Mind Body Mama: Brighting Out

I don’t know what the weather is like on your birthday. Even if I know when your birthday is, I don’t know if you ever scored a snow day and got to spend it building forts in the backyard with your brothers. Or if you go sailing every year but make sure to come in early because there’s usually a late day thunderstorm. I don’t know if the trees are bare and the light brief on the day of your birth, or if you linger outside late into the evening watching the fireflies and feeding the mosquitoes with your own life’s blood.

But you know what the weather is most often like on my birthday. Because September 11, 2001 was one of the most devastatingly, iconically gorgeous days the east coast of the United States has ever known.

This year it rained on my birthday, a soft grey rain like a tired sigh, like a quiet exhale. The fog nestled up onto our mountain like a friend who sits close and takes your hand without speaking. It felt like relief from the relentless color and brilliance of late New England summer, which has become an annual collision of hopefulness and grief in my heart.

Four years ago the School of Love lost another member, tragically and too early—a bright young tai chi student who was also a cyclist, an artist, an activist, a performer. Someone I didn’t know well. Except that she had been lovers with someone inexplicably dear to me. Except that she sparked to my tiny daughter in the way of few adults. Except that she was one of us, one of our chosen rag-tag tribe of peaceful warriors.

Lui Collins once sang, “Did you notice that the trees brighted out, redder than they ever did before?” Meg didn’t just wear the colors of summer brighting into autumn, she was those colors. The chartreuse trees so sudden against their darker neighbors, the flame of orange flicking the tops of the foliage, those rare narrow dark red trees that press against the stunning sky.

I asked her friend once, “Where does she even find clothes in those colors?” Because they were like crazy foreign jewels to me. I was still coming off twelve years in New York and most of what I wore was black. There was some red too—“red and black, anger and depression” Sweetie would chide me. And maybe grey. But nothing to shock the eye into gladness. Nothing citrus and metallic and shiny.

And then Meg was gone, and I realized that I was waiting for her to come into a room wearing orange and bright green because they were my favorite and most beautiful colors and they made my heart sing. This lovely young girl who was not even my friend in the truest sense of that word, who was to me just a fellow traveler beloved to the same circle of women. I was waiting for her to bring me some of life’s joy.

That’s when I knew life is too short not to wear orange.

My closet today is the palette of the mountains’ trees this early autumn: greens to reds to the blush of sunrise and the clear sky blue. Once I could not imagine where to find such colors in the stores and now they come to me, handbags and hats and scarves tumbling riotously.

“Mama,” says Small in our family’s standard joke, “not everything can be bright green.”

And then I buy the bright green anyway: iPod, down jacket, business cards. Unless I buy the flame orange, the magenta, the periwinkle.

A decade ago, I dressed every day as if I was headed to a funeral. Now I grieve constantly, and I do it in color. Life is short. What joy are you waiting for someone else to bring you? Bring it yourself, I say. Bring it. Bright out.

Mind Body Mama: Why Not Me?

Did you ever watch Pinky and the Brain?

Let’s do something different tonight. Let’s take over the world.

But first: the backstory.

A decade ago, I worked at the Big State University up as a mid-level administrator. A position became available in Marketing and Communications which was a departure from what was on my resume. I was really intrigued by the job. I didn’t have the qualifications, but I instinctively knew that I would be good at it. I knew I’d be genuinely curious, and therefore I’d seek out whatever information I needed to be successful. I knew I’d have a sense of purpose, and therefore I’d be driven to work hard.

I went to the Assistant Vice President of Marketing to ask if she thought I should apply. She acknowledged that it would be a stretch, but then she said,

“In situations like this, I always choose to think, ‘Why not me?’”

This would be a sweet story if I got the job. Instead, I got promoted to a different position for which my qualifications were a stretch. Unfortunately it was a job about which I was neither curious nor purposeful. Sweetie and I banked my raise and half my base salary; the other half we used to put a giant down-payment on this cheap old heap of a house. A year later I got laid off and knocked up in the same month.

But that’s another post entirely.

