Mind Body Mama: Each Night, Holy Night

I’ve been thinking of how I could sign off to all of you before this holiday weekend. I considered cracking wise on BirthPie by making note of the great miracle of a 30” snowfall that extended her eight nights of Hannukah another two. And how I hope it doesn’t take her family all twelve days of Christmas to fly to Billings, Montana. I could tell you how fast the years have spun by since I first rocked infant Small at the back of the Great Hall of Our House of Worship at the Christmas Eve service, to this year when she read the Linus verses from the Book of Luke in a loud, clear voice:

And there were in the same country
shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them;
and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them,
Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day
in the city of David
a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord.

The angel said
this shall be a sign unto you;

Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes,
lying in a manger.

And suddenly
there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God,
and saying,
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace,
goodwill to all people.

I could tell you about the gratuitous, over-the-top Christmas music-and-light show our neighbors put on and how, when I whispered to Sweetie “They’re crazy!” Small hissed at me, “They’re not crazy, they’re AWESOME! They know what Christmas means to kids.” And I thought about telling you my birth story again, about how this baby Small came to us in an ice storm and brought me face to face with miracle and wonder.

But finally I decided I could not do better than these words of Sophia Lyons Fahs that I have come to consider the Unitarian Christmas liturgy:

For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
Born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show
Where to find the babe that
Will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers-
Sitting beside their children's cribs
Feel glory n the sight of a new life beginning
They ask, "Where and how will
This new life end?
Or, will it ever end?"
Each night a child is born is a holy night-
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.

To every mother’s child: good night, holy night.

mind body mama: My Storybook Life

Earlier this week one of my favorite clients cancelled the third session in a row. When I called to see if I needed to stage an intervention she said, “I’m sorry—those last two were unavoidable conflicts. But the first time, I was just feeling overwhelmed. When I hung up the phone from cancelling I just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling for twenty minutes.”

There are times when I might have thought, “Wow, do I need to make a mental health referral here?” But this week I just thought, “Damn, why didn’t I do that?”

Because I’m fairly sure I crammed thirty seven extra errands into that found hour before I screeched up to my next session. The to-do list just keeps getting longer, and it’s not just the Christmas machine. In fact, our organization, restraint and foresight on the Christmas front seem to have bitten us in the butts. We only have a few things left to do for the holidays, which is why it’s seemed reasonable to say “yes” to untold other things. Somehow I ended up at the School of Love Monday as well as a record three times on Tuesday, and then we rescheduled a meeting for Wednesday night that got bumped by the funeral a few weeks ago. There were flu shots in there, and a session at the radio station recording some of my blog posts, and a spate of emails with the afterschool enrichment program to see if we can get Small enriched even though she’s above grade level.

It’s been the kind of week where, when I call BirthPie to see if she can watch Small for an unexpected hour she says, “Sure, but only if I can do it at your place because Frisbee’s working the overnight and has to sleep all day.”

So I say, “I gave the last extra key to the AM babysitter, I’ll have to hit the hardware store to get you one.”

And she says, “While you’re there, could you get a few extra copies of my house key for my cat sitters?”

It’s a turning of the screw kind of week: every errand leads to another; nothing is ever actually finished. I shed belongings like skin cells: my lunchbox is at the college gym, my sunglasses are accidentally left in my glove box, I can’t find a clean sports bra. I wake up in the middle of the night hoping that it is morning so I can get back to the races, my to-do list scrolling through my brain like movie credits. But it’s only two am so I pass the time making a mental inventory of my January invoices until I fall asleep again.

But it is almost over. Christmas Eve, when I will wrangle the seventh graders into an assertive and cordial team of ushers and Small will read a portion of the nativity story to the congregation, is almost here. (Note to self: must purchase 40 AA batteries for the electric votives, per order of the War Ship.) In just a few hours our Christmas week will be upon us and we are hell-bent on doing a whole lot of nothing but eating, sleeping and enjoying one another for nine long days.

***

In case you haven’t got a visual yet for why I really, really need a vacation, here’s how my workout went yesterday:

It went great, thanks for asking. I had time to work out because I had another cancellation (different favorite client) and I had the foresight not to cancel the AM babysitter. So after a surprisingly good night’s sleep and two cups of coffee I found myself tearing it up on my favorite elliptical machine. I was having so much fun sweating to Dead Prez that I cut it very close to my next appointment.

Which is why when I discovered that I didn’t have a towel with me—after I’d already gotten naked in the locker room, natch—I didn’t have enough time to get dressed and run back to the gym to borrow one.

