ingrid

My uncle is making a nice new daybed/filing cabinet/reading nook/bookcase for us.  It is spurring all sorts of organization that is badly needed.

My life, okay–my personality–is problematic.  I am very sentimental.  I have a hard time letting time slip away from me, so I cling to all sorts of reminders of the past.  I went to move boxes around and noticed that I had two huge cardboard boxes labelled “memories”.  That seemed like one box too many, so I sat down and attempted to pull things out to recycle right there and then.  That was last month.  I spent most of that work session reading, laughing, and crying, clinging to cards with clever notes from deceased family members, precious reflections from friends during a time in life when WE ACTUALLY SAT DOWN AND WROTE REAL LETTERS TO EACH OTHER.  I couldn’t get rid of anything.  How could I get rid of the letter from a friend coming out to his parents and telling me how surprised he was that they still loved him?  How could I get rid of a letter telling about a friend’s new life in a new country with a new man she loved?  She was shocked to find love.  She was astounded to be learning how to communicate.  How could I toss my sisters’ early stories of the excitement of new relationships, especially when those boys they told me about are now my family?  It is all too precious.  I couldn’t toss any of it.  Finally I decided that I could recycle cards with just a signature (not good enough!), letters from people who I absolutely do not see anymore, and silly things that I wrote that are not immediately, apparently special.

A few things that I realized during this exercise:

• I have more friend than I ever though.   Many many people have loved me (*and hopefully still do!).  I think back on times when I felt lonely or sad in high school, and I am a bit in wonder of how I could have felt this with such a huge outpouring of support from all these friends.  I read back on these letters and see, “Oh, you’re so great!”  ”I love you so much!”  ”You are such a great friend!”, and yet, I don’t remember feeling that way.  I don’t know what my excuse was.  I guess I was a teenager.
• My siblings are so wonderful.  I have three of the most loving, clever, devoted sisters that a girl could have.  Throughout the span of my life, these women have been tied so strongly to me, and in their letters I see how, especially when I was off adventuring, they were continuing to reach out to hold on tightly to our sister-bond.  I have three sisters, so you would think that one could be a dud– but no.  They are all fantastic.  Lucky, lucky, lucky I tell you.
• Woa.  I was popular with the boys!  It makes me laugh at how transparent all these “friendly” letters are now (including the ones from my husband).  Why was I so dumb?!  Opportunities missed, I tell you!  Actually, I was very fortunate to have good male friends all the way through high school and into college.  These are charming, smart boys.  Their letters make me smile and hope that Zephyr can one day be somewhat like them.
• Thank you aunts and uncles who cared about me.  I have letters and cards spanning 20 years from aunts and uncles just showing that they were interested in my life.  That is important to get this sort of support outside of your own parents.  I hope to be a good aunt and god mother too.
• And yes, my parents were/are excellent.

Okay, now to ponder: do  you keep letters you “earned” (for drama & band!) even if you don’t have a letterman sweater to put them on?

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I am trying to play more.  I am trying to relax and just be more fun.  My TSPC requirement classes made me sadly realize that I sometimes look at my kids as one great big bother, a source of stress and distraction that I must struggle to escape.  And that’s too bad, because it seems to me that I CHOSE to have these kids, right?  Why the crappy attitude?

I am such a do-er in my daily life.  I feel massive satisfaction from what I accomplish in any given day.  When Brad asks how my day went, I immediately catalogue what I achieved that day as though that justifies my whole existence, as though I am not worthwhile at all if I didn’t complete the siding on the chicken shed, plant lily starts, hang art, finish laundry and clean the kitchen.  I’ve got to fix this I know, because obviously the simple, quiet things are important too— maybe more important.  So I am going to play more and maybe do a bit less.

