVERYTHING, is there anything that ISN’T MATTER?
Kid: If matter is everything, then is God matter?

***
Yesterday we went to a two-bit circus with Bean. It’s a tiny family circus that seems to tour the country—360 shows per year. What a life. All the clowns and acrobats and jugglers were either too young or too old to make a crack at it anywhere else, and the ponies napped between rides when everyone was taking a break to buy popcorn and bright bobbing star-specked balloons and sparkling wands. But it still had magic. There were moments when I gasped. And Bean, big eyed from his daddy’s lap, his face sticky with cotton candy, could not take his eyes off everything that was going on.

I always remember loving the circus. As in: I wanted to run away and join.

Now I’m bitten with the peculiar desire to follow a troupe around and write their story. I often wonder if anyone else is curious about this? How these people live, all year, in trailers, going from place to place, performing, practicing, always on the road. How does the 12 year old Peruvian juggling marvel (who dropped his props) go to school? Or his sister, the contortionist who could twirl her entire body bent over backwards by holding onto a swivel with her mouth. But I can’t imagine they’d want me there, poking into the private corners of their lives, after fake eyelashes have been removed and the ponies are bedded down for the night.

***
Today I came home from work nearly staggering. Tired. I buried my head under pillows.
I’ve always loved my bed, wherever it’s been. It’s the thing I think of when I think of home. Soft sheets, the window open just a sliver, light falling golden through the big-leafed tree in the blue bowl by the bed. Without intending to, I was asleep. Not slumber, but black out sleep, that when I awakened I could not recall. The kind of sleep where you’re not sure if you were asleep at all, yet the shadows are longer.

Bean and DH let me sleep until dinner time, at which point I emerged like a baby raccoon. Clumsily and disoriented, at the very least.

Onwards.

Here again

Outside, in the quiet winter cold, a dog barks again and again and again. A series of three staccato yaps, then a pause, snowflakes swirling in the silence before it barks again; left somewhere outdoors, hot breath making the fur wet around his mouth, icicles gathering in shaggy snarls.

In the sky, the moon, rinsed in the shadow of a recent eclipse, climbs higher up the edge of the dark.

Inside, I almost hold my breath. Heartache coiled in my chest again. I’m restless.

It is still winter here, and I’m home after a week away, where I was submerged in desert sunlight and words. The yearning to be at the next place in my life is fiercer than ever now; to be doing this writing thing, full tilt, without anything else. To be writing every day, without a day job that leaves me feeling like one of those tabs of fish food you throw in the tank for the fish to nibble relentlessly while the owner leaves for a vacation.

It is still winter and stumbling about the internet I find a classmate from my year in college who has published her first collection of essays, and also has the job I wish I had, in the thick of the Manhattan literary world, among tall buildings and subways and martinis. I bite my lip seeing her book jacket, her shiny hair.

I hate the color of this thing that creeps up in my solar plexus. I hate the way jealousy makes me feel small and suffocated, and the way it makes me ask a hundred stupid what-ifs, as if time weren’t irreversible, as if I weren’t here in the thick of this winter snowstorm with a three year old tucked into flannel sheets upstairs and a husband suffering through another bout of depression.

Maybe this is the thing I hate the most. How he won’t admit that his entire way of inhabiting the world hinges on finances; on what he makes or looses for the week in the market, the charts and numbers blipping by him faster than a heartbeat. He won’t say that his life is empty of things that make his heart tremble with passion; he won’t say that he keeps putting these things on hold to maintain our status quo, to keep afloat, to put in a home gym and a flat screen TV, to do whatever comes next in the acquisition process that never ends but never makes him really happy either. He doesn’t see it this way. But I feel his emptiness like a dry heat licking at my skin, making my knuckles crack, my lips grow chapped.

Winter. It seems to always find us here, under sweaters in different rooms with hardly anything to say. It’s been three weeks of tight jaw muscles, and shorter conversations. We hug each other by the kitchen island over Saturday morning pancakes with maple syrup and bacon and hot coffee, but there is always something that makes one or the other of us pull away abruptly, as though magnetism, like heat, is scarce on these cold days and longer nights.

The only time I really see his face bloom into an unguarded smile is when he is with Bean. Then it spreads across his cheeks like the unexpected tiny rainbows from the prism hanging by a ribbon in the window, and a small sharp sliver worms its way into the very center of my chest. I can’t help but wish his smile would bloom like this for me.

But we’re like hungry dogs, circling, ready to snap at the slightest provocation. It is as though we’re both looking for a reason, for some release of tension—both of us craving the pulpy mess that exposes our hearts and leaves us pressed close together with heat between us. Maybe this makes no sense. Of course it makes no sense. But why else do we do this at-once push and pull?

