Getting Unstuck

There's a ghost from my past who visits me often. I'll call him Curtis. Curtis and I had a relationship during an impressionable period in my life. He introduced me to an expanded world of art, books, and music that proved to be a marvelous jumping-off point for me. His influence in other areas, however, has lasted in a way that I would rather it didn't.

More often than I care to admit, I still look at things from Curtis's perspective. This is too bad, because in the end, Curtis found me inadequate for his purposes. Curtis and I had the kind of relationship you hear about when two "creatives" get together. If one finds success and the other doesn't, things don't altogether work out. While I struggled to earn a living and find relevance as a writer, Curtis was hired by a newspaper as an editorial assistant, then moved on to critic and editor. I got and quit lame job after lame job. From my perspective, he got to do exactly what made him happy, for enough money to pay rent and buy beer. He followed his dreams and desires, and seemed to find opportunities everywhere.

I didn't. It was a frustrating exercise for me to analyze the reasons behind his success and my failure. He felt he deserved what he wanted, and didn't question the motivation to go for it. He took risks, was willing to look a fool, elbowed his way into things when necessary. The best reasons I could conjure for his easy sense of entitlement were that Curtis had supportive parents, a financial cushion through them, and had gone to an Ivy League school. He'd travelled. His parents travelled. He also had a lot of good dumb luck. This is the story I told myself.

I, however, had substantial barriers to being a real, paid writer. I was often depressed, chronically broke, and struggling mightily to break free from my family. I had a silly education from my four years at The Evergreen State College. I had not done internships, had not sought out extracurricular writing opportunities in college, and had not really learned any skills. I wasn't qualified to do anything. I had no support and no connections.

This is the story I told myself. I tried my best not to believe that there was any more going on in this scenario than my external circumstances. I was a good writer. I was just starting at a deficit and needed a lucky break.

This little story worked moderately well for me, most of the time. Every so often though, I broke down. It was too hard shoring myself up all the time, hoping that Curtis would not lose respect for me, hoping that my life would change somehow and I'd get out of the deep hole I was in. It was also pretty hard not to believe that I was just a fraud, a hobbyist, a hanger-on; in short, a loser.

Once, when Curtis hung up the phone after making plans to visit a friend in New York, I fell into a deep funk. We were at my apartment, and I'd been listening to his excited phone conversation with increasing bitterness. Once again, he was doing something interesting and glamorous, and I was still toiling over my little stories and drawings and striking out every time I tried to improve my life.

"You always get to do cool stuff," I blurted after he hung up the phone. He looked at me like I was nuts.

"I don't GET to do cool stuff," he replied with irritation. "I just DO cool stuff." From which I inferred, "So could you if you would get your head out of your ass."

"It's easier for you," I sniffed. "All the people you went to school with are doing interesting things. Your parents know people all over the place. They give you money for stuff like this. There is no way I could do what you're doing."

He looked like he was about to explode. "It's not all about money!" he said. "I see interesting things to do and I do them. Nothing's stopping you!"

A lot was stopping me. And reading Susan O'Doherty's new book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued; A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity has helped me see what it was.

My blockages have not so much been related to money, as Curtis suggested. They are, however, deeply rooted in the culture from which I sprang. I came up in a world of certain expectations for life. These were, more or less, (a) finish high school, (b) get a job, and (c) shut the fuck up. Getting by was the most you could hope for. It was foolish and even sinful to want anything else. If you were female, even more so. People in my family do not travel, pursue creative work, or go to college. I won't say it's a bad life for all my cousins who stayed, it's just a very particular life that doesn't lend itself to supporting dreamers, drifters and creative types like myself. To leave it, I had to reject everyone from home.

Still, their ideas about life followed me, especially the harder things got. Curtis would seem, on the surface, to have been a perfect influence for me, but he turned out to be a terrific snob and I turned out to be pathetic. I absorbed his disdain. He started wishing for a different kind of girlfriend.

I continued to not know how to do much but survive.

It's many years later. I am no longer stuck. Still, the very title of O'Doherty's book brought up such a wave of Curtis-like disgust that I had a hard time opening my mind to it at first. But through doing the exercises, I began to look at my past behaviors and habits of mind in this area with much more compassion than I had before. O'Doherty, a therapist, does such a good job of getting right down to what matters - the creative lives of women and our specific issues - with great compassion for what we are up against.

My therapist, Joan, once told me after I apologized for boring her with my dithering, "I'm never bored with you, Susie. I only try to understand." O'Doherty gives this impression, too, on nearly every page, about women who do creative work. She tries to help us see and understand.

I first wrote a review for this book in which I tried desperately to distance myself from the book's intended audience. "I am not one of you," I seemed to say. "I do not have your silly problems." If I needed to read a book like this, I must not be a real writer. I must be just another whiny female with too many excuses.

Oh, Curtis. Do shut up.

I have to thank O'Doherty for getting me to see that my drawn swords and plates of armor caused me to write a review that was not only dripping with bitterness, but was not a good read. I was trying too hard to protect myself to develop a thought.

In case you are interested in reading Getting Unstuck, doing the exercises, and comparing notes with me, I am going to post my written exercises in future installments of the blog. Please tell me about your progress! I recommend it to any female artist or writer who has an immediate distaste for the title, like I did, or for one who feels the mystery and mechanics of getting one's head out of one's ass have become overwhelming. As a companion, I recommend Pema Chodron's fantastic, funny recordings on a similar subject, also called Getting Unstuck. Download it, plug it in to listening device, and watch your experience on the bus become something altogether different.

And thanks for listening to my story about Curtis's ghost. It feels good to liberate it.

Hang On

It's probably no coincidence that my latest break in posts coincides with the closure of my yoga studio for a long summer holiday. I just ran into another student from the studio who asked, "How are you doing with the closure?"

"It sucks," I admitted.

"It totally sucks," she agreed.

The other thing I've been doing is reading and doing the exercises for a book I'm reviewing for MotherTalk. I can only do this at half-hour increments. Such is life with two small children. I'll be posting the review on Aug. 22 as part of a "blog tour" to support the author.

Please come back and visit.

Kindergarten, Again

A psychiatrist once told me that as mother, I would be reliving my childhood through my kids.

"Whatever ages they are, those are the ages you get to experience psychologically once again," she said.

Oh, shit. No wonder I'm on medication.

My disinclination to go back to early childhood typically manifests itself in a heavy heart and even heavier feet when it comes to matters involving my kid's schools. This all came up again last week, at playground meet-and-greet for Jonah's incoming kindergarten class. The kids went for the Popsicles, my husband went to meet the other parents, and I went because I had to.

On the drive over, my carcass pressed deeply into the seat. Movement felt barely possible. We parked. We unbuckled. We admonished Jonah and Audrey to stay close in the parking lot. I walked heavily behind my family toward the massed grownups and scattered children. Within seconds, I was staring at the ground and digging my toe in the dirt. I felt like I had felt every day of my life as a kid: like my insides were being sucked out.

Meanwhile the kids wandered off to the playground equipment. Matt chatted up an old college classmate and a mom he'd met at a kiddie birthday party.

I.

Wanted.

To disappear.

But I got myself together and weakly greeted some other moms. Many stood around in little gaggles, or followed their children through the park. There didn't seem to be much to say. Those not in a gaggle seemed, like me, a little wary. So I wandered alone. I observed how the diverse body of children came together and split apart. Particularly, I noted those kids who simply played by themselves. I remembered that in kindergarten, one doesn't always have a stable group of friends. The social scene shifts almost daily. I marvelled at how much we were left to our devices during play times and recess.

For me, this meant that I curled up inside the bottom of a tall climbing tube. It was just me and the wood chips and darkness in there. Circles of sunlight blazed through the foot holds, and I played with running my hands across them, making shadows on the wood chips and illuminating my skin. I sang little songs to myself to hear the way my voice echoed in the tall chamber.

When other kids invaded, kicking up dust and shouting for me to move out of the way, I left.

Maybe I was a bit of an oddball.

My son is an oddball for sure. He doesn't play like other kids play. He's passive. He doesn't understand the first thing about aggression. Also, he can amuse himself for a very long time following the progress of a beetle across the blacktop. I think this is a lovely quality and desperately don't want it to get beaten out of him on the playground.

It's like Lord of the Flies out there.

At the meet-and-greet, my husband and I wandered back to one another. "Where's Jonah?" I asked. I'd been tracking Miss A, who is more apt to get into physical peril, and had ignored Jonah completely.

"Last I saw, he was at the top of that slide. Uh, oh, there's a line forming behind him."

My heart leaped. Indeed, there was a bit of a jostling mob at the top of the slide. I bolted over there to find my sweet innocent boy hanging from a bar, wailing, tears and snot streaming, and running his little feet on the plastic slide to back up. But his Crocs wouldn't stick, and so he was trapped there, unwilling to go down and unable to go back up. Five or so slightly older boys stood behind him, one in particular shouting, "Go! Go!"

I elbowed them out of the way. I rescued my child.

"Oh, Honey, I'm here, I'm here."

I rescued myself.

"Why didn't that boy help me?" Jonah wailed, while I cradled him on my lap. "I kept telling him I didn't want to go down and he just wouldn't listen!" Oh, the injustice. I knew. I understood. My heart bled all over the both of us as we sat in a desperate embrace on the ground.