I’m not going to change too much– I will always love working, achieving, feeling the accomplishment that comes with being physically exhausted because you just mopped the floor on your hands and knees– but I am trying to find a little balance.  The work of mothering is a wide skill set, and the things that kids note at the end of the day are not the same things that I might catalogue to Brad as “accomplishments”.  So these are the things I am trying to do more of:

• Snuggling up with Zephyr at nap time (I would curl up with Inez if she would quit tweaking my nose)
• Reading books with kids (no, my books do not count, although once I had Francis fooled when I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan out loud to her a few days in a row)
• Art projects (like kid ones, not the ones where I tell them to go away and let mom work)
• Dancing around
• Playing instruments and singing
• Cooking projects where they get to make a mess and maybe even lick stuff
• Baths midday (with bubbles!)
• Setting up train tracks

Part of my goal with this year is just to calm down and not achieve anything, because you know, I think I am a good enough person just sort of sitting on my ass… and playing with trains.

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See this guy?  He’s a shepherd I was asked to make for my church’s religion class.  He is a painted wood cut out, and I think the goal is that he will someday have a whole flock of sheep that kids can move around and play with.  I was happy to do him, especially as I had seen the guy they had before.  He was nice enough, but far too white for a dude hanging out in the middle east in the sun all day.  And he had sport socks which sort of offended me.  My secret vendetta as an artist of religious themed works is to make everyone black or at least clearly Arabic.  Jesus-as-blonde-frat-boy does not work for me.  I fight whitey, and I have a whole host of paints to prove it.

Most of my art is sort of like this shepherd in that it walks out the door fairly soon after being created.  I don’t know what it is about the things I make— they don’t stick around.  I think some of it is that I am just not very motivated so I need people to ask me for stuff (like shepherds) in order to get myself organized enough to create something.  Maybe some of it is that what I make is really just not that useful!  I am okay with admitting that.  Not a lot of people need wooden shepherds or hand puppets of married couples.  And I have come to accept that NO ONE needs green tomato pickles.  (I broke open a jar of those that I canned in late September.  Sort of spicy and slimy.  Not super great.  Sorry if I gave them to you for Christmas.  You have permission to compost them.)

One day I will be gone and my kids will cast about the room for something that I made, trying to prove that their mom was an artist of sorts.  Meanwhile, my creations will be tucked away in some box somewhere, having forgotten their inception but retaining a lovely amount of pigment.

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The world is mysterious.  And for all our human focus on ideas of fairness, there isn’t a whole lot available in the natural order of things.  I’m not depressed, but I am thinking about how hard things happen to people and then happen and then happen.

My dear African friend’s little baby boy Shafi died in utero.  He had about three months to go to join us out here in the world, but his little heart was not enough.  Kendall and I made the trip up to Seattle to be there when C finished labor.  There is no fairness about it.  Even though she knew her boy had died, she had to labor to get him out.  At the end, she was tired, sore, spent, and heart-broken.  We held little Shafi and prayed over him.  It did not feel like enough of course, and even as I was doing this, I thought, “How many times will I be here again?”  It isn’t that I am sorry for myself.  I am young and my years near the deathbeds are just beginning.. I am resigned to that fact.  I am ready for this work, even.  It is her though.  She walked out of the valley of death in the Congo.  I love her so, I wish that her journey in those dark places was over.

But that isn’t the way it goes and we have no guarantees in this life.  Death is constantly with us.  I just wish it would clear out of places that it has already visited too much.

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I’m sick, but that is not interesting to talk about.  Too bad too because I have a whole lot of ideas about sickness.

I mostly think that I am a fairly hardy person.  I believe in moderation and my body forces me to stay moderate.  That being said, I am often sick after visiting my in-laws.  It isn’t them.  They are wonderful people.  It is me.  I don’t have it in me to stay up late, and that is what they do.  I want to be with them, but time and time again I find that after a few days of going to bed at some hour that would be fine for other people (like 11pm), I get sick.

