Bringing the Outside In

I'm sitting here on a cool July night, after a spectacular thunderstorm this afternoon, in the dark, quiet house. The Whirling Dervish, AKA Graysen, has finally succumbed to sleep after much heartache, tears, neediness, frenetic energy. He changes on a dime, I spend all my waking hours, it seems, trying to keep up with him. His new thing: if his shoes are ON and we remove them he pitches the holiest of holy fits. He literally acts as though he's losing it. He won't sit for more than a few minutes in his hichair. I usually have about three minutes of peaceful seated eating time before he's climbing out and, invariably, into my lap to nurse. He nurses ALL THE TIME. This morning we were up at 5:30 because he couldn't stop nursing, and switching sides, forcing me to constantly shift my position in bed to accommodate his demands. By morning, I am exhausted, wrung out, dehydrated. I almost feel violated, my body beyond my control.
This child can slay me with his smiles, and then leave me feeling depleted beyond all possibility.
I say this as the mother of four, and he is my youngest. Though the other three were intense, with this child I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster with no seatbelt, and no promise of any reprieve.

Chris and I were at odds tonight over smallish slights from the night before and a couple from today. Gory details aside, he feels as though I've been pulling away and being rude to him. I feel like I've been in a funk and am trying to be direct with my feelings. It all culminated in tears tonight--mine--and feeling at the very edge of myself. It seems, in our marriage, that we rocket between extremes. Extreme happiness and passion, extreme upset and hurt. Like a bipolar marriage. Like a rollercoaster, with no seatbelts, no reprieve.

So I came here, to the couch where my butt is slowly working a groove into the cushion (again with that issue of my "home office") and tried to find some definition around my grief. I am close to some sort of epiphany, I already grasp it in theory...but trying to bring it into my psyche and live from that place is proving difficult.

I am struggling with the idea that I keep looking to the external to fix the internal. That job I wanted is a prime example of this. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with desiring a position of paid employment doing what you love and have worked so hard to build. Therein lies my disappointment. Alternately, however, I knew going into the long wait that if I DID get the job I would be facing a very steep learning curve, be put into a position that would challenge my fundamental nature (mostly introvert whereas I would be required to be extroverted), and I'd have to devote a larger block of time to the work. Evenings, special events, weekend events...no straight 40 hour workweek for that position.

I knew this, and had this nagging sense of insecurity about it. Would it mean I'd have less time for the kids? Gray is still so little...what would I do if I had to work late and Chris wasn't home yet? How often could I really ask my mom to help out? So many questions. As the backbone of the family when it comes to managing the kids' time and needs, this concerned me. Of course.

I chose to ignore it, feeling that I'd figure it out. In the end, it figured me out.

In the dust that is my hopes for that position I can see something more clearly than before. I don't have to take a job to continue my creative pursuits. Perhaps, in fact, I can separate the two things and really create on my own terms. Design, writing, photography...for ME. And, hopefully, publication here and there.

The largest lesson in all of this: though I know better, with my mind, my spirit isn't quite up to speed with the idea that validation for my life and love needs only come from within ME. I don't have to land that director position to prove I have the skills I have been building for so long.

Right now I am faced with a dilemma. My inner editor wants to grab my hand, read this over, and poke holes in it completely. It's rambling, it doesn't hang together. What in HELL are you really trying to say, anyway?

Ya know...fuck it. What I'm trying to say is this:
I live on the fringes of this brilliant raw world where everything either brings great joy or great sorrow. My time is rarely my own and I am always tired. My belly sags, remembering the stretching of each tiny being I made with my blood and bones....and my heart is filled up with them. My marriage is a blessing and a curse, my husband alternately my best friend and confidante and the person who most makes me want to run screaming. I embody this rawness, this deep thick life...and I both crave it and feel repelled by it.
I can validate myself, and need validation.
And I got a big kick out of saying FUCK it. Fuck it!

