Long Night

I want to write tonight, but I am so f&cking tired. No good reason, except maybe the rain, and not getting to bed early enough and having kids wake up too early. Oh, and being stuck at home with two sick kids, the kind of sick that you really owe it to the world to keep to yourself because it's just annoying. Happily, not pukey, but ouchey and fevery and therefore cranky and clingy. And did I mention stuck inside.

This is not a recipe for good mothering.

Or good wife-ing either. Especially when marriage partner is tired and cranky and stressed, in at least equal degree to me. Our home wasn't so pleasant today.

If I were going to write tonight, I would write a bit about injustice and how we feel it so keenly and meet it out so freely. I am pissed at my husband for not (insert long list of unsaid hopes and expectations here) but have held an angry grudge all day for him not reading my mind, for him not giving into his own tired and cranky and stressed, for him not curing our children. I think that's probably some low-grade marital injustice. And both of us were too tired to rise above and so just glared and snarked until work mercifully gave us some space.

I would say that my deep thoughts about injustice were sparked in part by the book, The Help, which I just finished this weekend. A book that is lingering in the way good books do. I would write about how sure I am I would be the wrong character in that book, and would be an injusticer and how maybe I'm hoping it's true that we're all injusticers one way or another, and maybe we need to practice more grace or something since the injustice-making just seems inevitable.

It would have been so inspiring. If only Nate wasn't waking up because his whole self is so unhappy.

If only I had ... well, whatever it is that would keep me from being cranky about this too.

A Blog-Off

My friend Rory is a writer. Maybe even a Writer. He has been known to write things that get me thinking, and we've been known to think in similar directions from time to time. Rory's a LOT older than I am, so I like to think of him as wise. Older and wiser.

But sometimes he's so dumb.

Yesterday he wrote a piece about how the future doesn't really exist and how thinking about what doesn't exist makes people unhappy and ... well, there was more. You should read it here. I mean, he is probably a Writer, even if he's wrong, and I know all my readers love a good Writer so if nothing else, it's a good bit of writing.

And if I'm honest, maybe not altogether wrong. But to be clear, definitely not right either.

So of course, I commented. As if I can ever not say something. And he replied, because of course, it's not like he can not say something back.  He's like that - it's why I like him. Anyway, he says in his reply to me that he thinks that the opposite of what I said was probably true. In case you missed it, that translates from Writerese into Wrongo Bucko in regular English. He ended his email with, "I think the Buddhists thought would be that both are meaningless" (trans: The Buddhists are with me on this). I replied, very wisely I thought, "Buddhists are morons."

The high road is over-rated.

But as I am wont to do, I have been thinking about this for a few hours now, and it occurs to me that I think he and the Buddhists might be mistaken, for reals.

His post was pointing to the suffering that is brought by our desires, our wants, by living in What Lies Ahead instead of in What Is.  So far so good. However, they (he?) go (goes?) further to say that What Lies Ahead does not actually exist and that "dwelling on what doesn't exist is a stupid idea".

Now I'm a tad Jesus-y. And Jesus was a here and now kind of guy, no way around that. Don't worry about tomorrow, he said. Doesn't today have enough trouble of its own? But he also said, I am preparing a place for you (i.e. it's not ready yet: it will be ready in the Future). In fact, he talked about the future a lot - Matthew 25 comes to mind.  It was the promise of a future that made sense of his passion for the Now, for the kingdom of heaven on earth part. And in some kind of kooky time warp, the future was in fact already past, in that it was the Creator's great love that Came Before we did that made What Will Be - a future reconciliation with Them - the reason to be okay Now. Yikes. I may have sprained my brain.

Anyway, I wonder if the buddhist future-doesn't-exist-now-is-all-there-is is a privelege of okayness. Were there a lot of buddhist slaves in America? Are there a lot of buddhists in the Sudan? Because if your Now is suffering, the discipline of living in it and a derisive no-thank-you to What Will Be seems like cruelty. When our Right Now is kind of kick-ass, then maybe it's just greedy to hope for better still and so choosing to forego future thinking is more appealing?  I don't know.

But I do know that a conversation like this always leaves me surprised by my real fondness for that wiley Jesus.  I like a guy who could live in the crosshairs of Now and Then and find a way to make both necessary while acknowledging that neither mattered very much, except for the part where they're both crucial. A paradox. The collision of two opposites. I still feel at home here.

So probably Buddhists aren't morons. Probably Rory isn't Buddhist. Certainly he's not a moron.

