naming reality

I am currently cleaning up the wreckage of Christmas. This makes it sound like Christmas was a war zone, which I assure you it was not. It was perfectly lovely, actually. The calmest and sweetest one in years. I may always think that though. Who knows? That adorable baby of mine still doesn’t sleep through the night. I’ve been pretty sleep-deprived for a good couple years. I probably can’t be trusted to remember anything.

I love the holidays, and this year, I got all good and prepared early. The tree was up at the beginning of the month, decorated with shatterproof ornaments instead of our usual precious ornaments made of glass and Popsicle sticks and memories. I was afraid the baby would throw them, or eat them.

As it turns out, though, he was afraid of the tree. Which I was more than a-ok with. He was also downright petrified of Santa, and since I’m on my third kid and am over the illusion of how children are supposed to act, I found it kind of hilarious.

Don’t worry. I let them snap three pictures and then I saved him. The crying stopped as soon as my hands hit his armpits.

I made dozens and dozens of cookies, a 5 pound batch of fudge, candy canes with pipe cleaners and googly eyes that bare a resemblance to reindeer if you use your imagination. I went to the six chorus concerts that our school district feels compelled to schedule each year. I crocheted an ugly scarf for my dad. We had a fabulous prime rib dinner for Christmas Eve, our yearly tradition. We spent Christmas morning unwrapping presents and the afternoon with my cousin’s house. Like I said, I was on it, and it was just plain lovely.

But now… Now is the wreckage. The poky needles all over the house, the wrestling with the lights to get them off the tree. The dishes that won’t end.  And the cardboard. Dear Jesus, the cardboard… I could build an arc out of that stuff if I had somewhere to float to. So I’m cleaning up. Recovering slowly from the 47 chorus concerts and the carb/sugar overload. That ginormous batch of fudge is GONE. Seriously, you can’t leave things like that around in a house full of women. So now I need to get on the treadmill before that shit sticks.

I hope that all of you had wonderful holidays, full of family and cookies made with butter.  And some restaurant-style potatoes, because those things are just plain sinfully good.

Merry Christmas all! And happiness and wonder to you for the coming year.

A little over three years ago, my daughter Georgia decided to
try-out for her middle school talent show. She wanted to sing a duet with her
friend Tiffany. They made it through all of the cuts and were one of the only 6^th
grade acts in the show. My mom, Holly and I sat in the front row seats that we
had secured for perfect viewing. I got the video camera ready and set up. They
came out on stage, sat down in the spotlight and Georgia
started to sing.

Now I knew that Georgia
had a pretty voice. She sang beautifully in the shower and the car. But she had
never sung in front of anyone, other than choir concerts with all the kids in
her class. Certainly never in front of 300 people with a microphone. I was
nervous for her. But as she started to sing, I noticed her confidence as well
as her voice. Along with a velvety singing voice that I’d never heard before
was a comfort on stage. She was even smiled encouragingly at her nervous
friend Tiffany. I was floored.

My mom tapped me. “Georgia
can sing!” she mouthed to me. I nodded, trying to hold the video camera still, a
lump rising in my throat. That was my kid up there. Two
minutes earlier I would’ve told you that I knew everything about her. But I
didn’t. I was instantly enamored and blown away, and by someone so very familiar
that I had grown her in my own body and lived with her everyday since.

I was good and ready to beat myself up for not knowing about
this when Holly tapped me from the other side and mouthed the same thing as my
mom.  I did more nodding, more blinking
back tears. More amazement. So none of us knew, except for Georgia, and
she didn’t tell.

A while back budget cuts threatened the performing arts
programs at our local high schools. Some students came together and took it
upon themselves to direct, produce, choreograph and perform a student-led
musical revue called For Our Generation (FOG) to raise money. Georgia
has been a part of the show for the past two years. She amazes me more each time that I hear her sing.
.

