I had grand plans to make this really lovely photo montage for today, but because my kid is SO OLD, he was born before digital cameras were really A Thing and was several years old before they were cheap enough for us to afford one. So, the montage requires a great deal of scanning. I’m [...]]]>

I had grand plans to make this really lovely photo montage for today, but because my kid is SO OLD, he was born before digital cameras were really A Thing and was several years old before they were cheap enough for us to afford one. So, the montage requires a great deal of scanning. I’m not saying it’s not happening at all, but it’s going to be delayed.

My son is 10 years old today. That is blowing my mind in every possible way.

Last night, I put him to bed and told him that I would see him when he was a 10-year-old. He grinned as he snuggled down into his blankets with his beloved stuffed dog and the little alligator baby toy that we had unearthed. I lingered for a second, staring at the top of his head, and wished for a second that I could keep tomorrow from coming. Not because I grieve for time lost or the fact that my child is getting older, but because I wanted just a little more time with him as a little boy.

I can’t seem to recap the past year of his life in terms of milestones and achievements. Things like “started to play saxophone” jumble up in my brain with “laughed for the first time” because it all seems like it has happened in an instant. When he was born and when the nurse first showed him to me, everything stopped. I think I’ve been existing mostly in that moment ever since, face to tiny face, staring into the greatest love of my life while everything continued around us. So while he has grown and changed and become this wonderful little person, I’m still there, seeing his face for the first time.

1) To the victims of Sandusky, and to victims everywhere: I’m so sorry. We always tell you to listen to adults because we’re in charge and we supposedly know what’s best for you. You’re supposed to trust us. Every [...]]]> I’m going to get this out and then that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.

1) To the victims of Sandusky, and to victims everywhere: I’m so sorry. We always tell you to listen to adults because we’re in charge and we supposedly know what’s best for you. You’re supposed to trust us. Every single person who should have kept you safe and didn’t failed you and there’s no excuse for that. I wish there was some kind of official list of grown-ups who have sworn to look out for you, but there isn’t. So let me say this to anyone who might need to know: if someone is hurting you, you can tell me. I will make it stop. I promise.

2) To the media (I’m looking at you Fox News, though the fact that you still get called “the media” is such a joke) and anyone else with the ability to communicate: stop calling this a “sex scandal” right the hell now. A sex scandal is something naughty, something whispered about, some indiscretion between two or more people that maybe amounts to nothing more than a not-nice thing to do. A sex scandal is not illegal or wrong in every possible way. There was no sex involved here. What happened was criminal, morally reprehensible, rape, abuse, terrorizing innocents, and a systematic cover-up that is so disgusting it nauseates me almost as much as the initial violations. And scandal doesn’t really cover it. This was a disgusting, shameful failure of unbelievable proportions. Stop thinking with your ratings and REPORT WHAT HAPPENED FOR ONCE.

3) We can talk more in-depth about sports and “sports culture” later, but I really don’t think that’s a factor. People who rape children, or who cover up said rape, or who defend the people who did said covering up don’t do so because “they’re sports fans and that’s how they are.” They do such things because they are f*cked in the head and rather disgusting individuals. I know that my intense devotion to the Steelers will tempt people to draw comparisons to the actions of our quarterback. Though this isn’t quite a parallel case, I think you’ll recall that plenty of people wanted him gone, because Lombardis really don’t matter that much. I can tell you for certain, as I established above, my love of sports doesn’t suddenly erase my sense of right and wrong. If someone, especially a kid, is being hurt, and I have the power to stop that, I’m going to. I don’t care who I cheer for.

I’ve been working a lot this year on mindfulness. That is, being present in [...]]]> One thing that my brain keeps having a hard time wrapping itself around, much like a stripper on her first night on the pole, is that there won’t come a moment where I just feel like an adult from that point on.

I’ve been working a lot this year on mindfulness. That is, being present in what I’m doing at the moment instead of constantly living for some future life that I think I need to achieve that may or may not come to fruition, regardless of my efforts. On the one hand, it motivates me to push myself further. On the other, much uglier hand, it causes me stress and anxiety that is later followed by deep regret. (ie, If we had known that pursuing more education would not only not help our financial situation but actively make it waaaaay worse, the husband and I would have just enjoyed life, spent more time with the baby and UGH HERE I GO AGAIN FRETTING ABOUT STUFF I CAN’T CHANGE FAAACK.)