But he is a Writer, so it's on friend. It's a Blog-Off.

I Need A Better Friend

Are you cutting yourself some slack? Are you letting yourself be good at things you're good at, even if parenting doesn't seem like one of those things this month? If you were your best friend, what would you say to you?  - www.askmoxie.org

So a person knows they probably need an intervention when reading the above quote makes said person burst into tears. I'm not entirely clear on what kind of intervention would be helpful, but my weepiness certainly points to the need for something.


I was with a gathering of women this morning, women I know 7-out-of-10 well. All mothers, all of our children there. I forgot to wear a bra. I don't know, it just happened. But it took a low-grade not-my-best day and magnified it into I Should Probably Quit For The Good Of All. My children played happily with all the other well-parented children of remember-to-wear-bra-mothers and I wondered if they might be better off with them on a longer term basis.


Almost-Friend E asked if I was working yet, and I confessed that sometimes I wondered if I should, but mostly I just wanted to figure out how to be a good mother first. She laughed because moms laugh at these things and I almost burst into tears because as I said it, I realized it was true - I'm really tired of sucking at what I do all day. She assured me that she only hears what a great mom I am and I agreed that my Awesome-Momness is actually pretty amazing. Probably top 10 good. But my bad parenting? Oh. My. Lord. It is awful. And it might be killing me.


I guess it comes as no surprise then, that I might have been a bit fragile when I found the above quote on my favourite mom-site this afternoon. It will be nice when the crying stops.  Cause my best-friend-me is saying to my crying-at-the-computer-me, I have no fucking clue. I guess I can't get past the part about "letting yourself be good at things you're good at, even if parenting doesn't seem like one of those things". It's not like I'm not letting myself - it's more that there really isn't anything else I'm doing one way or the other. I mean, what else do I do? If I go to church, I'm still parenting. If I go shopping, I'm still parenting. I guess in the moments I get alone and go for coffee, I'm pretty good at drinking it. But you know, there's limited pleasure for me in being good at beverage management. And I guess I trip across the bit where if I were to work, it would just be defined as the time when I'm Not Parenting. If I had work that was meaningful to me and that I enjoyed, perhaps that would be okay, but since work has almost always only been an exercise in People Hating, it's hard to imagine the exchange being worthwhile.


To be clear, I am not needing to hear that I'm really, truly, a good parent. If you read this blog, you already know that deep in my heart, I know I'm a Good Parent. It's just that deep in my heart I know that I'm also a Really Bad Parent and I'm kind of tired of it. I'd take hints on how to numb the Feeling Bad part I guess...

I'm a Junkie

It's probably good to know your weaknesses. That way you're not surprised when other people point them out and you can even prepare witty comebacks for the jabs people are certain to throw your way when faced with said weakness.

I may not have the healthiest worldview. I'm working on the comeback...

I do however, have some great weaknesses. Fear of jinxing, of course. That way too healthy self-esteem I've mentioned before. Scott probably keeps a list somewhere so I could fill this in a bit if you find it lacking. The point is, for the most part, I like my weaknesses. And I think I know the one I like the most: I'm a Belonging Junkie. I just love Belonging. I love it so much that I spend most of my days trying to build groups that I can belong to. Or, to which I can belong I guess.

Anyway, I realized the extent to which I'm addicted when the cancellation of the block party nearly undid me this afternoon. So sad was I at the prospect of not Belonging to my neighbourhood that I still hosted a Block Coffee in my (very small) livingroom, just to get a hit.

Now because I'm also a Universalist, in public I call this a weakness of mine, but am of course secretly convinced that it is in fact, a Human Weakness.  Happily, neighbours are happy to oblige. While the collection that arrived for block coffee was mostly of the young parent variety, one couple with children in college came in. Mr. Neighbour placed a box of cookies on the table and said they'd only come by to say hello and thank me for organizing things but that they couldn't stay. Mrs. Neighbour stood beside-behind her husband and nodded - they could not possibly stay.

But of course they could! I insisted, just one cup of coffee. Just a quick chat with our new neighbours they hadn't met before. Just a minute longer.  And stay they did. They edged closer to the grown-up table, even pulled up a chair. Eventually Mr. Neighbour even had a cup of coffee. Mrs. Neighbour didn't, but did chat with a couple of the others and compared soccer mom stories.

I said to Scott tonight, when it was all said and done, that they just needed to know they belonged. They were exactly who was supposed to be there because it wasn't a Mommy Coffee or a Jesus Coffee or a Cool Kid Coffee. It was a Block Coffee and they are the Block. This was the group they Belong To, just like me.

