Comments (0) Not mine…but worth sharing. I need this one today.
LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS
by Shel SilversteinListen to the MUSTN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me–Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
I think last night was his last with this privilege.
He wouldn’t sleep…and I was concerned that he might be feeling bad. So I took him to bed with me. At about 6:00am, after a night of his only sleeping in bed with me, nursing (i.e. no sleep for me), he BIT me. That was the last straw. I put him in his crib with a bottle of water and just let him yell about it. Soooo tired, I fell asleep in spite of his carrying on.
At 7:00, through the fog of a dream, I heard him saying ‘mama, mama’ over and over. I woke up a bit and noticed that it smelled like poo and then, for a moment, eyes still closed, felt bad, wondering how long he has had a poopy diaper. I got up to change him, opening my eyes, and saw that he was naked from the waist down and there was poo everywhere.
He took off his diaper to shit in his crib. He apparently danced around in said shit.
He is quite proud of this.
Now, I am hunched over a coffee, trying to think clearly and he is playing cheerfully in his playroom.
At least he isn’t screaming.
It is not that anything significant came of this call. It is a mere step in a long journey to secure my son’s legal status. It merely led, as expected, to more waiting.
Recently, I talked with a friend who has been finally getting to some of the account changes with the phone company, the bank, and so on necessitated by her husband’s death. Having come through the initial pain and loss with grace and strength, she now finds these simple tasks exhausting and acutely emotional.
Another friend, having survived the trauma of separation is now taking practical steps toward a divorce and is finding this all-consuming. I remember this phase well. I also remember how shocked I was to be the deep and painful emotions evoked by putting our lives on paper and signing my already established new identity as a single person into being.
As I reflect on tonight’s Herculean effort, vodka in hand, I wonder how it is that these things are so difficult. In each case, the person concerned has already passed through what seems to be the worst, the fear and shock and sorrow. These steps are just formalizing what already is, even what has come to be preferred. How is it that they can feel (as I described the legal process of my own long-ago divorce) as if one is sawing one’s own arm off with a nail file?
I think this pain of completion is not as much about what is as what is not. Calling Australia is not hard. It is hard that I have to do it. This is not what I expected to be doing when I had a small child. The widow did not expect, at the age of 30, to be erasing her husband’s commercial existence. The divorcee did not expect to be picking through the knotted strands of years together, divvying up proceeds and plans.
You know it is over, that the die is cast, that you have to move on. Like someone looking at the burned out hull of a house for the last time, you may not want to go back. What was there is gone. But in some way it doesn’t matter if you do not want to live there any more. Sorting through the details, through the rubble of your hopes and dreams and expectations, is sometimes the hardest part of all.
Here in LA, the sun came out. It’s staying light later. And, it seems, everyone is freaking out. So far, in my circle of non-professional awareness (not that big, really), I have logged three breakups and at least five potential breakups, as well as countless identity crises and career crises and other crises. This is since last Friday. Some of it is the economy, some just the regular stream of drama that is a part of day–to-day existence. The rest has had me wondering. I have always thought of Spring as a time of new beginnings, growth, warm sun and possibility but, in conversation after conversation, this angst kept coming up. I started to wonder, what is it that has people so on edge?
Then, two different people on two different occasions said that this is a part of Spring—that people often feel restless and dissatisfied and at odds with their lives at this time. This was a new concept for me, yet it somehow makes sense. The springtime of the soul must be somewhat like the season. Spring is a time of beginnings and beginnings are hard, full of excitement and uncertainty, hope and anxiety. Like Seattle, with its sweet false starts and wintry relapses. Like Los Angeles, with its sudden Summer that leaves everything living scrambling to catch up.
Right now, I feel like something is beginning…it’s just not there yet. Like a seed that has been planted and can feel but not see the sun’s warm glow, I wait, underground. I can’t see the sprout that is wending its way through the soil. I have to believe that it is there and trust that it will find its way to break through to the light.
This is very hard for me to do. To trust. To trust myself, to trust others, to trust the process of life with its ebbs and flows and winters of the heart. But this is where I am, in the cool soil not yet dried by the burning Southern California sun, putting down roots so that, when the time is right, I can push up and up and bloom and not be blown away by the next storm.
A while back, I started writing a little column for a MOMS Club newsletter. Yes, folks, that’s right, I am a founding member of the Los Feliz MOMS Club. Quite a switch from post-conflict trauma ‘expert.’ But that’s a different story. This little post is to explain how Mom in LA City came to be. Back to the MOMS Club newsletter. It was intended to be something sort of professional–the shrink offering information and advice to our members. What evolved, however, was something else. I say evolved but what I mean is that I had a brand new, tiny baby and no partner and as the deadline loomed I hadn’t done any research. So I just wrote. Reflected on the process of being and becoming this new incarnation of myself as someone’s mom.
Life as a parent is so bloody hectic. Most moms I know can’t manage to use the bathroom regularly (particularly challenging if you had a protracted labor and pushing session, as I did–again, will save that for another post). At the same time, every day, there are hundreds of mundane and earth-shaking experiences that lead to subtle and techtonic shifts of awareness and identity. All of this is happening in a larger context that shapes the ways those experiences get translated and these awarenesses get expressed. Am I making sense here?
My consciousness of this process, my desire NOT TO FORGET WHAT HAPPENED TO ME as I moved from carefree single woman to yet-to-be-determined single mom, led to writing. Lots of it. I don’t know where the time or energy came from but it did. And then other people read it and responded. “Your column made me cry.” “I made my husband read it and he loved it.” “Please keep these and put them together in a book.” I began to find my voice in my wider context…this place they call ‘la la land’ that I now realize is home. I began to wonder if there might be an even broader context where these musings might have meaning.
It was suggested that I might even be able to make a living doing this thing…which would be nice…making a living, that is. Single motherhood is not, generally, a growth industry.
So this is the start of my exploration of the world outside the MOMS Club, outside of my Facebook page.
I believe that we make meaning, indeed, that we create our realities in the stories we tell. We cut paths through the overgrown, over-stimulated, information-indundated forests of our consciousness to reveal our path. I welcome fellow travellers on this journey and look forward to swapping stories, hopes and dreams, jokes and even occasional insults along the way. Let’s cut a path that is broad and smooth and challenging enough to lead to breathtaking views.
Panorama Theme by 
Themocracy