The advice has been coming back to me recently as I ponder the possibility of being successful in the thing that most stokes my curiousity and purpose now: writing. Yes, my friends, I have heard the mommy bloggers on NPR and seen the mommy bloggers on the morning talk shows. I have even checked out their famous blogs. In many cases, I’ve thought, “What was she thinking?” In no case have I thought, “Let me run out and purchase a case of that purportedly healthy pre-packaged snack product that cute mommy blogger likes so much.” But maybe that’s just me and my aversion to capitalism.

I’ve even had moments of soaring ambition and hope when I realized: it is possible to become famous for being a snarky, self-doubting and neurotic mother. OK, in the specific case I’m thinking of the author happens to also be a brilliantly talented writer. But still, you cannot deny that the life force behind Alice Bradley’s finslippy is dark snark. Are you denying it? Read this. This is the kind of dark snark that makes my heart sing with validation and wonder. This is the kind of dark snark that makes me laugh so hard I want to punch BirthPie. This is the kind of dark snark that makes me wonder if Alice Bradley would be my friend. If she wasn’t so famous and brilliant and everything.

Sometimes I’ve checked out the website of someone having wild success in the blogosphere and as a writer and I’ve had had to admit, in some tiny shimmering corner of my own self-doubting, neurotic little mind, “I’m that good. I might even be better.”

I started this blog on the kind advice of Martha Brockenbrough, who is generous and funny and genuine and has awesome taste in baby names. She blogs at cozi now and she is obsessed about grammar, which I think is an excellent trait in a writer and a human being. Martha suggested blogging as a way to practice writing. It didn’t occur to me to practice writing parenting advice, product endorsements or marketing contests, so I’ve been practicing writing essays. One decent first- (or perhaps first-and-a-half)-draft essay, nearly every week since February.

It’s exciting to be writing so much and to like what I’m producing. It’s even more exciting to reflect on the writing I most deeply admire—the sermons of SpecK and Victoria Safford; the essays of David Sedaris and Catherine Newman; the spiritual memoir of Anne Lamott and Mary Rose O’Reilly—and to think, “I’m not that good yet, but I think I can, I think I can.” It’s like being a color belt in the thrall of the black belts. It keeps you at the practice.

My book coach, the aforementioned Ellen Snortland, thinks I’m further along than I realize in the development of not one but three books. She turned my left brained, Virgo self on its head by suggesting that my essays might not be as unfinished as I think—after all, I’m letting all of you read them, week by week.

Which gave me the butt kick I needed to make this request: Help me take over the world.

What else are you doing tonight? And, why not me?

I promise to keep practicing. I’ll do all of Ellen’s assignments, and all of Kate Hopper’s too. I’ll submit my work to magazines real and virtual, and I’ll write that book proposal. In the meantime, why not grow this blog bigger and better? Why not me on the Today Show worrying about my bra showing?

OK, how about just attracting a few more readers then?

Here’s how you can help my evil plot:

Subscribe. My web designer tells me that if you click the RSS feed button at the top of your screen, your computer will notify you every time the blog is updated. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how it works, and I can’t help you if it doesn’t. (If you are very, very confused and you ask me very, very nicely, I may ask my oldest and bestest computer tech friend, The Nectarine, to explain it to you. )

Share. Well, not this entry. This one is all nervy and self-centered and it keeps linking you to blogs I think are better than mine in a sort of creepy, sycophant way. But maybe you could share the one about getting to the church on time. Or the one about the mice. Or the one about swim lessons and the sea smell of newborns. What if each of you forwarded it to one friend? Maybe two friends? Do you think we could start a mindbodymama movement?

Link. If you love me, link to me. Link to me on your big sexy blog or the tiny little one that only your mom reads. (Maybe she will love me too.) Link to me on facebook. Comment on other people’s big sexy blogs and refer them to relevant posts of mine.

Comment. One of the reasons I quit writing the first time was that I knew I would go crazy alone in a room. (I went crazy anyway, but I think that was made easier by not trying to be a writer at the same time.) I love to hear from you. It’s like getting up and doing a reading every single week, without ever having to get dressed or leave the house. Keep me going.

