Last month, the Arens family won an iPad in a sweepstakes put on by ClassWish. (They are awesome, go buy some books and the school of your choice gets part of the proceeds.) Since then, we have been using the FaceTime feature on it to talk to family back in Iowa.
We've noticed something. If the camera adds ten pounds, the pixelated oranges of FaceTime adds ten years, as well as sunspots, shine and huge pores (for white people, at least).
It's so bad that my mother commented once on how unflattering the view is of oneself, especially considering you're almost always looking DOWN on the iPad in your lap, thus adding double chins to the effect.
Seriously. Here is me right now, normal, head-on, not-great-lowlight-cell-phone pic.
We see a few fine lines and wrinkles, but otherwise, hey, I'm 38! I don't appear to be on the edge of death.
Now let's check out FaceTime on the iPad. (Note: It is crazy super hard to take a picture of yourself on FaceTime because you're in the picture holding the phone over your face and blocking yourself. I had to hold the phone like upside down and backwards, then rotate the whole thing to show you. You're welcome.)
Sunken eyes, shiny NECK? And OMG ARE THOSE JOWLS?
It gets worse from the lap angle.
Now I also have several odd slopes on my face and a comb-over.
Please tell me I am not the only person experiencing this phenomenon?
Yesterday a Twitter friend tweeted about his kids sobbing at preschool drop-off. I was back crouching under the window in the door at the Emerald City in a split-second, listening to the little angel screaming for me and throwing her little body against the door. I'm on the verge of tears at the memory, just the memory.
Then this morning, I read a post on BlogHer about the advice people give when your toddler has sleep issues, and my body had a visceral reaction. My body remembers the feeling of walking through water, the dimming of my hearing, the sometimes tunnel vision of extreme, prolonged sleep deprivation. Ever since my girl had her sleep problems, I can now feel the exact moment I fall asleep. It's a tingly feeling, and I've been jerked from sleep just as my body started to tingle so many times I now treasure that feeling. I've always needed a lot of sleep, but I never clung to it as much before motherhood as I do now. I cling to sleep the way some people cling to chocolate. I am in love with sleeping and what sleeping the right amount can do for my health, my mood and my intellect. Sleep gives me hope again.
I'm at the midpoint right now -- that period after my child can wipe her own butt and toast her own bread and before the tweener hormones and puberty kicks in. It's like the second trimester -- this period between five and nine when the sun shines brightly and she learns to ride a bike and she likes to cuddle and she writes the best stories and she wants to hug me all the time. The pause in the climb when you secure your footholds and check your ropes and notice the view is dazzling up here.
I take pictures on my phone of the evidence of her play and keep the sweet notes she leaves for me almost daily and record her stories on this blog in case the feeling of her arms around my waist isn't as powerful as the feeling of shame and the overwhelming desire to protect and the obligation of needing to go to work I felt crouching below that window at daycare. Sometimes the bad feelings linger longer than the good ones, and I squirrel away every sign of her love for when the day comes that she shouts "I hate you." When that day comes, I will try to remember how overwhelming hormones can feel and how confusing it is to be an adolescent and how much I needed to push away everyone I loved during my own teen years. Her adolescence may not be as rough as mine was, but I was a firebrand and I have every reason to expect a steep climb to her twenties.
So when she screams, "I hate you," I will look at those pictures, and I will read this blog, and I will cuddle her old stuffed animals and I will concentrate on that feeling of the little arms around my waist. And then I will probably cry out to the Internet for some parent with children a little older than mine to tell me it will be okay again. That this feeling, too, will pass, and that the view from the very top is worth every minute when the wind blew rain in my face.
Last Saturday, I spent six hours removing a layer of July from my house. I put Killz on the ceiling where I had *thought* I'd shut the bathroom sink off after hand-washing the swimming suits. I scrubbed Okie dust off the windows. I attempted to open the door that's stuck shut because our house has settled due to lack of rainwater on the foundation. I scrubbed the floors.
Then, because Beloved had taken the little angel to one place I have absolutely zero desire to visit -- the Missouri State Fair -- I went to the swimming pool by myself with John Irving's In One Person. I stayed there for three hours, and in that time, I fell back in love with the writing of John Irving after several novels of "is what we had lost forever"? My John Irving high lasted through date night at Cafe Verona -- where we ate in the little courtyard and the waiter explained the locks hanging from the wrought-iron gates were engraved and hung on people's anniversaries to signify their forever love -- and well into the next morning, when we had a lazy breakfast and headed into the Plaza to get something I needed at Barnes & Noble and maybe browse with my gift card they gave me for Mother's Day, which was at least 50 95-degree-plus days ago.