"He needs to listen!" Jonah cried.

The mother in me had overtaken the child by now, and I began to get an idea for how to turn this into a skill-building experience. If I can't protect my babies from everything, I can teach them some ways to deal with what happens. Especially Jonah, who can hang onto a perceived injury for a very long time, and remain offended and upset. So I asked Jonah if he wanted to air his grievance to the boy who wouldn't help him off the slide. He said yes.

"We should tell him that I wanted him to help me, and that next time he needs to help me when I ask."

"Absolutely right," I said, getting to my feet. We spotted him on the swings. We began our approach. I just wanted J to get this off his chest, and maybe the boy would say sorry, or maybe the boy would tell him to shut up, I didn't know. He was only, like, seven. But it was worth a try. Unfortunately, our little rapscallion dashed into a game of chase with about ten other kids, and Jonah and I decided it wouldn't make sense to try to get his attention now.

"Are you feeling ready to go home?" I asked.

His face clouded, then brightened. "Um, I would like to go climb on those tractor tires."

I went with him. I didn't want either of us to be alone.

TMI?

From time to time I'll pass my URL onto people who I think will like it. I'm wrong as often as I am right. As many people that say they like it never mention it to me. That's fine. At least it didn't cost them any money.

Two people who didn't enjoy reading my blog made comments to me that I have been puzzling over ever since. One, a friend of my husband's, said he felt uncomfortable reading such personal things about someone he knew. He felt he wasn't sure how to respond, or why I would want people to know these things about me.

Okay. Noted.

Another, also a friend of my husband's, told me last night at my kitchen table, over a plate of my food and a bottle of my wine, that he read it once but stopped because it stressed him out. "It's too deep," he said, smiling. "I mean, everyone has issues, but you don't always want to know all your friend's issues. It's like how we all go to the bathroom, but we don't talk about it because we don't want to hear that part of each other's lives."

Okay. Sort of the same as above, though relating what I talk about to bathroom issues is a new twist. The fact that this friend entered college without knowing that women menstruate may inform how I receive that comment.

My friend Jane, who has been very positive about the blog, asked me how I can be so bold about putting such personal things out there. We were standing on a dark corner of Capitol Hill digesting the beers we'd shared at Smith.

"It's not personal," I blurted. "I never put anything on there unless I think a bunch of women are going to identify with it."

"But how do you keep your family from having opinions about it?" she asked. She has something like nine brothers and sisters.

"My family doesn't know my URL," I said. "And when they ask for it, I tell them no."

"YOU TELL THEM NO?" she gaped. "That would never have occurred to me." She stared out into the night. "Huh."

I shrugged. "I can't write the blog if I think my family's going to read it."

"But how can you report what you report knowing that you have no control over things?"

This question perplexed me the most. Perhaps I misunderstood it. As I see it, I have total control over what goes on this blog; I write the damn thing. I do not have total control over the happenings in my life, but it wouldn't occur to me to include everything in my life. Maybe Jane meant that I have no control over the material once it leaves my desktop. She's right. I tend not to worry about that. I have a 12 stepper's attitude about it: "Take what you like, and leave the rest."

The whole point of this blog is not so that my intimate life can be known by many. That would be a skeevy impulse, at least for me. I just know that the lives of a good many women are too full; of self-doubt, irritation, hormonal-related illnesses and health issues, outright depression, huge mental and physical burdens, daily kid-induced insanity, confusion about who they are supposed to be, and very little real understanding from their families, communities or partners. In fact, the general sense I get from talking to a lot of women is that they are perpetually in a struggle of one kind or another, made intractable by motherhood. So when I get an e-mail from a woman telling me that I am the only mother she knows who has ever said it like it is, well darn it, I feel a little bit more sane. So, I hope, does she.

In any case, if I'm doing this blog right, it isn't really about me. So whatever you think about it is fine. Really.

Taking a Break

It's my birthday. I have four hours of childcare today. Here's how I've spent it:

Hour 1: Housework. I cleaned the kitchen, sorted through weeks of stacked periodicals, put toys away, did laundry. It is satisfying to do this uninterrupted.

Hour 2: Showered and read periodicals that I'd been saving for weeks. This includes a silly article about birth order written by Elizabeth Gilbert and her sister, an article about whether using income rather than race as a tie-breaker for public school selection really works to diversify schools in a way that makes a difference, and an article about unlicensed backyard trattorias in Sicily.

Hour 3: Watched two episodes of "Weeds: Season 2," while eating mashed potatoes and red velvet birthday cake.

Hour 4: Watched one more episode of "Weeds" and am writing this. I think I can still taste the red dye from the cake. It leaves a certain aftertaste.

I ditched yoga class to do all of this. Instead of being pleasantly sore with a calm mind, I'm hopped up on sugar and carbs with a high glycemic index. My mind is swimming with lustful images of marijuana plants, Martin Donovan, and Mary Louise Parker's wardrobe. Now I must ferry my son to The Little Gym.

Om.

Distractions

One thing I love about my daytime yoga classes is that there aren't too many younger, single, straight men there. Whenever one appears, I find myself immensely distracted by his presence.

This is due in part to my status as a SAHM. We SAHMs don't see a lot of men during the day. If we are having a day filled almost entirely with school drop-off/grocery store/pediatrician/playground visits, we can go for hours without seeing a man, except perhaps the guy slouched in front of QFC shaking a paper cup of coins. Anyone who has flung open the front door to greet the UPS carrier and felt a small, giddy rush of adrenaline at being in the presence of A MAN, for God's sake, knows what I mean.

Still, in yoga class, it is nice to be without that particular adrenaline rush. I enjoy this time to pay close attention to how my body feels as I practice. To note what my mind does. I appreciate this one place where I don't need to think about how I appear to others, or how they appear to me.

This is made easier for me by the demographics of my classes: the women, who make up 85% of any given class, are my age or older; gay men, who are bored, bored, BORED by all the full, female buttocks and breathy sighs all around them; straight men in their 30's who tend to show up with their wives or girlfriends; and the surprisingly studly silver-haired set. Those men tend to be cyclists and runners and in amazing shape, they just don't give off that certain...vibe.

A younger straight man who is unattached and in a room full of women gives off a vibe. Forgive me for saying so, but in my rambles I have observed that no matter how nice a single man he may be, he is either thinking, "Who in this room would I like to fuck?", "Who in this room do I have a chance of fucking?" or "How can I get someone here to want to fuck me?" (As you may have observed, this is not restricted to yoga class. I welcome any and all male readers of this blog to set me straight if I am wrong.) The older he is, the less he tends to broadcast it, but it's still hard to miss.

As a woman still in my child-bearing years, I am primed to pick up on this vibe. My DNA is patterned to receive this prowling energy, and I have been socialized to then start deciding what I am going to do with it. (Not to mention that I'm a brazen hussy at heart, if not in practice.)

I am happily married. What I am going to do with it, literally, is nothing. But how does this vibe effect my yoga practice? How does it effect my thoughts? Do I change anything about what I do, where I look, and what I think about?

Well, yeah. And it's annoying.

It happened this week in my Tuesday class. I got squished right up front next to some new guy I'd never seen before. Turns out he was visiting from an Anusara yoga studio in West Hollywood, the gayest city in California outside of San Francisco. Briefly, I looked forward to observing and maybe even riding some nonsexual gay boy-energy. Variety can refresh a girl.

And then he said, "...and I'm always the only straight guy there."

Dammit! Immediately, I took stock of my appearance. It was a day where my schmate yoga clothes were in the laundry so I wore my pretty ones. I had taken a shower before coming to class, due to lank hair separating into V's all over my scalp and giving off a stale smell. So my hair was wet, and trailing down my bare back. I was fresh as a daisy and feeling lovely.

"I'm Rob," he said, extending his hairy hand.

I thought, He heard me talking to the woman in the row behind us about my kids, right? He's not going to think I'm flirting with him if we have to become partners, right?

"I'm Susie," I said, taking it.

As our practice began, I realized, with some irritation, that I was giving off my own energy. The female, receptive, attracting kind. It was almost reflexive. Over and over, I breathed it out. Put my mind where it belonged: in my pelvis. I mean my CORE! I mean, my abdominal muscles! Not all of my core! Just the muscular part!

"Lift up through your pelvic floor," sang my teacher. Bloody hell. I'm lifting already, I'm lifting. Does a straight man know where his pelvic floor is? Does this guy, Rob, know how to lift up his pelvic floor? Is he aroused by all of these women around him lifting up their pelvic floor?

After class, Rob asked the teacher about other classes he might drop in on while he's here visiting. On my way out, I said, "Oh, hey, Rainey's class at 8 on Thursdays is really good."

"Thanks," he said. And then, "Are you going to be there?"

My teacher told a story once about another teacher she knew who brought along one really annoying person to every yoga retreat, just to give his students the chance to really practice mindfulness. It's easy to be all kind and peaceful and focusing on your practice when there are few distractions. But can you do it when that irritating stinky guy who groans orgasmically every time he pushes back into dog pose keeps placing his mat next to yours? How about when the boor of the group elbows into the private conversation you're having with your two favorite yoga friends about meditation making you a better person?

