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13Mar

Swampwater Poetry

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I hate neediness, sometimes in others, always in myself. It feels like a sticky, leechy organism turning my control center into a swamp, wiggling occasionally out of my mouth in search of fresh blood to suck. It makes my bones extra-porous, as fragile as spidered glass. It makes me feel infantile, like some hideously anorexic, hormonal version of a baby. Helpless.

But sometimes I can’t help being a choking, splintering, blood-sucking mess. (Look for Dan’s upcoming book: Vampire Wife: Why Mommy Lives on a Dustpan in the Basement Now.) I run through the checklist of “I Needs”:

  • A nap every morning.
  • A nap every afternoon.
  • Some illegal, trucker-endorsed substance to keep me upright between naps.
  • A maid.
  • Regular exercise.
  • The energy to begin contemplating the idea of potentially starting regular exercise.
  • The energy to get up early, and thus be dressed and hygienic before breakfast, and thus feel less like a flea-ridden hag all morning.
  • My own personal motivational speaker. (That means you, Matt Foley!)
  • A lobotomy, or
  • A happy switch.

I hate this list. It’s like a swampwater poem. It makes me crave a chemical bath for this brain that can’t seem to find its self-sufficiency. It makes me want to tattoo a disclaimer on my forehead: WARNING: Flea-ridden hag, four months post-partum. Take her words with a grain of salt and/or a hormone pill, and if you value your own blood, KEEP AWAY FROM THE FANGS!!!!!

The doctor we talked to says that yes, of course, not to worry, this is all perfectly normal for a pregnant woman. Which–and let me be perfectly clear on this subject–I am not. Please, someone, tell me that yes, of course, not to worry, this is all perfectly normal for me, in my definitely and completely un-pregnant state of non-pregnancy. Please tell me that you’ve been here, done this. Please tell me that daily life will get easier and that I will be able to do a whole sit-up again and that this squirmy, slimy neediness will abate before I suck my family and friends dry.

11Mar

Rabid Badgerish

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

5:00 a.m. is not a time I like to see with my eyes open.

Maybe in a previous life, I was an Amish farmer, greeting the dim morning with a sturdy cheerfulness, content in my pre-dawn liturgy of milking cows and slathering butter on thick brown bread. Maybe 5:00 was just a quiet friend, a strong and familiar face nodding thoughtfully in the barn.

Maybe I was once a sunrise junkie, Mother Nature’s confidante. Maybe my dew-dampened sun salutes woke each day in a meditative rush of energy. Maybe 5:00 was just a cleansing breath in my core, radiating through me like controlled calmness and eco-love and heightened awareness of my early earth.

Maybe I used to be a 2000-watt dancing queen, holding my liquor like a Mr. Martini himself and shaking what my mama gave me until I suddenly burned out with a POP. Maybe 5:00 was just another dazzling bit of a heavily-jeweled night, the Energizer Bunny still thumping out bass lines by the millisecond, an extended invitation for me to prove that my hips don’t lie and it’s bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Maybe in some alternate dimension I could face 5:00 a.m. without impersonating a rabid badger. I could go from 0 to upright in five seconds minutes flat. I could open my eyes, dislodge the sand therein, and manage a complete subject-verb sentence before coffee. But now, here, in this current existence of which I partaking? Not so much.

(Three guesses as to when I got up this morning.)

7Mar

Factory Guy

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Factory Guy is somewhat of a legend in our little family. (I’m sure you’ve experienced his handiwork too. Those rolls of wrapping paper without a cardboard cylinder for support? Zippers that stop two inches down with half your pants in their jaws? Super glue that remains wet and sticky on your cracked vase five hours after application even though it permanently affixed your fingers together in .3 seconds? Plastic wrap that stretches and rips and ties itself into sailor knots rather than tear neatly? Juice boxes that erupt if you so much as breathe near them? Packages of fragile computer equipment that can only be opened with a chainsaw? Inanimate objects that fill you with such rage that you will go on a killing spree if you can’t find SOMEONE to blame? Factory Guy.)

He’s been working overtime this week in our household. We’ve had:
A broken car window,
A stolen GPS,
A snapped guitar string (as Dan was going onstage, of course),
A shattered teacup,
A shattered coffee cup,
A bathroom flood,
Defective diapers,
Lost earphones,
A suicidal laptop,
A suicidal MP3 player,
Computer viruses,
More computer viruses,
Still more computer viruses, and
A doorway that planted itself directly in front of my little toe.
And it’s only Friday.

I just figured I owed you an explanation of why, rather than blogging this week, I’ve been out spreefully killing. (Factory Guy’s next.)

29Feb

More-Beautiful

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

It happens the first time in complete darkness. The cell quivers, stretches, and divides itself in two. That’s all, but it’s everything–the hint of beginning life, deep in the secret shelter of your belly.

The second time it happens is under bright lights, expectant faces all around. Your cells waver, strain, hesitate like water droplets on the tip of a leaf. Then, in a rolling burst of released tension, you find yourself divided eternally in two.

