Saul Good and Co.

Pretty Much All I Ever Wanted

I've been having a great day. I have a fresh pedicure, which is an instant mood boost, but I also got a really terrific esthetician so I feel like I just came from the spa instead of cramming in a trip to Coolidge Corner on my lunch.  Several strangers complimented my dress. HR is on his last day of camp before the big show and he seems to have found his groove in week two, and I suppose that really set the stage for my cheeriness, if you will. Oh and after the play tomorrow afternoon we're on the first leg of summer vacation palooza. Already? That's what I'm saying, yet I am also saying, "YESSS." For a million, billion reasons, but vacation in and of itself is always welcome.

 

There's the matter of the whole mess of everything in the country going on that I'm hoping to mentally escape as I play in the waves and eat and drink and read mystery novels and just be with all the best people, of course.  I was hoping, at this time one year (and two years) ago, that things would have changed by now. I didn't allow myself to think that they wouldn't get better, and I couldn't dare, couldn't have mustered the capacity to imagine the specific ways that they got worse, but yeah. Everything is a big gross mess and I'm low-to-high-key angry and sad from the time I wake up until I can steal a moment of shifted focus to get to sleep at night. It'll be here when I get back. It'll be here even while I'm living my vacation life. It's just easier to ignore when electricity isn't even an option, and then I have guilt about ignoring things. A catch-22 in SPF 50, that's this whole situation (gesturing to myself). The blog lady's refrain, in E minor. 

 

Anyway, since the happiness has already shown up, I might as well invite it in and feed it well. I look at this picture from HR's first vacation, when he was just three months old and though it was the least relaxing getaway of my life, it was perfect in its way.

He was attached to my boob for 4/5 of the time, and I remember feeling like I was in baby jail, but I'm able to look back on it with warm wistfulness. It was the year when so many people met our baby for the first time, when HR slept in Memere's arms in front of the campfire (and woke about 50 times a night), when my world stopped being about just me. As HR grows, it gets more exciting to look to the weeks ahead and not only appreciate how much less parenting work is mingled with the fun but to know that the memories we make are starting to accumulate, that this is the time when he'll remember things forever. 

 

I look forward to being surrounded by nature and laughing at whatever this year's recurring joke will be and wearing my first red bikini (I'll be 45 in a few months, if not now then when?) and experiencing the particular joy of just hanging out with my dudes, none of us with anywhere to be. I look forward to finding out whatever good surprises await. Only good ones, please.

 

 

I'll be writing about all of this in the rear view in the blink of  an eye, and it'll be fun to see how it all turned out, but not so fast. I've got more work ahead before it even starts, and I hope to savor the moments as they come, even just the general rosiness of this day. It's all a gift and I owe the universe a trillion thank you notes.

 

See ya.. sometime.

 

Mama Rose's Turn

In the future, when I look back at this summer, I imagine I will see it as a sweet season, bursting with friends and family and travel and fun and love. As I live it, I see it that way too, and I cherish all the moments we've had so far even as July is just heating up. Things are good but things are also rough because as HR embarks on the first of two two-week theater camp sessions, the anxiety monster decided to show up uninvited. At first, we thought we were golden. There were a couple of tears at the first dropoff, but we expected first day jitters, and he pulled himself together and came home after a seven-hour day all smiles and excitement. The first half of the week was great. I was breathing easy, like, "Oh, he's getting better! Things are so much better! Theater camp rules!" Haha, you dummy. HA HA frickin' HA. 

The thing is, theater camp does rule. He's having a lot of fun. He can't wait to be in the show. He just can't help what makes him anxious, and I should know about this since I'm a nervous Nell myself and his anxiety has caused my parental anxiety to spike to an all-time high. I mean, I can still do what I need to do while feeling anxious and that's the difference between us right now, but it's a miserable place. Furthermore I would absolutely hate for him to miss out on something he loves because of the anxiety. I do think that, ultimately, it will all be all right, but we need to go full bore on our coping mechanisms as a family.

So yeah, parenting: maybe don't. 

Oh I just love that damn kid so much. When I look back later on, like I said, this part isn't what I'll remember. Sometimes it just really helps to write it out and talk myself through. 

