Around the Bend
While getting out of the shower and into flannel pants, I was weighing what and how much I could accomplish before 11 pm. This was my one solo-bathing experience/week. Oh the glory!
For a little over a week I have been letting an entry percolate. It came to me originally while I was nursing Miss Belle to sleep and probably nodding off as well. It rooted later that evening as I drifted off myself, and I was shocked the following day when i not only remembered the thought but also that in the thin winter light, it was actually a decent one.
With my many hours logged in that nursing chair with only my fingers free, the rest of me trapped under, and in the mouth of, sleeping babe, I have become very fond of my blogger-buddies: Drewd, Soule Mama, HyperboleandaHalf, The Oatmeal, Not Martha, many friends at Apartment Therapy. There are probably better (and certainly more world-shaking, bloggers out there (ok, not better than Drewd), but I'm happy with these simple pleasures. And yet, they make me so goddamned jealous and regretful that I'm not creating some amazing blog.
Well, I am, but just not that frequently, and not really in one consistent direction.
So, I considered a brief entry tonight, in which I weeded out anything from the past that would be better left unseen (oh that unfortunate entry. . . if I could turn back time. . . ) and thought about where this blog might like to go.
I don't really have a concrete answer for that last thought, but I do want to write myself a few jogging reminders for what I hope will be the next post, a real one, a good one:
- people think you have children because you have faith in the best in the world
- and yet, the moment you have a child, you realize how f-ed up the world is
- it is truly full of horrible things happening all the time
- just this past year, many horrible things happened
- ugh, and as I type this, Clarabelle is having one of her 3-minute fuss/cry-back-to-sleep spells, which fortunately only happen 1-2 times/night these days, but it still totally sucks to be in the next room as it happens. I am HERE little daughter, I LOVE YOU!, you CAN fall back to sleep by yourself because you are a strong, amazing little woman, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!
- This past year: a woman drowned and no one listened to the child who saw it happen, a baby died in a van, children died at the hands of their parents, horrible adults did horrible things to small children, famine, war, torture, disease, my father had a FHA
- and then you wonder, why did I decide to bring a child into this scary place? Aside from all those terrible things, there is the reality of the everyday, work, worry, fuss, stress, fight, break, cry, try
- and even I, one day, will cause this small being to feel grief
- and so I was reminded of an exchange with a street vendor in Mexico. A man had bumped by on the street complaining, more or less, about how hard life is. The woman and I looked at each other (ah yes, women are so much wiser than men) and said, "yeah, whaddya expect?"
- Life is hard.
- But babies are so soft. It's so hard to think about soft, little babies in this hard world.
- And so, i will write about the realization of this difficult world, this difficult life, and learning to survive with "your heart walking around outside your body" (Elizabeth Stone). Except, I would rather that, i feel that my heart is more weathered, more world ready than the small, round, innocent one who sleeps next door (yes, it didn't even take 3 minutes - my big girl!). How every day i feel i must face down these fears, name them, listen to and read about them, even imagine them, to weigh how I would survive, how I would cope, what I would do.
Ah, I'm sorry Clarabelle, life is beautiful and life is indeed hard. I hope that I may bring you up strong and smart enough to face this crazy place where you live. For now, sleep, sleep, sleep. Me too!