Barnmaven

Dreams

Pictures of what I imagined my life would be five, ten, thirty years ago elude me like a minnow in the bright shallow water.  I see them there, sparkling and happy, I reach and grasp, but they slide away from my fingers with alacrity.

When I was small I didn't dream of my adulthood.  I didn't imagine myself as a mommy or an astronaut or a secretary.  Mostly I lived in the immediate, and if my imagination wandered to a time yet to be, it was to summer camp or my next birthday, not to the far-off future.  I never saw myself in a wedding dress, marrying Mr. Right.  I didn't picture myself teaching a classroom or joining the circus.  My daydreams tended to focus on the things I wanted right at that moment - a horse, a new book, a pony, ice cream. Then and even now, I could not imagine what heaven would be like.  How could I imagine it when it was a lifetime away? 

I try to imagine my future and I just cannot.  I am bound to the here and now with a cord that is heavy and strong.  I don't know where I want to live when I retire.  I don't - CAN'T imagine my children's graduations, weddings, families.  I seem completely unable to live in the world that has yet to be, and the plans I dream rarely extend beyond the next few months. 

Perhaps the one time in my life I fantasized a future it was when I married my first husband.  At a family reunion, a cousin and his wife brought their new weeks-old son, and I was bitten fiercely by the baby bug.  I tried to convince M to start trying to have a family, and focused all of my energy and intention on making it happen.  I dreamed of my children, who they would be, what we would do.  I pictured pregnancy and birth, in my mind I saw myself pulling a red wagon with a curly haired little girl.  As months, and then a year or three went by and my dreams of becoming a mother went unfulfilled,

Bitter, heartbroken, I cast the dream aside.

When I met J and the children I had dreamed of finally came to be, I started allowing myself to wander farther into the future.  Next year, maybe the next five.  And when it all came crashing down, the places we were going to go and the things we were going to do burned to cinders in the smoldering wreckage of our marriage.

Next week; next month; this Christmas.  That's far enough to consider.  Any more than that and I'm treading on thin ice.  And if I dare not live in the future, I most definitely steer clear of giving voice to my fears.  Dreams disappear, but fears manifest.  So they remain behind closed doors.

As I folded laundry, my daughter and I watched the television screen.  A couple embraced, then kissed.  "You and daddy don't do that anymore," my daughter said to me.  "No, honey, we don't.  That's for people who have those special feelings for one another."  "Maybe you'll get married again.  And maybe daddy will get married again, and then I'll have a stepmom and a stepdad.  And you'll have someone you like that way," she offered.  "Well, if that happened then I guess you would have a lot of people in your life to love you, sweetheart, but right now my most important job is being your momma.  I don't think I'll get married again."  We pondered.  For a moment, my mind wandered again.  Into a future where there was someone to want to be with, where the first blush of romance swept away the world.  And just like that, I slapped the lid closed on it.  I know better.

As the song says:  There is no future, there is no past...No day but today.

Being an Us

I love the show RENT.  I saw it on Broadway with my mom about 10 years ago and have loved it ever since.  The movie was just as phenomenal - wise move, that, using pretty much all of the original cast.  I've watched it countless times and I have no less than three CD's of both the Broadway recordings and the tracks from the movie.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend either watching the movie or seeing it live (I believe its still running at the Nederlander Theatre and also on tour in the U.S.).  One person who saw it for the very first time ever with me said that it was the first time they had ever *really* understood that there was no difference between being gay and straight, that "love is love, no matter who it is you love."  Its not that this friend was prejudiced before that point, but I think that they may have lacked understanding, not having had spent a tremendous amount of time around gay or lesbian couples.  I think there are a lot of things that you can walk away from RENT feeling or understanding more clearly, but what a powerful statement that was on how true and clear the characters that the sadly late and very great Jonathan Larson brought to life in his script.  Oh, crap, I'm digressing AGAIN. 

Perhaps my favorite song from RENT is "La Vie Boheme."  It evokes a fierce response in me, from the feeling of being on the fringes as a kid to clinging to music and experiences and ideas that were somewhat out of the mainstream.  As much as I have one foot firmly in the buttoned-down, a huge part of me simply doesn't belong there and wishes she could just fly away and be free all over again in another world, another life. 

In part B of the song, after the Roger/Mimi Interlude and toward the very end, there is a line that grabs me by the heart: 

"To being an "US" for once, instead of a "THEM!"

Last weekend I got to be an "us" again and it was so wonderful.