I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to dry off with the workout clothes I’d just taken off. Eeww! Is right. And double eeww to the fact that workout clothes are now made to be moisture wicking instead of moisture absorbing so rubbing my dirty clothes on my clean body wasn’t even going to make me much dryer.

I showered very quickly. Maybe I thought a brief shower would make me less wet?

I was drying my face with a random clean sock I found at the bottom of my gym bag when I accidentally caught my earring and pulled it out of my ear. I heard it bounce all over the tiled shower stall—the earring headed in one direction, the butterfly clasp in the other. Since I don’t wear my glasses in the shower I couldn’t see where anything went. So the next thing I knew I was naked, and wet—with no chance of getting dry—on my hands and knees, crawling around a public shower, looking for my favorite earring, and late for work.

If this does not make me the poster child for mamas who need a vacation I don’t care to know what I’d have to do to qualify.

***

The AM babysitter, name of Deborah, is an absolute treasure. I worried about inviting someone into the chaos of our lives and the detritus of our decrepit house, but it has been an unmitigated success. Deborah not only makes it possible for me to work two early mornings a week, she loves and knows my daughter. Which is what I most deeply wish for when I put my child into another’s care; that the caregiver will really see her: her quirks and foibles, her gifts and challenges.

I got Deborah a downtown gift card as a year-end thank you. “Small,” I said, “please write a message to Deborah on this card, but don’t make it a Christmas message. Deborah doesn’t celebrate Christmas.” I was thinking along the lines of “Happy Holidays” or “I love you” or “Thank you for playing alien fighters with me.”

When I opened the card to tuck in one of Small’s school pictures I saw the message she wrote:

“Be ready for anything.”

In all fairness, this is the message I should have given Deborah when I hired her.

***

At dinner last night Small wanted to role-play being a lawyer. We’d been talking about how lawyers fight for people’s rights.

“What’s something that you believe in?” I asked Small.

Small drew up her most solemn and imperious self. “I think that gayness—I mean, being gay, like you guys—is OK.”

Sweetie and I looked at each other. We rarely use the words “gay” and “lesbian” around here because there’s no need to draw that strong a line between our family and other families. There are lots of different kinds of families. If it’s necessary of a conversation I might say, “There are boy-boy people and girl-girl people but most people are boy-girl people,” and Small will fail to even look up from what she’s reading to acknowledge my description of the world as she already knows it.

“Um…ok.” I stammered. “But where did you learn that word 'gayness'?”

“Akbar and Jeff’s Guide to Life.” Small grinned delightedly.

I am really not as terrible a parent as it seems, I swear.

***

After dinner we googled Life is Hell and found out it had been reissued as Life is Swell in 2007.

Small said, “Life is Swell is even funnier than Life is Hell. Because in that comic, life is definitely not swell.”

I caught her up in my arms. “Small,” I said with the deepest parental admiration, “that is called 'irony' and you have never said anything that made me more proud.”

“You’ve said that before,” came her muffled voice from my stifling hug.

“Yeah, but I mean it,” I declared. “I’m even more proud than when you said you were a feminist.”

***

When I tucked Small in last night she said sleepily, “Do you know what a bad comparison is? It’s when you say something like, ‘It was as loud as a loud noise.’”

“What’s a good comparison?” I asked.

She pondered. “‘It was as loud as a wolf’s howl’,” she said. “You have to use something that’s a loud thing. The other one is just too obvious.”

“You’re getting to be quite a good little writer,” I observed.

“You too,” she said, snuggling down. “Have you heard the saying, ‘it’s in the blood’? It’s like that. The writing.”

There it is: my storybook ending.

mind body mama: Half Crazy

Welcome to the last day of LMWBloPoWe, inspired by the Half Drunk Challenge. Because there just aren’t enough bloggy good insider references in this post yet, I’ll add another: 101 goals in 1001 days. This is a meme or a scene or a website, I’m not sure, but I read about it on other blogs and it took on a life of its own inside my little brain. (Although at first I kept mistakenly calling it 1001 goals in 101 days and that made me very, very anxious.)

You can read through the list if you’re feeling prurient but be forewarned that this is the redacted version. (There’s risk taking and then there’s showing all your business in public and you know I’m not going there.) I’m not starting today, either: I’m starting on December 28. Which makes day 1001—I have no idea when. Because although I’m not half-drunk I am completely exhausted. And in my depleted state I’m wondering whether publicly committing to anything, let alone 101 things, is merely half crazy.

