It is so important, because maybe one day there will be an earthquake here, and we'll find ourselves in the same position as the Katrina victims. Where will our stability be then? Not in the earth, because even that can be shaken. Not in routine, not in reliable food, or water. Only in him.
September 19, 2005
Today I returned from a three and a half day trip to San Francisco. I left the Land on Thursday, by myself, feeling free as a bird. The courts had given me back my driving privilege and I flew down the road (under the speed limit) through green trees and the golden hills of late summer in California. I sang and prayed and had so much solitude I could burst with happiness.
The drive home was a little different. The four hours getting home seemed to take about a year and two months.
It's funny, now that I have kids. I'm not completely free anymore. I mean, I can leave, but I'm connected, in an almost physical way, to these two little people who can't even dress themselves yet. (When we ask Kai to dress himself, he suddenly has a really hard time remembering which limb goes where. "I can't get this over my bum," he says pitifully, as he stands in the middle of the room with two legs through one tiny leg hole in his undies.) I mean, kids are really little, but they occupy a big space in our lives.
Chinua and I were talking about this the other day. We're the philosopher-type parents. Our children will probably hate us for it one day, when they're teenagers. "The thing about kids," I said, "is that they are so much. There isn't a lot of space around them, and it's exhausting, but so worth it." And what I learn, from being away, is that now that they take up so much space in me, there isn't tons of room for a whole lot else. It actually leaves me wondering what else there was, before.
I can hang with it, though, for a few days. I really like being by myself, visiting friends and having uninterrupted conversations. I slept in until 10:00 for the first time in four years. I eat food when it's hot without sharing any, and take a shower whenever I want. I sit around. I get work done, in record time. It's amazing really. I can even try to have a few conversations that don't include things that my Superstar Husband thinks or says, or funny things that my kids do. Okay, maybe I can only last a few minutes in conversation without doing this, but I don't think I completely bore my single friends. That reminds me of a funny thing. Some friends and I were sitting around talking, and somehow I brought up the fact that Jed and Kai like to pee through each other's pee streams, if they are doing their business outside. See, even writing that down makes me realize how completely hopeless I am in conversation now, not that I was ever so social. But, one of the friends there (a guy) said, "Oh yeah! Crossies! That was so fun, when we were kids." It was stupefying, really. We were like, "You mean there's a name for that?" It led to a nice discussion about pee.
But back to the point. I can only be away from them for a few days. This time I accidentally overstayed, and the result was that I missed them so much I was almost physically ill. I couldn't think about them. I'd drive along and think about Kenya's cheeks and her little duck lips and almost start crying. And I really am not a fan of spending a lot of time away from Chinua. Just enough for me to remember what it's like not to see him; then it's time to come back. So, there was Chinua-missing and kid-missing, and oh, it was so good to get home, to be with them again and see how happy they were to see me.
September 21, 2005
Some days I feel like I'm being pulled in too many different directions. It's like people have a grip on all of my limbs and are pulling, pulling, pulling... Either that, or my mind is made of a mountain of different colored pebbles and all day long I am forced to search for specific stones. The green stone! The red one! I am scratching and heaving through a storm of tiny details, getting sidetracked on one search by the urgency of another.
I may be a little tired right now.
But the beautiful thing that supersedes the mountain of pebbles is that, maybe, for the first time in our marriage, I feel that Chinua truly appreciates me. Not that I haven't felt appreciated before, but that now he really knows. He knows. Because I went away for three and a half days and he tried it. He said, "I don't know how you do it. How do you keep the cabin clean, and wash the dishes, and give the kids baths?" Then he said, (this is after I had been back for a while) "Look at this place! You do it so well. You are really, really good at this."
Can you believe it? I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. And I was also thinking, "YES!" Because, to put it plainly, I've wondered if my beautiful husband understands how much work it is to do all this. We've shared a lot of our parenting responsibilities, and I know I'm very blessed to have him so available, being the best dad I could imagine. But let's just say that when Chinua's hanging out with the kids, he's hanging out with the kids. He's playing with them, taking pictures of them but not doing the hundred things I would be doing if I was watching them (with the eyes on the back of my head).
So, I got home to a minor laundry emergency (underscored by the fact that we are still line-drying), a pile of unwashed dishes (which is like returning a video un-rewound) and a beautiful loving family who were missing me like crazy because, to them, there's no one like me. That's what a family seems to be, a team of your biggest fans who are also more work than you could ever imagine. And sometimes they're not your biggest fans. Sometimes your 3-year-old is acting like a sulky 15-year-old who might die if you force him to kiss you or hang out with you. And then sometimes he reverts back to your baby boy and stares at you as if he's in love with you while he strokes your face and says, "I just wanna talk to you, Mama."
So anyways, back to how I do what I do and why I feel pulled apart. I do everything at top speed, as well as with the knowledge that at any moment I might be forced to suddenly switch gears. From say, taking care of my kids, to talking to the insurance company on the phone. Or from kissing my husband to mentioning, "I don't think the goat cheese is working out for the kids, they both seem to have pretty bad diarrhea." Or, and this may be the hardest transition of all, moving from the constant surveillance necessary with small kids to talking or sharing with adults. I'm already enough of an introvert as it is, but the mental hurdles that I have to overcome in order to converse with other grownups make it almost impossible.