I also do this thing where if I have a bad day or a bad week, to me it’s not just one of those things that happens, it’s indicative of how I’m not an adult, how I’ve never matured to a point where I can just take care of myself and my family, how I’m too stupid and irresponsible to do what I need to do to not have a frantic period of time.

This morning, for example, I woke up and looked at my phone for a second. My iPhone is my alarm clock and I usually hit the “snooze” button a few times before waking up for real. And I usually take a few minutes to look at my email or something, not because I’m sooo important or sooo addicted to email, but getting my brain engaged helps me to actually wake up and get moving.

This morning, however, I looked at my email and then fell asleep again at some point. (I apparently engaged in some sleep-emailing, which is like drunk-texting but dumber, as I forwarded an ad about Barnes & Noble’s Columbus Day sale to some very confused person in my contacts list. Sorry if that was you.) I only woke up a little bit later, around the time when we should have been leaving the house to go to the baby’s bus stop. To my credit, I stayed relatively calm when, in my less graceful days, I might have started yelling at the baby and the husband to GET MOVING RIGHT FUCKING NOW OH MY GOD WHHYYYYYYY IS THIS HAPPENING BEING LATE IS THE WORST CRIME OF HUMANITY AND WE’RE ALL GUILTY.

Despite my calm exterior, however, I spent the rest of the morning engaged in an intense self-flagellation-by-inner-monologue session, belittling myself for not being like a real grown-up and not only getting up early, but going to bed at a decent hour so I can get enough sleep. I also don’t regularly prepare for my mornings by getting stuff like lunches and clothes ready to go the night before because I always reach this point in the evening where I just need the day to be over and I think about basically starting the next day already and it makes me want to cry and write run-on sentences.

I’m also dealing with a lot of bills and student loan matters right now that I feel absolutely powerless to control and I want so badly to be able to hand the whole matter over to someone and be like, “Deal with and/or pay these for me.”

And I say to myself, “Real adults get enough sleep, pay their bills on time, don’t have a ton of debt, get up early, exercise, have lunches and coffee ready to go, don’t make their kids late for school, never have dirty hair, dress appropriately, and they might be tired but they suck it up and do what they have to do, and YOU are not an adult until you do all of these things every day.”

I’ll have a streak of a few days where all of these things fall into place, but then something will knock me slightly off kilter and it all seems to fall apart. And I don’t understand why I can’t just MAKE it happen.

We all have nightmares. None of us is unique in that respect. And I think we’ve all had a few that have always haunted us. I have at least a handful of nightmares that have so thoroughly terrified me that I’ve never forgotten them. Like the nanny legs from the Muppet Babies trying to kill [...]]]>

We all have nightmares. None of us is unique in that respect. And I think we’ve all had a few that have always haunted us. I have at least a handful of nightmares that have so thoroughly terrified me that I’ve never forgotten them. Like the nanny legs from the Muppet Babies trying to kill me, which sounds silly but, seriously, if I brought this to life in a horror movie you would lose your shit.

But maybe less so if they were played by these guys.

There was also the series of apocalyptic nightmares that I had in the months following 9/11 and leading up to the baby’s birth, obviously spurred by that harsh realization of the kind of world that I was bringing a child into.

There was the weird, crucifixion-type dream that I had when I was pretty young, in which I was executed along with two other people for the vague crime of being bad. I woke up screaming, desperate for forgiveness.

And there was, of course, that weird alien one from a few years ago.

But I think the scariest nightmares are the ones that don’t scare us at all.

I had one last night in which I was abusing the baby consistently over a long period of time. Hitting, screaming, abandoning. It was terrible. Thinking about it today I’m thankful to be fuzzy on the details since what I do remember makes me feel sick.

I haven’t talked about it much here, but I’m coming out of a pretty dark period in life from, I think, a lot of insecurity about mistakes that I think I’ve made. I’m doing so, so much better now. Like 180 degrees better, but I know that turning over the rough stuff about what the baby must have thought of me when things were getting bad has been on the back burner.