My experiences with Bastard Nation were among the most powerful of my life.  Never had I connected in such an enormous way with others.  Despite different circumstances - Late Discovery adoptees, adoptees who had found, adoptees who would never find, adoptees who hated their adoptive families, adoptees who loved theirs, the members of this group shared something special and unique.  Some of the friendships I formed with my fellow Bastards will last my whole life.  Conferences, protests, rallies - every event brought with it not only the opportunity to learn, educate others, raise our voices and be heard, but to connect and share with people who felt like family.  I suppose that's incredibly odd, considering that if you put ten adoptees in a room you're looking at twenty family trees.  Hell, you want confusing?  I married another adoptee.  Our children would have six sets of grandparents were everyone involved still living, speaking to each other, or known.   And only another adoptee would really understand how normal that truly was. 

Being a Bastard was the first time in my life that I knew unequivocally that I was part of an "us."  It wasn't only the experience of growing up adopted, but the shared passion for reforming a system that treats adoptees as a suspect class, denies us the same information that is available to anyone else, and for loving the gallows humor that everyone else appears to find tasteless but from which we derived the deepest, truest laughter.

Friday night, after an incredible dinner with a couple of my favorite Bastards under the sun, we sat up late in a hotel room drinking too much wine and laughing and talking about everything.  I felt as if I had been transported to another hotel room in another time and place at one of our many conferences or rallies.  Every good thing I have ever felt about being a Bastard just welled up inside me and filled my heart and my soul.  We talked of the old days, old friends. We mourned those we have lost.  We meandered through laughter and a thousand "Oh, yeah, I remember that!"'s down the warmly-lit paths of memory and shared experience.  We looked at where our lives had come since those days.  We caught up, bonded, reconnected.

To my Bastards who were present, and to the other Bastards, wherever you are, thank you.  Thank you for being my people.  Thank you for being a place where I belong, where I don't feel like I'm different.  I love you guys.

And if you're ever in Troutdale, OR, go have dinner at Tab's Chicken and Dumplings.  Make sure you get a window seat.

Multiplicity

I think many of us feel as if we are fragmented.  Mothers, employees, daughters, sisters, wives, friends, parents,k lovers, bosses.  Then there are the other shades of fragmentation, the things that makes us even more unique.

I've always envied people who knew their life's path, who knew exactly what they wanted to be in life.  Those who put a plan in place from a young age to follow a particular course of study or apprenticeship to become dentists, accountants, pilots, astronauts.  I look at those people and I try to puzzle out how they knew.  When did that one direction become clear to them, and how did it feel to be able to focus on the goal?

And what about those of us who never figured it out?  Who still haven't figured it out?  What is the mechanism that makes us different? 

Sometimes I feel as if I'm only partly anything.  I only commit to an idea so far, but there's a limit and once reached, I automatically withdraw.   I'd love to be a hippie, a free spirit.  I'll wear birkenstocks and even a flowing skirt or tie die...but the next week I'm in a suit or a business dress, or jeans and boots.  My persona changes constantly, sometimes several times in a day.  I'm so many things, but only up to a point:  athlete; gamer; free spirit; intellectual; musician; dog trainer.  I'm GOOD at things but not GREAT at them.  With a couple of notable exceptions, my interests change with the direction of the wind.  I get into a thing and for months, maybe even years, I learn it, I practice it, I enjoy it and I feel like this is THE thing.  Eventually, though, it gets discarded, either from being frustrated that I can't be better at it or because something else that was even shinier came along and distracted me.

Take my music preferences, for example.  You know what I REALLY like?

Classical.

Opera.

Hip Hop.

Classic Rock.

Love Ballads

Acoustic Guitar

Americana

Folk

Reggae

Cajun

And yes, even country.  Not just today's country, but classic western - Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Johnny ash. 

I do this with groups too - I join, I try to fit in, sometimes I do, mostly I don't, but eventually I move on.  I leave things behind.  I stick my toe in many pools, but never jump in the water.  My left foot's in the circle - but my right foot stays out. 

I used to think this meant I didn't know who I was.  I thought it meant I just wasn't good enough at anything.  That I continually stopped short of the goal, shy of the commitment.  That somehow I lacked something necessary to get where I was supposed to be going.

Maybe, though, I've been thinking about this the wrong way.  Maybe its not that I don't know who I am, but that who I am is someone who just really, really likes a lot of very different things.  Maybe its OK that I'm not incredibly talented at one really special thing but passably talented at a lot of different things.  Perhaps this means I have the capacity to enjoy life on many different levels.   

Maybe I'm not a fragmented person - maybe I'm just a whole person made up of a lot of really cool pieces.

Woman Eternally Conflicted

Even though I've suspected from a very young age that I have a mind that doesn't work quite the way a "normal" mind is supposed to, I still have the capacity to be surprised when others don't share my opinion.  I guess I'm just that naive.  I can't understand why anyone would hate another person because of the color of their skin, or how someone could fail to see the innate beauty in an egg fresh from the bidness end of your very own chicken or how anyone misses the fact that there is almost nothing in this world so breathtaking as a half naked child covered in dirt, grubbing away in the garden alongside you.  I just think you should all know that I think you think the way I do and I am shocked beyond belief when you just. don't. 