This is Georgia’s
solo from FOG this year :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syXk2qr6iTw

It’s been too busy these past few months.  Hectic. I feel as
if I spent the better part of them chasing after the summer, only to find that
by the time I arrived, summer was already all but over. The spring fed lake we
swim in is drained. The girls are back in school this morning. I have been
overcome with the desire to shred zucchini to freeze, make batches of pico de
gallo with the goodies I’ve been given from others gardens, and make bread from
scratch. Fall will be here soon. The heat and humidity of today is only teasing
us, giving us a last glimpse of summer on her way out to make her trip around the
sun.

Here are some highlights of what we’ve been doing this
summer:

I took my son to Lambeau Field for his first time to see the
Packers play their annual scrimmage for the fans. He’d been there before, but
this was the first time on the outside. He was there when I was pregnant with
him technically, but he was the size of a walnut and didn’t have ears yet.  Anyway, he just kept clapping at everything.
He was kinda awed and curious. And then he nursed for like 20 minutes. It was
weird because he doesn’t really nurse as much when we’re out and about because
he doesn’t want to miss anything.  My
best friend Holly says that he must’ve felt right at home at Lambeau, which is
good, since he’s going to be playing there one day. Georgia
came along too, with her boyfriend Matt and her friend Bethany. Matt wears a size 18 shoe. Really. He’s a product of
growth hormones in milk. (Correction as he is no longer her boyfriend. Nice kid, though.)

We went to the cabin with our family from California
and Michigan. We’ve been going
since the kids were all little, and now they’re big, and there are a couple new
babies. The moms are the grandmas and I am the mom and sometimes that really
surprises me because I still think that I am 16. Or at least that 16 isn’t
really that far behind me. But that isn’t true even a little bit.

Bricey turned one. How did a whole year go by? I want it
back, so I can live it over again because once wasn’t enough. It was a trying and
wonderful year.

Holly turned 13. Georgia
turned 15. So I have two teenage girls. And a baby in diapers. I’m going to be
actively parenting for a really big part of my life. Good thing I like it.

My dad came for a visit from Colorado.
We took obscene amounts of pictures, because that’s what we do. It was
wonderful.

I got an article published in the local paper. Front page
even, with a photo. A photo that I took with my amazing new camera that I am in
complete and total love with. It’s a Canon 40D, for anyone who is wondering. My
daughter Holly is also in love with it. She has the same picture taking
affliction that my dad and I do. It’s genetic apparently.

My car is being troublesome. I hate this. It’s to the point
where I have talks with it (sometimes pleading, sometimes stern) about my
expectations. Grrrrrr.

We moved!! We finally are in a bigger house that actually
fits us. It’s so wonderful that I can’t even tell you. We still all hang out a
lot together in the living room when the girls are home.  But we all have our own space and there are two
whole bathrooms and everything! We love it. Somewhere is afraid of going
outside though. I guess she liked us going out with her to walk. She needs
encouragement, or company, to go out, especially at night. As if I need more
dependents. Jeebus.

We quit eating sugar. This is a good thing. That stuff is a
drug. Don’t let anybody tell you its not. Just try not eating it. We all feel
better this way. We do eat it on special occasions, like birthday parties or to
celebrate really cool stuff like me getting published in the newspaper for the
first time. But I don’t buy it and bring it home. It can’t live here. I tried
to keep chocolate chips around for baking, but I just ate them. Cause like I said,
its like a drug.

I started a photography business. More on that soon…

That’s our summer of eleven, the synopsis. I’ll try to fill
in the holes, cause I’m making some goals. Blog more. Do more yoga.
Stress less. Walk the dog. Good stuff.

I hope that this all-too-quick summer has treated you well. Namaste.

For the last couple of years we’ve lived at 307 1/2 Park Avenue. It’s just a little upstairs apartment, right on the main highway that winds through our little town. The front of the house has the busy hustle and bustle of the street, the occasional parade, and the passing ambulance or squad car. The backyard is green and lush in the summer, surrounded by neighbors little gardens, giving it the enclosed quiet feeling of a story book.

We moved here because we were downsizing from a big house. It was just the girls and I then, and we were always so busy. I was commuting to Madison three or four times a week, traveling for work and with the girls for softball and gymnastics all the time. We weren’t home much, and when we were, we would nestle into the same small space anyway. So our little upstairs apartment was perfect for us. And then I got pregnant.