It's all fine and good to protect myself in my little yoga enclave of mostly menopausal women. What would happen if I dropped into a hipster studio and took a class with a bunch of 22-year-old hardbodies? I'd probably feel like a hag.

But that would be very good practice.

And no, Rob, I won't be there for that Thursday class, but thanks for the eye-opener that I still have so far to go.

The Path of the Warrior, Part II

Allow me to introduce you to this section of the blog. It could have many titles, none of which really get to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is that I'm not depressed anymore, not identifying myself as a depressed person, no longer researching meds and motherhood, no longer wondering how in the bloody hell to get through a day with my children. (Ok, I still wonder that, but at least now I have some tools that I even remember to use.)

But, like every one of us, I am still on my path. I find I've moved down the path a ways, out of depression and into something else. So far, the something else seems to be silence, rest, and observation. It's no wonder I've been craving a few days in the woods alone, to move into a bigger silence, so that I can listen more attentively.

Listening is what I do in yoga practice. And when I listen, new thoughts come to mind. Here is where I want to explore this experience, and the experience of belonging to a yoga community, and of following the yoga teacher path.

Of course, this is all from my perspective, which includes the stewardship of two small children and the specter of depression always hovering around.

I will do my best to write about these matters in a way that doesn't make you want to stick your finger down your throat.

P.S.

It's likely that I'll blog again, because I just can't be expected to shut up. If you want to be on an e-mail list to recieve notification about the next blog of undetermined subject, please send me your email address at susan.i.hillman@gmail.com.

Love,
Susie

The End?

Have you noticed that I rarely post anymore?

I can't help it. I come, I sit, I type; nothing gets posted. I do my yoga stuff and think about how to incorporate that into the blog. I avoid meditating and think how to make that amusing for the blog. I realize that after coming up from the depths of a major depression, I am more inclined to focus on things like creating a persona for this blog.

I don't want to create a persona. I am so done with creating a persona. Those damn personae and ideas about who I am and viewing myself through the eyes of other people were part of the problem to begin with. I set out to let go of a lot of my conceptions about myself. While traveling down that immensely liberating path, I find myself back at some old habits of mind.

This is actually a sign of better health. If there were a hierarchy of neuroses like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, worrying about maintaining a personality is up there past things like being afraid to leave the house. But another sign of health is that my answer now to the question, "Who am I?" is a benevolent, slightly exasperated, "Oh, Honey. Are we here again?"And after chasing my tail for awhile, I start walking again.

I think it would be easier for me to keep walking if I didn't have the self-referential blog reflex happening so often.

Plus. The original idea was to explore all of this stuff in the context of parenting and depression. I can say with certainty that I am not depressed. Also, that I have no interest in writing a parenting blog. I just feel done.

Readers, thank you for reading and commenting. Really. Thank you.

In gratitude,

Susie

Interruptions

This whole blog should be about the stories that happen when I'm trying to write the stories. Because here we are, with post number three that is more or less a memo asking you to stay tuned for real content. I'm working on something really deep and spiritual about living a slow and quiet life. But all this stuff keeps happening, like:

1. Mother-in-law visit.
2. Photographers here to photograph my kitchen because they think it would look cool in some magazine about storage. (Did I not do a good job on the storage, heh?) There are opened black umbrellas on stands and stacks of white plates that aren't mine and someone drew pretend kid drawings on my chalkboard refrigerator. There's an assistant getting waters for people. I feel like I'm on a movie set, but it's my kitchen and I need to make sandwiches for my kids.
3. Not that I'm complaining. How cool is this?
4. Mother-in-law wandering around house in shorty bathrobe while stylist and photo people show up with equipment and props. Kids unwilling to get dressed or wipe the maple syrup off their faces. Me braless in white tee-shirt trying to answer the door and hold back the dog. Mentally calculating how many minutes I have to finish cleaning up the kitchen, de-slime myself, apply yoga clothing, and make it to a class. And get Audrey's nasty pull-up off her body, even though she's running screaming through the house that she's not ready.


Those are just some of today's excuses. Yesterday's are a different story.

But, really, I'm working on it. Deep thoughts about the slow lane. The contemplative life.

I wonder if I can fit that in before the kids' bedtime.

Empty

Spring brought with it an urge to spank my house into shape. For me the urge itself was a relief. I had become comfortable with clutter and disarray after my breakdown. I'd had to be. There was a time when I couldn't do anything about it because I was in bed crying, and after that was a time when I taught myself to let go of general housewifery in order to stop yelling about the shit all over the kitchen counter and kicking shoes against walls because some asshole left them in my path.

All of this was wonderful and instructive, but as of this spring, I couldn't contain myself anymore. I really needed to reorder the linen closet. I really needed to plant flowers and herbs and I really needed to dig compost into all the planting beds.

This kind of work required my strong back, but it also required trips to big-box stores, and it required substantial mental energy spent on the merits of bamboo storage bins and a complete inventory of the house in order to figure out where in the hell to put the dog food bin so we can use the shoe cubby for shoes. Etcetera.

This can be sort of fun. What household manager hasn't experienced the breathless rush of possibility upon entering a place like The Container Store? Alas, all problems are not solved in one four-hour block while the kids are at home with the sitter. I learned for the hundredth time that this sort of organizational and freshening campaign requires merchandise that must be measured, scrutinized, paid for, experimented with, and, about 50% of the time, returned. Which necessitates more car trips.

But I was into it. I solved the kitchen command center problem. I solved the toy storage problem. I amended the soil in my yard and planted dozens of new plants. I bought a big-girl bed for Audrey, and moderately-priced bedding from a giant chain store. (I wanted to splurge on cool stuff from Habitat but it turns out that these groovy modern bedding design houses don't make their groovy stuff in twin size. Probably they figure no sane person would spend that kind of money on a kid's duvet cover.) I still have not solved the shoe cubby problem.

But that's fine because I'm all emptied out now. I can't spend another moment in one of those stores. I can't spend another drop of brainpower on what color towels to get for the bathroom. I don't want to buy anything or fix anything or make anything happen. I just want to sit in the sun and read novels. I want to primp the flowers with Jonah, and have evening picnics on the front lawn, and, in a larger sense, tend what I have created.

Now, as I try over and over to write, I keep hearing the voice of writing-guru Natalie Goldberg in my head: "Sometimes, you're empty."

Sometimes you're empty. There's a new thing to observe. What is it like when I am basically done creating for the moment? What is it like when striving has ceased? There's nothing to work out. Things are proceeding as they're going to proceed. I can sit on my deck and look at the orange nemesia that I planted in pots last month radiate color and warmth. A breeze will cause the blossoms to tremble, exposing their pink undersides. My black dog will streak across the yard and stop short at the cedar tree while a squirrel scratches up the trunk and chatters in victory.

This is all punctuated by my children demanding a graham cracker and insisting I decide a disagreement over who has the rights to the squirt bottle. But that's fine.

This is just being. It's okay not to be trying to make something out of nothing. If memory serves, Natalie Goldberg also says that when you are empty, you are supposed to lie around and watch the grass grow for awhile. Doing nothing is a great opportunity for spiritual practice, as well as a time for recharging. So I needn't feel guilty.

Plus, we all know it won't last.

Yoga at Shows

I am a useful person to go to rock shows with. Not only will I drink too much and amuse you, but if you get fatigued by all the standing around, I know Things to make you feel better.

At Silversun Pickups, I did a maneuver on my friend Sara that made her go slack and groan. I stood behind her, bent my knees, grasped the sides of her ribcage, and used my powerful mama arms and legs to lift her spine and decompress her lower back. She did actually groan. Later, when she complained again about her back (because we're getting too old to stand around for hours on end waiting for silly bands to finish whatever they are doing backstage before coming out), I placed my hands on her upper buttocks and squeezed the flesh in toward her sacrum. We've known each other for approximately 57 years, so she didn't mind me touching her butt. Her face brightened. "I feel so much better!" she said.

I learned all this at my prenatal yoga training. I love knowing that I can make someone feel better. Plus, I can make myself feel better.

At The Long Winters, my lower back was killing me. I'd been to the above-mentioned show the night before, and had just done two days of more yoga training. As my great-grandparents used to say, I was tard. I turned to my husband, who is tall and strong and tolerant, and said, "Remember when I was in labor and I hung on you during contractions? Let's do that now." He assumed the position. I faced him, threaded my arms underneath his armpits and up around his shoulders, then let my body hang. I buried my face in his stomach. He stood there and allowed it. Afterwards, a couple about our age snuck sly glances at us. The woman laughed in what appeared to be a knowing way. I bet she was either a mom and knew what I was doing, or she thought I was a tard. I didn't care either way because now I felt much less cranky.

I promise never to do any of this to you unless you ask. You may have to put up with me disappearing into a forward bend every now and then. If I'm there and then suddenly I'm not, just look down. If you are feeling generous, please pull my shirt down over my butt crack. Thanks.

Dinner Conversation

Me: "Hey, guys, how about some sliced apples with cinnamon?"

Audrey: "Yeah!"

Jonah: "Mumble mumble mumble."

Me: "What was that, Jonah?"

Jonah: "Mom, I'm not really in the mood for things with cinnamon."

Me: "Ok, so do you want apple without cinnamon?"

[silence]

Me: "Jonah?"