Fonder

Since Friday I've been living la vida no-nino while HR spends some time in Maine with his grandparents and cousin. He's having a blast, and I know for a fact that he doesn't miss me at all, but I can't wait for him to come home tonight. I miss mom-ing. This is not to say that the break wasn't amazing, because it was wondrous, an absolute gift my parents have given us, and also given HR because it's so awesome he gets to spend this dedicated time with his family. Mike and I got to take a trip and see a concert and go out in town and see a bunch of people we know and walk on the beach and eat whatever we want and watch terrible baseball while we drink in strange dives and see a rainbow. We got to sleep in and nap as much as our old bodies required, and I read an entire book (Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner - I recommend) and am all caught up on my DVR queue. I had a bunch of tasks to knock down for an upcoming trip and it would have been a great time to take care of all that, but alas, I squandered the time being completely impractical and indulging my whims as they emerged and it was THE BEST. So yes, having next to zero responsibility for another person (while said person was in very capable, loving, spoiling hands) was a lovely treat, but now it's time for my dude to come home. I miss everything about him. My house feels like a stranger's house. 

I'm working one more day this week, then the three of us are meeting up with friends for the extended holiday weekend and it has the potential to be Epic. Tymes. So, you know, it's an especially charmed time to be me, and don't think I don't know it.

Self-portrait taken at the shrink's office (there's usually good light in there).  

 

Perchance to Dream

One of the best things about HR being on summer vacation is the sleep aspect. Not just for he and I getting to sleep in (I don't have to be at work until 10 and it IS amazing to wake up naturally without an alarm, trust) but all three of us sleep better because we're not anticipating whatever anxiety might await with regard to school drop-off in the morning. The kid usually still crawls in with Mike and me early in the morning, and those few hours of peaceful snuggle time are still the bomb. Maybe if he's doing it when he's 12 we'll need to have a lil chat, but we'll worry about that when we get there. It makes me think of how important sleep is over all, how it contributes to happiness and/or how much of my life that stressing about sleeping or not sleeping has consumed in various ways. 

 

When I was a kid, I HATED going to bed. I had a lot of fears, and bedtime was when they'd manifest. It wasn't until I was a young adult that I discovered the joy of sleeping, and I had just gotten really attached to my snoozing time when I went and had a baby who was not a naturally great sleeper, so then sleep became my most sought-after commodity. I also worried incessantly about how much sleep he was getting, when he'd ever sleep longer, if it was too early to give up his nap, if he should be waking in the night, etc. etc. etc. (you were all there for most of the ride). That all eventually went away, and we're at the point now in HR's development that I can kiss him goodnight and he can read to himself until he's sleepy. Sometimes the sleepiness occurs later than I'd prefer, but overall he's a well rested goober who allows us to be in bed sometimes until 9 on the weekends and that is luxury city. Mike works too much to benefit from this during the week, unfortunately, but weekends are better than nothing. Anyway, summer vacation has its challenges for working parents, but so far it hasn't worn out its welcome and the rest is a huge part of that.

 

In other news, last Saturday my sister and nephew were in town and we had one of those nearly perfect, magical days together that you can only have in the summer in the city, tripping from the Children's Museum to an oasis-like beer garden that was super crowded but cleared out in a minute flat when some rain began to fall and we were able to get a table to rest our beers upon (and stow our children beneath) and we wandered through a movie set on the way back to the T and my nephew got pooped on by a bird and though the supposed luck from that didn't parlay into lottery winnings, we were lucky to get to bask in that togetherness (and the adults got to have a few drinks and chow down on Chinese food after the boys were in bed). 

 

And while my life is full of beauty and wonder the president of the United States is a rapist and a piece of shit and we've always known he was a racist and a piece of shit and somehow it doesn't make a difference and the atrocities that were taking place on the border this time last year never stopped happening but only now they are happening with double-down horror and we need to help these babies even if we feel powerless against the soulless ones in whose gleefully inhumane hands their very lives are held.  This article helped me, if you're wondering how to get started on doing something. All is not lost, but it's getting closer every day unless we all start giving an extra-crispy fuck right now. 

 

 

Who Run the World?

My idols and role models have always been women. My nursery school teacher, Mrs. New and my dance teacher Mrs. Fuller. Mrs. Kellogg in 5th grade. Gilda Radner. Tina Turner. Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. Carol Brady. Maya Angelou. Debbie Allen. Joni Mitchell Patti Smith Toni Morrison Janet Jackson Carole King Queen Latifah. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, of course. My mother and my grandmothers and my aunts and my older cousins. I love all the men in my life and I am so lucky to have grown up among solid, kind, loving men who made me feel safe and were never afraid to pick up a vacuum or change a diaper and gave me the example of the way I should expect and demand to be treated in the world. The women, though, were the tough ones. The emotionally strong and stalwart, where the men, at heart, were softer. The bosses. I grew up in a matriarchal family, to be sure. I went to a women's college. I work in a female-led industry. It's not by accident, in a society that resists this model. Where it's an open secret that the female role of caretaker encompasses so much more than proficiency with the ironing board but the dudes in charge want to keep that secret from being named and exposed, it's important to recognize this. I was modeled after the capable, resourceful ladies who took care of business, and though I'm quiet and unassuming and emotional by nature and I have an ongoing issue with finding my assertiveness, I know this boss lives in me.

