29 September 2007

Monkey Bars and Orphanage
Current mood: grateful

Fergus is playing in Brian's closet right now and it's all I can do not to run in there and yank him out, but I don't want to make a weirdness out of him hanging out in an empty, sunny room. Besides, we both discovered the exhilaration of hanging full-weight from the steel rod that formerly held his father's wardrobe, now boxed, bagged or keeping other folks warm and shod. Just an empty, sunny room now with neither positive nor negative energy; I like to think that keeping the door shut for a few months with its window open allowed for a cleansing, made room for replacement energy, for renewal. One day it will be full of clothes again -- a stranger's, to be sure -- but for now it is a place of meditation and monkey-hanging. I keep a mirror blocking the door most times to deflect entrance, removing it only for purposes such as today's.

Fergus was up during the night, vomiting in his bed; I forgot how scary it was to vomit as a child, how it's the most uncontrolled feeling in the world -- I remember vomiting as my first pondering of death...as in, "Mommy, am I dying?" to which my mother would just sigh and roughly wipe my face with a washcloth, shuttle me back to bed with coke syrup and ice chips and order me to "stay in bed, throw up in the trash can if you need to." I think about how scared I felt last night, helpless...there are these moments in parenting: helplessness, stupidity, seat-of-one's pants action driven by an intense desire to comfort, to fix...my mother doesn't have that instinct. What you will see of her is an act: Her motherhood is a role in a play and she's had more curtain calls than were ever merited and she's never afraid, not truly; one would need empathy to fuel fear and she sadly lacks it. I am embarrassed by her but I try to remember that embarrassment is the bastard child of anger and that it requires accountability and I will not be responsible for her odd and bad behavior but I will sure as hell relish my anger and breathe it out in fiery asana or sing loudly off-key while scrubbing the shit out of pukey mattresses. I love my emotional orphanage, even when it makes me cry, my perspective uncluttered by mixed signals or ambiguous lessons...loudly and clearly, I was wordlessly instructed to make my own way and I've made it, I'm here. Here is good.

9 September 2007

I love my roommate.
Current mood: melancholy

I have the best roommate ever: My four-year-old son, Fergus.

Just now, as I was folding a pile of linens that'd been collecting dust on the guest room bed for over a week, I sneezed loudly, a big ACHOO! that shook the walls and up, through the floorboards, came a loud, "Bless You!" to which I responded, "Thank You!" and then he said, "You're welcome!" and I thought that it was just about the most grown up exchange of politeness I'd had in ages.

We're doing okay, the two of us, in case anyone was wondering. Our routine is solid: Up at 7, breakfast for him, coffee for me, vitamins for both of us; a bit of Sesame Street before "daycare," which until Friday had consisted of four days a week with Joel and Ruby -- sometimes with guest appearances by Mina, Elijah and Eugene -- but will change tomorrow with the advent of PRESCHOOL! We are both excited and nervous; his last venture into a structured school environment was unsuccessful because at two, ain't nobody sitting still for no reason and this was somehow disruptive to the group (who were, all judgement intended, unsettlingly calm for two-year-olds -- I suspected beatings) so I pulled him out with little ado. Pre-K, which Brian and I had waffled about for ages, is now as inevitable as my full-time day job and necessary to acclimate him to kindergarten where I hope the Pledge won't stick and where I wish for a solid introduction into the world of "normal," a place with which I'd wanted to keep him unfamiliar but necessity is the mother of invention and I'm living in a world now invented for me against my will and am relying more on necessity than whim than ever before.

At night we have crafts: Playdough, crayons, Tinker Toys and puzzles; he's fond of a show called Martin Mystery that comes on pre-bed time and I'll allow it if it's not a bath night. After bath, solidly at 8ish, we indulge in the awesomest thing to come down the pike since potty training: Chapter Books. We've just finished Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and are solidly into Peter Pan but he's been distracted by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so we switch them up each night. Next in the queue is Huck Finn, although I think we're supposed to start with Tom Sawyer but if my memory serves me correctly Huck manages to summarize what we've missed pretty well in the first chapter in case addled moms like me screw up the order. He falls asleep quickly, I retire to the sofa for a bite and a half-hour of mindless television (or mindful, depending on my mood: When The Levees Broke is on again and I've been sucked into its tragic pageantry for the second time in as many years); I have a cocktail, I make the coffee for the next morning, I pick up the toys and the books and the crafts and I lay out our vitamins in individual dishes for immediate morning consumption.

Then I collapse, only to have my tiny roommate climb into bed with me most mornings at 6 when his father would normally have risen for work and cleared a space for a growing boy with too-long toenails and an irritating penchant for breast fondling. Lucky, I guess, that I don't have a bigger roommate with the same fondness.