When he’s around, it’s all about pull-your-hair-out-crazy mood swings, and this week has been his worst week ever in the stock market. Everything tipped in the wrong direction, keel up, toppled like dominos. And at the end of a day I can’t help it, I turn away, heart pounding. I’ve already given nearly every shred of patience away to six year olds who play modern warfare games and miss their mothers living in other states. It’s almost like a reflex: the way I avoide directness, intimacy, while feeling like everything between us is flayed: muscles, tendons, hearts, tears always at the back of our eyes.

But then when he’s gone all I can do is watch the clock, the minute hand dogging the hour hand until he’s back, craving him like homesickness.

A positive counterbalance

It’s the end of a week off and I feel at once relaxed and utterly frantic. I keep trying to remind myself not to let amorphous anxiety paint the backdrop for the entire day, and to instead pinpoint the underlying fear that causes angst to spread like a dark stain over calmer moments. This week my fear is that I won’t have enough time. My writing deadline looms at the end of the week, and although I love the work I’ve been producing I haven’t had the undivided time to sink back into it in a week or two, and this week is particularly busy.

I have decided to focus on the positives this week as a counterbalance to the stress. I am excited because DH and I are starting a new class together: a beginner series in ashtanga yoga. I can’t wait for my new yoga pants to come in the mail, and am looking forward to bring more attention and focus towards being consciously in my body next to DH being consciously in his. We’ve missed each other like crazy for the past couple of weeks. Bean has been sick, and this always results in him cozying up in our bed, needier than usual and full of toddler snores. We had an afternoon napping date yesterday, and though not a lot of sleep happened, we’ve been grinning at each other ever since.

Small good things that make me smile: my orchids blooming again on my windowsill; chai tea with sugar cubes and milk; discovering new settings on my camera today; carrying around a list notebook in my back pocket (instead of obsessing about the things I’ll otherwise forget); the first green and blue eggs from my Ameracuna chickens; and my new subscription to Cookie magazine. What are some things that make you smile?

The work you love and the work you do

A day to catch up with myself: the boys left early to install soapstone counter tops at the inlaws house. I slept in until after 10 a.m. I’m not sure when I last did that. It felt unbelievably good. I woke up to sun splashed across white flannel and the cat purring and sang in the shower. I had breakfast alone by the woodstove in the dining room, reading Heat and eating bacon, eggs, toast, and a peach-raspberry smoothie, then headed outdoors. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. The sky was bright blue, and the last golden leaves were floating down. I cleaned the chicken coop, relishing the work.

As I scooped debris from the floor I pondered how within the scope of my life there are different kinds of work. So many of you responded yesterday with job worries, and these resonate with me: with my longing to be doing something else (specifically: writing full time.) It seems as though for so many of us, what we do, and the work we love have become disparate, cleaved out of necessity.

What is the work that you love? For me it is a dozen things: wearing leather gloves and stacking wood; raking leaves; turning soil. It is mowing grass, cutting branches, planting seeds. It is spending six hours back to back writing. It is waking up when the sky is stained pale pink, to scribble in my notebook. It is putting paint on a canvass. And also, some days, it is greeting the faces at the door, eager, curious, exalting. But most days it is my job. The thing that pays the bills. The thing I am good at. The thing I put 100 % of my energy into every day. And yet it doesn’t fill me up the way it used to; my solar plexus is too full with longing, with words that never make it to the page.

Twirling in a burlap sack

Or something.

This week has been hectic, and I’m grumpy that I’m turning into one of those depressing post once a week bloggers. I love coming here and finding all of you and your comments and your stories, and I have a zillion posts that I write in my head… you know how it is.

This week though, in particular, has been like a bizarre synchronized swimming competition and I’ve barely had time to come up for breath. It shouldn’t really be so hectic–my in-laws have moved here (and though they don’t have appliances so they’re here all the time for meals, they help A LOT with Bean and such) and my class at school has finally started to come together as a group. There have been no more incidents of scissor throwing or wailing or refusals to say, sit in a chair, or come to the meeting area, and today a parent came in and built an exquisite terrarium for us.

At home we have a toasty warm new wood stove, and the hills are turning to burnished red and saffron. When we take walks in the afternoon we walk through armloads of fallen leaves the color of gems, freckled with rainwater. The rooster has begun crowing. The skies at dusk are purple like the stain of a grape, with gauzy gray clouds smudge across the mountains. It’s a good time of year. Time for apple pie, and café au laits and pumpkin cheesecake ice cream.