Jonah: "Just bacon."

Audrey: "I don't want bacon!"

Medication, for Better or for Worse

So the Wellbutrin causes my brain to melt when I ingest mere drops of alcohol, a fact I've detailed in a previous post. I find myself slurring and talking about things I ordinarily would keep to myself. This is annoying.

It's annoying because pre-Wellbutrin I'd been having fun playing with awareness about verbal restraint. Awareness of where my energy goes via the hot air I produce leads me to tone down general verbal incontinence. It means before I speak, I flash on my motivation. This is very instructive.

(My yoga teacher talks about leaking prana, which means wasted energy, and a person can really leak a lot of prana shooting the bull about things that are of absolutely no consequence to anyone. This doesn't mean that I only talk about Important Things. I don't have anything against people who only talk about Important Things, I just don't want to hang out with them.)

Before I added this new drug to my regimen, I usually had the presence of mind to observe my motivation for talking at some point during a day. Sadly, the Wellbutrin turned out to be a verbal diuretic. Talk about leaks. Recently I have found myself going on and on about Martha Stewart, the failed Seattle Commons of ten years ago and how stupid the failure was because look what's happened to South Lake Union anyway, and, the other night at a small dinner party, towels.

I didn't start it. The hostess did. I mentioned, while helping place cloth napkins on the table, how a little girl we had over for a play date recently told me that cloth was best because paper kills the environment. My hostess friend looked at me with a wrinkled expression.

"I don't know," she said. "With all the laundry I do, it hardly seems that way."

I gave her a "yeah, well, who knows?" kind of shrug. She pressed further. "What's your system for towels and napkins?"

Because I have one, I told her. She led me into the bathroom to show me the new bamboo-fiber washcloths she had purchased, ostensibly to offset the environmental damage she was causing by washing all linen items after only one use. We proceeded to stand in the bathroom and discuss our towel-use habits at length. And our bathing habits. At a certain point I flashed on conversations I have had while stoned. I thought, this feels like I'm stoned. Am I stoned? Where's my margarita?

Next day, while filling my pill-dispenser for the week, I cut all the Wellbutrins in half. Soon I'll be Wellbutrin-free.

Will this be better or worse?

The Downfall of Broadway and Pine

Sometimes after the parent-baby class I take Audrey to, a few other moms and I invade a small grungy pizza joint around the corner with our strollers and small children. We did this today, and since Audrey was clinging to her pizza when it was time to go, I let her walk out of the place holding her food.

While we meandered up Pine Street at a very slow pace to our parking spot where the meter had expired ten minutes ago, Audrey stopped to pick up a flattened, chewed-on red straw off the sidewalk. I batted it out of her hand. "Ick," I said.

Normally, of course, I would direct her to the nearest trash receptacle and give her a big high five for cleaning up. But she was holding food, so my first concern was about cross-contamination. Further complicating matters, no trash receptacle immediately presented itself. From experience I knew that it would take a day and a half to find one at the rate we were going. So I, extremely dutiful citzen though I usually am, left the straw and kept walking.

"There's a trash can right here," I heard a voice behind me say. I turned to see a man bend down to pick up the offending straw.

"Oh, I didn't drop that...she picked it up..." I started.

"Yeah, and I saw you take it right out of her hand and drop it on the ground again." To further prove his point, which must be that people like me are a tragic drain on the patience of others, he bent down and picked up another peice of random garbage (with which I'd had no dealings)and stalked around the corner to deposit it appropriately. "You should show her where the trash can is so she knows where to put her pizza crust when she's done with that," he bitched, sashaying past us in a huff.

I stared at the back of his plaid wool blazer.

How could I explain that we would never waste good pizza crust?

Every Moment is a Transition

Those of you who know me know that I am not a happy housewife or a contented stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). Since I don't earn much money and I have two children, I really should be those things, but alas, my DNA, or inbred bad temperament, or something, prevents me.

Since admitting all of this two years ago and taking steps to remedy the situation, I have come to the point of being spoiled by adequate childcare. This means that when confronted with extended periods of responsibility for my children and dinner and laundry and the dog and all of that, my initial reaction is to try to get out of it.

This isn't something I'm proud of, or like to broadcast. But since you already know about my psychiatric medications and my drinking habits, why should I leave this out? One of my goals for this blog is to tell the truth about what happens to one's mind in mental breakdown/motherhood mode. I tend to identify rather well with Heather Armstrong's version of SAHM, which is Shit-Ass-Ho-Motherfucker.

Still, I often regret that I can't deal with domestic life in a more balanced, grateful, accepting way. Because in a global way, I feel deep gratitude for my life. If someone asked me to close my eyes and think of a time when I was happiest, I would say, "Now." And all of my jaw-flapping about practicing being present, and practicing non-attachment, and accepting the moment for what it is is totally sincere. It's just impossible to follow at home.

Or almost impossible. I am discovering a new way to practice non-attachment with the children. I tell myself that I am not in a hurry. And I practice not being in a hurry. When I am in a hurry, I am trying to escape the moment. The moment can be excruciating to stand, when Audrey needs to re-buckle her car seat after vacating it, or when Jonah sings songs while staring at the ceiling with his underwear halfway down his skinny legs and growls at me when I try to hurry him along so we can make it to preschool on time. During these moments, I would like nothing more than to be transported elsewhere.

Pema Chodron says most of our behavior is about running away from a feeling we can't abide. And yes, it's true, I hate feeling impatient and hurried and exasperated by my children. They don't seem to understand that the world is going to end if we don't follow our plans. I want it to be over. I don't want to be held captive by the dawdling and pointless resistance of these little people while I endeavor to get on with the day. The waiting and the dealing with petty problems en route to the front steps is hella boring. What am I supposed to do with my mind during these times?

I started to ask myself what would happen if I pretended the world wouldn't end if we were five minutes late. If Jonah went to school with no underwear once or twice. If the children brushed their teeth a couple hours after breakfast instead of the instant they swallowed their last bite of waffle. What would it be like if these transitions between events were the events themselves? If it was all one big event, or all one big transition?

In a Zen way, I could say that all moments are equally important, and equally unimportant.

Playing with this idea has been a tremendous relief for me, and for my kids. For one thing, it gives me something to do with my mind. And for another, it's having a good effect on the kids. Two nights ago, Jonah said to me, "Mom, you're not yelling anymore."

I looked up from my dinner and smiled. "You're right. I'm not. I'm really glad you noticed."

"Yeah," he said. "I think you're learning how not to yell."

I think I'll always be learning how not to yell. But that's okay, because I'm not in a hurry.

The Drugs Don't Work (They Just Make You Worse)

There's a lot to write about. Two things are stopping me. These are:

1. My beloved has had surgery on his knee and is being utterly useless as he recovers. He feels really badly about it. Every time I bring him a tray of food he apologizes for his uselessness. I keep telling him it's okay, but I really have to go back downstairs now. "Are you mad?" he asks. "Of course not," I say. It's just that I'm simultaneously assembling French toast, bacon and strawberry smoothies while supervising the mud-making and rhododendron blossom harvest that's happening in the backyard. Gotta run.

2. The new drugs. They've sapped my desire to stay awake. The world feels muffled. I can't remember conversations. I can't even tell jokes properly. This is much worse than being somewhat reduced in the area of my intimate life. Now I'm reduced in all of my life.

As I write this, my two year old is sitting on the potty and insisting that while she has been there for 30 minutes, she still needs to go. It's after ten. I have read many books, settled a couple squabbles over toys, filled two humidifiers, sung about ten songs, rocked both kids in the rocking chair, argued about whether Audrey gets another drink of water, and now I am spent.

Will I ever get to go to bed tonight? Will Audrey ever get off the potty?

Beer Night

"As soon as I'm a mom, I'm going to be drinking every day." -from hilarious new comedy, Notes from the Underbelly

My friend G and I get together once in awhile for adult conversation away from our four loud children. This usually involves me walking to her house, picking her up just in time for her to miss putting her children to bed, and the two of us walking to a nearby drinking establishment. We call this "Beer Night." The fact that we typically order foofy cocktails and dessert is irrelevant. G is a known lightweight and never drinks more than one beverage. I am a known lush with a sensitive stomach, so I keep it to two.

This Friday, while sunk into an Ultrasuede lounge chair at Liberty, I continued to drink. And drink. They were playing the Pixies and Al Green, for God's Sake, how could I possibly leave? Plus, we were getting into the juicy details of why it is deadly to belong to a social group of women, and how long we dated our husbands before certain relationship milestones were achieved, and other such topics that we mothers rarely have the opportunity to discuss in any depth due to noisiness of the children.

By the time I had reached the bottom of my third Sidecar, I slurred that I hadn't better drink anymore. G was on her fifteenth glass of water. She was ready to go home and probably ready to stop hearing me talk about whatever the hell I was talking about. We parted outside the bar, and, because I had been drinking, I walked over to QFC and bought a pack of American Spirit lights. While walking the ten or so blocks home, in the dark, and smoking one cigarette after another, I began to feel completely bludgeoned by drink. Naturally, I whipped out my cellphone and called a few friends. (One should never, never do this.)

Upon reaching my house, I stripped off my shoes and earrings and handbag and whatever else was on my body, trudged upstairs, and collapsed on the bed.

