"Kai, please eat your spaghetti."
"Dinosaurs don't EAT spaghetti."
"Okay... what do dinosaurs eat?"
"Leaves."
"Well, if you can pretend you are a dinosaur, you can pretend that your spaghetti is leaves."
Lots of things are like this. If I tell my three-year-old that he can't stand on the arm of the couch, he'll explain that there are ALLIGATORS in the water and if he gets off, they'll eat him. Obviously, I don't just let him get away with all his reasoning. He WILL eat his spaghetti, and he WILL stop standing on the arm of the couch. But it's not just arguing to him. He really gets so caught up in his imagination that he finds it hard to break out. Almost all day I'm saying "Earth to Kai, FOCUS, put your jacket on, put your shoes on, let's put the toys away... Hello?"
Hmmmm. This reminds me of someone. I can't for the life of me think who... OH!
"So then I was thinking that we should find that number and make sure we call her back... Hey! Are you listening to me, Honey?"
"Hmmm?"
"Chinua, did you hear what I said?"
"Sorry, I was gone for a minute there."
"Where did you go?"
"Fighting aliens."
It's like Madeleine L'Engle says. We are made up of all our ages. I'm a nine-year-old, a sixteen-year-old, a twenty-five year old. Good to remember when I feel like pitching a fit in the middle of the night when Leaf won't go back to sleep for two hours.
April
April 4, 2006
1. My Superstar Husband flew to Turkey today.
2. I'm crazy for saying, no, I don't mind if you go. I think I was still experiencing the euphoria of prescription pain medication when I said that.
3. I like to torture myself by making decisions and then changing my mind when it is too late
4. I aired all my apocalyptic fears while the poor man was trying to pack yesterday.
5. I don't deserve him.
6. It's mostly hard because Kai's whining is making my hair fall out and Chinua is the good and patient one in the family.
7. But today went okay. Kai whined a lot but banging my head sharply against the glass door a few times made me feel better. I accidentally dropped a mason jar into the toilet, where it broke. I spent a few thousand minutes cleaning shattered glass out of toilet water. I played the no-nap game with the baby. I took care of some property tax issues. I fed my daughter sliced meat for a snack to keep her happy while I was on the phone with the property tax people.
8. The kids kissed me lots because I told them not to (what am I teaching them by extorting kisses through reverse psychology?) My mom folded laundry for me. Both my parents worked on painting my new home until late tonight.
9. We won't have to walk in the dark with the kids ever again until next winter. Thank you reverse daylight savings time.
10. I'm really very glad that Chinua flew to Turkey today. It's just sad to be without him.
11. I'm joking about banging my head on the glass door.
April 5, 2006
It's no use arguing over whether the little lizards that the boys are finding all over the Land are newts or salamanders, because it turns out that they are pretty much the same thing.
Except when they're dead, in which case I freak out. Elena came to collect Jed today and when the boys showed her their lizards she said, "This one looks dead to me," and then I had to suddenly turn and run quickly up the hill, shrieking. Not too many things make me scream and run away. Dead things. And people waiting in the dark to scare me. That always makes me scream. I remember one time in Berkeley my friend Eddie ran up to me and growled, "Gimme all your money," and I screamed so loud I must have given everyone within a ten block radius simultaneous heart attacks.
Today it was two dead lizards in one day. Two is too many. One was huge and we think a cat got him, and just thinking about him makes me want to get up and run out of my cabin.
Speaking of dead things. Why are all the hens dead? We have one hen left, and one rooster. Skunks have killed the rest, despite a valiant effort to keep them safe. Not valiant enough, apparently. Those dastardly skunks. Killing what they don't even stick around to eat. It's heartbreaking, especially since the hens were just about to start laying again.
Today was Day Two of Chinua's absence. Today there was no glass in the toilet and a minimum of whining. The Leaf baby took amazing naps all day. Our hot water heater was fixed (I think I neglected to mention that it's been broken for awhile) and I made soup and biscuits for the community for dinner. I always love cooking for everyone because it feels like such an accomplishment and I so rarely get to do it.
I woke up with excitement, thinking about Chinua arriving in Turkey, feeling almost like I'm arriving in a new country.
April 6, 2006
Today Kenya did what I had hoped that no child of mine would do. She stuck a bead up her nose, a big round bead. And I didn't even notice for probably an hour or so. We were sitting and watching Little House on the Prairie, while I worked on her dreadlocks, and she turned to me and very mildly said, "Uh oh," pointing to her nose. So mildly that I thought that she was maybe slightly distressed over being a little snotty. It took me a minute to notice the big purple bead wedged in her nasal cavity.
So I did what every parent would do, after freaking out for a moment over the possibility of a trip to the emergency room, I worked it out of her little nostril with patience and much snot-touching. It was one of those moments when I saw myself from the outside and thought, "Who are you? And what have you done with Rae?" Similar to the moments I spent cleaning glass out of the toilet or poo out of the bath or even, the other day, standing in a parking lot wolfing ravioli out of a can in the rain. That deserves more explanation. I was starving like a nursing mother can be, and all I could find was a drugstore. My Superstar Husband could tell you that I don't make the best judgement calls when I'm hungry, and I didn't want to smell my friend's car up with canned ravioli smell, so there I was, in the rain eating nasty cold ravioli with shaky hands. Who is that person?