There's just a certain kind of woman I live in awe of, whose accomplishments leave me wanting to be a better person and do my lineage proud. One of my grad school professors, for example, is my absolute inspiration. She is so smart and confident and no-nonsense. Intimidating, to a point, but only because when a woman is so sure of herself and not interested in putting being liked before her professional integrity as an intellectual and an educator, it can be scary if you're afraid of getting your mind-ass kicked. She never pandered, which I appreciate, and her dry wit was the icing on the cake. I wanted her approval more than anyone in the world, and when she commented favorably on my work, when I felt like I really earned it, it was like she gave me a million dollars. I still wonder, "What would Cathie do?" when I need to channel some particular fierceness, and I would never say I'm at her level, but her spirit usually helps me through. (She's still alive and well and doing a great service to the world, btw.)

I'm not sure what got me thinking of this, but the more I look back, the more I know it's true. I adore the men in my life, but I'm a women's woman to the end. Mike was raised in a household of boys, but I don't think he or his brothers would dispute their mom's influence in showing them what strength is. I hope the combination of our experiences and comfort in a female-forward environment will help HR be the best man he can grow up to be. People bristle at the word "feminist" in this day and age and even though I don't get why, I can't put a label on anyone for them. I will say that I'm a feminist and I was raised by feminists--in action, in deed--whether they claim the title or not.

In conclusion, Warren 2020.

Wayback Machine of the Senses

Most weekdays I'm up earlier than Mike and HR so I can get a head start on our day, and yesterday I got up extra early because we had a school event and I wanted to make sure I had everything set. "Overpreparation or Death," that's my personal crest. I wasn't happy when my alarm went off, but in the end it gave me a few minutes to sit in peace, sipping my coffee and reading about Bob Fosse near the open window while the rain provided a soundtrack of gentle patter as well as a coolish breeze. All too soon I had to rally the troops and get on with it, but being able to relish that moment set the tone for a gem of a day and replenished my inner peace reserves. Seasonal allergies aside, late spring and early summer are a bonanza of positive sensory experience for me, and the June rain is a powerful memory trigger, bringing me back to the screened upper porch of my childhood home, the precipitation washing away the grime and exhaust of Route 2, the scent of hot asphalt mixed with grass clippings and sulfuric spewage from the paper mill. 

 

The other day I spotted wild strawberry blossoms as I walked across my mother-in-law's backyard, and it set off my trip down a nostalgic rabbit hole. Right then, I was there at Memere's trailer, picking her lawn clean of the teeny, insubstantial berries, sweet grit in my teeth. I smelled the pine pitch and the fine, worm-studded earth that tumbled loose when I climbed the hill in the lot behind that house, using tough, deep-rooted grass as a handhold. A hill as big as a mountain. I wonder how big it is in reality, if it still exists. 

 

Lilacs have passed, but lilacs belong to the yard that's not really a yard anymore where Pup lorded over the lawn, burning the dry grass to make it come up green and to hide his cigarette butts. He cultivated peonies, white and pale pink puffs emerging after the ants had a chance to perform their enchantment on the bulbs. I never knew they were called peonies until I was grown and they were gone. 

 

Warm weather at Aunt Sue's: a melange of rhubarb leaves and dusty barn, raspberry bushes and fallen apples in ferment. My earliest memories of her outdoor space are tinged by wood smoke from the bonfires she held next to the weeping willow. I carried my love of that scent into my teenage years, the romance and possibility of parties in the open air because where else would we have parties? 

 

Aunt Peggy's is the calm funk of a lake cove, of herbs from the health food store, sleepytime tea, later chlorine when she moved to a home with a pool and a hot tub in a little shed besides. 

 

Most of the summers of my life have been spent in the city, and that's a distinct jumble of sights and smells that I mostly don't hate, but it's important for me to escape. To revisit the homelands and be reminded, but also to venture to the beaches I've come to know since relocating to this part of the coast. Wake me up, O sea spray, O sun-warmed dune grass, O pungent low tide.

 

Every season has its pull, its ability to set me adrift on mem'ry bliss (RIP, Prince Be) but don't bother me now, while I'm deep in the greeny-greens and dark browns and gurgle of water immersion that signals summer's cusp. 