I'm sure that many moms identify with the line that runs through my head. It goes something like this: wake up, breakfast, kettle on, oatmeal, cuddle kids, tea (big sigh of happiness), laundry!, wash dishes, break up fight, wash face-nope break up fight, oh yeah-make bed, clothes on "where are the clothes?" And then it's time for me to go work in the office amidst thousands of questions from people needing things.
The surprising thing lately is; I actually love it. I really do. It's challenging enough to really engage me, it all keeps me moving through my day with purpose, and it's humbling enough that I'm always calling out for help from God. And I love it that Chinua is stoked on our home when it's nice and inviting. I wouldn't want to trade, I wouldn't want Chinua's job for anything. It's cool, the roles that we have. God knows what He is doing, although sometimes it takes some refining to get us to see that. I love to work hard, and I've never done anything harder than this. It's wonderful.
Besides, in August I moved out of a house that had about twenty people living in it, and the kitchen sink seemed like it was always full of dishes, so when I'm doing the dishes now, the line that is going through my head is "I'm so glad I'm only doing dishes for four people, I'm so glad I'm only doing dishes for four people..."
September 24, 2005
Today I am a walking bag of anxiety, and I know I'm not exactly a stranger to anxiety, but, really, it's been better lately. I haven't been walking around with my shoulders touching my ears, or kicking rocks with a knot the size of a yak in my stomach.
The funny thing is that my anxiety it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that an ultrasound on my neck revealed a questionable mass that is now the center of attention of the doctors who are supposed to be paying attention to my wee unborn babe.
> I had a two-in-one ultrasound, one being pictures of my baby, two being pictures of my thyroid. I've had what I thought was an enlarged thyroid for years. I learn now that actually, I have a growth, a little cling-on. The ultrasound of the baby went swimmingly, and the technician even went so far as to say that my baby gives very good images (which is another way of saying that he is extremely photogenic, even at his tender age) and when I left, she thanked me for being such a good scan (which I took as her way of saying that she has never worked with anyone as kind and witty as me). It was great, the grainy black and white images of my active baby who rolled around the whole time she tried to catch him with her little wand. He has beautiful hands, I can tell. (We don't know that I'm having a boy, I just say "he.") Chinua, Kai, and Kenya were in the room, Kai watching with a kind of stupefied awe, wrinkling his brow to try to see what exactly we were seeing, and Kenya being generally distracting by turning the lights off and on and pulling on various cords. It was at once very like our first, romantic ultrasound of Kai, and very unlike.
But, as for the lump, I can't say that I'm that worried about it. I mean, I have to be careful not to think about it too much at certain times of the night or day, since my imagination is wild and morbid. As Chinua and I drove home after the ultrasound, the kids asleep in the back of the van, we skirted around and dove into the loaded topics of sickness and death. We talked about how sickening it is to think of dying when you have small children. It seems to be not even an option anymore, although of course it's outside of your control.
Then I had a thought. "It's probably just something I swallowed the wrong way," I said to Chinua.
"Yeah," he agreed, "like a piece of chicken or something."
"Or it could be something I misplaced years ago,"I continued.
"Hmmm," Chinua said. "It's probably a wad of twenties. Or maybe it's your twin."
My real anxiety revolves around something that I have absolutely no control over: Other people and their thoughts or emotions, how they are doing, whether they hate me. I walk around scrunching my forehead over things that I have no way of changing. The ball is not in my court. It's not even on the same block. I may as well worry about whether the river is flowing the right way.
Living here, at the Land, a community for people who are in the long process of learning to walk with God, I worry over the guys and girls who live here with us. Are they leaving? Should they be leaving? Did they leave for the wrong reasons? So-and-so looked sad at lunch—are they okay? Or, I worry about conflict. Is everyone mad at me?
I sound really pathetic. But it's funny that I can trust God with my pretty neck (I like my neck, even if it is a bit lumpy. It's one of my favorite body parts, next to my forehead) yet I feel like the pasts, presents, and futures of the people in my life are on my shoulders. How ridiculous is that?
This is all to say that the futures of my dear friends are in the hands of a gentle Father.
Just like my skinny little lumpy neck.
October
October 2, 2005
The first rain came yesterday, and I stepped out into a tropical breeze when I left my cabin in the morning. The air hung close around and wisps of mist were weaving through the trees. It was surprisingly warm and humid, raining ever so slightly. I hurried to get my laundry off the line and felt perfectly happy, loving the warm wind, which reminded me of Thailand. I rushed to tell Chinua to step outside and breathe it in, and he agreed with me. It was a perfect day.
It was a perfect day in many ways. It was my husband's birthday, and I'm so glad that I've been able to spend so many birthdays with him. The first we ever shared was in Thailand, when he turned twenty-seven. We sat with friends at our favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai and ate sesame balls in honey instead of birthday cake. Today was the fifth birthday that we've spent together.