It surprised me to notice that I’ve already completed a few items in the week it took me to write the list. Because like the life coaches tell us, intention matters. So in the spirit of throwing caution to the wind so lovingly fostered by my friends Jen and Sarah, here’s some of what I’ll be up to for the next two and a half years.

101 Goals in 1001 Days

1. Finish renovating/decorating the upstairs bathroom
2. Finish renovating/decorating the porch
3. Get the kitchen renovated
4. Finish cleaning the basement
5. Organize the dining room closet
6. Catch up on Quicken backlog and don’t get behind again
7. Maintain emergency fund (6 months Liz’s salary)
8. Work with career counselor on Career.3
9. [Intentionally left blank for emerging goals related to Career.3]
10. [Intentionally left blank for emerging goals related to Career.3]
11. [Intentionally left blank for emerging goals related to Career.3]
12. [Intentionally left blank for emerging goals related to Career.3]
13. [Intentionally left blank for emerging goals related to Career.3]
14. Publish three-five articles on self defense and parenting
15. Publish three-five personal essays
16. Give three-five public talks on self defense
17. Complete AFAA recertification (April)
18. Achieve ACSM certification
19. Teach more community self defense
20. Increase business income by 25% each year
21. Catch up on office filing backlog and don’t get behind again
22. Enroll Small in music and/or drama classes
23. Hire someone to paint the exterior of the house
24. Write book and/or book proposal on self defense and parenting
25. Get my writing on the radio
26. Have a romantic weekend away with Sweetie once per year
27. See Mimi’s financial advisor
28. Participate in dojo reorganization, aka The P33 Project
29. Publish “Adventures Outside the Gene Pool” (essay) in literary magazine or anthology.
30. Send at least one gift per year to my sister-in-law who does not celebrate Xmas and B’day
31. Earn my Nidan in shuri-ryu karate—talk to Sensei, train for Nidan, get Nidan
32. Learn to play tennis
33. COMPLETED: Buy snow shoes
34. Paint the staircase
35. Finish Small’s flippin mermaid quilt
36. Do all of Ellen Snortland’s writing assignments
37. Refinish my nightstand
38. Finish the beautiful table Sweetie made.
39. Buy a laptop
40. Double my weekly writing time
41. COMPLETED: Organize my computer files of training session plans
42. Improve my calendar record keeping for PT business
43. Improve my post-session record keeping (ie: SOAP notes)
44. Design and purchase prescription pads
45. Put up new curtains in the dining room, office, living room, and master bedroom
46. Make plans re: international travel goals.
47. Establish a system for organizing pictures on the computer
48. Contribute to existing anti-violence efforts in Holyoke: attend an event, send money, volunteer.
49. Attend Springfield Unitarian church 1-2x/year
50. Master the whole reusable printer cartridges thing
51. RE-ASSESS: Goods for Girls seems to be out of business. Make reusable sanitary pads for African schoolgirls through Goods for Girls
52. Transition my family to reusable cloth Christmas gift bags
53. Contribute to Safe Congregations work at Our House of Worship
54. Hang full length mirror in my bedroom
55. Continue to transition towards more sustainable eating, especially regarding meat consumption. Remember that sustainability includes my energy/ability to manifest.
56. Paint the dining room window sills. Or redo all the trim in the room. But really, just pick one and do it already.
57. Experiment with different writing periods; ie: one hour per day; a full 8 hour day; weekend retreat; etc.
58. Get my sewing machine professionally serviced at Newman’s Sewing, Route 20, Springfield.
59. Submit parenting tips to magazines that offer money for tips.
60. Paint the radiator cover.
61. Refinish the cabinet in the front hall.
62. Finish the shelves Sweetie made and hang them in our house.
63. PRIVATE!
64. Organize my recipe collection.
65. Continue to observe internet-free Sunday.
66. Organize my computer passwords.
67. Make a weekly bill-paying appointment and keep it.
68. Hang up the chicken poster I gave Sweetie for Xmas in 2001.
69. Create a master Christmas card list.
70. Figure out what’s wrong with my bike: needs more air in tires, resize, new bike? Fix it.
71. Ride the new system of bike trails through Easthampton, Florence, Northampton, Hadley, Amherst.
72. Go hiking with Peach at least 1x/year.
73. Keep my mileage records concurrently not retroactively.
74. Build relationship with [institutional client].
75. Medical goal.
76. Get bike hangers for the garage.
77. Put up the new fence in the side garden.
78. Rip out the daylillies on the driveway side garden.
79. Get the bench fixed in the way back.
80. Pry the shoe shelf out of Small’s closet.
81. Extend my clothesline season and commit to no dryer between April-October.
82. Bring Madame Lasagne to more church events and help her get connected to rides.
83. Take Small swimming once per month.
84. Do my rehabilitation/spine health/core strength exercises BEFORE my back hurts.
85. See Mimi at every 6-8 weeks.
86. Finish my AF certification
87. Clean the spice rack
88. Buy the Eight Loving Actions marriage book and do all the exercises
89. PRIVATE!
90. Follow my hateful oral hygeine routine.
91. Serve on the leadership team for the NWMAF SDIC conference.
92. Let things go, including things on this list if necessary.
93. Go to bed early because my body prefers it. Try to create a nice bedtime so it doesn’t feel like a deprivation.
94. Watch more Netflix with Sweetie.
95. Do as much high intensity cardio each week as I possibly can because it makes me feel better: mind, body, and mood.
96. Participate in Lee Sinclair's Girl Gang National.
97. Add goals here.
98. Add goals here.
99. Add goals here.
100. Add goals here.
101. Read this list every (week) day.