It was probably the hardest thing about becoming a mother—losing some pieces of identity that were important to me. And it was possibly the most important thing about becoming a mother—learning not to be defined by what I do. I used to be known as an artist, a painter, and after I had Kai I really struggled with the fact that a lot of people I was working with had no idea that I painted at all.
I don't really struggle so much with that stuff now, it seems that the edges have been slowly worn off me. I'm like a piece of beach glass, now. Motherhood has softened me, and I don't even really care about my identity anymore, or how people see me as much. Not to say that I don't care about art, I still care as much as I ever did. But I love the absurdity of taking care of small children, of having no more than moments for yourself in a day, of doing totally disgusting things because being a parent means plucking a bead out of your daughters runny nose or straining poo out of a bathtub.
April 8, 2006
Today Kai leaned over the side of the couch and whispered conspiratorially to the Leaf Baby, "Your daddy's dead."
"Kai!" I exclaimed, horrified. "Don't say that! His daddy, I mean, your daddy, isn't dead!"
"Oh," Kai replied. "He's in Turkey?"
This confusion between whether Daddy is dead or in Turkey isn't a wild question out of the blue. It all originated in the (gasp) Little House on the Prairie, Collection Edition, First Season on DVD. Elena loaned it to me, and I thought—Wow, it would be cool to watch some together before bed every day, while Chinua's gone. We don't have TV here, and I figured that Little House on the Prairie is about as innocent as you can get. That is, until the little boy's pa exploded in a rock quarry.
"Wow, uh—whoops, what happened?" I flustered, and then tried to fast forward past the part where Laura's Pa has to tell the man's wife and son that he was dead. Tried, but managed to un-pause it just at the point where the little boy says, "Now that my Pa's dead, I've got a lotta work to do. A
lotta work."
I watched as Kai's eyes got bigger and bigger, and then, after it was over, as they started to glisten. "What are you thinking about, Kai?" I asked. "I'm thinking about how that little boy's daddy died," he said, in the saddest little-boy voice ever, and the glisten turned into a couple of big tears that still managed not to spill over.
We talked about it a little. Kai was confused about why the boy's dad died. "Was it because he was yelling?" he wanted to know. I told him no, it was just an accident. Then later, as we were getting into bed, and we were talking about Chinua, and crossing off another day on the calendar to show that it's getting closer to when he will be home, Kai said, "Is my daddy going to die?" Again, in the saddest little-boy voice you've ever heard.
"No," I replied, end of story, because you can't even leave room in his mind for something like that. Not now. And we talked about how exciting it will be when we go to pick Chinua up at the airport. The next morning he woke up talking about how "issited" he was to get Daddy from the airport, and I thought, phew. But today, the confusion persists. Is Daddy dead? Or in Turkey?
As if it wasn't enough that he wonders daily about whether a big rock is going to fall from space to kill him, like it killed the dinosaurs.
I don't think that he really thinks his daddy is dead, but it was possibly the first time that it has occurred to him that a parent could die. Curse you, Little House on the Prairie. It's not that I want Kai to be in the dark forever about loss and sad things that happen in the world. But it seems like slightly bad timing, during Chinua's longest absence from the kids.
Kai's funny, the way he takes things in. He's a lot like me. We both personalize everything. If something bad could happen to someone on TV, then something bad could happen to me. It's the reason that I can't even think of the plot of Flight Plan. Waking up on a plane to find your daughter has disappeared? ACK. No, can't think about it, la la la, I'm not listening. I've la la la-ed my way through a lot of movies in my life, walked out of even more.
We'll just have to take the next two weeks day by day, crossing off calendar square by calendar square, sorting out the confusion between "dead" and "in Turkey."
April 14, 2006
I will not feel sorry for myself.
I will not feel sorry for myself.
I will not feel sorry for myself.
I will not feel sorry for myself.
I will not...
...Oh dang.
April 19, 2006
My parents left yesterday. I feel a little lost. I was so amazingly blessed to have them here, for three and a half months. I was spoiled by their help and love. Now, with Chinua gone, and them suddenly gone too, I feel like that halo of family care has been lifted, and I am alone.
Except that I'm totally not.
I have the most amazing family around me: my friends here at the Land, and no girl with her husband gone for three weeks ever had it better. At the very least, I have people to talk to, and often I have hands around me to help.
But there is something about the love of parents, or should I say grandparents? My parents love their grandkids with the fervent intensity of devotees in an ashram in India, making their Darshan gleefully. No one else feels this way about my kids. Except, perhaps, me. Maybe.
What grandparents have that I don't have is distance. They have distance from the time in their lives when they were raising their own kids. They have distance from a lot of the parental fears of messing up. They have a lot of freedom. They also have the assurance that they can always hand the kids back to the parents.