Little Miss Queen of Darkness

Things are going pretty well, overall. I'm boring when things are going well. Just facts. 

I did promise to make an effort to embrace what typically makes life so happily uninteresting, so here's some groundwork. Lately I've been feeling myself, physically. I've touched on how moving my body directly impacts my mental health and I am in that place right now, racking up the miles and hitting the mat. I've been juggling the same five pounds for the past few years, and I've gotten comfortable with the idea that that's not going to change. The thing is, the number on the scale and the actual way I look don't matter, anyway. It's all in my head. I truly feel more at ease with myself when I'm getting in my regular sweats. It changes how I see what I see in the mirror. I sleep better. I'm less anxious. It's so simple, so obvious, so life affirming. 

I'm not an extreme sports person or an adventurer. I've never wanted to to climb a mountain or run a marathon or learn to fly a plane. My passions are small and achievable, and since the beginning of the year I've really been able to capitalize on feeding my hunger for art and culture, seeing live music as much as possible (Sharon Van Etten! Lizzo!! Patti Goddamn Smith!!!!!!!!) and reading my face off. I've crammed in so many good books, and I feel like I'm learning a lot as well as being inspired and entertained. I'm a curious cat, and I can't seem to read fast enough to scratch the surface of what I want to know and experience. May that never change.

My major work event is over, and was a success (bless) and now that things are settling around here, my writing hiatus is just about over, so also bless.

Summer has pulled up to the curb and though I have an uneven relationship with the season, our calendar is a bingo card of fun and I'm ready for it. 

Finally, and most notably, just in time for school to be over of course, HR seems to be in a manageable place with his anxiety. I will take that win.

Soon there will be some more writerly meditations, but for today just saying that things are going well and here's the how and why. 

Pretty Pretty Pain Cave

It bums me out when I'm not on a regular blog schedule. I've had some actual busy-times reasons to not be writing, but I feel undisciplined when I'm not fulfilling a self-prescribed quota. Sometimes I let mental laziness win when I do have something I want to write about but just don't feel like getting started, and I like to keep my laziness to weekends, vacations and after HR's beditme. I just finished Maid by Stephanie Land, which is the true story of a single mom who had to fight her way out of poverty to pursue her dream as a writer. It wasn't my favorite book of all time, but the finer points of navigating this country as a poor person, the way the system is rigged to keep people down and solo parenting really hit home. The book inspired me, not so much for her ultimate success (I am happy for her of course - I believe her debut memoir is a best seller) but because even when she was down in it, scrubbing toilets and fighting for food stamps and sharing a mold-ridden studio apartment with her toddler, she was able to find moments of beauty to focus on and write about. I want to be able to do that, even when things don't feel beautiful. I think I'm especially suited to writing about hard things, and sometimes I can make them pretty to read, but writing about beauty eludes me. I'm capable of experiencing and appreciating these golden moments, but trying to present them in that way is one of my biggest challenges. Hence, it's a challenge I have to go after. We're halfway through the calendar year, and I'm hereby committing to three things, as a writer, for 2019:

1) more regular blogging (after my big work event is over in a couple of weeks)

2) finish the first draft of my novel by New Year's Eve and

3) focus on beauty, interest and pleasure. 

It wouldn't be authentic if I totally stopped writing about painful things or even just the unglamorous bits of real life, but I truly appreciate all the authors I've ever read who have been able to transport me from life's difficulties with their words and I want a crack at following in their footsteps, maybe even doing the same for even one person.

Incidentally, after the run of books I've just ingested, I need a break from reading nonfiction for awhile. If anyone has a great fiction read (preferably escapist, but I'll consider something heavy) let me know. 

Beauty/Art/Words/Life - it's the cusp of summer and there's no better time to do this. 

By Fives

5 years ago today I lit this firecracker. It gives me a pretty good sense of where I was as a parent at the time, to be sure. 

10 years ago today I saw the first drops of blood that foretold my eventual miscarriage. 

15 years ago today my friend and I were getting ready to fly to the midwest so we could roadtrip back in her car.

20 years ago today I don't know what I was doing because I don't have a digital trail to 1999, just a dusty old journal packed away somewhere. If I had to guess, I was sitting right where I am, doing a version of the same job, emailing with Mike about what we wanted to have for dinner.

25 years ago today I was getting ready to go home for the summer after my first year of college, or was maybe even home already. I didn't know at the time it would be the last time I lived with my family.