mind body mama: Half Full Disclosure

Last summer I met Ellen Snortland at the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation annual Special Training. In a hot, crowded feminist bazaar I rushed up to Ellen where she stood behind a table crowded with copies of her book, Beauty Bites Beast.

“I loved your play!” I gushed. An hour before BirthPie and I had been trying not to pee ourselves with laughter at a staged reading of Ellen’s Pulitzer Prize nominated play Now that She’s Gone. “I have to bring my mother to see it!”

Ellen’s subject is her difficult, heart wrenching, comically absurd relationship with her—now gone—mother, Barbro. Without giving any spoilers (because you must see this play if you have the chance) Ellen offers a stunning explanation of Barbro’s agonizingly inadequate parenting.

I kept babbling at Ellen. “My mom was so hurt by her mom, and I think she’d learn so much from seeing your play. Because I think my Grandma was depressed all her life. Actually, I think depression runs in my family, I mean—I have depression, and….”

I know we kept talking because I can see Ellen’s round face nodding and her beautiful smile. But I left my body at that moment. Dissociated from the conversation I noticed that Ellen Snortland had not been swallowed up by the earth as a result of me disclosing that I have depression. Lightening did not strike either one of us, neither did the building blow up or burn down.

Perhaps even more importantly, I did not burn with shame. Blood did not rush in my ears, bile did not rise in my throat. For the first time in twenty five years I said depression out loud and thought calmly, “That’s true. But that’s not all.”

This morning at the gym I lay on the mat remembering last fall. I almost started crying to recall the deep, unremitting pain of it. Our friend died, and Small went off to kindergarten without me, and I turned forty. The School of Love was rocked by a tragedy that broke our collective heart into a million glittering shards and every time we gathered, we bled. I cried at everything. I just could not stop crying.

The days got shorter and darker. It took more and more energy just to get through them. By three o’clock, when I finally picked up Small at the school on the corner, I was finished. More often than not Sweetie came home to find me sitting on the sofa with no dinner prepared and no plans for one. Quietly, without saying anything aloud, I found myself a therapist. But it was late in the game and I’d been sailing that ship of sadness away from my life for a long while already.

Then one day in October I found myself weeping in the shower in the middle of the day. I heard myself say out loud: “I can’t go on like this.” I thought: “I need help, and BirthPie doesn’t even know this is happening.” I knew I was in a lot of trouble and I was terrified because I was alone. I hadn’t said anything to anyone and that meant no one could help me.

An hour later BirthPie was at my dining room table serving me a cup of tea and writing me a tiny to-do list. “Call your therapist,” read one item. “Cancel tomorrow’s clients,” said another, with a helpful addendum of what to say when I did so: “I’m having a medical emergency. So sorry!” She took another tiny sheet of paper and wrote a list of helpful things to do when I felt most awful. “Take a bath. Drink tea. Read a poem. Hug my kid.” She washed all my breakfast dishes.

Dr. Frisbee came in the back door having picked up all the kids. He put his hand on my shoulder and We Don’t Do That, me and Frisbee. There is almost nothing I would not do for that man, and I’ve diapered his kids and folded his laundry and cooked him dinner more times than I can count, but under normal circumstances We Do Not Touch Each Other. When he put his hand bracingly on my body I knew that the jig was up. It was time to let go. Whether I liked it or not, I was being held.