"Oh, Honey, you don't look good," said my beautiful and saintly husband.

"Yeah, I'n rilly fffucked," I mumbled. "Can I haff a towl a barff on?"

He ministered to me with water ("I need a sippy! I can siddpup. Can I haff a sippy?"), and a towel, and he lay beside me on the bed, chuckling and clucking.

"You're really attractive like this," he joked. I didn't even have the coordination to flip him off. I just had to take it.

I awoke to a rainy morning and a colossal headache. The alarm was going off. I had to get up and take Audrey to The Little Gym. I could not believe this was expected of me. But Matt, well, he was lucky enough to tear some ligament in his knee a few weeks back and so has to be excused form such duties. So I fucking went, in sweats and ponytail and hollow eyes, and took every opportunity to lie down on a soft mat. I began to develop a new understanding of why my parents never did anything like this with me. They were always hungover.

So, I've apologized to G, and the friends I called, and I hope I will remember all of this the next time I'm tempted to drink too much. Clearly my new meds have lowered my tolerance. Not such a bad thing, since I shouldn't really be drinking anyway. Too much alcoholism in my family, plus I'm a depressive, plus I have to get up in the morning and be on my game for the kids. Plus I learned some scary statistics from a psychiatrist I saw over the summer.

More on that later. For now, I must play with Jonah who is whining to be played with (he wears on me like a chronic disease), and shower and serve a nice brunch to my step mom and half brother.

Happy Spring.

Yoga in California

I'm standing on a wood floor under a peaked two-story ceiling. Sunlight is pouring into the room through six high, curved, Spanish-Colonial windows. Five professional yoga teachers and I have our mats positioned like the petals of a daisy. We stand facing into the center of the daisy, brains frantically working to make sense of what our teacher has just shouted at us to do. We are meant to take turns leading each other in a mini prenatal class. As students, we pretend to be pregnant and have some pregnancy ailment. Our teacher, Stephanie Keach, rings a bell. I spring into action like a dithering turtle.

"Ok," I say, frowning over my photocopied chart of prenatal poses and their possible modifications and adjustments. "Uh, so, we all have high blood pressure, right?" My my five phony, pregnant, pre-eclampsic students nod. "OK, let's stand in tadasana." Then I get all Aunusara-yoga on their asses, and start asking them to scoop their tailbones and spiral their thighs inward. "Keep your butt fluffy, though," I add. A few students smile, a few wrinkle their brows. I lead them into Warrior I. They sink into their bent front legs, and raise their hands high overhead like goddesses. Then I go around, and one by one, manually turn their upper arms inward to broaden their shoulders, then grasp the sides of their ribs and muscle their upper bodies up out of their lower backs. One by one, they groan. These are good groans. Thank you groans. I feel a great rush of satisfaction. I lead them into triangle pose, then rush to each student to do other adjustments. The bell rings, and my eight minute teaching session is up. Everyone bends over a scrap of paper and scribbles out an evaluation of my teaching. Now it's time for the woman next to me to practice her stuff.

She only adjusts a few people at a time. Mentally, I slap my forehead. Duh. Rushing around trying to adjust each student is silly. This is what caused me such anxiety when I taught creative writing to seventh graders. Attending to one while the others wait causes everyone to be irritated. Especially if they are seven months pregnant and hanging out in downward-facing dog until the next instruction.

OK, good, so I'm learning about teaching. Here are some other things the faux p.g. "students" have to say about my teaching:

"Nice and gentle, very joyful spirit." "No overall structure." "Good, strong, confident touch." "Perhaps you could guide us into poses more." These comments all make me grin.

After class, I tuck my rolled mat under my arm and walk to Cantwell's market to see about dinner. This is Santa Barbara, so the deli offerings include quesadillas stuffed with roasted eggplant and fresh basil. (California has a way of turning any food into something totally wrong but delicious. BBQ chicken pizza started here, as did sushi rolls that appropriate mayonnaise and avocado.) I get the quesadilla, a carton of roasted vegetables, and a large bottle of Fat Tire Ale. I walk back to the little B&B cottage I'm lodging in for the weekend, spread my foodstuffs out on a wrought-iron table on the patio, and have myself a little party for one. I feel relieved to have completed my first official yoga teacher training. I feel relieved to be alone in the garden of blooming red bouganvilla and heady jasmine. Alone in the fading sunshine. Wearing only a t-shirt in March.

I miss the children with all my internal organs, but not my brain. My brain is enjoying all this space, this blue sky, this nothing to do. It doesn't matter that I've got a long way to go as a teacher. It doesn't matter that my clothing is strewn about the cottage and I have to get up really early to board a plane and I don't yet know where to catch the bus to the airport. I slip off my shoes under the table and feel the rough stone of the patio under my bare feet. What a lovely place. The potted tea rose on the table rests in a tiny, white tart dish. There is a bit of rust forming on the table. A nippy ocean breeze sweeps through the courtyard.

It's the most perfect moment.

Lost in Transition

I'll be honest with you all. I've been trying hard to write something. I wrote a funny and offensive piece about practicing Kegels with two girlfriends in a crowded bar. Then I wrote something sincere about the way we think other people see us. I may still publish them, if I can find a point to them besides an effort to display my cleverness and sincerity.

But I found during my last breakdown that the best way back to a clear mind is to call bullshit on the bullshit.

Here's the straight shit:

1. All I can think about is the stuff that I hate, the people I hate, the life I hate.
2. I haven't showered in three days.
3. I look like a haggard single mom on food stamps (bless their hearts).
4. I feel like a haggard single mom on food stamps.
5. I drink too much.
6. General restlessness threatens to swallow my soul.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

My shrink asked me if this happens every spring. I looked up last year's journal. Here's what I found:

Things I am tired of [March 18, 2006]:

*Writing bullshit that never sees the light of day
*Melancholia
*Demanding children
*Never eating an entire meal in one sitting
*Being tired
*Being confused
*Being worn out
*Disliking myself
*Being sick
*Myself; I am desperately tired of myself and all my repetitious thoughts. I’ve thought about offing myself or becoming an alcoholic out of sheer boredom.
*Being required to care
*Being mad at my mother
*Despairing about my father
*Feeling empty, alone, and broken
*Laundry
*Dishes
*Clothing
*Makeup
*Grooming
*Entertaining children

Thereafter, things got much, much better. But now:

Things I am really tired of and/or scare the crap out of me [March 18, 2007]:

*Hanging out at the Science Center with kids and other tired, unwashed, rumpled, bored parents who also don't want to be there
*Answering to a child's comment or question every ten to 30 seconds
*Watching myself age rapidly
*Never sitting down for more than one minute at a time during a meal
*Never reading a book for more than ten minutes at a time
*Being interrupted constantly, no matter what I'm doing, be it reading, writing, sleeping, eating, taking a shower, going to the bathroom

So it's the usual stuff, more or less. Apparently motherhood, like depression, cannot be cured, only managed. How I've managed over the past year is I dropped a lot of useless ideas about parenting and hired a lot more childcare. What's not listed in the second excerpt is my prevailing sense of unease and boredom and loneliness. It would be there, but I got interrupted to make someone a sandwich.

(A new twist on the "things I hate" list is my terror of aging and old people. To wit: I went to a dance performance last week and was disturbed by the sea of white and grey heads all around me. All these soft-bellied old people clutching their tickets, fretting over finding the right seats, looking irritated beyond comprehension when someone needed to get past them after they'd sat down. During the performance, in the middle of one particularly quiet, erotic solo, a baldy near me turned around to hiss at the fellow behind him to stop kicking his chair. "Eh?" the fellow said. "I said, would you please stop kicking my chair!" The entire audience, probably even the dancer, heard this. Lord, smite me with a bolt of lightning if my life ever comes to this! I thought.)

So, I arrive again at the manic-depressive state of melancholia and restlessness. I shall endeavor to enjoy my mercurial mood, or at the very least, learn to ride it. Sit in the nice little yoga space I've made for myself downstairs, close my eyes, and do nothing about it. To do nothing about it is to triumph. To see this period as a shift and a transition rather than a crisis requiring divorce or grad school or some other thing that will make the feeling go away, that's the real practice. I'm lost in this mish mash. There's no other way for me to be right now.

The Path of the Medicated Warrior

I waited exactly 14 days. Then, on Friday, I gobbled a 40 milligram dose of citalopram.

I realized that while it was a worthy goal not to say "fuck," or "fucking" around the children anymore, the fact that I was increasingly compelled to do so reminded me for the millionth time that depression is not a matter of self-control.

I spoke to Dr. Clark on the phone.

"How are you doing on this dosage?" she asked.

"Crying all the time, lots of outbursts, feeling like I want to rip off my own skin," I said.

"Mm-hm," she said. "Any thoughts of suicide?"

Only once, while rocking back and forth on the floor at my friend's house, with my forehead pressed to my knees, but it was nothing. "No," I said.

She prescribed Wellbutrin in addition to my regular dose of Celexa. How this is supposed to help with what the medical professionals call "sexual side-effects" is unclear to me. I think it's unclear to the medical professionals, too. But whatever. I'm game.