I've worked in transportation for a very long time.  And I've always worked.  I had a period of about two weeks in 1998 when I was unemployed, prior to that my longest time frame between jobs was 6 days.  There are two threads of thought interwoven into these sentences.  One:  I have throughout my career worked mostly around really crass, un-PC and mostly chauvinistic men who probably believe that women belong at home, and for my entire career I have worked my ass off to be respected by those men.  Part of my current job today is to make decisions about which trucking companies my company uses to ship product.  Don't think for a minute that I don't experience a little shiver of joy every time a trucking company salesperson comes to see if they can get my business, because 99% of these salespeople are men.  I enjoy very much that they need to earn MY respect in order to be considered, and I like watching their faces when they realize that they are dealing with a woman who is smart, knows her business, and has the temerity to be balls-out blunt  when the situation requires. 

Two:  I've always held a job.  I've never stayed home with my children.  I've never had that particular option.  I think in the biggest part that it is due to my own choices in life, some of them not so great, many of them selfish, some of them largely inescapable.  I've always been the breadwinner, even when I was married.  At some point in time him not working might have been an option, but me not working was never on the table. 

I have to admit, though, that when it came right down to it, I don't think I have the ovaries to be a SAHM.  At least when they were little - we lived in suburban New Jersey.  All I would have had to keep my brain from wilting would have been a baby and my house.  Possibly my internet connection would have kept me sane, but that's questionable.  I just don't know that I would have chosen to stay at home, even if I could have.  Nowadays, possibly.  I have a fair bit more to take care of than just the house - I could take a three week vacation and do nothing but repair fence & irrigation, catch up on eleventy billion chores, and for ONCE spend time working my horses more than one lousy day a week.  There would be ever so much to do - and I would love it.

Its not that my world doesn't revolve around my children.  I believe to my core that raising them is one of the most important things I will ever accomplish in this world, and that the price of failing at that task is higher than I can pay.  When I'm not with them I think about them.  I have their pictures and their artwork all over my office so that any direction I look, there they are.  When they are at J's house for the night and I think about going home to a house without them there, my heart turns over solidly in my chest and I get that sort of hollow sick feeling you get when you know something's not right.  I may not have been born to be a mother, but a mother was born right along with my daughter. 

I have  a liberal arts degree - a bachelor's degree in English, to be precise.  Or rather, imprecise, as I honestly believe there's almost nothing more useless in this universe than an English degree.  My liberal arts education did little to prepare me for a career in anything.  College itself provided me with an endless education in athletics and interpersonal relationships, the fine art of beer-bonging without spilling it on your sorority initiation dress and how to set a formal table.  There are, beyond those precious and banal skills, a few things that to this day make their impression known.

I had a roommate my freshman year, Becky.  Becky was the first girl I'd ever heard use the word "masturbate" out loud in front of people.  Becky encouraged me to take some of my general credits in the Women's Studies department.  I ended up with about three semesters worth of women's studies, grounding myself for a lifelong interest in women's rights and women's welfare.  I loved my TA in my Introduction to Women's Studies.   She was out and proud, smart, engaging, challenging.  She was first openly gay woman I had ever met, and she set cornerstone in the foundation of my viewpoint.  From her I learned to see queerness not just as a societal and cultural issue, but as a women's issue.  It was there, in that class, that I began to consider and question what it truly means to be a feminist. 

As a young college student, feminism to me meant the right to be different.  To be respected.  Wage equality.  To be safe from violence.  To have a voice. 

And then I got older.  I had friends get married, become mothers.  I married, divorced, married again.  I became a mother.  I advanced in my career, not to stellar heights, of course, but to higher levels of responsibility and respect.  And throughout that process, my views on feminism advanced as well.

In many respects, feminism to me is still first and foremost about respect, about freedom from violence and ignorance, about equality in the workplace.  But its about a hell of a lot more than that. 

Its about choice.  Its about all of us or NONE of us.   It means that I have to be glad to see the biggest crop of women running for higher office than we've ever had in the history of this country, even if most of them are diametrically opposed to my politics.  It means that I support a woman's decision to be a stay at home mom just as much as I support a woman's decision to pursue a career.  Really being a feminist means that I want all women to have real choices in life, choices to be or not be a parent, to get as much of as an education as we want to have, to have safe and adequate medical care, to be respected in our choice of religion.  To live our lives with dignity, no matter how we choose to live them.  To

One of the things that disturbs me most is when I see women tearing down other women's choices.  Moms fighting over whether you should stay at home or work.  WOHM's who think SAHM's are somehow less smart and missing something; SAHM's who think WOHM's are letting other people raise their children (an assertion with which I most heartily disagree).  Women bloggers who think "mommybloggers" are sellouts; High-revenue bloggers who think bloggers with low readership and no ad revenue are stupid; Moms who have the time, money and ability to cook everything from scratch who judge moms who work too many hours a week and don't. 