I got so lucky with the therapist I chose, almost randomly, from my insurance list. When I told her the story of my clinical depression at seventeen, the drugs they put me on, she slapped her palms against her face and looked exactly like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. A tiny part of my heart peeked out from where it had been hiding for twenty five years. I wasn’t crazy to think that the “treatment” offered me in the late 1980s actually made things worse. And that meant, just maybe, this bout could be treated effectively.

This year has been heartbreakingly wonderful. My business grew (in this economy, as they say), I got my writing mojo back, I taught at Special Training, I met Ellen Snortland and Lee Sinclair. My daughter grows more beautiful, more brilliant, more joyous every day. I climbed out of that well of sadness with help, with the love of my family and friends and with a kick-ass clinician by my side. But it still takes my breath away to know how deep my capacity for sorrow and darkness runs. Though it no longer threatens to drown me I know its currents will always murmur below my surface.

When I was in my twenties, recovering from the round of clinical depression that derailed my early adulthood, there are many times I would have told you, “I am depressed.” Someone had dumped me or I was fighting with my mother or my job sucked. I would have said, “I am depressed” and I would have felt diminished, ashamed and defined by that declaration.

I am not going to say that again. Because I am many things: I am a mother, a writer, a teacher, a wife, a member of many loving communities; I am a friend, a person of faith, an athlete, a warrior. I am all these things and more, and I have depression. I have depression like I have asthma or eyeglasses or a painful corn on the ball of my foot that pierces me whenever I pivot to do a roundhouse kick. I have depression, that’s true, but that’s not all I have.

mind body mama: Half Wit Hump Day

There is nothing especially daring about this post. But we had a snow day in this corner of the world and after a day of shovelling and walking out in the slush and madcap Christmas crafting--half at BirthPie's house--I am a tired writer. Much more tired, in fact, than if I had gone to work today. Go figure.

This is the writing that came to me today. So to honor my half drunk commitment to daily blogging this week I offer you: a math quiz. I promise I'll get back to riskier business for Thursday and Friday.

(For those of you new to the scene, BirthPie is my best mama-friend. She lives around the corner with her two daughters and Dr. Frisbee, her sweet husband. This is our life.)

Word Problems with BirthPie

1. Dr. Frisbee invites 20 people to his birthday party. I pick up 3 girls at school. If BirthPie is feeling the effects of nitrous oxide 2 hours after her oral surgery, how many cups of flour go in the pie filling?

2. If I babysit BirthPie’s two children 4.6 hours in one month and she babysits Small 6.4 hours in the same month whose turn is it to make the other a casserole?

3. If the phone rings before 8 am, what is the probability that it is BirthPie?

4. Sleet is falling at a rate of 2 inches per hour with a weight of 5 lbs. per cubic inch. BirthPie’s cross-country flight is delayed bringing her family’s total travel time to 68 person-hours. How long will it take me to shovel her driveway?

5. Let X represent the difference in age between BirthPie’s big girl and Small. Let Y represent the difference in age between BirthPie’s big girl and Mighty Meg’s big girl. How many boxes of hand-me-downs are on my porch?

EXTRA CREDIT: I am teaching Self Defense for Pregnant and Parenting Teens at The School of Love until 2:15. The little girls’ karate class starts at 4:15. The big girls’ class starts at 5:15. BirthPie has 1 big girl and 1 little girl. Small is a little girl. School is dismissed at 3:10.

a. Who should pick Small up at school?

b. How many car seats will fit in my station wagon?

c. How many times will I visit The School of Love today?

d. How many girls will I bring to karate class and what size will they be?

e. What kind of tag will the girls play during the teachers’ meeting?

mind body mama: Half Truths About My Baby-Daddy, and a few things I forgot to say yesterday

I have no idea who my baby-daddy is.

My baby-daddy is a biohazard on dry ice.

My baby-daddy gave me a gift I don’t deserve and can’t ever repay.

My baby-daddy jerked-off in a jar.

There is only one guy who could be my baby-daddy and I know exactly which guy it is.

My baby-daddy is somebody’s baby’s father but not mine.

My baby-daddy was robbed of his child.

My baby-daddy sired a litter.

My baby-daddy broke his mama’s grandbaby-longing heart.

I might never meet my baby-daddy.

My baby-daddy will miss my baby his whole life.

My baby-daddy never thought twice.

My baby-daddy will answer my baby’s call.

My baby-daddy will never hear from her.