Just like me. I organize block parties every year just to have that feeling that I Belong with these people, that we are the In-Crowd in our town. I go to church and I Belong. I invite friends to coffee so that I Belong. I probably got married and had kids in an ultimate act of Belonging-Making.

And maybe I hope that the Secret Goodness of my Secret Weakness is that I sometimes make sure other people know They Belong Too.

Does that make me a dealer?

Put a Civil Tongue in Your Mouth

I am confused by people who say the good parts out loud.  People who always say how much they admire their husbands, or who talk about their children's successes. People who love their jobs, or like their family's Christmas traditions. These people make me nervous. Not because I don't like pyjamas on Christmas Eve or because my children do not shine (they do!), but because of course, I'm a bit Greek-Chinese. If you act all positive, you're just daring the Force to prove you wrong. Or stupid.

Now is not the time to point out how this is in direct conflict with everything I believe about the world, the Creator, to say nothing of Scott and my recent Anniversa-Ganza Facebook Love-In.  I have never pretended to be consistent.

This resistance to cheerleading enthusiasm for life has its cousin in a squinty cynicism.  This is why I mock these guys and love these guys.

I won't lie - I like the laughs I get for saying the cynical parts. No quicker giggle-getter than confessing to use of the word mother-effer while parenting. They laugh, but they worry. They worry that I'm ruining my kids. They worry that I'm depressed. I like to think they worry that I might be right.

This would be where two recent posts collide: Not Me meets I'm A Universalist. I share this world of mine with friends who's kids get cancer, with friends who are lonely even though they're married and "have it all", with friends who got shitty parents and with friends who chose poorly and seem to be paying more for that bad choice than the rest of us do for ours.  I know that Life Is Hard, even if it is not, Right This Minute, hard for me. And because I'm a Universalist, I'm pretty sure that if it isn't yet, it's going to be hard for you too.

The people who only talk about how Great It All Is make me nervous because I just don't believe it is. I mean, I know it's Good. All is Well. That's a for sure.  But it isn't Great! Amazing! Wonderful! Because even if my world is all of those things Right This Minute, it sure as shit isn't for all the people I love and what kind of ass celebrates their own Fantastic! while their friends are pushing through Sucks?

But while swearing is good for a chuckle at the moms' bible study, it fails me because it makes light of the pain that I think is True here. And that's why I'm glad for the wiser men and women who write and think and share my world view, using better language.

In my recipe box, I have at the back about a dozen recipe cards with quotes that were really important to me about nine years ago.  Some are things I think that I didn't want to forget I thought ("make decisions that affirm and confirm the presence and participation of God in my life" - that's good huh?); some are things friends and family have said ("You can either spend your energy making a decision or you can spend it living in the decision you make" - Thanks Dad!); others are gleaned from books and TV.  In the garden this morning, my wandering mind tripped across the phrase "the insufficiency of all attainable" and knew it wasn't my own brilliance.  Sure enough, there in the back of the recipe box, I found the quote and almost wept with the familiar comfort of it. Nine years later and it still moves me in its Truth. It is true, happy people, that life has lots of great and amazing and wonderful and fantastic. But never enough.  That others know that too takes the edge of the loneliness.

Karl Rahner, quoted in Ronald Rolheiser's Against an Infinite Horizon:

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.

Motherf-cker.

Nope

Well, it turns out the whole, Life Is Also So Great thing was a bit ... short-lived. I think it might be Pre-PreMenstrual Syndrome. Like all that optimism should be my warning that I have 48 hours to secure my children, stow the valuables and phone a cleaning lady.

Suffice to say, it has been a bit dark around here.

I like knowing though, that the darkness isn't all real. I know it's partly real - I really am bothered by the lack of order in my home, the lack of structure in my days, the lack of energy in my little body.  Real bothers. However the degree of apathy, lethargy and sullenness is about 18 degrees higher than required. I think probably some calcium and evening primrose oil would cure me. I'm just too annoyed and cheap to go find some.

The less real part, that part is comforting. Because knowing it isn't real makes it easier to believe that it isn't permanent either. I think it is one of the pleasures of my 30s actually, realizing that none of this is permanent. Or maybe one of the lessons of parenthood? I don't know - do either of my not-childrened but 30'd readers know of which I speak? To know that all that sucks is not for the ages, and that all that rocks is but tender grass... well, that is one perk of not having elastic skin.