I’ll be doing my part: writing my fool head off, and spending long evenings squinting at the blog networking sites trying to find the virtual community of “feminist mamas aspiring to be great writers who are widely read and fairly paid.” Those spots are hard to find amongst all the other sites for “people who want to shill for major corporations” and "people who like the sounds of their own voices," but I feel confident that I’ll find support somewhere.

We can do it. Are you with me? Let’s take over the world.

Mind Body Mama: Pit-a Party

Somewhere outside Milford I looked up from my mystery novel and said, “Sister Carrie is going to lend me an ombre pashmina.”

Sweetie was driving us back from Auntie Ollie’s funeral and burial and the family luncheon that followed. Home was far off, past the miles of Connecticut drivers jockying for position in the far-left lane.

Sweetie had sprung Small from the graveside portion of the proceedings to make a donut run. A few months earlier Sweetie leapt up from the computer and ran into wherever I was working,

—ok, that’s not realistic: it’s more likely that she lurched up from the computer and limped into wherever I was working,

—actually, it’s even more likely that she waited, ninja-like, to accost me when I came to her with something urgent on my mind.

“Did you know that one of America’s top ten donut shops is in your hometown?” My mind goes blank in the face of such stunning revelations. “Why haven’t we ever been there?”

A lot of our conversations go like that: I come rushing into the room full of critical information while Sweetie waits, still as a spider, to pounce on me with whatever news she’s been storing up. In this way I fail to convey crucial details of childcare scheduling but learn a lot about donuts.

It wasn’t simply the urgency of the donut shop discovery that led Small and Sweetie to pass on the burial, but also an accommodation to Small’s age and sensibility. It felt important for Small to be with us at Ollie’s funeral, to honor her namesake and the brief, sweet connection they had.

And it felt equally fitting to remember Ollie on a day filled with donuts—and old-school Italian food and family and laughter—because she was a lady who knew how to have a good time.

Like her namesake, Small loves a party and looks for one wherever she goes; in this case, at her great-great-aunt’s funeral. She worked the room, charming every stranger and passing over Sister Carrie, Bobbi and Grampy and Sweetie and me like so much old news. At one point she hissed,

“I wish there were more people for me to talk to. I need some new people.” She brandished the Disney princess Aurora by her gnarled nylon hair. I hate this hideous deluxe edition singing big-head princess with the physical proportions and musical sensibility of Celine Dion. Someone who obviously hates me and all that I believe in gave it to Small.

“Why don’t you go talk to your cousins?” I suggested, steering her towards the lovely young adults in the back row.

“Good idea,” she snapped, heading off with Aurora dangling from her fist.

I wanted a day filled with reminiscences and stories of Ollie, and that day will come—perhaps next month when I sit down with my mother and sister to go through Ollie’s photographs. On this day I got instead the quiet comfort of hours spent with the others who loved Ollie well, who cherished her charming, fun-loving, sometimes maddening high-spirits. I got a day at a funeral with a charming, fun-loving, sometimes maddening little girl. I can’t ever claim I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I chose her name.

“I can’t help it,” Ollie sighed the last time I saw her. “I’m just a pit-a.”

“What are you, Auntie Ollie?” I said, leaning in close to hear her.

“A pit-a, a pit-a. A Pain In The Ass,” she stage whispered, indicating her head towards Small as if she could be corrupted by such vulgarity.

But I’m pretty sure that Small knows what a pain in the ass is, seeing as her mother and I are such ourselves, and she is shaping up to be one herself at a tender age. I don’t think it’s an accident that Aurora and her schmaltzy ballad are Small’s favorite companions these days.

When the funeral director asked the family settle in the large, upholstered seats of honor in the front row, I asked Small if she wanted to join us or sit with Sweetie in a row of more modest chairs.

“I’ll try that chair out and see which one is more comfortable,” she said, heading to the front of the chapel.

After the service Small asked me to accompany her to the coffin so she could kneel and tell Auntie Ollie that she missed her. I watched her lower her little gold head onto the kneeler and was starting to take a deep, reflective breath when her tiny neck snapped up.

“I’m done,” she said in full voice. She gestured at the coffin. “Is Auntie Ollie really in there?”

The trip home was a full-on pit-a party.