The only thing Chinua really wanted for his birthday was a set of juggling torches. Juggling torches are a lot like they sound—used for the purpose of—you guessed it—juggling fire. Teaching fire safety to our kids seems almost pointless when they have a dad who throws flaming sticks around as if they were as benign as say, crumpled up paper or something. I can just imagine saying, "Okay, kids, don't play with matches, all right?" They'll look at me as if to say, "Sure, Mom." I'll have to qualify, "Only adults play with fire." Given Kai and Kenya's frantic and persistent attempts to learn how to juggle, they'll want to join in some day. Kai's tries at juggling involve him throwing three or more items up in the air and then running around to try to catch them. Every time, they hit the ground, but I think that he really believes that if he just tries one more time, he'll figure it out. During Kenya's attempts at juggling, though, the toys she's trying to juggle don't even leave her hands.
A bunch of us at the Land pitched in to put enough money together to buy Chinua his torches. I made Chinua look for his present, though, with a scavenger hunt where he searched for clues that brought him to the place where the promise of torches was hidden. (All we had was the I.O.U. card. I would have no idea how to go about actually buying juggling torches, so I left it up to him.) The hunt was really, really fun. Maybe even mostly for me, since I was shaking with laughter over Chinua trying to puzzle out my elusive clues.
Then, oh my word, the two of us actually went out to the big city of Garberville for dinner. Together. Alone. It has been about two months since we've done this, so it seemed like the most luxurious thing possible in life. It's kind of cool to be deprived of something you love, because once you have what you were lacking, it is so sweet to you. My dad used to work all night outdoors in ungodly weather. It would be -40 degrees Celsius with a wind chill, and he would say, "It's not too bad when you're cold, because it's so good when you're warm again." Right.
In San Francisco we had many more date nights. We would put the kids to bed and have someone else who lived in the flat with us listen for them while we crept around the city streets hand in hand, a very sneaky couple. But in the City, we lived in a flat with what was sometimes twenty other people, and it was a little difficult to be alone. We don't have the same problem here at the Land. It is so much more peaceful. (Being one of the people "in charge" does make you prone to being asked for advice at any moment, though, so if Chinua and I are walking hand in hand around the Land at night, and I see someone walking purposefully toward us, my instinctive and primal urge is to turn and flee.)
We had pasta with shrimp and smoked salmon, and I was disappointed that the salmon seemed somewhat cooked. I was expecting the rawer, creamier smoked salmon. It was probably good, seeing that I'm not actually supposed to be eating that sort of fish. I crave it, though, and was planning to cheat in that minor area of pregnancy do's and don'ts. What? It's not like I was planning to chug back a bottle of wine or anything. I think that my pregnant self goes into some sort of world motherhood state, because I'm craving like I'm a Jewish mom in New York. Bagels and lox and cream cheese. Mmmmm. Capers. Mmmmm. Or I'm Japanese. Sushi! Miso! Or Vietnamese, desperately craving Pho Ga. It's seems to be different with every pregnancy, actually. With Kai I was Mexican, eating Mexican rice and beans like there was no tomorrow. With Kenya, it was the sushi. I ate whole packages of somewhat fake California rolls, sitting in the car in the parking lot at Trader Joe's. This time it seems to be the aforementioned food of American Jews.
Our meal was delicious and we had a wonderfully nerdy time discussing food in different cultures and the progression of civilizations as represented by their ability to survive and their interest in food. We figure that the colder the climate is, the less time people could dedicate to their culinary arts. Thus, Thai and Middle Eastern and Indian foods win out over kidney pie and borsht. Chinua and I are made for each other. We really sit around and talk about this stuff on dates. Cultural history is our favorite thing to discuss, next to physics or math concepts.
We arrived home to a painfully obvious attempt at a surprise party. As in, "Honey, will you put the ice cream in the freezer? I just have to "check something."
Or, as we were walking up to the Big House from our cabin: "Honey? I feel like I should have the camera, just in case there's anything to take a picture of. I'll run back and get it." Because I always take pictures in the dark. We both knew it was a façade. It was a hilarious Land birthday party, though, complete with a round of our favorite game, Narcoleptic Dog. Chinua made Narcoleptic Dog up, but our friend Amelia came up with the name. It's pretty great. It involves skits and drawings and dances and art criticism. The best kind of game ever. My favorite moments were when Jeff acted out Someone Shooting Arrows at San Francisco, and Derek impersonated a parasitic cow. I've had some of the best times in my life playing games at the Land. It's as if in the midst of all the seriousness of broken lives that God is putting back together, he understands that we need these joyful, hilarious moments to even it all out. A lot of the guys who live here now have had their hearts absolutely crushed, and are being rebuilt from the ground up. And God brings such joy through them. I feel so fortunate to be here.
The crowning moment in the whole evening, however, was Kai's break dancing. Our friend Jesse showed him some moves back in the city, and Kai did a little bit for us, refusing to dance to anything other than the ring tones on my cell phone. We were laid out, laughing. He got a super serious look on his face, and then started a little toe tapping, to warm up. Then the fingers started wiggling. Then the somersaults, the crouches, the kicks. It's the best thing ever, especially since he feels the music, you can tell. I'm telling you, this boy has talent. And he's only three.
October 5, 2005
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 3