Maybe if I was single and 23 the decision between being semi-orgasmic or crazy wouldn't be quite the no-brainer it is now. It's fine to be nightmare in your 20's. Some fellas even dig it. But now when I go off the rails it truly dampens my husband's spirit. And damn, I've got kids to raise now. I've got important shit to do, too, like enjoy vacations in Mexico and do half-moon pose without a block and post pictures on MySpace. (Not to mention teach pregnant ladies how to relax when they feel like cows, and contribute to the good of humanity, and basically be a bright star whenever possible.) I don't have the space to wander in those woods anymore. I'm intimately familiar with them, and they never lead anywhere.

I'm back on the path of wellness.

Day 11

This, my friends, is what I've been doing a lot of lately. It's quiet, it's meditative, and it burns off my abundant aggression. I can go from utter self-loathing and fury to an open heart and humility. In one hour. Even if I don't stay in that state of grace for very long, my soul gets a taste of what this feels like. And so does my brain.

I want my brain to be ingrained with this state, the memory of it to be permanently scarred into the tissue. I need something to remember, to go back to. I reach points where it seems the only logical thing to do is run away from home or become a tremendous alcoholic. That's when it's time to go back to the mat.

My teacher said once, a long time ago, that no matter what confined state you're in, mental, emotional or physical, do what you can to sense one sliver of ease, one iota of space to move into. Feel for the merest opening. Then move into it. Then see if you can sense a little more space, a little more ease. Relax into that. And on and on.

This is what I do in my yoga practice, especially when my brain is roiling about. I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself if I didn't have my practice to come back to, to pour my zappy, disjointed, animal energy into. I can depend on my practice to deliver me, for a few minutes on the very worst day at least, from blind wildness.

At 20 mg. of citalopram, life is more vivid. I can cry again. I feel low moods and irritation more acutely. I can't really say if pleasure is more pleasurable, or if highs feel higher now. The circumstances of my life over the past couple of weeks have been such that I haven't had the chance to feel those things. But I'm crossing my fingers.

(And my knees, ankles, wrists and elbows.)

Day Six on Reduced Meds

I'm all fire and love for humanity in the morning. By late afternoon, I want to tear off my own skin.

The experts agree one should give the brain two weeks to adjust to any changes in these kinds of medications. So I must wait before drawing any conclusions. And then, if I'm still a loon, I should get rolfed or acupunctured or massaged on a regular basis. I'll do anything.

I guess if the rolfing and Chinese medicine don't help, I'll have to experiment with some drug cocktails. Hate to think I' might have to be on this stuff forever.

The very worst thing about not being emotionally stable is how I relate to my kids. I truly lose interest in them. That causes them to run at me full-force with body slams and frog leaps, and otherwise make sure my attention is on them. They sense when I am slipping away from them. Their desperation sends me further underground.

Maybe I'm just not the maternal type.

How to Be Complicit in Someone's Death

"So how's Grandma doing?" I asked my mom over the phone.

She sighed. "Well, she won't use her walker, and she's back up to smoking a pack and a half a day."

"Unbelievable."

"Yeah, I know. I get so furious at her every time I bring her cigarettes over to her house that I just want to throw them at her."

Mm-hm. I suppose not buying them for her in the first place would be out of the question.

Day One of Reduced Meds

This morning I shook five pills out of a bottle onto my black granite kitchen counter top and proceeded to slice each one in half with a table knife.

"I'm tired of being stupid," I explained to Matt. I covered the knife and pill with a hand to prevent post-chop scatter. Chop. 40 mgs became 20. I sprinkled the tiny half pills into the compartments of my weekly pill dispenser. I have to use this thing that is usually reserved for people with dementia because the pills make me stupid.

Well, to be fair to the drugs, "stupid" is probably an exaggeration. Forgetful is more like it, and flaky, and, oh yeah, unable to achieve certain states that one expects to enjoy with one's partner. One can only put up with these things for so long.

My doctor gave me the okay to taper down. 20 mgs for 2 weeks, maybe a month, then down to 10. Then see how I'm doing. Presumably, if I find myself screaming at the children or hiding in the guest room to sob, I'll be upping the dose. But I am willing to experiment now. I want all of my faculties again.

It's possible that I have worn new paths in my brain deep enough that my thoughts follow the new patterns by habit. The last time I went off meds, I did just fine for five years.

It could happen again.

This is the Way it Goes

It was a week of extremes: kids dripping green snot, Audrey up 5-6 times per night, sitter on reduced schedule, Nana busy with bridge and whatnot, umpteen hours of yoga training for me, and, oh, yes, Valentine's Day (a holiday that is rotten to the core and only fun for little kids). Plus, Jonah was anticipating our trip to CA by asking every few seconds, "How many days now until we go on the airplane?"

But the really crazy thing was that my grandmother entered the hospital. She was doing so poorly that my mother was inspired to call me and tell me if I wanted to see Grandma again, now was the time.

After hanging up the phone, I walked up two flights of stairs to the attic, where Jonah and Matt sat playing with a train set.

"I have to go to Centralia tomorrow," I said. "My grandma is not well. My mom said I better go."

I wanted to say, "She's dying," but since Jonah was present, I refrained. Instead, I tried to make the gravity of the situation clear in my hushed and steady delivery.

"Oh, no, is she dying?" he asked.

"Great Grandma Lorraine is dying?" asked Jonah.

My eyes popped out of my head as I gave Matt a look that spoke volumes about his honed skills of subtlety and my opinion about that.

Matt cringed and said, "Jesus...I'm sorry."

"She's pretty sick," I said, kneeling down in front of Jonah.

"Is she sick from smoking?"

Matt and I exchanged incredulous glances. "Yes," I admitted. I didn't know for sure if that was true, but one can surmise that fluid in the lungs and a failing heart weren't brought on by a lifetime of healthy living. It's no wonder Jonah picked up on this, since my mom bitches constantly about my grandma's smoking and I bitch constantly about her smoking. He's asked a lot of questions about it, such as the great and obvious question of all time: "Why do they do it if it's going to make them sick?"

I still haven't figured out a way to explain in clear terms that we grownups are bonkers.

Enlightenment Not Guaranteed

So I spend 13 hours this weekend at a yoga immersion at my sweet, beloved studio with all of my sweet, beloved teachers. I sit on a wood floor in a cross-legged position for long stretches and learn about sanskrit, yoga history, why we chant, and how to sequence a practice. Combined, I do 3-4 hours of asana and meditation and breathing exercises. Leaving class today, the last day of this session, my husband calls to tell me I need to go pick up Jonah from Nana's house because he forgot to leave the car seat with her last night when he dropped him off. So I drive through Husky basketball traffic from Capitol Hill to the U Village area. I play "I'm Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks about three times during this trip, singing at the top of my lungs as if I were performing in an arena packed with screaming fans. I glance in my mirror at the car behind me. It's Meg, one of my teachers, and she is watching me and smiling really big.

When I get home with Jonah, I open a bag of chips and begin sorting through the mail I have ignored for two days. Audrey, the napless wonder, is racing around the house like the Energizer Bunny, cackling and knocking shit off surfaces. Jonah keeps demanding paper clips to unclog his glitter pens. Matt is asking me if I will bake the chicken that's been loitering in the fridge for days. The due date on it has passed. I think about this for one second, then wash the thing and rip out its innards. I open a piece of mail that tells me I am naughty for not responding by mail to the summons I got two weeks ago to be on a grand jury, every other Wednesday and Thursday, not to exceed 18 months. I fill out the form. Matt is talking to me about another form I need to fill out, something about voter registration for some election in March. I don't know whether this will be a local school bond vote or the presidential primaries. Matt and I get into an argument about why I always put these things off, when all it takes is a signature and a stamp, yadda yadda yadda. I go out and harvest the last of the dying parsley. I chop parsley and rosemary and thyme and garlic. My step mom calls. I crack a bottle of Stella. Step mom invites me over for dinner next week. I politely decline because next week is a nightmare.

I grab my beer, tell Matt I need a few minutes of downtime while the chicken roasts, and immediately come up here to the attic, light a cigarette and swill my beer.

I wait for enlightenment.

Give Up

Last night, Matt and I went to a rock club to see Dan Savage read from The Commitment and Neal Pollack read from Alternadad. Alternadad is a book in which Pollack writes of his angst about losing street cred now that he's a parent. Apparently, he grew up in a suburb with nerdy, stable parents who drank highballs at cocktail hour and played golf on the weekends. He couldn't fathom what a "cool" parent would look like, so he assumed there was no such thing. This was a problem when it came time for him, a self-proclaimed hipster, to become a dad. How was he going to pull it off?

(I can tell him all about cool parents. You know, the ones who let you drink tumblers of champagne on New Year's Eve and hold your hair back for you later when you vomit? Sooo cool. The ones who smoke so much pot they can't remember why you shouldn't? The ones who are so open about sex that you have to hear about it all the livelong day? Oooh, yes. Growing up with cool parents was grrrrrreat! It was so great that most of my life I never wanted to have children.

Not that I'm bitter. Because of my parents, I got my binge-drinking out of the way before I left high school and delayed having sex because I was terrified of getting knocked up young like my mom. So how could I complain?)

I empathize with old Neal. I have expended a great amount of energy on the same question (which may have been more ridiculous on my part due to my lack of actual coolness). It's a common concern.