My lease was up right when Brice was to be born. I couldn’t decide if it would be better to move hugely pregnant or with a newborn, but we ended up just holding off until now. So here I am, sitting here alone in my living room with the kids all asleep for the last time in this house. After tomorrow, this wont be our home anymore.

Truthfully, it’s okay that this isn’t going to be our home. We have more than outgrown this place. We have used every single space available to us and it’s still too cluttered and cramped for us all. It’s time. And we’re glad to be moving somewhere bigger that suits us more. But as I pack up our home, I realize that I’m also sad to say goodbye. Home isn’t a place, really. I know that. But after a while, a place becomes more than just walls and windows and an address. It becomes a part of the story.

 I was standing in my kitchen when my heart got broken two summers ago. I remember that it was pouring down rain, so fierce that it rained in through the kitchen window, soaking the kitchen floor and the table. It hasn’t rained into that window before or since.

I was in our little bathroom when I found out that I was going to have another baby. I took a picture of the pregnancy test and sent it to my best friend right then and there. She drove up the next day and we sat on my porch, overlooking my quiet little backyard, talking about how life was never going to be the same again. She said “You were looking for love. I guarantee that you found it. And who knows? Maybe it’ll even have a penis.”

I was in my little bedroom at dawn when my water broke, and I shuffled out, creating puddles on the kitchen floor as I went to get the girls up. They packed the last minute items into my bag, and we left as a family of three. The next afternoon, the fourth of July, we came home a family of four.

This is where I brought Brice home, my last baby. It was so hot and humid then, and we sat with him in the living room for weeks, passing him back and forth between us. We almost never set him down. We only went where we had to go, and spent our time together.

We are taking the rocking chair that I’ve rocked all my babies in. We are taking the sewing table that I’ve made all the kids quilts on and the baby toys and the girls’ clothes and all the thousands of pictures and videos that I’ve taken. We are taking all the things that make us us, and all the things that make it home. But still, I’ve come to love this place. I didn’t think I would. I thought it would just suit our needs and give us shelter. But after all that the last couple years have brought to our lives, it feels a lot more personal than that. After all these walls have witnessed, this place feels more like an old friend.

It was 35 degrees and raining today. Not quite winter but not quite spring. Somber. Gloomy. A good day to stay inside and get things done. So I took the baby swing down. It was time, and it seemed fitting. Taking down that swing made me feel gray like the day. I kept thinking of last June, of Holly taking all the parts out of the box. She wasn’t quite 12 years old yet, but she laid it all out across my living room and meticulously assembled them according to the directions, in anticipation of her little brother.

 It was a hot summer already, and I sat on the couch watching her, hugely pregnant. I loved that swing already. I’d had my eye on it for most of my pregnancy, but wasn’t willing to spend the obscene sticker price. But my dad sent me some money to use for my birthday or the baby or whatever I wanted to, so I bought the swing. It was just as lush and soft and fluffy as I had imagined it would be. I couldn’t wait to put my baby in it. And I only had to wait a few weeks, because he showed up a couple weeks early. 

That was over nine months ago now. And for most of that time, Brice used the swing everyday. We laid him in it to nap, to comfort him when we couldn’t hold him. It was where we put him when we came into the house after grocery shopping, or where we laid him to make dinner or vacuum. Sometimes we’d use the music or the sounds, sometimes we’d turn on the mobile. His reflection in the mirror on the mobile was one of the first things he smiled at and talked to.

As Brice grew larger by the day and was routinely off the charts for weight, I began to worry about him making out the 25 lb. weight limit of the swing. He hit 22 lbs at 4 months and I almost panicked. But he slowed down, still only 24 lbs at 6 months. I said a little prayer, and by the time he hit 25 pounds, he’d lost interest in the swing. He started to sort of sit up in it, or just get irritated that he was in it. He figured out that it lulled him to sleep, so he would fight it. When he hit the weight limit, there was no reason to try anymore. So the swing just sat there, taking up space in my already cramped little house.