I'm left wondering where all of this gets us, as women, as mothers.  Am I better if I tell everybody I'm better than you because I have *this* job or *this* value?  Am I better if I insist you're not as good as I am? 

I have this thought about what it means to be a woman, a mother, a feminist.  And that thought is that we either ALL benefit or none of us do.  That to me part of being a feminist is fighting for the right of women not to be torn down by other women.  That a bigger part of it is for women, ultimately, to really have it all -- "all" being whatever it is they hope, dream, aspire to.  For one it is to be rich and famous.  For another it is to be president.  For another, to raise her children and to keep her house beautiful, care for her husband.  For another, to have the right to marry her partner and not be discriminated against because she's gay.  Ultimately, we all share something that regardless of color, culture or social status puts us in the same room.   Yes, a vagina.  More or less.  ( I had to say that, it was getting too serious in here )

Very seriously, though, I was reading a blog by a SAHM today, and for a moment I started to feel vaguely guilty, and left out - as if she was part of some exclusive club that thinks I'm less of a mother because I work.  And then I realized that NOTHING SHE SAID even vaguely intimated that she had a negative opinion of WOH Moms - she simply had a positive opinion about SAH moms.  I realized the negativity I was reading into her words really came from inside ME.  I understood at that moment that a great deal of the enmity with which we treat other women actually comes from within ourselves, from our own guilt and shame over all the things we are NOT because we aren't taught to value and celebrate all the things that we ARE.

Today, I AM a mother.  I am a career woman.  I'm proud of myself and I'm doing the very best job I know how to do, for my employer, for my children, for myself.  And that has to be enough.  

Mommy doesn't do blood

Cuts, scrapes, stubbed toes - these I can handle.  I handle them well, in fact.  I am the Empress of Band-aids.  In my house, Band-Aids are the placebo for everything that goes wrong.  I mop up the blood, apply a little sticky-backed patch of Doctor Mommy Goodness and off they scamper, back outside to bust something else.  This blood is no problem.

All mommies are Superwoman.  And with few exceptions, all mommies have their kryptonite.

Mine?

Needles.

I am squirming in my seat just typing the damn word.  Needles give me heebie-jeebies of EPIC proportions.  But only medical needles.  Not tattoo needles.  Not sewing needles.  Just the kind of needles that the doctor or dentist uses to put UNDER YOUR SKIN or IN YOUR VEINS.  Omigod, I almost just passed out.

It started at a very tender age.  My childhood pediatrician hated me.  Poor Dr. Tucker, if I so much as thoughtI was going to get a shot or have my finger poked for blood, it took five people to hold me down.  By the time I was in my twenties, I had to caution every doctor I had to put me horizontal for bloodwork.  More than one doctor or phlebotomist insisted "Oh, no, its just a little draw, you'll be fine."  They found out the hard way that I was going horizontal, one way or the other.  Involuntarily works just as well, folks, except you risk injuring your patient.  I've fallen off more than one exam table.  Once I tried to donate blood, because my fireman father - who, incidentally has some kind of kooky award from the blood bank for donating something like 1,000 gallons in his lifetime - insisted that I was not a true American or a patriot or even a human being if I didn't donate blood.  So I donated once when the building I worked in was doing a blood drive.  I made it all the way through the procedure, then passed out in the elevator on the way back to my office, scaring the shit out of some poor man who was riding with me.  He thought I'd died.  (Dude, my fingers are going numb right now.  I can't even THINK about that day without my eyesight fading to black)

I thought pregnancy would cure me of my aversion.  Remarkably, for both of my pregnancies, I did OK with the blood draws and the IV's.  Anything for the baby, I supposed.  But the postpartum surgery I had after A was born quickly proved that my pregnancy-induced-tolerance was only a temporary phenomenon.  Remember how I posted a little bit ago about how its not really funny if the doctor gives you too many stitches in your perineal tear?  Yeah.  So I had to have surgery to correct that.  So I could, you know, GET LAID AGAIN SOMETIME IN MY LIFE.  And I went in, got all dressed for the prom in my open-backed butt-hanging-out hospital gown, reclined on the preop bed, and promptly passed out when they put in my IV.   Oh how I miss the days when anesthesia just meant they put a big mask on your face, you breathed in a few times, and you went down for a nice long nap.  No.  Now they want to stick needles in you.  JUST MY LUCK.