I think some of it is the way that I burn through energy.  I am a natural morning person and sort of an extender.  I don’t save much energy during the day.  I don’t know how to conserve.  Even with taking a nap, I am really usually very tired by about 8pm or so.  The kids also don’t permit any sleeping in.  Sleeping in is about 7:30am (which is awesome!).  If only I had the discipline that I enforce on them!  They have a bed time of about 7:30pm.  If I were smart, I would follow at 9:30pm at the latest.

I feel like a big loser; the kid who can’t stay up late at the slumber party.  That is me.  Sicky.

Are you a toughy or a sicky?  What pushes you over the edge?

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I ran this last week…. twice!  It was a stunning anomaly— me, running.  I mean, I have run before.  I started running in earnest in 1999.  Brad and I had this weird idea that we would run a 10K on our first anniversary, as though running 6 miles even compares to the agony and work of being married!  Way harder, less gatorade.  The running continued though.  That year of ‘99 was marked with one race after another; I even took 3rd (or 4th?) and got a ribbon for one race.  (It wasn’t really that I was all that fast, it was just a ribbon for my age bracket which was bizarrely small I guess).  That year my friends all became jocks too.  One delightful friend in particular convinced us that we should all try to run a marathon, so we picked up a bunch of copies of Hal Whoever’s Non-runner’s Marathon book and hit the trails.  And I did it, and I liked it.  The following year I ran Hood To Coast, which I really liked (besides all the trash and plastic bottles those runners create.  I didn’t like that.)

And then what happened?  Not much.  I continued to run throughout grad school, but stopped pretty abruptly when I had a real job.  Running didn’t fit into my life so great if no one was delivering a schedule to my door.  I am sort of a social runner too.  If no one was going out, I was certainly not going to run alone.

Still, I did like it while I was doing it.  That period in my life allowed me to explore my inner jock.  I actually make quite a good one.  I am very competitive physically.  I don’t give up and am fairly impervious to pain.  I like hills, I like challenges, I like to go faster, longer, stronger than others.  Too bad I don’t have any actual talent.  I could’ve really been someone, if I actually, you know, had talent.  Maybe motivation would help me too.

I’ve sort of jogged here and there, usually while pushing the stroller somewhere, and never really in running clothes because that would mean that I am really committed to, you know, running.  But anyway, I ran along with my sister-in-law this weekend as she trained for the LA Marathon in March (Go Katka! Yeah!).  I was worried about her running schedule.  I was pretty sure that I could do the 40 minute run, but the 14 miler seemed impossible.  It turned out that I decided that it was indeed impossible as of yet, (wise choice), and did half with her.  Seven miles felt great.  Abso-friggin-lutely excellent.  The secret is that we went ass-dragging slow.  It was awesome.  I need to remember that slow is the bomb.

This brings me to my question: what am I going to do about my inner jock?  Is she going to wither away in there?  How can I maintain her while living my life and providing for all these kids?  (By the way, where did all these kids come from?  Can someone tell me please?  They are eating all my food and have totally ruined my couch with their snotty noses.  Anyone?  Anyone?).  I wonder sometimes if there are parts of me that must lie latent until their time.  I have the feeling that my fifties are going to be awesome.

Old ass photo, me, Anne, Brad, and Jim. May 30th, 2000. This is the 27 year old me. What a jock.

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Kids are smarter than us.  Or at least, they tend to think about the world in a more productive way than we do sometimes.

Take a couple of  weekends ago for example.  We went up to Mt Hood with my bro-in-law and our two darling nephews.  The idea was to drive up there, park somewhere off to the side of the mountain and then hike in to a secret sledding hill attached to an outdoor club cabin.  All right!  Set!  We drove, we fully outfitted all children in their very fine ski gear including my son in his PINK snowsuit— hey, it was $7 at Fred Meyer out of season.  (The only other ones they had were camouflage and I don’t consider war costumes much of a fashion choice for my children).  ANYWAY, off we go to the snow.  The kids love the parking lot, but that isn’t good enough for us adults.

Oh no, now that we have made it to the snow, we have to hike in to MORE snow.