The Plaza killed my high. I never actually *shop* in the Plaza, which for the uninitiated is a high-end four blocks of shops and restaurants. I love hanging out at the Plaza, but I never buy anything anywhere other than Barnes & Noble, because I don't have $375 for a handbag. We went into at least ten stores, but I realized I have grown really, really bad at shopping, because we've been trying to save money for so long I now fully understand that I really don't need anything and want everything. And everything I want costs more than the balance of the gift card. But everything I need I already have.
It's a quandry.
I ended up in H&M staring at all the cheap crap and ill-fitting clothes that would look good on my daughter but not on me and realizing there was not one thing in the entire Plaza that I wanted to buy. Then I saw a $12 white, gauzy scarf, the exact kind of scarf one would wear if one were riding in an open convertible and wanted to avoid mussing her hair, even if that convertible were built in 1997 and even if that woman were also wearing yoga pants.
I bought the scarf and we drove home, and I realized I'd forgotten that feeling of wanting to be a better writer that I'd pulled from John Irving's words. And it made me mad -- the Plaza made me mad -- myself made me mad -- I went from feeling inspired and content with my lot to grouchy and jealous of other women's shoes in one hour flat.
The next time I go to the Plaza, I'm spending the entire gift card at Barnes & Noble, and then I'm getting the hell out.
Because I know and care about so many people through the wonder of the Internet and my job, I am subjected daily to their sorrows and their strengths. I realize, perhaps more than any generation before me, how completely normal everything that happens to me really is. I have bad days, I have good days, and that is normal. The universe is chaotic, and peace comes from within. I believe in God, but I also believe my God is both empathetic and hands-off. We learn from our chaos. We get another day, but the next day might suck. If we didn't have the low points, we wouldn't appreciate the high ones. There is a need to balance darkness and light.
My daughter is upstairs sleeping. I wanted her very badly, and then I didn't want more children. I hope she will not be upset with me when she is halfway, and I am as old as my parents, and she is looking upon potentially being the only one left when we are gone.
I pray she will have more than two close friends. I pray her friends will be her sisters and brothers, because even though I treasure my sister more than I can say, I'm also thankful for the other friends who have stepped in when my relatives can't be right by my side. I think people get planted for us when we need them, virtually and physically. I believe in paying it forward. I believe in answering the emails I get weekly from women struggling with eating disorder recovery. I believe in the woman I saw in the Serenity Suite crying for Susan Niebur when I didn't realize that was what she was upset about. I was talking with my friends when she started crying, and I hope she doesn't hold against me that I didn't realize what she was doing. I didn't lose Susan in that I didn't know Susan well, but I've lost my own Susans and I understand that pain. I'm sorry, blonde woman. I hope you don't hold it against me.
Halfway.
When I thought on goals for my life in high school, they were grandiose. This year marks my twentieth high school reunion. I have reached an age in which many professionals look like teenagers to me. I wonder if the people I bonded with in high school will come back or if they will stay secure in their new lives and their new selves, not wanting to be reminded of who we were at eighteen. I don't hold it against them if they want to forget. I was sick when I was eighteen. What does anyone know of me then? I don't even remember it myself.
Have I gotten old?
I am only halfway.
Last weekend, I listened to Katie Couric talk about how much more she has to contribute now that she is in her fifties than when she was in her twenties, and I understand. As much as I miss the elastic skin of my twenties, I don't miss the angst. I don't miss the uncertainty.
I wonder if I will feel even better about who I am in another twenty years.
I wonder if this website will still exist.
I wonder if my novels will be published.
I wonder if my daughter will still want to be held by me.
I wonder if I will be the person I want to be.
I am halfway, and for some that would seem a bad thing, but for me it feels glorious. If I am lucky enough to achieve the average lifespan in the United States, I will have another whole 39 years to become twice as good as I am tonight, twice as meaningful. My words will hold twice as much weight as they do tonight. My grandparents lived to be fifty-something and eighty-two or eighty-three, three of them. I never met my maternal grandfather, but my other three grandparents were strong well into their late seventies and early eighties. They had so much to tell me in their last years.