So the whole point of this post, the reason I'm telling you all about how big, tough, me is a total weenie when it comes to needles and blood, is that C had to have a blood test.  My secret, shameful parenting fail is that neither of my children has had basic bloodwork done.  EVER.  I can't do it.  I can't take them.  But C needed to have some blood tests done - long story short, it is likely that C has a double-gene mutation that, if he has it, would cause his body not only to not uptake Folic Acid but also not to process it into the end product that the body needs.  This condition also has some indications for people with anxiety disorders.  For those who take meds for their anxiety disorder, it can cause the meds to make them very nauseated, and mostly rendered them ineffective.   My poor little C has pretty bad anxiety disorder - likely genetic.  He's been having a very hard time lately.  Our pediatrician doesn't think he's going to survive kindergarten very well in his current state, and I concur.  So we want to try some low-level medication to see if he has good results.  Except if he has the gene mutation, medication won't really help.  So he needed a blood test to help find out if that's the case.

I just couldn't.  Could. Not. 

All the credit for getting that done goes to his dad.  And when he called me to let me know it had been done, I almost passed out in my chair as he described the event.  (I think he did it on purpose.  There has to be some way to get me back for the Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts that was our marriage). 

I won't be able to look at the band-aid on his arm without my knees going week and my stomach doing a little flip.  That's how bad I am.

My name is Mary and I'm a Weenie.

Listless Monday: Things I've Lost/Things I've Gained

I take a great deal of satisfaction in having come to motherhood at what the doctors like to refer to as "advanced maternal age".  (And the doctors can just smooch my butt, by the by.  Ageist douchebags)  I know plenty of women who procreated young, married young.  Women I went to high school with are grandparents already, while my youngest isn't in kindergarten yet.  I know that parenting can be harder when you don't have the energy you had, but in many ways it can also be extremely satisfying.  Unlike my friends who by necessity became mature adults when they were in their late teens/early twenties, I enjoyed more than a decade of doing whatever the hell I wanted whenever I felt like it.  I wished I'd traveled more.  Wished I'd written that novel.  But still and all, those were very good years.  I don't have the lingering feeling that I missed my youth.  Now that I'm approaching middle age, I don't have any desire to get a fancy car or a younger boyfriend, or even to go out and hit the party scene as I see too many women my age doing.  I know many of them are trying to make up for a youth they never got to fully enjoy thanks to the responsibilities and fiscal burden of being young parents.   I got to sow my wild oats - and then some, thank you very much. 

No, the things I miss now, as a mom, are not the things that one might expect.  But there are things that are gone from my life, things I really wish I still had:

1.  Language.  I have a B.A. in English.  I have been reading since the age of 3.  I LOVE words.  I like nothing more than reading a deft turn of phrase or a scene described so vividly that I can smell and feel it.  Words used to roll off of my tongue and pen with the ease of a well-oiled hinge.  No longer.  With the onset of my first pregnancy, I fell victim to the dreaded cerebrus maternus-- MOMMY BRAIN.  This insidious disease has taken root deep in my system, and the most prevalent symptom is complete dyspraxia.  I KNOW there is a word that I want to use.  I just can't REMEMBER IT.    And so I have gone from being what I used to gloatingly consider an eloquent person to one who stammers and says "SHIT!  What was that word?  SHIT!"  constantly.

2.  Abs.  I am pretty sure there are still muscles inside my abdomen.  But I can' find them.  Endless crunches, yoga dvds, leg raises and shredding a la Jillian Michaels have failed to cause them to reappear, so I must finally accept the fact that they are gone forever. Along with whatever used to resemble skin tone being my navel and pubic bone.  Seriously, is the skin there always going to wrinkle and sag? 

3.  Money.  Sometimes I have this great dream, wherein I go get a pedicure and have my legs waxed, hit the salon for a good haircut.  Then I go to Barnes & Noble and drop $150 on books, and stop and have a grande nonfat vanilla latte at Starbucks.  On the way home I fill up my tank with premium gasoline, and when I go to the grocery store I buy WHATEVER.  I.  WANT.  Then I wake up.  I cry.  The end.

4.  Coherency.  I believe that the loss of logic and deductive reasoning is a secondary symptom of cerebrus maternus.  Along with the inability to speak, I have lost the ability to remember things like math and people's names, follow simple directions or respond appropriately in social situations.   I try to yell at my dogs and I call them by my children's names - I try to yell at my children and I call them by the dog's names.  I have solved this problem by simply yelling "HerculesRoscoeFosterDogChildAChildB - STOP THAT!!!!"   I put milk away in the cupboards, I pour coffee on my cereal, and on more than one occasion have arrived at work to find that I have two different shoes on my feet. 