I've loved seeing the relationship that has grown between my parents and my kids. Having my mom and dad staying here at the Land has taught me a lot. A few things are:
1. That I am sinfully independent. I would rather pull myself up a sheer cliff with my teeth than let someone help me. This past winter, after giving birth to my third child and having surgery, I've been forced to accept help from people who possibly love me more than anyone in the world. Pure torture.
2. That I am terribly controlling. Kai told his grandma the other day that she "does a lot of things wrong" because she put the juice in the cup before the water (yes, I dilute our juice) instead of the other way around. I'm not as bad as that. I just don't like it when someone does dishes for me and the dishes are in the dish rack the wrong way. You know, important stuff.
3. That grandparents are just as much family as parents are. This should be obvious. It's just amazing to me, how much the kids thrive on the love of their Grandpa and Grandma.
4. That my parents are two of the most giving, loving, flexible, incredible people I've ever known.
April 21, 2006
I'm in LA right now, meeting lots of new people and hanging out with my friend Sheri. She's a great host. Some highlights:
1. Well, this actually happened before I even left, but as I was driving down to San Francisco from the Land yesterday I was having a great time. Spring has finally come, it was actually sunny and warm, the scotch broom is blooming, and I even caught sight of some lupine. I felt liberated, as I began to drive through the vineyards north of Hopland, like I hadn't even known I was caught in the prison of winter until I happened to step outside.
I may have been driving a WEE bit over the speed limit. I was coming to the crest of a hill when a friendly soul gave me the ol' "flash of the lights--psst-- there's a cop on the other side of this hill." I slowed down and sure enough, just on the other side, there he was. Whew. A narrow miss, but for a little while I imagined how our conversation would have gone.
"Ma'am, do you realize that the speed limit is 55 here?"
"Yes, but, Officer, it's so HARD to drive only 55. The road is so straight. And the Scotch Broom is blooming."
"Ma'am, this is a stretch of road with several vineyards and wineries along it. If you hit one of Sonoma County's best winemakers and knock him off, Napa will be all over us in an instant. We can't jeopardize our grape-growers."
"Are we in Sonoma? Or Mendocino?"
"Uh--I'm not sure, but I do know the speed limit. I'm issuing you a citation."
(I fall out of the car door) "Noooo. Please."
"Ma'am. Please take your hands off of my ankle. Ma'am."
2. This also happened before I got here. I was in the airport, waiting for my plane to board.
Actually—back up—getting through security wasn't so easy. I was carrying Leaf in my wrap-around carrier, and the officer told me I'd have to take him out of the carrier. And then she said I had to take the carrier off. But I can't do that with one hand. And then she said she couldn't hold him for me. What was I supposed to do? Lay my three month old on the floor? Put him in one of the trays? I ended up enlisting the help of the people around me, asking a complete stranger to hold my baby so I could untie my carrier.
Then my phone rang. A strange number. I answered, and the most beautiful melodious voice in the whole world said, "Rae?"
"Chinua?" I said. My heart leapt into my throat and I almost started crying, right there. Actually, maybe I did cry, a little. It's amazing what a short absence does. Like the way I check my email these days, the way I did after we first met and we corresponded for a year. Both of us were crazy about each other, but neither of us were admitting anything. We wrote nice and deep and sweet emails for a year, and checked our boxes thinking "Did he? Is there a letter.... no." Or, "YES!" It was so good to hear from my Superstar Husband. He'll be home on Monday. It's almost over.
3. It's weird. After living in San Francisco, LA seems kind of thrown together. The buildings don't seem to go together, and the signs are rag tag. It seems kinda... shabby, in a cool sort of way, but I think I prefer the well-ordered buildings and amazing hills of San Francisco. Although it may be hard to judge, after only being here for a day. I definitely feel more at home in Northern California though. In So-Cal I always feel a little bit like I landed from a different planet.
4. Yesterday I went to a recording studio on Sunset Blvd where an old frien
d, David, was recording his new album. I was there to hear the music so that I can get an idea of what I'll be working with next month, when I paint for the live recording. I'll be doing art as worship, something that I love, something that I feel born to do. It was a little loud for the Leaf baby right in the studio, so I was hanging out in the lobby and ended up getting a tour of the kitchen and hanging out with the cook, Curtis, for a while. He chatted with the baby and told me about all the places he's been and lived: Chicago, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia... and on the list went. Another of the workers bragged about all of the bands that come and record there. "Next week it's Sheryl Crow, today Van Morrison's here, sometimes Maroon Five, Weezer..." He went on, too. I didn't ever see Van Morrison. Just his gear. The studio was funny. They're obviously pulling in a lot of money, so why do the carpets look that way? It was very LA shabby cool, I suppose.
5. Who needs to be a star when you have a baby? Everywhere I go, people point and smile, stop and talk. It's great. I forgot about this part of having a baby. It's like it opens people up. They trust you. They feel warm. And Leaf smiles back and talks to them, rewarding them for all that openness.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 8