But I still have this feeling; like a dervish. Twirling, my feet barely touching ground. I know the real reason is that I haven’t connected back with my writing for several weeks now, and the threads that connect me to the stories I’m constructing have become fine and tenuous like spider’s webs. But every morning I wake up still tired, and every night I go to sleep with my mind a kaleidoscope of fragments. I have forgotten the geometry of being divided in this way: mother, writer, teacher, spouse.

In a conversation with my mother yesterday, she was saying how so many women she knows are on a quest to find the true things that they love. A calling. A direction. A depth of purpose. I laughed, relating my own woes. Mine has never been a lack of purpose or direction or enjoyment, it’s always been a lack of time.

“If I could do every day twice,” I said, “then maybe, just maybe I’d get everything done that I long to do.”

How about you?

Here goes…something

Every year the fledglings learn this: at some point the nest of twigs and thistle down and the blue ribbon from last year’s presents is not enough. The dappled rustling shade of further branches beckon. The wide arc of sky, streaked with wind and sunbeams becomes a daily siren song. And then the day arrives when they must make a willing leap into the empty air despite having never flown before.

It feels like this, linking my writing over at Parent Dish to here. At once both terrifying and certain, it has always been the natural order of things. The work of showing up at the page here was always with this is in mind. Writing here was an attempt stake out a claim on behalf of my writing within my own heart. A way of saying yes, this is possible, this is the future of my longing.

You have to start somewhere to get to somewhere, and this is where I began, words running long across paragraphs, photographs, no-post days.

It’s incredibly vulnerable to think that more people from my ‘real life’ and my work life will inevitably find me here and find the archives of fights with my husband, the heartache of winter longing, the sallow listless words just before spring, and the posts filled with poop and wonder and breastfeeding that have been my personal history as a new mama.

I didn’t have to link here. Yet not doing so felt like it would be a cop-out. The finch opting to hop about on the forest floor instead of taking flight. It would have reeked with self doubt, not to stand by what I’ve written. The many thousand words here are deeply personal, but also good. I’m proud of how this almost-daily practice of finding something to say here has shaped my writer’s voice in a new way. Your comments, and the emails I gratefully receive, have given me the first inkling of audience, and also courage to say more. No point stopping now. No point hovering at the edge of the quivering twig.

Ready, get set…

In nineteen different places today, all at once. The sky is blue, but winds are roaring up our valley making the birch leaves show their silver underbellies. By my computer on the bar in the kitchen are a row of ripe peaches. Outside hawks are calling. It’s getting ready time: laminating folders and organizing books, every random hour spent at school in preparation for a new passel of kids. Also trying to find the right things to say to Bean so that he understands that our routine will be changing. We’ve had such a fun summer: taking rambling walks and playing on the back lawn. Here are some pictures from our walk yesterday evening.

Chicken coop in the evening light.

Goldenrod is waist high in the fields now.

Bean & his red wagon.

Wild grapes, ripening.

Slug love.

I love ferns.

Overgrown mailbox.

Bean in the green.

Jewel weed.

Autumn’s first red.

Tumbling towards start

The last few weeks of summer before the start of the school year make me feel like a tumbleweed; aimless and windblown, with so many things up in the air, and without the routine of work. I laugh, realizing that I’ve arrived at this point: ready to go back. I miss a routine, even though I’m not good at exacting one upon my cantaloupe eating summer days.

Over the vactation I’ve managed to slow down enough, unwind enough, to start missing the days of waking up early to sip something warm and write before heading off to work. Now more than ever I need that structure. I need to get started on the forty pages I’ll be exchanging with my writing group in December, and starting this week I’ll also be posting over at Parent Dish.

I like the tingly feeling I get contemplating how with each progressive step I’m sinking more deeply into my commitment towards writing. And also, trepidation.

There’s no better way to get started than to simply sit down and get started, this much I know. But I have a particularly hard time with this. Introductions. First days. First words on the page. First weeks of a new routine. The beginning of anything is something that time sets me on edge and makes me resistant. I drag my feet. Think up every reason in not to jump in. And then, invariably, I finally do.

But what is it about starting that’s so hard? There’s something in those first moments that’s raw and unpredictable. It’s an act of throwing yourself off the cliff, of leaping into the blue space of air and unknown. My heart thuds in my chest when I sit down, poised, ready, my fingers hovering above the keys. Does this happen to anyone else?

How to make your kid’s teacher love (or hate) you

The Top 10 Thing’s You Should Not Do If You Want Your Kid’s Teacher To Like You:
(Based on things real parents have said/done)

1) If you send a note, don’t also call and leave a message about the content of the note. We’ll get the note. Promise.