Finally

I found out on Friday that I didn't get the job I wanted. I was bummed. The person hiring, however, went on to tell me that the decision wasn't an easy one, and that she was impressed with me personally. She asked if I'd be interested in interviewing for a different position within the school--Administrative Assistant to the Director of Admissions. Basically, none of the stuff I enjoy doing. Not a creative position.
I said yes, I'm interested. And I am, for the following reasons:
1. The tuition benefit for school employees is phenomenal. Without working there, my kids wouldn't be able to attend (nearly 15k per year).
2. I suspect that this would be more of a straight 40 hour/week position, thus lending me more time and less stress for the kids and my own creative pursuits (the other position would have likely required a lot of extra time).
3. It's a regular paycheck with benefits.

So, I hope to hear about an interview, and was told that this position would start soon. School is just around the corner, after all.

Here's hoping.

Getting away, getting back...

I feel like this lately--like a speck of a bug being followed by shadow poised on the very edge of the world. I try to focus on the color, rather than the precarious ground beneath my feet, but it's so easy to lose sight of the glorious view.

Last Sunday, we got away. Loaded up the Moose (our burly and beloved '85 Landcruiser) and trekked out to a canyon about 45 minutes from town. Chris, my mom, Graysen, me...in the rattling truck, beneath the hot hot sun, on a day of raw feelings. Chris's work schedule, 12+ hour days 6 days per week with a 120 mile round-trip commute, has left him feeling flayed. I struggle to offer my support while stuck in the quagmire that is, on an almost daily basis, parenting four kids. We both have our burdens, and it's so tough to see each other without the cast of our own shadows. Last Sunday saw us getting a late start after much tension, and there were few words between us as we closed in on the mysterious and treacherous canyon that wends its way up from Dixon Apple Farm. In the canyon, a stream, butterflies, wildflowers...a reprieve from the parched desert landscape that otherwise surrounds us, pulling all the moisture from our skin.
A roostertail of dust followed us along the stretch of road by the farm and we rounded the bend, mouth of the canyon in sight, only to come up short in front of a locked metal gate. ROAD CLOSED. The canyon out of reach.
We turned around, defeated, and mused about the reasons the road was now blocked off. Our suspicion: in January one of my mother's co-workers drove her car off a cliff somewhere up here. She wasn't found until March at the base of a cliff in a canyon so remote that rescue workers had to rappel in to retrieve her body. The papers referred to the canyon where she was found as Bland Canyon, a label my mother was uncomfortable with. "There's simply no place in Bland Canyon where she could have plummetted from such a height in her 2 wheel-drive car," she said. The only obvious place is here, on this now blocked road that winds up, up, and around one of the most frightening corners I've driven. The one-track dirt road snakes its way around the corner where there's no guard rail on the lip of a drop-off nobody would survive. It only makes sense.
In lieu of venturing further into the canyon we planned to visit, we took a right turn past the apple farm and went instead into Bland Canyon. As Mom described, the road did not climb high enough to create a suicidal drop-off. Rather, it meandered through the bottom of the canyon, was shaded by evergreens. Recent rains had raised clusters of wildflowers, and at one point I called the halt, grabbed my camera, and was awestruck by the small world I found unfolding on a crop of coneflowers. White butterflies, reddish spiky bees, bright red aphids, a honeybee or two...the air was thick with life, the flowers host and witness to all of it. Beyond that, we found a pull off where we explored for awhile, all three of us adults with cameras in hand. Then, we moved on, and found a road that climbed away to the left. With Moose in 4 low we climbed up an old washed out track, passing a sign that piqued our interest:



A cemetery up this old road? Of course. Bland Canyon gets its name from an old mining town, now a locked-up ghost town. A few years ago, Mom visited Bland and met the last resident, a woman named Helen Blount. I recall seeing Mom's photos from her visit, but having no physical place to connect with personally they didn't resonate for me past the aesthetic (Mom is a great photographer!). When faced with the cemetery, which we found a ways up the road and hidden in some trees, I'm jonesing to go to the actual town.
The cemetery isn't delineated on its border, as far as we could tell. Simple rings of moss rock seemed to mark the older graves, which are scattered beneath trees and around bends. The only marked graves we found were enclosed by a short black fence. Three people rest there. The two older graves were a bit hard to read but I think they said Grace and John Callahan, both deceased pre-1980. The one to the farthest left was Helen Blount herself. When we approached the grave I had not yet made the connections with Mom's long ago trip to Bland, the pictures she took, and this canyon or this cemetery. So I was at first surprised when Mom said: "Oh look, this is where Helen is buried." Surprise passed quickly, however, because I am well aware of the fact that Mom knows pretty much everyone. Forget Kevin Bacon--around here it's the six degrees of Laura Ware.
She filled in the gaps of my understanding about Helen and Bland, and we explored a bit before heading back up the road that took us to the top of the ridge and the most beautiful view. The bouncing of the Moose along the old mining roads rocked Gray to sleep and as the sun set we retraced our steps back to the mouth of the canyon and home, the full moon inset in a deepening blue and pink-streaked sky following us the whole way.

fractured

Driving away from the house in the early evening, Gray in the carseat and unhappy about it, I felt like running away. Running until my chest constricted and forced my legs to melt, my body sink to earth. And reality. I felt like running from Graysen, who screamed at me from his carseat. Not a sad scream, not a crying scream. A scream to see where my boundaries would be. A scream so shrill it made my head echo painfully. After each such scream he looked at me, challenging me. What are you gonna do about that, huh? his eyes seemed to say. They could have burned holes through me, bad mama who strapped him unwilling into the carseat. If you wanna see your mama pull all her hair out and run screaming from the car you keep that up...I said through clenched teeth. He kept it up. Kept doing it until my voice washed over the decibels of his, canceling out his fury with my own. I turned and saw his little body jump, his eyes crumple along with his rosebud lips. He began to cry. The screaming challenge ground to a sudden halt. I drove on, raging mother, taboo and guilty. Full of anger and regret. I wanted to reach back and touch his little bare legs. Comfort him. Reassure him that his mother isn't psychotic. Isn't fractured with insanity.
But I didn't want him to start screaming again...I wanted...needed...to be taken seriously. I white-knuckled it into town, listening to the tide of his sadness ebb. Then, there was silence between us, the monotone of the car engine the only soundtrack for our sinking feelings. Mother, child. Mother, son. Mother...baby. He is my baby. I reached back, felt his rounded knee, rubbed his little boy legs. Turned my head ever so briefly and saw his little half moon belly poking out from under his big boy button up shirt. Caught a small smile playing on his lips.
Everything forgiven. The fracture sewn back up, fire and fury tucked away. For now.

Choices....

