the growing edge: sewing

It all started last weekend. I brushed past a beautiful dress in the closet, sent to me long ago by a friend with a gift for thrifting who, in her characteristic generous way, found it, knew I would appreciate it, and mailed it off. Sadly it was made for a woman far less pear-shaped than I, but it was too lovely to part with, so there it hung quietly, day after day in my closet. When I noticed it there last week, I realized it's rectangular shape just might provide enough fabric for two square pillows. If it did, the dress could become a bright and beautiful part of our everyday domestic landscape.

And look, there they are! I felt very, very accomplished. Sewing is right on my growing edge. That's a phrase I picked up in grad school, sitting in on a group therapy session. The psychologist who used it with a group of young women struggling with eating disorders had borrowed it from a yoga teacher. We have the comfort zone (Mike and I watching The Office snuggled in bed), the growing edge (me, sitting before the sewing machine, puzzling over the detached presser foot and reminding myself to take deep breaths), and the pain zone (use your imagination). Conceptually, making a couple of pillow cases does not seem so difficult. The problem is I do not do spatial relationships. The whole right side/wrong side of the fabric, flipping things inside out, etc? Oy. Feel free to laugh at me, because it is downright comical how much concerted effort and focus is takes for me to figure these little challenges of the physical universe out. I have to talk to myself. A lot.

But you guys - I did it! It is not often in adult life that we experience that feeling of really learning something new, something that is not particularly easy for us. I tend to avoid the things I'm not very good at. Being able to steer clear of (some) hard things is one of those unappreciated luxuries of adulthood. Not so for children, who have to confront a dizzying range of unknown skills and information - from monkey bars to multiplication - every day.

So I endured the discomfort of the growing edge, and it proved so thrilling to make something beautiful and useful that I kept going. Yesterday I finished these curtains for Mike's office.

I sewed two panels onto old white curtains, cut up to fit the new fabric I had. Again, between muttering to myself and the noise of rusty, squeaky machinery in my brain heavily slogging away as I probed the inner mysteries of my sewing machine, I made some pathetic music. But now Mike has pretty curtains!

Yesterday I read a Wendell Berry essay that spoke so eloquently of what we lose when everything we depend upon in our lives is mediated by outside corporations and organizations - when we are unable to create and provide for ourselves the things we need and enjoy.  Here is the prophetic Berry (writing in 1979) on the evils of our complacency:

Our people have given up their independence in return for the cheap seductions and the shoddy merchandise of so-called "affluence." We have delegated all our vital functions and responsibilities to salesmen and agents and bureaus and experts of all sorts. We cannot feed or clothe ourselves, or entertain ourselves, or communicate with each other, or be charitable or neighborly or loving, or even respect ourselves, without recourse to a merchant or a corporation or a public-service organization or an agency of the government or a style-setter or an expert.

He goes on to articulate how it is that when we are ignorant of, for example, how food is grown, we become more and more disconnected from the earth (and the people around us) that sustains us. Eventually we do not understand our connection to the earth, and as Berry says, we tend to destroy the things we do not understand. This resonated deeply with me, especially considering the tenuous, slight understanding I have of all the 'conveniences' around me: the mind-boggling mystery of wireless internet, the origin of my clothing, the route some baby arugula took to make it to my plate this evening, the telephone, the plumbing, the way my kids' shoes are made.

Here is one final quote to leave you with. I've been thinking about what it means to think little ever since reading this passage. Are there times to think big? Does thinking big compromise our abilities to think little? Does our yearning for public (and thereby less intimate) acknowledgement of our good deeds betray some immaturity or weakness?

But the citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work. A couple who make a good marriage, and raise healthy, morally competent children, are serving the world's future more directly and surely than any political leader, though they never utter a public word.

Well. One more sewing project on the horizon: curtains for the playroom. I know buying fabric at the Ikea in College Park and then figuring out how to sew four relatively straight seams around it is not exactly an example of the heroic and dignified self-reliance that Mr. Berry would rally around. But I'm thinking little these days. Making curtains (and decent neighborhoods, and thoughtful kids) really is work - in the best, most satisfying sense of the word.

of mice and mama

We have had nocturnal invaders in the kitchen for what feels like a very long time. I was horrified the first time I found their tiny pellet mouse poops scattered about in a utensil drawer. But after many days of waking up to empty humane mousetraps licked clean of peanut butter, and what with the utensils camping out quite comfortably in a couple of drinking glasses on the countertop, I became resigned to the mice. They were so adventuresome, leaving traces in the most unlikely nooks and crannies. They could have the drawers. We just wouldn't open them anymore. 