“What the hell is an ombre pashmina?” asked Sweetiebabyhoneylicious, slamming on the brakes to avoid crushing an idiot making his way directly from the highway entrance to the left lane in one smooth swoop. “Is it a dress?”

From the back seat Small shrieked, “I finished reading The Tail of Emily Windsnap!”

“What is wrong with these people? I just want to go the speed I want to go!” Sweetie cursed at the acre of traffic in front of her.

“They’re not out to get you, you know. It’s just volume. If you just go the same speed that they’re going it won’t bother you,” I said reasonably. “It’s for The Life Coach’s wedding. Ombre pashmina, ombre pashmina—what do you think an ombre pashmina is?”

“There are two more Emily Windsnaps!” yelled Small.

“I don’t know—a Persian man?” guessed Sweetie.

“I’m going to get Emily Windsnap and the Monster From the Deep next!” hollered Small.

What a pack of pit-as we were, hurling towards our home.

This morning I caught myself issuing commands at Small faster than she could execute them. I called her into my office.

“Brushyourteethbrushyourhairputonyourshoeswhydidn’tyoubrushyourteethyet?clearthetableputonyourshoes…”

We both started laughing.

“I’m sorry I drive you crazy, Small,” I said.

“You do drive me crazy!” she said. “But I think I drive you crazy too. Do you mind?”

“No, Small,” I said. “I don’t mind. I think you’re worth it.”

“Me, too,” she said.

mind body mama: these bright blue days

I want to tell you about these bright blue days, the end of summer in our New England mill town. These are my favorite days, the wide sky and the cool nights, our humble mountain watching over us. The little parade to the red brick school house starting again and something about endings and beginnings converging as these last days of summer grow shorter and shorter.

I want to say how beautiful our lives are and how sad we are. How can our hearts be so heavy in our chests as the black-eyed susans make their last hurrah? I want to tell you we still think of Janice nearly every day. We remember the great chasm of losing her, just one year ago in the same late summer sun. And we miss Dave with a grief that makes us dizzy. It seems impossible that the school yard could be so loud, so filled with the writhing joy of childhood, while our loss is so fresh. It seems impossible that we could all still be here if he is not.

I want to tell you that Small’s namesake, her great-great Auntie Ollie, departed this world on Wednesday after a long and loving life filled with sadness and joy and a big dose of hell raising.

Do you remember how bright the sky was on September 11, 2001, my thirty-third birthday? Do you remember how gorgeous and clear our lives were that morning, and how they shone against the blackest dust cloud of chaos and terror and hate and grief?

I want to tell you that we love our lives.

The War Ship convened on Tuesday night, at Our House of Worship. I want to tell you that I feel giddy to sit among them, the smart and spirited people who guide our War Ship. I think, to have SpecK as my friend, it is like winning the lottery. The President of Our House of Worship joined us and she brought a quote, I’ll have to ask her where it came from, but it sounded like this to me:

“Life is a tragedy filled with joy.”

I want to tell you that Small grows more delightful, more quirky, and more herself every day. And somehow this season of grief is making me move more slowly, it is slowing down the moments of our days so I can really see her, this uniquely strange and wonderful girl who calls herself mine. I feel my resolve to busyness melting, I feel the heaviness of my grief pinning me down, and there in that still moment my joyous girl bursts forth.

I want to tell you about BirthPie’s girls. How the big one grows clearer eyed and stronger bodied, how I can see the woman she will be someday, how lucky I feel to know her. I want to tell you how the little one caught my eye yesterday when her mama was just a moment behind me arriving to the schoolyard, and if a face can have an accent, she raised her eyebrow with the voice of a Lower East Side grandmother as if to say, “Ech--Didn't she tell you she’d be late either? Oy veh.”

I want to tell you how dear these girls are to me.

I want to tell you our neighbor is expecting. And the little girl next door is suddenly fourteen and old enough to babysit. And the folks across the way have a new dog. And the raspberries are in. And the Life Coach is getting married. I want to tell you about standing in the midst of acres of farmland gathering parsley and oregano and basil while my crazy child munches onion tops and Thai basil.

I want to tell you how happy we are, how blessed, and how much it hurts.