Emotions run high today, a symptom of lingering stress. Chris, my husband, is stressed by a job that demands so much from him. He's working 6 days a week for the forseeable future, and each of those days also requires a commute of 120 miles roundtrip. The job is a good one, and he's fortunate to work days now, instead of nights. He worked graveyard shift (with a commute) for nearly a year. That ended this past April and we're both relieved. Still, jobs can be stressful, especially when you're faced with a learning curve. His new position requires him to learn a whole new technology--he was in computer hardware support, now he's a technician supporting projector technology. It's all very complicated. Greek to me.
I, too, have been smothered by stress lately. My job at Mothering effectively moot, I am in limbo. Where do I put my energy? What do I focus on and build? I am slowly letting go of the job I wanted...I think I still want it but it's been so long that I have to move on, emotionally. I need to at least start considering other options. Plan B. For nearly 5 years I have freelanced as a graphic designer, writer, editor, and photographer, and I am still pursuing jobs. But do I throw myself into this and market my services on a wider scale? Do I want to be taking in a lot more contract work, pursuing invoices, writing contracts, dealing with vendors? Whereas the flexibility of running my own business is wonderful, and empowering, it's also tiring. To bring my business to the next level I really need to spend a lot of time on it now, and that won't pay off right away. There's something so attractive about getting a regular paycheck...ditto going to work rather than planting my butt on the couch (where I am now). I won't even go into the long story that is my "home office."
Other ideas have been floating around in my brain. I need something solid to latch onto, some sort of plan that offers a bit more hope and possibility.
A few months back I entertained the idea of going into business with my sister. We looked into buying an established babywear business. We both have good connections for this market and we work well together. She lives in Seattle, I'm here in Santa Fe. It all made sense....until we realized that we would likely take the business and redesign it from the ground up. We toyed with the idea of starting something from scratch, came up with a name, a look, and product. Then, she realized that her focus needs to be on school. I balked at the fact that I don't have a designated place in my house, right now, to run a business that requires stocking inventory. The idea drifted away. We both still want to pursue it at some point, but that "some point" is so nebulous now. Today, it came up again for me. Perhaps I need to pursue it on my own. Scale it back a little from the original plan...offer two product lines rather than three. Maybe I need to start small now, draw up a timeline, work on it slowly with no expectation of return for about a year or so.
Alternately, perhaps I should finally bite the bullet and throw myself into school. Obtaining my degree, that speck in the proverbial distance of time, is a goal that I have long wanted to meet. A goal that continues to be elusive. Santa Fe is tough for that--we have no public four-year university here. The closest is in Albuquerque, 60 miles away. I'd hate to commute for school...but maybe I need to consider it. Maybe I could go part-time, take some classes online, work toward it slowly. It IS the most affordable option, after all. I'd prefer to pursue my dream of attending Prescott College as a distance BA student, but I balk at the cost. Really. Maybe I need to consider private college for my MA rather than my BA.
But with a degree....would I teach? Would I start my own business? Would I write books and travel?? What??
Obviously, the choices are still not clear enough. Hopefully, time will lend that clarity.

I suck at this....

Last update to my planet: March. It is now July. Conclusion: I suck at this blogging thing.
Inspiration this morning came from my good friend at Stay-at-Home-Mayhem, who also has lots of comments after each of her posts (jealousy rises!!). She is here: http://stay-at-home-mayhem.blogspot.com/

And I...I am here, planted in my seat on the couch, hoping that "Da da da," also known as Spongebob, will keep the kinder happy for a while so I can write something of note here.

For just over a month now I have been living in a gray, emotional limbo. My life is on hold. School ended in May along with my job at Mothering magazine. I was waiting then too--waiting for the chronic migraines that had spiked in March to subside. Waiting for my hip surgery, scheduled for June 7th but entirely up in the air because my surgeon's first baby was also due that day. Now, from my July 8th vantage point, I look back and can see this whole year as being one of waiting and hoping that something will open up. That my career will take a mega leap, that Graysen will talk and use the new blue potty that is taking up so much real estate in the bathroom (which as of this moment has just been a repository for farts).

I took a chance in the beginning of June and enrolled Graysen in preschool two days a week. I did this so I could regain a touch of sanity, and maybe get some work done. What I didn't anticipate was that there would be no work. Or, should I say, not much work. As I suspected over a year ago, there wasn't another book project following on the heels of the one I worked on for Mothering. My title "Book Editor" now seems a cruel joke. Freelancing is hit or miss, and the cash flow from that is always unreliable. I'm still awaiting payment for a project I did over a year ago, and am now considering small claims court.

But what I am really waiting for now is a job that I want with all my heart and soul. It's a full-time communications position with a local private school and I applied for it just days following my surgery (which thankfully DID happen on June 7th). I was hoping to hear something this past week but the phone has been silent. I'm living on pins and needles, have been really cranky as a result, and am simultaneously mad at myself for putting so much of my hope into this one thing.

The waiting continues on this rainy gray Saturday. I am a held breath, hoping not to explode.