The problem is, when we get to more snow, there is really, really MORE snow.  There is actually so much snow that you can’t really move in it.  There is so much snow that the sleds don’t slide much.  There is so much snow that you sink in up to your hip— your adult hip, which is just worse when carrying a kid.

We try to pound the snow down so that we don’t completely sink, and eat a quick lunch in the snow.  It is cold.  The kiddos decide to play in this little downhill area, but I have my eye on a huge hill.  Wouldn’t it be great to make a really long sled run?  The problem is that it is nearly impossible to move through there.  It is exhausting to try, but off I go.

I work and work and work.  I hum that song about John Henry, and that is how I feel as I pound with my arms and try not to fall in.  I am exhausted, but I keep pounding and clearing.  This’ll be fun!  They’ll love it, I think.  My arms ache, but finally I make a 30 yard run.  And then… no one wants to go down it.  The kids are cold.  They don’t want to go through the snow to get to my run.  They don’t want to fall off the side of the pounded down snow and get buried to their necks.  It is too hard to get up the hill.  Zephyr starts crying, “I don’t like this place!  I want to go home!”.  The other kids are happily playing on a 15 ft slick area just yards away from the cabin.

Sigh…. I hope someone comes along and uses my great run.  I really broke ground for them, ground that some other kids will surely appreciate.  It wasn’t entirely fruitless, right?

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There is a big fuss in Portland over what might happen to the Made in Oregon sign in Old Town.  That is interesting, but not too much to our family.  Around here, we have other branding issues— mainly, do we correct the kids on their totally awesome and sweet mispronunciation, or do we continue to live the lie?

You see, each year around this time, the sign owners put a red nose on the deer.  The first year we lived in Portland, Francis was two and 1/2 and very precocious.  She had seen enough of a very famous Christmas animated movie to confidently call out from her car seat, “Look!  I see Rhubarb, the red nose reindeer!”

Now that is cute right?  Cute enough that any parent would continue to try to use that wording.  Maybe even cute enough to change all mentions of some Rudolph guy in the song year after year after year.  But how long can this go on?  Francis is now 6 and still calls him Rhubarb.  Zephyr is three and is fully indoctrinated.  And you know how lies suddenly become truths with enough re-tellings?  Tonight, Brad tripped over his tongue when just leaning over to excitedly whisper to me from the train, “From here I can see Rhubarb!”.

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When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to ride the Zoo Train at the Oregon Zoo.  It is expensive you see, and being from a family of modest means, we could never afford to do the train after getting into the zoo.  It is still expensive to this day.  Even if you are a little kid, they expect you to shell out $4.50 to ride the train for 20 minutes to the Rose Garden.

Last week I was contemplating how different things are for my kids.  It is tempting to romanticize your childhood, to make assumptions that the way you experienced things made you a better person, when in fact we don’t really understand the factors that form an individual’s character and values (nor do we know that you are much of a great person now!  Ha!).  We have a human tendency to try to reassure ourselves that hardships were formative, that they had purpose.  I think we want to be sure that we didn’t suffer for nothing.  I had this conversation with a young man struggling to put himself through college while his peers have scholarships and family support.  When I was in college, I remember being vaguely jealous that some kids had their school paid for, all while I presented as fiercely proud that I was putting myself through.  Now I look back and think, did that really make me better somehow?  More appreciative?  Not really.  Would I change places with someone with a full-ride in a heartbeat?  Hell yeah!  (At this point I would like to thank Brad for putting me through graduate school, and for issuing me a retro-active partial scholarship for undergrad.  Yes, I “did it myself” and exiting school, I had the loans to prove it.)