I remember a woman in my graduate program telling me, wistfully, that she envied the moms who dressed in stretch pants and Keds. She herself cut her own hair, shopped in thrift stores, and made a personality trait out of her super-alternativeness. She was also, at the time, the mother of a small toddler, and pregnant.

"Wouldn't it be nice to just not care anymore?" she said as we drove past one such unhip, uncaring mom pushing a stroller up East John Street. Inwardly, I sort of rolled my eyes at her hipster snobbery. I mean, God, if you have to try that hard to be cool, then aren't you really trying too hard?

(I understood the larger concept, though. I was battling my own issues about becoming a teacher and having to buckle down in grad school. I couldn't even smoke pot anymore, because it was too expensive and it made me too stupid in class the next day. While my friends went to noisy rock shows and my roommate drank $50 bottles of wine, I was reading Piaget, writing papers about multiculturalism, and shopping for my bananas on sale at Safeway.)

Last night, my one question for Neal Pollack was, how do you know when you are just trying too hard and it's time to quit? Sean Nelson, the MC for the evening, beat me to it. During the post-book-reading Nelson/Pollack tete-a-tete, he asked Pollack a related question: Is it even possible to stay cool once you become a parent?

"At a certain point," Pollack admitted, "you just have to throw up your hands."

"And drive the Passat wagon? Metaphorically?" said Sean.

"Not even metaphorically," said Pollack.

Soon the standing crowd of people near the bar turned their attentions to each other. Poor Pollack stood onstage, eyes afire at the crowd's impudence, and interrupted his own story about a holier-than-thou vegetarian mom he and his kid encountered at the LA aquarium to shout, "Hey! Do you guys just want to drink?"

I felt for him. We were in a club, and a band was about to come onstage, and there were alcoholic beverages to imbibe and cute people to look at, and suddenly the whole parenting discussion just wasn't that funny or interesting anymore. And Pollack became just…a dad. Who was coming to realize it was time to get off the stage.

I guess that pretty much answered my question.

So you think you're doing better?

I am doing better. I am doing so much better that I am actually considering a professional commitment. In light of this consideration, I went to a prenatal yoga class with my friend Robin the other night to observe and pick the teacher's brain. When she started correcting my postures, I had an interesting new experience.

I say "interesting" because that is the nonjudgmental word I use to remark on a sudden emotional jumps in yoga practice. Such as, "Hmm, it's interesting that my teacher is asking us to stay in chatturanga for this long. It's interesting that I just thought of my teacher as a bitch." That kind of thing. It helps me not get mad at myself for having a response, so I can just have the response and then move on with my life. It also helps me not grasp at positive feelings, like, "I feel so strong and awesome right now! There are rays shooting out of my body! I can conquer the world!" So that has to fall under the category of "interesting," too. Whatever it is, it is temporary and I don't have to do anything about it.

Anyway, so I'm in this class with a bunch pregnant ladies. I'm there to observe them and the teacher. I'm doing a totally half-assed yoga practice while craning my neck to watch all the mamas do their pigeon-prep poses or what have you. And, to be honest, I am feeling arrogant. I mean, come on, with all the training I've been doing, this has got to be a piece of cake, right?

"Susie, is it?" says the teacher, coming across the wood floor toward me. I am on my mat with my shoulders and feet on the floor in bridge pose. She kneels down to grasp my ankles. "Move your feet more parallel and a little farther away from your hips," she says, manually placing my body into the correct position. I allow this, while thinking, "You can't tell me what to do! You're not my real teacher!" I lift my hips higher. I squeeze my butt really hard, which you just aren't supposed to do, to get my hips up really high, to prove that I know what I am doing. Then I feel icky. I think, wow, she must think I'm a total nimrod and probably shouldn't be a prenatal yoga instructor after all. Why do I think I could be a teacher? I'm not really that good…

Etcetera, etcetera.

I haven't worried much about how "good" I am for a very long time. I started yoga with the knowledge that I was uncoordinated and hopelessly high strung, and never thought too much about getting "good." And my big life practice over the past year has been to let go of measuring myself against other people at all. (A lifelong practice, but you have to start somewhere.)

Now that I'm in the process of becoming a teacher, of putting myself in a position to be judged, serious doubts are coming up. Do I really want to have to judge myself? Isn't this process against the whole reason why I practice yoga?

Maybe. I guess I will find out. In the meantime, what if I could really encourage an open heart toward myself? My practice is, if nothing else, totally sincere, and I do believe I've had incredible training from my beloved teacher. Can I remember that I want to teach yoga to pregnant ladies for the same reason I lead new parent support groups? That it's not about being an expert, but being a good shepherd and a supportive presence? Can I continue to retrain my brain this way, and really cultivate fearlessness?

Hell, maybe if I can learn that a little more, I can go off drugs. Wouldn't life really be an adventure then?

Mexico Diary (Part II)

January 12

There is a relaxed attitude about smoking here, which I, coming from the US, find at first alarming and then incredibly seductive. Wow, I think, noting the clean ashtrays at tables of restaurants and poolside lounges, I could just light up and no one would ask me to leave! I saw a man shepherding his family through an outdoor restaurant with a cigarette in his hand. You just NEVER see anything like this at home anymore. You have this sudden jolt, like, "Hey, he can't…how come no one is…" and then realize no one gives a rip.

This combined with all the drinking we've been doing (yet staying sober, I swear), has been making me desperate for a cigarette. I think about it all the time. I pass a super deli (Cabo's equivalent of a corner store) and think, I could just nip in there and get one.

Finally, this evening after the 24/7 family time came to be a bit much and I saw an opportunity to slough the children for a few minutes, I offered brightly to go in search of swim diapers for Audrey.

Matt was instantly suspicious. "Where are you going?"

"I want to check out the super deli off the lobby," I said. "Get us some limes. We need limes. It'll be great! I’ll get some swim diapers so you can stop worrying about poop in the pool, and we can have proper margaritas tonight. OK? Can I go?"

"Wait," he said, raising himself up on an elbow from his spot on the suite sofa. The kids were enjoying a post-dinner movie on the laptop. "You're going over there just to get limes?"

Exasperated, I said, "Look, I just want to go out for a minute, Ok?" I cupped my hands around my mouth and mouthed, "I want to smoke."

I have hidden my intermittent smoking life from the children thus far, which is good because they do know what smoking is. They've seen my parents do it a hundred times and asked me why people do it, is it okay, etc. We take a firm stand that it is dirty, unhealthy, and not okay.

"You want to smoke?" Matt yelped. The kids looked up from "Cinderella."

AAAAAAAAAARGH!

"Mommy why do you want to smoke?" asked Jonah.

"I don't! I think you misunderstood me, Matt," I said, glaring at him hard. "Anyway, off I go in search of diapers and limes. Good bye!"

When I came back later with limes and cigarettes (alas, no diapers), I helped Matt put the kids to bed and then poured us some really terrible homemade margaritas. Out on the balcony I sat with my drink and stubbornly lit a cigarette. I closed the glass door behind me. I took a wonderful burning drag.

The glass door slid open. Dang. One whole second for my nicotine-alcohol-solitude buzz.

"Can I join you?" Matt said, pulling out a chair.

"Are you sure you want to?" I asked. "I'm smoking."

"I don't understand your attitude," he said.

"I know." Pause. "I made you a drink."

We sat on the white deck chairs and watched the scene on the darkened beach: a few straggling couples, some lit torches near the steps to the resort. A smattering of boats rocked in the bay, barely visible but for the lights on their masts.

And it was nice for awhile.


January 13

The music here is categorically bad, except for a great, truly professional band we heard last night at dinner. As we waited for our food in a dim, catacomb-like room replete with walls of candles, two men set up chairs in a corner near the kitchen and began working on a samba. One patted some bongos between his thighs and the other strummed his guitar and crooned sweetly like Joao Gilberto. They leaned toward each other, watching the other's eyes and hands. Every now and then they'd stop abruptly and discuss something, then pick up again.

During dinner, they were joined by a stand-up bass player and another guitarist. A rollicking Latin blast ensued. To me, it felt like sweet relief. The kids clapped. I snapped. Audrey high-chair danced. I swayed a bit while nibbling my explosively hot seafood-stuffed, bacon-wrapped jalapenos. Pretty soon the kids and I drifted over to be in the presence of the strings and bongos and passionate male voices. Jonah allowed me to take him into my arms and spin him around a few times. Audrey bounced and smiled hugely. For their part, the men seemed delighted to have an audience (the rest of the diners were ignoring them completely). They all turned and directed their voices right to us. The bass player, a heavy mustachioed man with a scarred face (and one of the few locals I've seen with long enough limbs to manage a stand-up bass) laughed at Audrey's antics and made crazy faces at her.

Later I sent Jonah with a bunch of pesos over to their tip jar. I was quite happy to pay for being in their light for while. Because in the morning, the piano man who performs (badly) on the breakfast patio will bore us all to death with "Moon River."

This morning, by the pool, I watched a silver-haired woman glide past the pool's waterfall, limbs elegantly performing the inelegant breast stroke. From the patio came the troubled strains of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." The pianist missed a note. The lady swimmer kept swimming. I turned over on my chaise longue.

After a life of travel anxiety, I think I am getting the hang of vacation.

Am I Done Yet?

My shrink:
Same time next week?

