Wet Feet

little bombs

i found a wedding album under my bed this morning. we had three: one arty black and white, one traditional, and one my cousin patrick made for us, with captions written in his nine-year-old's penciled script, which is the one i found.

i showed the bride-obsessed naomi: "here's when your mommy was a bride" (she loved the dress), "and your mommy and daddy danced together and were very happy."

and it was true: whatever events would trigger our collapse in seven years, as the couple celebrating their wedding in those pictures, we were happy. we were in love, as much as we ever were.

"where was i?"

"you weren't born yet. see how little becca was?"

indeed: becca was only a few years older than naomi is now. in 1999 she would have been six.

and it was all, "who is this? who is that? is that your wedding cake? did you and daddy eat your wedding cake together? why is nana falling over?"

i hadn't seen that album in years, probably not since before the end. the last time i saw it, i probably flipped through it nonchalantly with a "hey look how young we all were!" and "damn, that was a great dessert table". this time i scanned our apparently happy faces, looking for foreshadowings of the ending. there were none. we were young, blissful, trusting that everything we had would always be there.

but the day took off, as days do, leaving no space for ruminations. i suppressed the threatening detonation and went down to make breakfast, change a diaper, find lost toys and manage the emotions of other people.

if i were alone, i would have pulled the covers over my head and cried (6:30 am is too early for this kind of upset). or maybe i would have gotten into the shower and let the hot water scald the sadness away. at the very least, i could have let the thoughts run in a straight line until they found their way to a conclusion, or a resolution.

but the questions, the interruptions, the intrusions, kept coming.

and after the questions, the needs and reactions, a meltdown over the wrong kind of cup, the operatic fake crying, the screeching sound of preverbal frustration. the noise downed out any kind of thinking i could have done, and suddenly i resembled the grinch: "the noise noise noise NOISE!"

"mommy, are you... crying?" said the little girl who never sees her mommy cry.

i ran upstairs, they followed with their sandwiches, and smeared jelly all over the sheets as they pawed over my sobbing body.

i wanted to crawl out of my skin. i was caught in one of the conundrums of parenting: the more weakness you display, the more they need you to be strong. the more you need to get away, the more they cling. stopping to feel was simply not a luxury i could afford. an explosion was inevitable, and messy it was.

the explosion, the tears, the apologies and make-up songs are all over now and i have the purged feeling of the air after a thunderstorm, the clarity of a cleared landscape. i also have the exhaustion of a sleepless night followed by an emotional volcano, and my girls are wise to tread carefully around me today. by tomorrow i'll be fine again.

Jenna's questions

Jenna asks what we think when we read this quote from the Secret Life of Bees:

Also, go check out what barb and nic have written.

I wish she’d been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don’t give up their children.

What does it make you feel? I'd wish I'd been smarter. Also, less arrogant than to think with the right mental manueverings, I could avoid the repsonsibility that life had thrust upon me as well as avoiding the pain of relinquishment. Yeah, I feel stupid. And then there's this idea that life could, and should, ideally, be without burdens, and there are certain things you should never take on (like parenthood) under the stress of burdens, for example, the burdens inherent in being a young single mother. I wish I'd known that the fact that I would have had those burdens, or any extra burdens, didn't disqualify me from parenting my own child.

What does it make you think? that at 19, I was idealistic to the point of arrogance, and had so many misconceptions about what life is really like, and what parenthood is really like.

How does it hit at your core? oof. I feel like my decision was a shallow one. I wanted her to have access to private schools and long vacations and everything she wanted. I wanted to finish my education and travel. These things are not worth the loss I marked us with, not by a long shot. Getting back to being stupid, I had no idea how mismatched this trade would turn out to be, and I can only hope and cross my fingers that she turns out to be one of those adoptees who doesn't feel the pain and confusion of having been relinquished so acutely, just to keep a lid on the losses that have piled up.

Have you had this conversation with your placed child already? No.

How did it go? How did they respond to your answer? n/a

How did you phrase your answer? n/a

If you haven’t yet had this kind of conversation, are you mentally preparing for it? Or mentally avoiding it? Reasons as to why. I've been mentally preparing for it for years. I don't know what to say. I hope that in the moment I say the right thing, the true thing, the whatever that heals.

Catching Up

1. I finished reading Harry Potter yesterday. I hate to say I told you so, but...I told you so.

2. I was the matron of honor at my cousin's wedding on Saturday. It was a beautiful, perfect day. Pictures forthcoming. As could be predicted, I caught Big Mouth Disease from a few drinks and spent Sunday recovering, with that awful feeling of knowing you've embarrassed yourself but not quite remembering how.