Anyway, back to the Zoo Train.  No, I didn’t suffer because I couldn’t ride the Zoo Train as a child, but I always longed to ride the Zoo Train.  Now I am an adult living an easy and luxurious life.  I am raising three very privileged children with college accounts and such.  When I say no to the Zoo Train, or anything really, I can’t honestly say that it is because we can’t afford it.  We can afford all sorts of crap that we don’t really need, so I have this new existential struggle that involves privilege, fear of creating nasty spoiled children, shame over conspicuous consumption, worry about what other children can have, worry about waste and the shit that people give their kids right and left just because, and other issues that probably come from my Catholic upbringing.  It isn’t just the Zoo Train; it’s a train wreck.

So, back to the Zoo Train. (Man, I have to move this post along.  I will try short sentences because the long ones are pulling me into some sort of philosophical whirlpool).  I was at the zoo last week.  I spent the first hour thinking about the zoo train.  Should we ride the zoo train?  Should we not ride the zoo train?  Man, I really want to ride the zoo train.  Why NOT ride the zoo train?  We could ride the zoo train!

Finally I decided that we were going to do it.  We were going to blow $13.50 on a stupid ride on a miniature train.  I walked up to the ticket booth, scanned the prices and saw:

RAIL TO RAIL: present your Tri-Met Max ticket for this day and ride free round-trip on the Zoo Train

Holy Crap!  The Zoo Train is free if you take MAX to the Zoo.  I ONLY take Max to the Zoo.  The Zoo Train is free for the rest of my freaking life!  I am so happy!  I am going to leave it all and go LIVE on the Zoo Train!  Who knew?  See you on the Zoo Train suckers!

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Times have changed.  I have changed, and the things that seemed like we needed just 3 months ago, don’t seem so all-fired important.  I’m thinking more and more about “owning” my own garbage output— taking responsibility for the trash that my family is creating.  If I had to live with what we made, what would I find worthwhile and what would just seem trivial?  What doesn’t really improve my life?  What is just a bunch of junk that we don’t need?

The big question that I have to consider is “Do I really want to buy all this plastic?”.  You know, the stuff that will be here when I am long gone?  There are all sorts of things that I have quit buying in efforts to be a more responsible consumer.  Individual yogurt containers are out.  Anything from Trader Joe’s (vegetables in plastic wrap) are out.  Most drinks in a plastic cup.  Coffee in a to-go cup (if I didn’t think ahead to bring my own mug, then I just don’t need it enough).  Herbs in plastic sheathing.  Frozen convenience foods.  Plastic toys (except those Playmobil…. the kids love them too much!).  Water in a bottle.

Now it is time for another little step.  I’m contemplating cutting these things out of our lives.  Here is why:

BOXED CEREAL

• I feel like I am constantly emptying another box of cereal.  We go through so much of it for so little joy.  Yes, the cardboard goes in the recycling, but the plastic bag inside isn’t any good for reuse.
• Even the most affordable box of cereal is WAY expensive.
• The kids waste cereal like none other.  There is this weird milk/cereal balance that always seems to leave a bunch of bowls of soggy cereal just sitting around.
• I don’t think that cereal is such a fantastic breakfast food.  Besides being fast and convenient, I don’t know what cereal has going for it.  I am always starving by 10am if I eat cereal.
• The damn stuff is full of over-processed grains and sugar.
• We could easily get cereal in the bulk food section and keep it in jars or tubs.

DOUBLE-BAGGED BREAD

• Yes, it is cheap, but why do we need two wrappers for our bread?
• The plastic bags are only vaguely re-useable.
• We seem to have a lot of these bags around; more than any other type of plastic in our house.
• I live within walking distance of two bakeries.  Why the hell am I buying this crappy bread when I could buy loaves (even cut for us) and take those home?

SHAMPOO

• Why does our shampoo need to be in liquid form?  I don’t need my soap to be in liquid form, and isn’t shampoo just…. I don’t know…. soap?
• Wait, can’t I make soap?

We’ll see how I do.  I’m going to phase these things out when I am ready.  For now, there are 3 or so loaves of bread in the freezer and a few bottles of shampoo.  Count down.  See ya’ later plastic wrap!

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