Me:
Well, you know I've been thinking about cutting back. What if we skip a week?

[Silence]

Me:
You're smiling.

My shrink:
We've been here before.

Me:
You don't think I should cut back.

My shrink:
I think we should talk about it next week.

Mexico Diary (Part I)

Cabo San Lucas, Baja del Sur, Mexico

Jan 9

This place is a paradise of easy pleasure. Easy pleasure is suspect…except when I have two kids and sunlight deprivation. Bring it on, Mexico. Drench me in Pina Colada, dry sunshine, and obsequious poolside service. I need you.

Thanks to Sara at Wax-On Capitol Hill, I am sleek and hairless in the parts that matter, thus not worrying about that as I go everywhere in my swim suit. (Typically the only people who see my normally European grooming habits are my husband and the people at my yoga studio. And some of the women there don't even wax their mustaches. But I digress.) I'm white but intend to stay that way. Didn't even mess with the suntan-in-a bottle. Why bother? I'm just one out of a hundred fish-belly-colored gringos on Playa Medano today.

Here at the resort, there are four resident flamingoes standing around a small pond, dipping their beaks into the water and emitting soulful moans every so often. I'm not sure the coastal desert is their natural habitat. I'm going to pretend it is so I can enjoy looking at them. Same with the green and turquoise budgies flapping around in a soaring cage by the pool.

Audrey is all bravado and curiosity in the water. The only thing she wants to do is "swim." Here's how she swims: flaps her hands and feet while I support her shoulders and hips just under the surface of the water. Her face beams with pride. "I swimming!" she crows.

Why did I wait so long to come here?


Jan. 11

Beautiful Ellya the concierge helped arrange a coconut birthday cake for Matt. He's 39 today. It says "Feliz Cumpleanos Matteo."

I also arranged a sunset cruise to celebrate. The four of us took a water taxi from the beach to the marina. After I sent us walking in the wrong direction around the very large, G-shaped waterfront, we discovered the correct dock and that our boat had left an hour earlier. Guess I left my suspicion of easy pleasure AND my ability to read boat schedules back at the customs line in San Jose del Cabo. No matter: it had begun to rain and a cruise out on the open water would have been very unpleasant. Instead, we went to dinner.

The restaurant was centered around a courtyard. Just off the kitchen in a dim corner, a woman stood behind a counter pressing balls of dough into a two-sided, cast-iron, round tortilla press. A hot grill sizzled with a dozen tortillas. The woman stood over this grill, surrounded by mounds of coarse-looking dough and stacks of fresh, warm rounds. Audrey and I watched her for awhile. She never looked up.

At this, the best restaurant we'd been to so far, the kids behaved their worst. In their defense I have to say it was hard finding a bite of anything that wasn't too spicy for them. The food had not been bastardized to please the turista palate. Audrey insisted on sitting on my lap, Jonah whined that his leche tasted funny, and both of them grew distrustful of anything I put on a fork and tried to coax them into eating.

We took a taxi back to the hotel. I couldn't stomach another half hour of walking the gauntlet of Mexican hustlers and fat white men in golf shirts blocking the tiny sidewalks downtown. Plus, Jonah kept trying to pick up really scary things off the ground. A crack vial. An old band-aid. Etcetera. I just wanted to get there, get the kids to bed, and drink some tequila on the balcony.

Jan 12

If I may be allowed a gross generalization about the Cabo locals: they love children. Everywhere we go, Audrey attracts shameless flirtation from Mexican women and men. Today a woman standing near us talking to her companion absently reached down and stroked Jonah's hair. We smiled in surprise, but she never even caught our eye. Just petted Jonah and kept talking.

This was not so much the case on our sunset cruise tonight. It turned out to be kind of a bust – although the 40-something drunk ladies doing the Macarena with the hot waiters probably wouldn't say so. The liquor flowed freely from an endless supply of flimsy plastic cups. If you were lucky enough to be drunk before the buffet was served, then you didn't care how drippy and lardy the frijoles were, or that the "queso" was really congealed Velveeta. (I think the chef must have been Mexican by way of Kansas.) I stayed sober in order to keep the children from careening over the sides of the boat or tumbling down the vertiginous stairs that led below deck. Or being hit by a drunk gringo who lost his sea legs as we entered a small rain and wind squall. To be honest, it was all a little scary.

But we saw whales. And we idled in front of the awe-inspiring rock formation called Land's End. (Land's End and El Arco are what you see in every picture of Los Cabos.) I looked in vain for the formation that is supposed to look like a group of hooded monks, but couldn't elbow my way through the people taking pictures and keep hold of Jonah's hand.

As we sailed back toward the marina, much later than I wished, I watched the drunks dancing to "My Humps" and thought, man, if my mom was on this trip with us, she'd be right there." Then a fortyish woman in white walking shorts and Keds started gyrating around a flagpole. No, I thought, she'd be right there.

School Daze

My kindergarten sat on a large landscaped lot about 10 blocks from my stucco house in Milpitas, CA. I went there because it was free. I crossed a four-lane street with traffic lights by myself to get there, then found my way to a painted green line on the expansive playground blacktop, where I waited for the bell to ring.

My son gets lost going to the bathroom in our house. This is one reason why, despite the fact that there are other options, I am lobbying for him to attend his default neighborhood public school for kindergarten next year. It's two blocks away. I can stand at the end of my yard and watch him make it to the crossing guard.

Another reason is that I just can't bring myself to get into the kindergarten hysteria that descends upon a certain Seattle demographic this time of year. There's this attitude that if you don't get accepted into one of the "good" public schools, you must do dire things to afford a private school or your kid will never learn how to read.

"OMIGOD did you get your app in for [blank]????" In the Little Gym class lobby, the preschool parking lot, and the book group, it is THE topic of conversation right now. I hear many expressions of fear, angst, disgust at the application fees. There is much eye-rolling at the non-aligned deadlines of Seattle Public School applications and those of virtually every private grade school in town. Parents swap test score data and free-and-reduced-lunch numbers when they run into each other with their dogs and kids and paper cups of coffee.

Some of these parents are friends, good people that I respect and like. Yet the whole thing gets my Irish up. I hate the notion that where you go to school makes you who you are. I hate the attitude of many parents that their kid will be, by default, elite or advanced or gifted. (I really hated this when I was a teacher. Those parents were a pain in my ass.)

This feeling took hold for me when Jonah was going to a little co-op down in a fancy zip code. The kids were 1-2 years old. It was a play class. The kids wandered around like cats, exploring objects, bumping against one another, climbing on pillows. The teacher sang songs with hand motions and made each kid feel special. It was lovely and developmentally appropriate. But some parents were pissed because the teacher wasn't using flash cards.

It's not all about the fucking flash cards.

Anyway, what makes some kids so special that they get to go to exclusive schools, and other kids not so special? I mean, who do these parents think they are?

This came up in a conversation yesterday with my husband. He blinked at me as if I had just told him I wanted Jonah to go to an elementary school that does weapons pat-downs at the door.

"I don't understand this," he said, shaking his head. "You complain about the crappy schools you went to and how your parents weren't involved, and now when you have some options..."

I know, I know. But look - I come from a place where to ask for something better is to invite a swift kick in the ass. Who do you think you are? Once I brought up the idea that I might change to a different high school, and my mother threw a screechy tantrum.

Maybe if I had my druthers Jonah would be learning to read while taking backpacking trips with Outward Bound. For the next ten years. (Of course, he'd have to be strapped with a GPS unit.)He would be completely out of the normal school loop until it came time to apply to college.

Because for me, the normal loop sucks. In the normal loop, life becomes all about the flash cards, the tests, and where you are in the pecking order of the lunchroom. I have never flourished in this kind of environment.

My husband, however, has and does. He was the kind of kid for whom public schools are made. He blossoms in regimented environments. He enjoys competition. And if it weren't for those traits, and quite possibly the great schools he attended that helped him develop his large brain, we'd be fuckin' broke.

So I guess we just start trying stuff and see what happens. In the meantime, I need to relax my judgment. Stop thinking about what's best for Society and think about what's best for Jonah. It is okay to do that. It's good to do that. It makes me less angry to do that. I don't need to be fighting these old ghosts.

Bitch Lit

Blogs are supposed to be for ranting, right? I have one this morning, inspired by a quote in a week-old article in the New York Times about the rise of "mom lit." Mom lit is, apparently, light and frothy narrative about the perils of choosing an Italian stroller in Manhattan. Or something. Anyway, it picks up where "chick lit" left off. Jill Kargman, author of the forthcoming "Momzilla," describes her readers as savvy and hip and, one has to infer, somehow better.

"They don't feel like the crusty, over-the-hill J.C. Penney moms with the tapestry vest," says she.

My first thought: Bitch.

My second thought: Why are publishers giving so much shelf space to these bitches?

Every mother who does the daily grind with her kids knows that we are all about one vomit-stain away from giving up on the artifice of looking good. If that means shopping at J.C. Penney for sturdy wash-and-wear items that are cheap enough to discard without guilt after the breast milk leaks through the breast pad for the 400th time, then so be it. Shit, who do we have to impress during the day?

Not Jill Kargman. I hate to think what she might say about my second-day hair and (gasp!) last year's shoes.

Did that sound judgmental?