I believe there are few aches in this world as profound as having a baby, and none as glorious. I’ve always felt that ache to a small extent at the symphony or the museum, feeling my heart lift out of my body, simultaneously wanting to call it back and wanting to relinquish it to that more-beautiful realm. That’s what the instant after giving birth is like, magnified to an unfathomable degree.

You gaze at her cotton-candy cheeks, her precious blip of a nose, her watery eyes. You can’t stop gazing, trying to find that part of yourself that separated with her. It’s there, of course, but only for an instant. Your features and her dad’s pass in and out of hers like a mirage, but in the end, the only face you see is her own. You nuzzle that warm crease where her neck will one day be, and you relinquish your heart to this more-beautiful place. Eagerly.

Of course, real life has a way of diluting wonder, or maybe just coating it in a layer of explosive baby poop. Your little miracles track ketchup across the newly-mopped floor and throw up all over your favorite sweater and WON’T GO POTTY!!! and scream because a milk-dispensing device is not in their mouth at that exact instant. They dump out a box of marbles behind the sofa and wake up before you’re ready and horrifically mistreat their diapers. You find yourself experiencing mother-pattern baldness.

The precious ache, though? It’s never gone–not really, not in those quiet moments when your mind runs wild with What Ifs. What if she never wakes up? What if she gets hurt by a friend? What if she drifts away from me one day? And oh, what if she had ended up with some other family? What if she had never been mine, my little princess? That’s motherlove, the real, painful, cosmically-magnified ache. That’s how you know your heart has settled in the more-beautiful realm for good.

28Feb

Up Yours

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I’ve never been afraid of a blank page. It’s really more like a mirror to me, a place to sit and breathe and shed the daily lint collected in my mind… then look deep into the clearness of my reflection and write what I see. This has been my daily ritual for months now — tucking the girls in for their naps, relishing an after-lunch espresso and “Scrubs” with Dan, and then settling into that quiet part of my heart where words happen. Coffee-stained clarity.

I’ve stayed away from blank pages the last few days, though, quite suddenly caught in a tangle of insecurity. Maybe it’s my old journal entries that I pulled out over the weekend–my teenage patheticness slamming into me like an anvil. Maybe it’s the remark from a friend that made me feel guilty for being so self-absorbed. Maybe it’s the six or seven hours of sleep each night when my body actually needs fourteen.

I’m back on my computer this afternoon, tentatively, and only because when I listed my reasons for not writing anymore (I’m pathetic, I have nothing valuable to say, and no one wants to hear more about me anyway), Dan simply said, “I do.”* Well actually, that’s not the only reason. It was just the catalyst. The other reason is my daughters. I want them to be able to read my thoughts, years from now, and understand who their mom was, is. I think if I had gotten that opportunity with my mother, many unfortunate circumstances would have turned out differently. I intend never to take communication with my precious girls for granted, and I see writing about myself now as one way to protect our futures.

So. Up yours, insecurity! And even though I now want to apologize for saying “up yours,” I won’t, because confidence is valuable. Believing in my own motivations is valuable. Even embracing my inner pathetic teenager is valuable.** (Yes, yes it is.) So stay tuned, because my blank-page, espresso-scented séances are far from over.

*No, I won’t share him with you.

**At least in the sense that you will soon get to read VERY DRAMATIC excerpts from my fourteen-year-old tragic love saga, as chronicled in no less than five journals. Look for Mortification Mondays, coming to a blog near you!

25Feb

Tribute

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Today is the most perfect tribute to springtime I’ve ever experienced. Those of you still slodging through gunmetal winters, take a deep breath and imagine…
Pastel-tinted sunbeams bounding through your open window.
Tufts of sky-scented breeze rolling end-over-end like cotton balls at play.
Ice cream swirls of pink and white dripping from shy tree buds.
Bird chirps like flutes and oboes and tinkling celestas, piping grace notes over the mid-day traffic.
Fresh laundry line-dancing (ha!) for the joy of warmth and light and newly unfolded air.

Springtime in Texas, where I grew up, is really more a melty form of winter. The sky takes on the surly color of old pipes, leaking gray water continuously until summer hits it suddenly with a wrench. Texas never really gets cold, but its Februaries and Marches suck out inner warmth like zombies, complete with the drooling and the clammy outstretched fingers and the diseased-cow moaning. (“Uuuuunnnnnnnhhhhhhhh.” I have no nostalgia whatsoever for the sound of spring.)

This winter has been a rodeo for me… and not just me, I suspect. One of our friends told us the other night that he has two wives–a cold-weather one and a warm-weather one. I understand, though I often wish I didn’t. Surviving winter can be a fight, a constant bundling and layering and gritting teeth; it’s a struggle to unclench, a struggle to thaw. However, when the outside world suddenly softens and blooms, I feel myself relaxing. My pent-up tensions drift away on a stray breeze. I lighten up.

There may be a month of winter left, but my mind is bursting ahead into spring. I’m already thinking in terms of strawberries and open windows, flower pots and Easter egg hunts, swinging with Natalie and picking daisies with Sophie. I’m taking the heavy blankets off our bed and planning picnics, and oh, it’s a much-needed loveliness.

What springtime hopes are warming your minds today?

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