3. Miriam is now fully weaned, and has been for over a month. Thunk, and I'm no longer a lactating person. It happened so suddenly, so quickly, but it was time. After five years of sharing my body, I was done. It was suprisingly easy to do: I had no ambivalence, she had no dependance on nursing for comfort. It was just a matter of distraction during the day and having some willpower at 5 AM when I'd nurse her just to get a few hours more sleep. Now I can drink coffee after 3 PM without worrying whether I'm going to ruin my whole night. I can have a few drinks without worrying about scuttling anyone's chances of going to a half decent college. My boobs are purely recreational, and from all accounts, not looking so bad for having worked so hard for so long.

4. I thought the jumpiness I was afflicted with after my brush with crime had worn off, until the other night when there was knocking, and then louder knocking, on my front door. I panicked (like muggers would knock? Shut up) and called the cops, who found a keyless and phoneless Jul outside my front door. Yes, internet, I called the cops on Jul Thumbscre.ws.

5. I have been wrestling in my head with what to do with this blog. This wrestling is nothing new, it's been going on basically all winter and spring. Now that summer's here, I'm actually spending more time out of the house than in, and my weekends off are full of friends and...activities. Unless I want to start blogging about dating (or the vague reversal approximation of dating that I do), which could be interesting to write about but also extremely embarrassing, seeing as my family and in-laws know where to find this blog. And, you know, this is a family place. Or something.

6. The thing I feel really horrible about is my utter neglect of my online friends. A combination of not having a computer of my own or good internet access for a few months (bloglines is one of the hardest things to load on ghettonet), living life more outside than in, means that my online friendships have been getting a little moldy. Once I have my workspace set up and my wifi sorted out, I hope to get back into reading the blogs of my friends. And maybe my friends will forgive me for being such an asshole.

So, what's new?

Last Saturday night, I was mugged.

I have spent all but three of the last twelve years here, in this city, in this neighborhood, feeling quite safe walking alone at night. Until last weekend, nothing has ever happened to me, even though trodding ten blocks at four AM is something I’ve done countless times.

Although the list of dumb things that I shouldn’t have done that night is about a mile long, one of the impressions that remain is a confidence in my sense of my own safety. Trusting myself would have made all the difference. I knew the guy was up to no good as he walked along the other side of the street, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind. My footsteps echoed in the predawn emptiness; I wasn’t hard to keep track of. I kept my eye on him for several blocks, waiting for proof that I wasn’t some jumpy white chick who assumes everyone with dark skin is out to get her.

That was my mistake: by waiting for proof I waited too long. I was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when I was attacked. If I’d called quietly while he was simply walking along and keeping tabs on me, he would have been picked up, I would have been safe. Next time, (if there is a next time, doubtful there will be after this), any hint of a heebie-jeebie will be met with immediate action, damn the social consequences.

As it turned out, in my effort to not insult the black guy who ended up mugging me, I insulted every darkly dressed black guy who was walking around doing nothing untoward, as the cop I was riding with stopped to look at each one of them. There were at least ten men we found in the hour or so after I was attacked, guilty only of existing while black.

The attack itself was swift and clean. There was a moment when I was sure I was about to be raped at gunpoint. Instinctively I tucked myself in a ball as I hit the wall behind me. My back shows a deep bruise blossoming into the size of a grapefruit. But his groping went nowhere and I loosened my grip on my bag long enough for him to take it and run. He never pulled a weapon. As far as muggings go, it couldn’t have been more tame. My luck astounds me. It could have been so much worse.

He loped away and in the heat of the moment I charged after him, bellowing things I won’t print here. When I told this to the detective who took my report, he said “how do you feel about that now?” And I just shook my head. Why did I run after him? Why did I do such a monumentally stupid thing? I had some vague rage driven plan of catching him and beating the living crap out of him with my high heels, small and unarmed as he was. Why did my primal self size him up and pick the fight, rather than the flight, path?

He saw me running after him and bolted away, disappearing behind a line of parked cars. “You probably scared the crap out of him” the detective laughed and shook his head. “Most people wouldn’t chase”. Well, most people probably don’t have my rage.

At the same time, I can’t pretend this wasn’t a bit traumatizing. Sleep has been hard to come by as I listen for sounds of menace in the dead of night from my bedroom window. When out walking, I find myself revisiting the scene and circling the blocks around it, looking for evidence, thinking about where he could have disappeared to (under a car maybe?), thinking about what I could have done, should have done, will do next time. And in the first rocky night afterwards, the place I wanted to be was enfolded in a man’s arms, an unnerving fantasy for a feminist to be having. But last night was easier than the night before, and the night that I write this is better still. Soon I will slip back into blissful complacency, and I won’t be straining to hear footsteps outside my front door or finding comfort in dreams of manly protection.