I don’t beat myself up for having days when I’m just not being the mom that I wish I could be. It’s not always up to me. Sometimes the baby is in a cranky mood and I’m exhausted and we end up bickering. But what I did in my nightmare was make sure that he knew that I did not love him, which has never been the case no matter how inescapable my darkness may have seemed at times. I think it didn’t scare me because no matter how improbable those other nightmares have been, this one was the one that was utterly impossible.

Much to his increasing embarrassment, I will often grab him and smother him with kisses and hugs and “I love you”s. Something inside makes me do this, I think because I fear that he’ll have dark days like the ones I’ve had. If one of my jobs as a parent is to teach him survival skills, then I’m going to always be braiding a lifeline for him that he’ll be able to find even in the murkiest of waters.

Reading this post on Gin and Tacos led me to this video on AT&T’s archives.

My grandparents still have their rotary phone, which I regarded with disdain when I was young. If I was spending the night there as a kid, I had to think long and hard about how badly [...]]]> One more thing before the weekend…

Reading this post on Gin and Tacos led me to this video on AT&T’s archives.

My grandparents still have their rotary phone, which I regarded with disdain when I was young. If I was spending the night there as a kid, I had to think long and hard about how badly I wanted to call my parents, because our phone number had 8s and 7s and even A ZERO AND DEAR GOD LIFE IS TOO SHORT. Now, it’s kind of cool to use it. The whirring zip of the dial gives me the tiniest thrill and the action of moving it around with my finger makes me feel like I possess some mysterious old skill.

The husband and I were watching Adaptation the other night, which we love and I was struck by this scene in which Meryl Streep’s character, deep in an experiment with mind-expanding orchid powder and finally fascinated by something, has a winding phone conversation with her article subject and soon-to-be lover.

I remarked to the husband, somewhat sadly, “People soon won’t remember what dial tones sound like. Cell phones don’t have them.” I never noticed it before, but it really is quite a beautiful sound.

“Alright, let’s get going. We still have to go to the store.”

I gathered up my purse and my camera. The baby girl stared up at me from her swing and I bent down to tickle her behind her ears one more time and pressed her tiny, round feet in between my forefingers and thumbs. We [...]]]>

“Alright, let’s get going. We still have to go to the store.”

I gathered up my purse and my camera. The baby girl stared up at me from her swing and I bent down to tickle her behind her ears one more time and pressed her tiny, round feet in between my forefingers and thumbs. We hugged her daddy good-bye and walked outside into the late afternoon sun.

The smell was almost intoxicating. The ground was warming up on the first legitimate spring day. It inhaled the sun and exhaled the possibility of life beginning again, much like how the baby girl’s sighs and giggles had filled the room. The nearby steel mill pumped its scent into the air. The baby girl’s mother had commented on it earlier with a somewhat weary tone, not looking forward to another hot summer with that smell permeating the humidity. “I kind of really like it,” I admitted. “There was a mill in my neighborhood where I grew up. I’d forgotten all about that smell.” That mill was long gone now, the land being reborn into luxury apartments and townhomes. Those don’t have a scent, as far as I know.

The train roared past, announcing our departure from Braddock. Entering that small town had been like a trip back in time for both me and the husband. Despite the tremendous efforts pouring into the community to restore it, it remained a worn version of itself from when it started its rapid decline when we were kids. “This is exactly what Pittsburgh looked like when we were little,” we marveled. “All of it. The houses, the streets…” and the intangibles that we couldn’t quite grasp, like the way your dad smells when he comes in for dinner after working outside. Everything seemed…slower…drowsier. Happy and sad with the knowledge that life just keeps on going, like spring afternoons and baby toes and a groaning, creaking steel mill that used to pump the lifeblood of a community and now just pumps weird scents into the air.

We rode toward our end of town and I let the wind create small knots in my hair, brief suggestions of red lace. We sped past Carrie Furnace, which imposed itself against the landscape of still brown trees aching to burst with yellow-green buds. The rusty red stairs and bridge demanded that you look and respect it. As my baby dozed off in the back seat, the husband turned up the song that had come on.

Home is where I want to be. But I guess I’m already there.

I was sure I’d been somewhere else all this time, lost and alone with no way back. Looking at that huge furnace and its bright red appendages, my chest suddenly ached. This is my home. This landscape created me. It shrivels and dies and seems to disappear, but its elegant beasts remain, landmarks to remind me of where I’ve always been.