***

I forgot to say: Fathers. How Sweetie and I love fathers—our own fathers, the idea of fathers. I never got to meet Sweetie’s Dad, Harold, who would have been Small’s Papa. He died when Sweetie was fourteen. We have a picture of him in his WWII uniform in our living room; what a handsome man he was. He was a father to five children and Papa to five more. And my dad, Charlie Da-da, now known as Grampy. He tries to convince us that Small is better off for having two mothers—he is convinced that fathers do not parent the way mothers do. Which may be true. But they parent like fathers, and the good ones like Dr. Frisbee and Crabby Latin and our friend Dave do it with gusto and grace and magic.

When I think of the fact that I will likely outlive my father my heart clutches. It seems unsurvivable to live without a father. And yet, I love a woman. I made my family with another mom. My baby has no daddy. My family couldn’t be any other way, and yet…. And yet.

***

I was floored by the comments to yesterday’s post. ("Have you read the comments on my blog?" I asked Sweetie. "They're going to make you cry.") I love my friends at Momalom and the readers they send me.

A number of you responded to the theme of marriage equality. You may be interested in reading this sermon I preached at Our House of Worship in June on the theme of Love which included my reflections on California’s Prop 8.

mind body mama: Half Adopted

Somewhere in our photo albums is a snap of me, Sweetiebabyhoneylicious and the judge Small almost threw up on the day that our second-parent-adoption was finalized. We’re all grinning maniacally and I look as dazed and busty as I did that whole year of non-stop nursing. It’s surely one of our only family photos to prominently feature the American flag.

If ours was a traditional adoption this picture might be a treasured piece of memorabilia. But our baby was born to me and Sweetie. The hoops we had to jump through to get Sweetie legally recognized as Small’s other mother seemed distant from us and our intention to create a family.

Some people get to be parents by forgetting to pick up condoms or by being married to someone who busts out a baby. Sweetie had to submit character references. As grateful as we were for the testimonials we collected from Sweetie’s brothers and staff members at Our House of Worship (and we were really, really grateful, and deeply touched by their vision of us as worthy parents), I felt slightly humiliated by the whole process. It was demeaning that we needed approval before Sweetie could be called Small’s Mom.

Here’s how second-parent-adoption works in our state: we collected a butt-load of paperwork and met with a lawyer while I was pregnant. Stuff got filed but the adoption was not finalized until a six-month “residency period” was completed—i.e.: until Small was six months old. So for the first six months, Sweetie was not legally Small’s mother.

During that stretch of sleeplessness I can’t say I ever thought of this. I had other pressing concerns such as figuring out how to get bathed and fed and toileted in the fifteen minutes each hour in which I was not breastfeeding.

But the idea of this waiting period tortured me as I prepared for birth. I harangued my midwife—also a lesbian mom—“What if something happens to me AND the baby while I’m birthing? You have to let Sweetie make all the decisions. She’s the mom.” Mean Mary Midwife was noncommittal—in part, I think, because she knew more about the nature of medical emergencies than I and understood that the doctors and nurses would make the first round of decisions.

But also because she couldn’t promise how her hospital’s legal department might handle the lesbian mom thing. (Did the nurses at Jackson Memorial know that their colleagues would force a woman to die alone while her partner and family desperately tried to be by her side?) I went into labor knowing that a worst-case outcome for my family might not only include my death but also my parents getting custody of my newborn child.

If you follow the paper trail you see that our family went through a legal adoption proceeding in the Family Court of Our County Seat. But this is not the way in which I think of Small as half-adopted.

***

I follow, with shrewd interest, the issue of open adoption. Sarah Buttenweiser, a writer local-to-me who I greatly admire, has called the motto of her family’s experience with open adoption more love is more love. I visit Andy’s blog and her Open Adoption Roundtable and also Weebles Woblog. Sometimes I even peek into the blogs of angry adoptees who resent their adoptive parents for making mysteries of their children’s history.

I listen. What I hear is that lots of adoptees want to know who their biological parents are. I hear that our country’s heritage of closed adoptions hurt a lot of people. I hear that open adoption means more love is more love.

But I chose to create my family by using a sperm provider who won’t be known to my daughter until she’s 18, if she chooses to contact him then.

The glass-half-full version of this choice is that I did not decide for my kid whether or not she’d have access to her paternal family of origin. Before she was even a zygote I put the choice in her hands: of all of us—sperm bank, sperm provider, bio mom, second parent adoptive mom, baby—only Small can choose to create this connection.