2) Don’t “stop by” first thing in the morning as the kids are just arriving to talk. Usually your child’s teacher wants to greet her students, and those precious 10 minutes of arrival time mean getting a last sip of coffee, reviewing lesson plans, and hearing little antecdotes from individual students. If you just want to “talk” about how things are going, write a note, email, or leave a message asking when is a good time to do so. Also, don’t say YOU DONT DO EMAIL. It’s the twenty-first century. DO EMAIL. End of story.

3) Do not ask your child’s teacher to remind your 1st grader (or older) to use the bathroom. By first grade your kid should get the hang of this. Write him or her a note and stick it in his lunchbox if he really needs reminding.

4) If your child is doing well in school, don’t harp on your teacher for the things she is not doing (i.e. if your kid is doing well in math, don’t criticise the math program.)

5) If you are concerned about your child, EMAIL your teacher. Teachers love email. We have like, ZERO time in a day as it is. Our lunch “break” is NOT a time to “catch us for a chat,” we’re doing the nine million other things we can’t fit into our teen-weeny prep time.

6) Don’t imply that your child’s teacher doesn’t pay enough attention to your child. Chances are, your kid is getting more than their fair share. Teachers love kids. THAT IS WHY WE TEACH. Remember? We have your kid’s best interest in mind. If you are concerned about your child, acknowledge that your child’s teacher has other kids to teach also. Really. This goes a long way. Also, don’t imply that your child deserves more attention than any other kid. Chances are this will make your child’s teacher want to give your kid less attention. Not that she will. But it will certainly make her want to.

7) Do not say things like, “what are you doing to prepare my child for the SAT’s?” when your kid is in FIRST GRADE. Also, don’t mention how America scores on stadardized tests compared with other countries. Let me repeat. IT’S FIRST GRADE PEOPLE.

Don’t belittle or berate your child’s teacher in front of her students. It’s obnoxious. And entirely inappropriate.

9) Don’t imply that it is your child’s teacher’s responsibility to remediate current flaws in the district curriculum. It isn’t. We’re contractually bound to teach the curriculum provided. But chances are, if there really is a problem with the curriculum, a comittee is working on it. So be patient.

10) Don’t try to discuss your child’s social, emotional, or academic needs or concerns in front of your child, or with other student’s present. YOUR CHILD WILL HEAR YOU AND FEEL AWFUL. Also, it’s just totally obnoxious. So don’t do it.

Now, here’s the fun list.

Ten Things You Can Do To Make Your Child’s Teacher Love You Forever

1) Just once all year long, stop by in the morning with a large coffee for your child’s teacher. It will make her think you are the nicest person in the entire world. Having your kid give his teacher a hand-decorated bag of homemade cookies will also make her think your family is the nicest family ever.

2) Acknowledge that you understand that your child’s teacher is probably the busiest human on the face of the earth. Ask her what is the most convenient way for her to stay in touch, and then use that form of communication.

3) If you want to volunteer, be specific. Tell the teacher what your areas of interest are. Come with suggestions or ideas for how you could be useful in the classroom. Teachers get overwhelmed trying to utilize parent volunteers. If we know you’re really good at baking cookies and that you’d like to share that skill with the class, we’re more likely to ask you to help.

4) Use Email.

5) If you’re concerned about your child’s academic success, acknowledge that at least half of the responsibility rests ON YOU, and demonstrate that you are committed to supporting your child.

6) If your child is academically advanced, first let your child’s teacher know that you understand that your child is one of two dozen other kids, then express your interest in understanding how they are individually being challenged. Also ask what you can do to support your child at home.

7) At the Holidays, write your child’s teacher a thoughtful card noting a few reasons you really appreciate her. This goes farther than any gift you’ll ever give.

Offer to coordinate a classroom activity such as a brunch, presentation, pizza party, etc. She’ll swoon.

9) Bring in consumable supplies like tissues and wipes, without being begged to do so. Other things you could randomly bring include balls for the recess yard, fun indoor recess games, or a dustpan and a kid sized broom. These things are pretty much considered GOLD by teachers.

10) Show up for your child’s presentations, conferences and performances and show genuine interest in your kid.

Ok. Now I feel better. I had the worst possible morning with the most awful of awful parent interactions (see the first list 1-10.)

I know all of you who stop here regularly are already the most awesome parents and your kid’s teacher’s love you as it is. Because they should. But if you’re stumped and don’t quite know what to say or how to interact to advocate for your child, start with being nice. Kindness goes such a long, long way. Again, you already know that. How can anyone not know that, honestly? And why, why would someone choose today, my second day back after being sick for three days, to stage a thoughtless confrontation. It’s just mean.

Ok. I really feel better now.

Also–I’m so psyched about the recent elections! And.. my sister is coming to visit tonight which is absolutely delightful…And…the house is cleaner than it has been in weeks. I love a clean house and fresh sheets, don’t you? Whew. HappyFriday everyone!