I am halfway, I hope. And I have so much more to learn.
This past week has been extremely draining for me. Yesterday morning I was in such a dark mood I actually cancelled meetings so people wouldn't have to talk to me.
Last night, I went to an Indigo Girls concert in Kansas City. I named my first horrible and forever unpublished novel after a line in an Indigo Girls song, and I moved to Kansas City after really listening to "Least Complicated." I like a lot of music, but there are certain singer/songwriters who capture the human condition so eloquently it takes my breath away. Listening to the music last night reminded me that I have a thing that I do that can bliss me out as much as the bass player of the back-up band, The Shadow Boxers. (I wish I had taken video last night, because I have NEVER seen a bass player this jacked before. I found a video on their YouTube channel, though, because you really need the visual to understand this post.)
It wasn't just the bass player, though -- I don't know how young these guys are, but they looked a lot younger than my 38, certainly younger than Emily and Amy. And when the audience sang along to some of the Swamp Ophelia songs, the guys looked like they were getting a straight dopamine drip. The wheels turning, yes, this is what it can be like after all that hard work and heartbreak. As artists we get so few of those moments and so many of the moments of rejection and struggle. You have to bottle the good moments in your head and sip slowly so as not to use that joy up before you really, really need it.
I desperately needed that reminder last night that I can access my shot of bliss when I want to, too. I just have to sit down and search inside myself for the writing. I'm lucky and blessed that I know how to find my joy -- I just need to clear my schedule and make time for it more -- not just here, though I love writing here -- I love talking with you guys -- but the fiction. The new novel. (The second novel is with editors, it's a long story and there's too much uncertainty, which is why I never write about it. Honestly, it pains me to talk about it, because I've come so far in these past three years, but will it be far enough? I can't explain how painful and important this is to me.)
I can't remember what made me remember the poem I wrote right before I graduated from the University of Iowa OH MY GOD SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, but I mentioned it to my friend Kristi last night in reference to some song lyric, and this morning I looked it up to see how much it sucked. It isn't my best work, but I can clearly see what I was thinking back then, so I thought I'd share it here in honor of the happy boys of The Shadow Boxers and my hope that people sing their lyrics with fervor. Good luck to you and keep loving life.
The Last Day
The last day of college collected no knowledge
different from all of the rest.
To the edge of ability
I tested virility
can't say it was the best.
The snowflakes come swirling with dreamlike unfurling,
covering the entire town.
Hot water rises with scented soap prizes
as I try to steam straight my gown.
They gave me two stars to represent wars
I fought with words and with pen.
To get their attention, attempting dissension
and failing to score in the end.
My work here is done.
My words have not won
the battles that ignorance wrought;
my lofty ambition
achieved no sedition:
I fear education is bought.
But hope will still flower
far from the tower
of ivory I've never seen --
thoughts of the younger
still here will blunder
and sleep in the places I've been.
And then while I was searching the Mac for "places I've been," I found this other one also detailing my obsession with other people who have lived where I've lived. What are their stories? Do they wonder about mine? What do we leave behind? A song? A poem? A smile?
Places We've Been
Lofted bunk on a college campus
somewhere in the Middle West,
I carved my initials in the closet
near where you rest your head.
First-floor walk-up in Chicago,
the corner of Clark and Halsted streets,
no parking, disposal or air conditioning --
do you find it had to sleep?
Historic building in Kansas City,
the very first space I called my own,
I taped poems to the cabinets
and never answered the phone.
Haven't built a house, always filled a space
vacated by somebody else.
I smell you, sometimes, before I drop off
to sleep, in the places you've been.
Today's a tough day. Hang in there, Aurora. Everyone go find your bliss -- every day is a gamble and a gift.
[Editor's Note: I wasn't compensated at all for this post. I only linked to the swings so you could visualize, as we all know I suck at photography.]
The tree must have already been a hundred years old by the time I met it and its black tractor tire swing hanging from a long yellow rope. It wasn't the sort of tire swing I see hanging on suburban playground sets, laid out horizontally with three ropes meeting in the center. This tire was hollowed out with handles cut in the sides, so you could sit deep inside it like an astronaut in a rocket booster and hang on for dear life.
I remember my father and uncles taking turns pushing us so high my toes seemed to crest the roof line of my cousin's house. We'd beg them to keep going long after we could tell they were regretting ever hanging that rope. In my imagination, the swing got higher off the ground every year as the tree grew, taking the swing with it inch by inch.
