In which I am reminded that my daughter rocks

Okay, sometimes I lose sight (only for an instant, of course) of just what cool and excellent people my children are. When they are refusing to _____________ (pretty much any phrase will do here), or when they are in the throes of a full-frontal drama attack, or when they make me feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing—in those moments I can’t see the forest for the trees. I just blunder around, the high-priestess of self absorption and annoyance, attempting (without success) to sigh my way out of the conflict. Inevitably though, some seemingly small gesture or word from one of my kids skyrockets me into the blue, just below the cloud-line, and I finally see that lush and fertile forest in all of it’s depth and glory, as if for the first time.

Case in point: our trip to the doctor today. My son has had crazy high fevers for nearly a week, fevers that manifest themselves most pointedly in the wee hours of the morning (105 degrees at 3:30am is no party for anyone involved). The poor boy has been a trooper throughout, sweating and hotter than anything that isn’t actually on fire reasonably should be, yet polite and sweet in his request for yet another change of dry pajamas. It’s been a roller coaster ride of he’s-better-he’s-worse and so we had to make another trip to the pediatrician, and had to drag his sister along for the ride.

She was whining and dragging her heels from the moment she was appraised of the doctor plan, staunchly declaiming, “I’m NOT going. I WILL NOT go,” even as we made our way to the car. She hemmed and hawed in the backseat, sighing repeatedly and loudly (where’d she get that?), all the way to the waiting room. She managed to reign it in for the public good, but once the visit was over and we returned to the car, her crabbiness was ressurected. I’m driving, trying to remain neutral (She’s had a long day at school, of course she doesn’t want to get dragged to the doctor, who would? Sure,  I get it. She needs her dinner, she probably didn’t eat her lunch again or drink enough today and this is how it goes…but I wish she’d f*ing can it already). Somehow, we all make it to the front door in one emotional piece, and then she says, “gluey martin is a little tiny ghost.”
“What?” I say.
She repeats herself.
I am delighted by this sentence. “That sounds like the start of a poem,” I say.
Her eyes light up and she says, “His favorite food is jam on toast!” (slight pause) “I’m going to write the rest of it!” She kicks off her shoes in a way most joyful (and without hitting anyone) and runs to the kitchen, where all such things are created. She returns moments later (seriously, moments) with this, written out in her charming, 7-year-old hand:

Gluey Martin, the little tiny ghost
poem by MMG

Gluey Martin is a little tiny ghost.
His favorite food is jam on toast.
He sneaks around at ten o’clock.
When you see him he gives you a shock.
One night he scared some robbers away
By saying he would kill them if they wanted to stay.
So if you see a little tiny ghost
Don’t be afraid. It’s just Gluey Martin.

I am stunned by its completeness and its mix of the whimsical and the sinister. She beams up at me, utterly transformed from the quivering pile of complaints that she was ten minutes before into a self-assured second-grader who understands where she fits in the world and how the world fits around her. Now I realize that this poem isn’t Yeats or Elliot or Adrienne Rich, but I love it, and so does she. I reminded, not for the first time, of how incredibly creative she is. Art-making has been her friend and her tool almost from birth—by the age of two she understood (unconsciously, of course) that she could process her experiences, the good and the bad, by drawing them or sculpting them and so work out whatever she needed to. A lot of her foul moods can be softened immediately by putting a pen and paper in her hands (why do I not remember this more often?!?).

I am so thankful that she has connected with such a fundamental and powerful communication tool so early in her life. May she never become disconnected from it. I guess it’s our job to ensure she doesn’t, at least for the first 18 years.

the gift of spring

What an insanely gorgeous day. The kind of beautiful, sunny, it-smells-like-spring-and-thank-god-because-the-whole-city-is-f*ing-cranky and-who-can-be-in-a-bad-mood-when-it’s-finally-warm day that makes you thankful to live where the winters are long. Without that tedious winter driving you to the brink, you can’t fully appreciate the gift of the newly warm and nearly verdant. There’s such hope in a day like this you can almost put your hands on it. Makes you want to try.

To scoop up that hope and hug it close, run into the nearest office building, ride the elevator to some feng-shui-challenged cubicle where a perfect stranger has been doing something menial and mind-numbing for hours, smile down at him beatifically like the savior you are, and place that armload of springtime hope right in his lap. He would beam up at you, unable to believe his good fortune, that you, kind stranger, have chosen him to receive this mood-enhancing, life-altering bounty. Then you’d run outside and do it again, and again, turning the city into a glowing mecca of gladness and goodwill, one beat-down worker at a time. Neighbor would hug neighbor, dog would hug rat, hands across America, world without end.

Until it dips below 40 tomorrow and the veil descends once more.

an abundance of pleasures

No matter how you try to spread ‘em around, events insist on traveling in packs. Like you pick a day for one great thing and the gravitational pull of its awesomeness drags others to fill in all the days around it. It sounds like I’m complaining, doesn’t it? Which is ridiculous, given that this week is full of things I want, but they are all circling around my 40th birthday party in a way that is starting to feel overwhelming. My sister is coming into town—great. Fifteen of my close friends are coming over for a dinner to be fabulously prepared by my best foodie friend—also great. A playwright that I have longed to work with (for years!) has asked me to do a reading with another actor that I have also longed to work with—double greatness. But it’s all happening within a 36 hour period. Can’t we share this wealth among the other 363 days of the year when nothing of particular note is happening?