5. Me Time.  Its not that I was ever the kind of girl who was into meditation and quiet moments.  But I have always enjoyed having time to bury my nose in a book or sit and watch a movie without interruption.  In the past 8 years, the only time that I have been able to read more than one paragraph of a novel without hearing "Mommy!  I have to go potty!"  "Mommy, I'm hungry"  "Mommy, the dog ate my Barbie and then pooped out her shoe!"  have been when I was traveling for business and staying in a hotel room by myself.  J used to think that my work trips were my chance to go live it up in strange towns with strange men.  In truth, the strangest thing happening was that I would run myself a nice quiet bath, get a glass of wine from room service and fall asleep in a warm tub while reading a book.  I know, you're thinking "Good God, that woman's a HELLION!" 

6.  Music.  They may finally be getting over it, but I have not been allowed to play the piano or sing since my daughter could speak.  Music has always been a part of my life - fourteen years of piano lessons, singing at weddings or whenever I could, teaching myself to play the guitar.  There was a time in my life when I sat at the keys nearly every day.  When the Amazon Girl was a baby, there didn't seem to be time, and the last thing I wanted to do if she was giving me a few minutes of free time by napping was wake her up with my piano playing.  When she was a toddler and could entertain herself, I thought to myself "Finally!  NOW I can play!"  I sat on the piano bench, selected a nice old jazz standard and started to play.  No more had the first notes of "It Had to Be You" left my mouth, when suddenly a curly-haired virago appeared next to my chair.  "NO MOMMY!!  NO SINGING!"  I patiently invited her to sit on my lap.  She refused.  "NO!  Mommy NO SING!"  And so it went.  Every time I sat at the piano for more than a few minutes, a tantrum ensued.  After the second child arrived, any attempt to enjoy a few minutes at the keys resulted in a fight erupting, something being broken, or an emergency which required my immediate attention.  I have been forced to acknowledge that my children were born with an internal radar which informs them the moment I have decided to play the piano.  I can prove this, because last weekend they were playing at the neighbors and after I finished my housework I sat down at the piano.  No sooner had I started to play than daughter fell over and skinned both her knees.  I could hear her screaming from half a block away.   I'm going to try it next when they're at their dad's.   What are the odds they can hear me then?

The price tag for parenting is high, in many respects.  And when I take the time to think about the things that I miss most about being a child-free adult, what strikes me more than those things I no longer have is the presence of new things in my life that I cannot imagine living without.

1.  Purpose.  Before I became a mother, I wandered aimlessly through life.  I did whatever I felt like doing at the moment, I took the opportunities that came along, but I had no direction.  The arrival of my children changed that, not just by necessity, but by the awakening of the realization that I had found my place in the world.  I have identified myself with many titles in my lifetime, all of them meaningful and profound.  Daughter, Cowgirl, Athlete, Adoptee, Friend.  Of all of the titles I hold dear, I cherish "Mother" the most.  And because it is so important to me to live up to all that being a Mom means, I have no choice but to have a direction.  To know where I'm going and what I stand for. 

2.  Flexibility.  Nothing used to annoy me more than when my Grand Plans for things got screwed up.  I always know how I want things to go, and rigidly following plan was also a way of coping with my ADHD.  Any mother knows that while children want and need structure in their lives, that in the grander scheme of everyday, Plans, while noble in concept, are only meant to be adapted to Circumstance.  A Plan is a good thing.  Start with one and do your best to follow it.  If you have children, be prepared for your Plans to be disrupted.  Constantly.  The bigger challenge to me was to learn to be OK with that.  On the large and small scale, I have learned that one of the kindest things I can do for myself as a parent is to learn to be flexible.  To learn that MY plans aren't always going to happen, and to be OK anyway.  My children have given me a great gift by teaching me flexibility. 

3.  Relaxation.  And I don't mean the "spa weekend" kind of relaxation.  Technically falling under the category of Flexibility, relaxation is what happens when you stop trying to be on time for everything, when you stop watching the clock and panicking because you're going to be late for work/church/dinner/appointments.  Relaxation is when you take a deep breath and decide to live in the moment and not care that you didn't make it to the movies because your kids decided to dismantle your washing machine and throw your car keys in the garbage.  Its a survival skill - Relax or lose your mind.  You pick.

4.  Love.  I know, its such a cliche.  It can't be helped.  I thought I knew what love was before.  I thought the love I felt in my relationships was the ultimate kind of love, that needing-wanting to be with someone all the time, that desire for closeness and rapport.  The kind of love I felt for my parents, needing, wanting to please.  The kind of love I felt for my dog or my horse, having someone I could be around who loved me without an agenda, who liked me for me and made me feel good about myself.  Certainly special, but nothing compared to the depth of love you feel when you hold your child for the first time.  When some mechanism deep in your soul that you never realized existed awakens and you realize that THIS is the person you would die for.  This is the person you would sacrifice everything for.  This is the person that no matter what, you will do whatever you can to ensure they are protected, happy.  There is no moment in the world that is so perfect as that moment when both of my children are near me.  None.