I loved that swing.
Last Christmas, Beloved bought me a canvas sky swing, the kind made out of canvas and wood that you see at home shows and think, "Man, I really need one of those," but you never buy it because it's totally frivolous. (I love gifts like that.) We hung it this summer from one of the forty-year-old trees outside our house, but I could never get a turn because my daughter and her friends were always in it, and it's not a swing meant for kids. It's a swing meant for long novels and a stepladder end-table to hold my glass of wine. So I bought the ladybug swing.
The rope wasn't long enough, so my husband and the neighbor got more and spent two hours getting the rope over one of the top boughs. My daughter, fearless as always, taught herself to run and jump onto it that afternoon, though she begs -- just as I did -- for the sort of above-the-head, underdog push only an adult can give, the kind that sends the swing twisting and jittering ten feet in the air as the child begins a methodical pendulum ride that's as pleasing to watch as it is to ride. Back and forth. Back and forth.
I had to buy a timer because the neighbor kids all fought over the swing, ignoring hot tubs and motorized kid cars and wooden swingsets and park slides for the $23 ladybug swing, which has become so popular we unclip its little green string from the long white rope at night. It's a treat, something brought out only when there is time to sit back and inhale the scent rolling off the tomato plants and listen to the morning doves argue over safflower seed.
The swing is really a time machine, and it lands a few times a week in my cousin's yard in Iowa.
My doctor told me I should do yoga for my upper back pain. She told me this on the same day that she gave me a referral to a surgeon and a gastro doctor. Me not really being the yoga type, I bought Jillian Michael's version. It's a half hour of teeth-gnashing, panting hell, and that is the beginner version. For someone who has been lifting weights for the past fifteen years, Jillian Michaels can be quite humbling.
I had to take about two weeks off from Jillian due to the incisions in my leg. Of all things exercise, I was most concerned yoga would actually stretch the areas so much it would cause problems, so I waited until it was way healed before I tried it again ... yesterday.
I did not realize you could lose muscle strength so damn fast. I took five days off after my surgery before walking a few miles. The minute my surgeon cleared me after ten days, I went back to weighted squats and all that jazz with The Firm. I didn't expect any problems from Jillian, other than you know, her being JILLIAN.
As I was attempting not to fall off my hands during the side planks, the little angel walked over to me. She sniffed and stared at the sweat rolling off my red face as I sucked in air like a vacuum cleaner.
"You know, Mommy," she said. "It's a choice to do that to yourself."
I started laughing so hard I did fall. Off my pride. Ouch.
I'm not going to go into details, people, don't worry. But many commenters mentioned having tummy problems often amped by anxiety, and I've had really bad tummy problems for the past several years. Two years ago, I got a colonoscopy and we never quite solved them (but at least I know I don't have Crohn's or celiac disease or colon cancer, at least I didn't two years ago).
Around the time I told my primary care doctor about The Lump (cue DJ Nibbles!), I told her about my tummy problems and she sent me to another gastro doc. The man was wearing a full-on, two-piece, blue-and-white pinstriped seersucker suit. With a bright blue tie. He reminded me of Bert Cooper on Mad Men.
His suit looked like this, only imagine it on a man of about 50 with little round glasses.
The suit was so distracting I nearly couldn't describe my symptoms.
So as I told him, yes, this problem is worst in the morning and it happens right after I eat anything and yes, it's really interfering with my life. He listened and started spouting something I totally didn't understand about bile malabsorption, which is a totally nonthreatening and mostly annoying problem that happens when some bile doesn't get absorbed in the small intestine (natch) and goes shooting into the large intestine, where it is the equivalent of Mentos in Diet Coke.
Guess how they treat it? CHOLESTEROL PILLS! Of course!
Don't ask me. SCIENCE.
So I have these four huge horse pills that I take each day, and I can't take them at the same time as my other meds because of ABSORPTION, so now I have to go buy a BIGGER daily pill pack thing because I swear I can never remember if I took the blasted things or not and I don't want to be the writer who dies from cholesterol pill overdose. I haven't even published my damn novel yet.
But ... so far it's working. It's not a perfect solve yet, but I just went jogging without fear. And that, my friends, is worth seersucker any day. So if you're having chronic tummy problems, don't give up. It might be as simple as ABSORPTION.