The fear is that I won’t be able to participate fully in these experiences because of the demands of the others. My sister will feel slighted by the need for party preparations; I’ll cut short the all-nighter hopes I had for my birthday party in order not to completely suck onstage the next morning; I’ll suck onstage anyway because, in spite of my best intentions, I will have drunk too much wine and be hopelessly hung-over, and blow any chance I might have had to work on the larger play with these two excellent men of the theater.  I could’ve said no, you say? That’s true. But then I would be spending the aforementioned 363 regular days kicking myself for the missed opportunities. Just shut yer friggin’ pie hole and enjoy it, you implore? Yeah. That’s sound advice. Let’s hope I can take it.

Bedtime

It’s bedtime again. My son, tucked in only moments ago, has already boarded the train to dreamland. But my daughter is resisting the inevitability of it with all of the force her seven-year-old will can muster. It’s a force to be reckoned with. “I need to go to the bathroom. My hands are dry. There’s a cramp in my foot. I can’t sleep, mommy. My mind is racing.” And certainly, I can sympathize. She comes by it honestly enough—I spent many a wakeful seven-year-old night freaking myself out about vampires outside my window. I’m sure insomnia is hereditary.

But you know what, honey? As much as Mommy loves you and wants you to feel safe and secure, and would hold your hand as you drift off to sleep, right now, Mommy needs you to GO TO BED. Mommy needs to clock out, to set aside her mommy-ness, even  just for a few hours before she, herself, struggles to fall asleep.

Eventually, I know, sleep will come. For all of us. But while you’re waiting for it, the night and the dark seem to stretch on out forever.

the power of perspiration

Whenever I am feeling completely out of sorts, when the list of things to accomplish far exceeds my ability to complete it, when I feel my life spiraling out of control, I reach for…the scrub brush. A bucket full of hot soapy water, a brush, two rags (one for kneeling on and one for drying), and the methodical removal of grime from the bathroom floor alchemically combine to create a bubble of security and calm. Swish, swish, scrub, scrub, wipe it clean. Mr. Miyagi was definitely onto something. The meditative motion of washing the floor clears my head and pulls everything into focus. I can accomplish this task. I can make my floor clean. I am capable of doing things. One step, one section at a time, and then it’s done. I get an unreasonable amount of self-satisfaction when I finally stand up at the threshold of the bathroom and admire my work. And for a few minutes after, as the lemony scent of achievement wafts through the house, I feel like I can finish anything.

With my new sense of power, I turn to the next task on my life list: reorganizing the pantry. With it’s piles of half-completed craft projects, ancient cans of corn starch and experimental soups, wrapping paper, boxes, packing supples, hand-me-down dishes–where can I put those? Where’s the step ladder? How did this wax get all over the microwave?!?

Ugh.

Maybe I’ll just scrub the floor.

And today I am 40

My birthday has landed, and I woke up with a cold. How poetic. Forty. I can’t believe it’s here. This is a challenging one—putting me in a very strange place emotionally. Mid-life-crisis-y I suppose. If only I had the money to buy the…what is it that women are supposed to do when they crack? If not the penis car, then what? Trips to exotic locales with other middle-aged girlfriends? Plastic surgery? Not my style. There is a decided dearth of ideas on this situation coming out of Hollywood for those of us still partnered. Maybe I should take up painting? Join the Peace Corps?

I don’t know what exactly I thought I’d be doing when I achieved this milestone, but I’m sure I had the expectation of being able to pay my bills…And yet, here I am, scrabbling up the tumbling rockslide, descending into the maw of debt. Like the rest of middle-class America. I still haven’t decided what I’m supposed to be when I grow up. I’ve spent so much of my life making art and having random day jobs, then having children, that I have no career, and not much of an idea what that career could/should/would be. I ask the universe to do me the favor of revealing my path over the coming year. Or at least providing a general idea of where the path might begin…

Jumping in

I’m starting fresh. My entry into the online world of words has been slow, but I have begun it, and this blog is my phase 2. I started on a writers forum, which was great, for a short while. Getting immediate feedback on my work was helping to light a fire under my behind to keep writing, keep posting. And then the bloom, as it inevitably does, faded. In order to read what people had to say about my work, I had to slog through and comment on too many pieces that held no interest for me. Life is too short to have to read bad writing and then think of something constructive and encouraging to say to the writer. Is that harsh? Certainly I did run into a few talented people, but I wasn’t allowed to limit myself to interactions with them. Ultimately, I wasn’t getting enough useful feedback of my own work to make the slogging worth my time. This all sounds amazingly self-involved, but if I can’t be unapologetically self-involved on my blog, then where?)

And here’s the other thing—I realized that I’ve been trying to make myself into a fiction writer, and, truth be told, it’s a shoe that doesn’t fit. So I’m officially joining the blogosphere, and hoping that my contributions will be worthy. My goal is to speak without censoring—to write the truth (albeit my truth) without worrying about ruffling feathers. Here goes. Geronimo.