30 years ago today I was doing whatever it was that I did on any given spring day at 14, likely gearing up for dance recital, obsessing over algebra and the boy who sat in front of me in algebra. It would be another year before I started my first real journal so I'll never truly know and that's ok. 

35 years ago today I was HR's age, and my empathy for him right now is as sharp and unshakeable as it has ever been. 

40 years ago today I was four years old. My memories are few and unreliable, but it's safe to say it was a scary and chaotic time for me and my family. Hey loves, we got through it. 

It's amazing to reflect on the many lives I've lived, even as it is all the same life, and to be able to call up so much of it in my own words. It's great fortune, to have that access, even when what I might read is painful or deeply embarrassing. I didn't start journaling with the conscious intent to have a detailed record, it was more of a working-out-my-feelings endeavor, but that was the side effect. The evidence of growth is all there. The evidence of strength and fight and resilience. The evidence that I was a person in the world and did what I did and the people in my life were there, even the ones for the shortest time. I love the ability to look back, but not more than the ability to take all that I've learned and seen and done and feel it all and move forward. I take the notion of the future for granted. I set an intention that I see the present for the gift that it is. 

Moving Meditation

I'm tripping out on the dopeness of the mind-body connection today. I've always thought that it makes sense that so many writers are also runners, and vice versa. I have some of my best ideas during my runs. If I have a mental knot, it's often untangled as pound out the miles. I rewrote a major character in my novel from the ground up this way, and I wasn't even cognizant before I tied on my sneaks that she didn't feel right in her original conception. Running as exercise plays at least an equal role in the upkeep of my mental and creative health as it does for preserving my matronish fig. Walking, for me, yields a different result. It's slower, calmer, lighter on epiphanies and but heavy on the inner peace.

For boring housekeeping reasons, I've been walking to work lately and though it takes longer and requires more preparation than driving, it's proved beneficial for so many reasons outside of the obvious physical activity. For one, I get to be out there and appreciating springtime while it's right in my face. I note that it goes so fast every year, and I still feel the keen lament that so many full blooms have already come and gone, but the past few days I've been literally stopping to smell the roses (ok tulips, lilacs, etc.) and keeping my eyes open to appreciate how ludicrously beautiful the Boston area is this time of year and it makes me feel proud and fulfilled in a way that's not possible from behind a windshield. It's also the perfect time in my life to let my mind wander and see what it comes back with. As I've mentioned a bunch, HR has been experiencing some school-related anxiety and we're all suffering through it together. It's been stoking my own nervous nature, and I'm trying not to let it show so that he feeds off of it. I think I've been successful so far in that effort, but it doesn't mean it isn't swirling around inside 24/7. The walk lets me think it through gently, and on my terms. It helps me accept that I'm doing as much as I can and that, ultimately, time will pass and one way or another he'll be all right because we're getting help and he's growing up and we love him and he knows he is loved. Day to day is precarious, and it's hard not to focus on my worries, but the walk helps me sort them out.

Today I passed Junot Diaz on the sidewalk. We made eye contact and I could tell the moment he realized I recognized him. We continued our separate ways, each stonefaced, thinking our private thoughts. I can't speculate if he felt shame or sadness or nothing, and of course he doesn't know me so maybe his mind was on any kind of plane, but for me it set a ponderous tone for my walk. If I'd encountered this literary hero of mine a few years ago, I would likely have fangirled out in some way but now, knowing what I know about him as a person, it just made me feel disappointed and melancholy and it turned the next few miles into a meditation on the dark complexities of human nature. We all make mistakes, sometimes we learn from them, sometimes we're sorry. Sometimes we're punished, sometimes not. Sometimes people with exquisite gifts do bad things and continue to do them even when they know they're wrong and hurtful and I don't know why, but it's all part of life. That's true, but it's also true that, at the very least, if my kid is having trouble, I can be here for him, and that was a comforting conclusion as I emerged from the gradually greening stand of beeches near my office. 

HR turned 9 on Saturday and by all measures he's a smart, imaginative, loving and happy kid. He knows who he is, and he's wholly himself. He has two parents whose love for him is fierce and unrelenting. Mike and I are a team and we can borrow from each other's strength as needed and that will get us through the rough parts. Soon enough spring will turn to summer. Soon enough I'll be back to my frustrating car commute, singing at top volume and working on my creative swears (I'm partial to "fuck knuckle" lately) for traffic offenders, which is not without its therapeutic merits. Soon enough I'll blink and our boy will be nine times two and ready to leave the nest and goddess willing, I'll still be around to witness it. 

I'm grateful for my functioning legs and my healthy brain and the ways they work together to get me to this place of sanity.