The glass-half-empty version of this choice is that she might have another set of grandparents who is missing the magic that is Small. She might have a half-sister or half-brother or cousins. She might look just like her father when he was that age and not have anyone witness and know that. She might not be—as she is in our little family—a singular, almost alien, blond-haired, hazel-eyed, extroverted linguistic phenom. She might have a clan somewhere that matches her capacity for magic and math and sheer presence of personality.

It’s hard to think that she might fit somewhere else as well as she fits us. Because she’s ours and we are hers: this is our family. But when I look at the pictures of my elders—Ollie and Dottie and Gabby—I see the Slovak and Italian in their faces. Then I look into the mirror and see their lines traced down onto my own face. There is something about blood and biology that is not everything but is not nothing either.

Seattle University School of Law professor Julie Shapiro writes about family law issues of interest to the GLBT community on her blog. In a recent post she detailed the legal risks lesbian parents face when they use a sperm provider who is known to them. By risks Shapiro meant the various ways that the lesbian moms’ custody or status as parents could be threatened by the sperm provider being recognized as a parent/father. Shapiro concludes:

My point here is that there are legitimate concerns that could lead lesbians to select unknown sperm donors/providers even where they think it might be beneficial to their children to have access to the donor/provider. If you want to increase the likelihood that lesbian couples will elect to use identified or identifiable sperm donors/providers, these concerns need to be accommodated.

You heard me say it loud and proud: I am the most risk-averse person who ever lived. And also: this is our family. We created it the only way we could. I hope that my Small will think we’ve done the right thing.

Mind Body Mama: Half Drunk and in My Pajamas

Taped onto my monitor is this quote from Ellen Snortland: “There is no wasted writing.”

When Sweetiebabyhoneylicious first noticed it she deadpanned, “But there is writing when you’re wasted.”

My new best virtual friends Jen and Sarah think this is a good thing. That’s why they’ve created the Half Drunk Challenge. And I’m in. I’m all in.

Don’t think this means I’ll be drinking this week. I already toasted Sarah’s innaugural post with a finger of Drambue with my hot bath last night. I was asleep before 9pm and woke up at 3am with a headache.

As one of my favorite ninety-year-olds likes to say, “That’s enough of that.”

So what is Half Drunk about if it’s not about drinking?

It’s about lowered inhibitions achieved by any means necessary. It’s about writing something that frightens you. It’s about saying something that surprises you. It’s about risk.

(You do remember that MBA Mama calls me, "the most risk averse person I’ve ever met”, right?)

I’ve got topics for Half Drunk. Right here on an index card. Ideas that have been gathering dust in my writing notebook for weeks or months because I’m too chickenshit to give them a go.

The time is now.

And I’m going to try to do Half Drunk one better: I’m going to post every day this week. That’s truly drunken behavior for me. Given that it’s only three weeks before Christmas and the gift factory is up and running on my dining room table. Given that I have clients starting at 6am some days. Given that I am still trying to find my clean underpants after our weekend in Boston, Thanksgiving, and unexpected funeral-type travel.

It’s going to be my secret tryout for NaBloPoMo. I hate to fail at things. (See above, “risk averse.”) So I’m giving myself a soft entry. Call it NaBloPoWe. Or LMWBloPoWe. Or don’t call it anything at all. Just drop in and see how I’m doing. And check out my friends Jen and Sarah while you’re at it.

Ten more points for the first one to catch the lame-ass literary reference. Jender is out in front, people.

Props to BirthPie for the term Gift Factory.

Mind Body Mama: Bad News, Bad News, Come to Me Where I Sleep

When my mother's doorbell rang at 9:00 am the day after Thanksgiving my first thought was that it would be a friend of Bobbi's come ‘round to meet Her Majesty, my Small. Small is my mother’s first born and farthest flung grandchild and her legend is large around Bobbi and Grampy-land.

I wasn’t particularly in the mood to entertain in my pajamas over my post-holiday coffee so I grabbed up a change of clothes and was bolting for the bathroom when my mom opened the door and I heard an unfamiliar man’s voice say, “Do you have a Sweetiebabyhoneylicious here?”

My first thought was, “Why is someone sending my Sweetie flowers?” My second thought, tumbling over the first, was, “She’s having an affair! And she’s having an affair with a stupid girl—stupid enough to send flowers to her in-laws house!”

Then I heard him say, “Apparently your number is unlisted. Her brother has been trying to reach her.”

And Bobbi said, in a small voice, “Thank you, Officer.”