As much as I couldn’t bare to let the swing go, the sight of it empty might have been even harder. Its emptiness just ate at me, at this part of me that knows there won’t be anymore babies. And really, I don’t know if I’d want any more. I remember having two little ones at once. It was so hectic, I just moved through the days feeding hungry mouths and wiping faces and hands and butts until I woke up one day and they were both in school and I thought “Where the hell did the last five years go? What happened?” I get to appreciate Brice so much, because he is the only little one. I’m getting older, and pregnancy and labor was so much harder on me. It’s okay to be done. But still, that empty swing he doesn’t use anymore just keeps whispering that he’s growing up, making me sad that it goes so fast.

So I disassembled it today. I took the little lambs from the mobile off and placed them in the little ziplock bag that’s still on my dresser full of his tiniest baby clothes. I pulled out a onsie he wore after he was just born, so incredibly tiny that I caught my breath. I remember it being too big on him. And now, he is 5 times that weight. He is mimicking words. He is smiling and laughing at us, and the dog. It just goes so very fast.

I wish that I could go back to that day in June, with Holly putting the swing together. I wish that I could go back and live it all again. Its not that I didn’t appreciate every single second of his babyhood, because I have.  Its just that I would like to appreciate it all again. The first time wasn’t enough.

This is how it goes. The baby is cranky all day, but for some unknown vague reason like teething but no teeth yet. I happily put him in bed at 830 only to have him wake up at 1130. This part is pretty normal. He still eats every few hours during the night. On a good night he wakes up three times. I don’t know why. I don’t even want to do the math on how long it’s been since I’ve had more than three straight hours of sleep.

   Usually, I nurse him in bed and he is back to sleep before he’s even that awake. But last night he woke back up five minutes after I nursed him to sleep. And five minutes after that. By midnight I gave up and brought him into the living room, where he proceeded to sneeze and produce little rivers of snot down his face, and get really mad when I wiped them up. Then he barfed all over the couch cover, because when he has a cold, he barfs up snot and whatever else he has in his stomach. So I clean him up and then the couch. I gather bath towels as safety nets. And we rock in the rocking chair that I have rocked all of my babies in. Until 2 am. He wakes up a few times after this and I rock him in bed, but he is up and unhappy by 630 instead of 8 or 9. We watch Sesame Street and wipe his nose. I give him a small piece of my toast, which he immediately gags on and pukes all over the new couch cover that I just put on. I change him, again, and look at the laundry that not even eight hours ago was only a small load to be done for today. Now it is a mountain that will take me three trips to get it all to the basement.

   I have packing to do. We’re moving at the end of the month and it’s a whole lot easier to move it the house is packed. But the baby won’t let me put him down and the girls are at track or softball or gymnastics or something for choir or their friends’ houses. And I can’t catch up. That’s how I feel, like I can’t even catch up. Just when I think I’m close and the sink is free of dishes and I only have one load of laundry, this is what happens.

    I remind the girls all the time that there is only one of me. That I am outnumbered and they have to not only understand that but be helpful. And they are, but they need to be picked up and dropped off and they forget lunches and homework and need to live their lives, too. And the baby doesn’t get it at all. He just wants me, because he’s that type of baby. And truthfully, as much as I sometimes just want some time, I love that these past ten months of our lives have been so closely intertwined. There are very few hours that we’ve even been apart, and I know that I will look back at this season of my life fondly as the time that Brice and I were each others. I know that, like his sisters, he will grow and change and become independent and have a life of his own. But for now, he is here. Here hugging me to him and saying “Awww Mama” after only 15 minutes of playing on his own. Or throwing his arms up to show me “So big” and smiling at me with his mouthful of teeth. He is nuzzled up to me at night, nursing and touching my face, giggling at my songs and funny voices, happy on my lap. And yes, sometimes barfing all over my house so much that I nickname him “Laundry” for a week or so.

   My point in all of this was that it’s busy, that the dishes never really are done, and this is why I haven’t been here to blog. But that’s really dumb because what I do is write in my head and the second that I sit down to actually write it all comes pouring out like this, telling me that I have to write. That its part of who I am. That I want to remember all of this and mapping it out in words forever is one of the best ways that I know how to do that.

   So I’ll try to be better. I’ll be back, sooner than later. Before I do the dishes, but after I clean up the barf.