5.  Faith.  It was easy to walk away from faith before I was a parent.  When that changed, my perception of the entire universe shifted.  How could I not look at the perfection of my baby, feel that upwelling of joy and fierce love, and not understand that there indeed WAS a greater purpose in life?  Not feel intimately linked to Creation?  My faith has been shaped by my experience as a parent, my understanding of Who I believe God to be honed by my own relationship with my children. 

6.  Family and Friends.  My boundaries and definitions of family were refined once I became a parent.  I began to appreciate and enjoy my own parents even more, because I was finally able to understand what the challenges of raising children can be like, I was able to see how a parent might be doing just the best they can in a difficult circumstance.  I stopped having resentments about the things they did that I didn't agree with, because I got to experience how it felt to have other people question your choices or your parenting style.  My relationships with other certain members of my family deepened, because we finally had some common ground.  Children are life's great equalizers. You might meet someone with whom you think you have nothing in common, but if you are both parents, suddenly you have everything in common.  Interestingly, the people in my life with toxic qualities suddenly became easier to say "no" to.  I no longer have the luxury of tolerating bad behavior, I have children who are learning from me about what friendship means.  I want to model healthy relationships, which means I have to HAVE healthy relationships.

7.  Self Esteem.    Physical perfection no longer matters.  I have to learn to accept myself so that my daughter will not be twisted by my own body dysmorphia.  But even deeper than learning to accept my imperfections has been learning to recognize my strengths.  My children (at least for now) think that there is nothing I can't do.  I can bandage every cut, soothe every hurt, I know how to operate the lawnmower and how to drive a car.  In my children's eyes, I am Superwoman!  Its hard to buy into negative perceptions from others when the people who matter most in the world to me think that I am beautiful, smart, powerful, amazing.  The opinions of the outside world fade into just so much noise, and I can hold my head high, because I have the antidote to the poison of their negativity.

And there you go.  Two lists for . Have yourself a nice day, now.

Naked

When people make fun of disabilities or kids who look different, I turn into two people.  On the surface, my superpowers flare and I become Barnmaven, Defender of the Innocent, Crusader Against Injustice and Ignorant asshattery.   I swoop through the air in my bright pink cape, using my Acid Tongue to serve a Verbal Lashing on the evil perpetrator.  Justice served, I fly back to my telephone booth, magically transform back into Barnmaven the Mom and regular old human being, and then I crawl into my closet and I shed a tear or two.

The tears are from the other person I become when I witness cruelty.  I become the Girl With the Braces.

Thanks to congenital deformities to my lower spine and right hip in conjunction with a C-curve scoliosis, I move a little funny.  Not so much now, but when I was little it was really bad.  After I started walking, my toes pointed straight in toward one another. Straight in.  Not pigeontoed.

Throughout my childhood years, I suffered a combination of leg braces and physical therapy to help my bones move the right way and to strengthen the right muscles so that I could walk more like a normal person.  The braces and the funny red shoes they came with I have almost no memory of, but I remember the physical therapy, using sandbag weights to build muscles and crying because it was so hard.  My right foot, the one with the malformed hip socket, still turns in when I'm not trying to make it go straight, and because of the scoliosis, I give new meaning to the phrase "Baby's Got Back."   

I suspect this has a good deal to do with both my desperate need to be liked (I wanted to feel normal) and my deep-seated distrust of people (they made fun of me - a lot).   Questions I heard in grade school and beyond:  "Why does your butt stick out like that?"  "How come you walk so funny?"   One particular incident in sixth grade, a group of older, junior high aged girls approached me, ready to make fun.  They were laughing.  "You know your butt sticks out?" one girl asked, challenging me.  I turned bright red and looked at the ground.  "I have scoliosis," I mumbled in embarrassment.  "What's that?"  "Its something that makes my back curve the wrong way.  Its better now, I used to wear braces for it."  "Oh.  Wow.  Hey, you guys, leave her alone.  She has a DISEASE." 

In my twenties I remember a guy at a bar that I knew only superficially walking up to me and saying "You know, you'd be a really pretty girl if your butt wasn't so big."  "You'd be a halfway attractive guy if your IQ wasn't so small."

I was lucky.  I outgrew my braces, my differences are mostly under the surface now, unless you're looking for them.  The emotional scars are deeper and longer lasting.  And it is time for me to start letting go of them.