***

On Thursday morning, when the turkey was safely in the oven and there were hours before the flurry of last minute vegetable preparation, I went for a run in my old hometown. The dips and swells of the New England roads were as familiar to me as if twenty five years had not passed since I rode my bike through that leafy suburb. But around too many curves the vistas I remember were shattered by the decadent development of the last decade. Where once stood hundred-year-old colonials and saltboxes now are miniature castles with four car garages, turrets and crushed white stone circular drives. Houses that were familiar enough for me to never notice are gone and their absence is confusing to my eye.

I live in a hundred year old house. I don’t understand how homes that sheltered families for a century are suddenly inadequate. I could go on and on about conspicuous consumerism and what I think of it. Or how embarrassed I am for the owners of these ticky-tacky mini mansions. “All that money and this is what you did with it?” I think. “Four thousand square feet and you can see into your next door neighbors’ bathroom.” I want to pull the owners aside and whisper to them discreetly, “If you want to see how it’s really done, with wealth and class, the Gold Coast is just a mile away.” I want to take them down the shore road where waterfront mansions—actual castles—sit behind imposing walls, gatehouses and quarter-mile long driveways. I want to drive them through the seaside village where the homes of colonial shipping magnates perch on the hill overlooking the harbor. You might think of them as quaint, historical architectural specimens if you did not look close enough to notice the new copper roof or the Bentley in the drive.

But mostly, on Thursday morning, I was thinking of change. I was puzzling how the road could be the same beneath my feet and the view could be so different. I was thinking of the lines of a schmaltzy Judy Collins song I loved in my childhood which has been coming to mind frequently of late.

…but most of all
It is me that has changed,
And yet still I’m the same.
That’s me at the weddings,
That’s me at the graves,
Dressed like the people who once looked so grown up and brave.

My heart was heavy. I had time to run on Thanksgiving because the old folks are gone this year: there’s no one to visit at the long-term care facility. The last great visit I had with my Gramma—Small’s Gramma Dottie—was two years ago Thanksgiving. She was lucid and sarcastic. And she was thrilled to see Small. It always filled my heart to see Gramma’s eyes grow wide and wet as she gazed upon her great-granddaughter.

We had an hour with Gramma. I even brought Auntie Ollie down from her wing . At the end, Dottie and Ollie were were living under the same roof for the first time in fifty years, but they still weren’t really speaking. Ollie insisted on the visit, I think, because it seemed like a party was going on in Dottie’s room. Ollie never missed a party.

Then suddenly it was time to go. Sweetie looked at her watch and got worried about the turkey in the oven—she did not trust my mother to supervise the blessed bird—and we all got up in a flurry of activity and kisses goodbye. The next time I saw my Gramma she was drifting in and out of consciousness at the hospital, and the next time was her funeral.

***

Our hearts were in our mouths as Sweetie dialed her brother’s number to get the news that chased us into our holiday weekend. We knew death had come, and we didn’t breathe again until we knew that it was her closest-in-age brother who had finally succumbed to the health problems that dogged him for the last fifteen years.

***

Monday night before bed Small had an uncharacteristic melt-down. Her little body finally wore down from the holiday that morphed unexpectedly into hours of holiday-weekend traffic and the tedium of adult visits stunted by grief. Small’s style of unraveling these days is perfectionism, self-recrimination and frustration. She growled and writhed in my arms as she cried, and then suddenly she slumped her little head against my shoulder.

“So many people are dying,” she whispered.

Our family has weathered five losses in the past two years. It seems stunning to me and I’ve lived more than forty years on this planet. I can’t imagine how it feels to a seven year old. And the deaths are coming closer to Small: first a friend of her mothers’, then the parent of her own little friend; first the old folks from the distant nursing home, then her mother’s brother.

Sometimes it feels like a game of Red Rover: we link our hands and brace ourselves for the body blow of the next loss. We wait to feel the impact in our jaws, our bellies. We carry the fear that our elders and our sick will go next and then we are sucker punched by the loss of someone young and vibrant.

I think, “Now I have to be afraid of losing anyone, at any time.”

I have a black dress coat that buttons to the neck in case I need to stand at someone’s grave on a cold winter day. I have a pair of fancy shoes with patent leather flowers and a flash cocktail dress to wear if someone gets married on short notice. I am looking awfully grown up and brave. But inside, I am the same small girl swooping down hills on her blue bicycle, coming around the curves surprised to see the landscape has changed.

Hear the schmatlz here.
Ten points to you if you can cite the other song reference in this post.