Putting pictures of myself on my blog is excruciating.  Its not only that I know you're looking at the bags under my eyes, the deep lines next to my mouth and the fact that my mouth is crooked and my right eyebrow higher than my left.  And yes, I have  hammer chin.  And I would like you all to not notice those things and think instead that I am pretty.  But what is deeper and worse is that I am sure you can look at my pictures and see my funny leg and my butt sticking out and also the remaining weight from my babies that I keep losing and gaining and losing and gaining.   

But today is Bloggers Without Makeup day.  And so.  Without further adieu, here I am.  Late to the party, as usual. 

Part of me knows that there is a way to overcome my fears of being exposed, and that way is not to continue to think that I am successfully hiding my flaws.  That way is to bring them out into the sunlight.  The people that see them and run away, good riddance.  The people that make mean comments about them, so sad that they remain hopelessly shuttered behind their lack of intelligence and class.  The people that I want to know, the people that I think I can let in a little, they are the people who see me and don't care about those superficial things. 

Which kind are you? 

Admission of guilt and a Pledge

I do it every day.  Sometimes several times in a day.  Sometimes its not just my fingers, its my mouth too. I'm such a bad girl.

But today?  Today it ends. 

Today is the day I take the pledge. 

Today my car becomes a NO PHONE ZONE.

 

The bluetooth headset is charged.  Harder than that will be not checking twitter or texts on my 90-mile round trip to work.  I know I can do this!  Too much is at stake, too many lives have already been lost or changed forever because someone like me just couldn't wait another few minutes to read or send a tweet or make a call. 

Won't you join me today and make your own car a NO PHONE ZONE?

Where would we go and who will watch the kids?

Mr. Lady's post  last Friday got me meandering down the nostalgic pathways of road trips past.  Most of the ones we took in college were short, and usually undertaken for the purposes of aiding and abetting our desire to engage in underage drinking without the possibility of arrest.  Vancouver, BC was close enough to leave after class and be there in the early evening to drink hard cider and Canadian beers (generally superior to commercial American beers, this in the days before microbrews really hit my radar).  I remember driving back to Seattle with the sun coming up right about Bellingham and wishing I didn't feel so hungover so I could enjoy the spectacular sky.  Moscow Idaho was the choice of our cross-state rivals at WSU and too long a drive to be considered for a casual weekend trip.   If we were going to the Apple Cup and it was the Coug's turn to host it, Moscow was SO ON.  But otherwise, no, fank you.

When I pledged a sorority, we did the traditional Pledge Sneak.  Marjorie borrowed her parents' Suburban and I volunteered to drive us all to Ocean Shores, where it predictably rained all weekend.  Since we were only there for the drinking and making up of skits and songs for our return, weather was a non-issue. I'm not sure I'd have offered to the be driver that weekend had I known that the old Suburban's accelerator pedal was incredibly heavy and hard to press down.  By the time we returned to the sorority house on Sunday, my right calf had a Charley Horse that took a week to go away.  Fun weekend, that.  We were creative, or we were at least we were convinced that we were.  If you're ever in town and shove enough wine in my face I'll even sing you the song we made up.  I haven't forgotten it.

I haven't had a road trip since 1998 when J and I drove from Seattle, WA to Toms River, NJ.  That was an incredible adventure, one neither of us will ever forget.  We were in LOVE and nothing could suppress our conviction that youth, love and a sense of adventure would conquer every obstacle in our path.  And then somehow we morphed into parents (I say "somehow" rhetorically.  I know how babies are made).  Everything since then was a family vacation, complete with screaming children, and therefore is classified under "voluntary mashochism" and not "road trip."  As I read Shannon's post, I thought of all the road trips I've taken mentally in my head in the last few years, and I immediately commented, "Let's rent a Winnebago and GOOOOOOOOO!"  I wasn't expecting her to actually respond, but next thing you know there's an email in my inbox to the effect of "You're so f'ing on!  BRING IT!"

Know what?  I am a lame old lady.  Because right after I laughed uproariously (thereby startling the cat in my lap into sinking her claws into my thighs) the very first thought that went through my head was "I only wish I could.  Because the kids and who would watch them, and the animals and who would feed them?   And work, and blah blah blah blah blah."

When did I lose my sense of adventure?  When did I in fact become a boring old woman with absolutely NO redeeming qualities other than great hair and halfway decent boobs? 

If this is what being a grownup is all about, I'm ready to hand in my resignation and rejoin the ranks of the young and reckless. 

I miss the days when I did what I wanted to without thinking of the consequences.  Yes, of COURSE I was irresponsible.  That was a big part of my charm.  I wasn't the ringleader, but whenever one of my partners in crime made a crazy-assed suggestion, I was the first person to jump up on top of the table, rip off my shirt and say "Hell YES! Let's do that!" 

I miss that hippie chick.  I'm not so crazy about the cautious old granny who moved into take her place.  Something must be done.  Something.  MUST. 

I need a partner in crime.  Any volunteers?