Where's my can-do attitude, you ask? I have misplaced it, along with many other things, so distracted and depressed have I been of late. Frances and I are in the midst of una mala racha, as they say in Spain. A bad patch. We seem to have them every so often, and this one is particularly rough, perhaps because there has been a recent surge in Oedipal alignments and affections in our house. Doesn't she look innocent and peaceful in her breakfast tiara?

But that clenched left hand gives something away. When we go through these periods of mutual exasperation, such extremes of sadness, anger, and a desperate kind of love that feels like a kick in the guts move through me. When she begins to whine or accuse me with venom in her five year old voice of some petty misdeed, I lose all perspective and react in a way I do not like. Why do we do this to each other, and why can't I access some emotional distance from which to engage?

Earlier in the week I took the kids to Philadelphia. I was surprised by how excited I was to share all the little details of the old Center City neighborhood where we used to live with them, and how delighted I was to walk into our friends' home that Mike and I had spent so much time in over the years. More dear friends joined us that night for dinner, after the children were asleep. We talked about radio, television, books and shared friends - the stuff of our conversations back when we all worked together at the radio show. In the morning Ann Marie and I walked to visit the station, pushing strollers up the same old stretch of 6th Street that we once ambled so slowly in the opposite direction in the evenings, lingering on the corner where we parted on the way to our respective apartments and boyfriends (now husbands), talking as the traffic light went from green to red and back to green again.

Do you detect a note of nostalgia? Dear me, it only got worse at the station. I loved introducing my kids to all my old co-workers and friends, and I loved introducing them to the control room, the cubicles, the same gracious receptionist in the lobby. Lordy, it stirred me up. I slipped through a portal into a world I lived in before marriage and children. The people who still live in that world knew me when and so I was that person again, independent of my role as wife and mother. It was delicious - but I paid a price. Over the next 24 hours I found it hard to see past a thick cloud of self-doubt, darkness, and fear about the future. Would I ever find my way to that kind of world again? What will I do, and where will I do it?

How quickly the peaceful feeling I have been enjoying recently slipped through my fingers! I am so quick to question my choices when I brush up against lives I have left behind. I am often confronted with the feeling that my former co-workers are befuddled by the central place my family occupies for me now. No, I'm not working very much. No, not doing social work right now. No, no, haven't really found the right thing...

The weird thing is, I think I have found the right thing! It's a hard place to claim, counter to many people's expectations for me (myself included, maybe), but it's where I want to be. I wish I had a crystal ball, so I'd have some reassurance of my eventual return to professional life in a fuller and more meaningful way. For now I have to have faith.

And try not to strangle my daughter. Today was yet another snowy day off from school. I woke up feeling like that cold gray branch at the top of this post, heavy with wet snow. More mouse poop in the drawer. More whining at first sight of me from Frances. I still didn't know what to do with my life.

Even though I felt bent beneath the weight of all this regular-life heaviness, with some help from Mike in the morning, I forged ahead. Solitary, quiet shoveling was restorative, and then a beloved friend unexpectedly called. The day already felt more manageable. I declared it a mouse-battling day, turned on some college-era pop music to inspire me, and got to work. In a grand departure from our hippie housecleaning habits, I found a large bottle of bright yellow Lysol in the back of the pantry to aid in some serious disinfecting. I scrubbed the counters and the stove. Even that black cloud of doubt and fear scudded out of the way of my avenging sponge.

I suspect the kids enjoyed my return to behavior befitting of a capable and minimally conflicted mama. I sent Frances to her room for a number of time outs (trying all the while to be neutral and matter of fact about it, rather than bitter and nasty) and over the course of the day, during brighter moments, she made me some peace offerings. This is the wrapping for the first:

 

Inside was a diminutive picture taped to a magnet, which I was told I could put on the refrigerator and look at whenever I felt sad. This is it on the refrigerator, her own version of Corinthians. It reads, "For at the end of the world only three things are left. Love, hope, and faith." Oh, my darling dear girl! I know it's not easy when your mama feels sad and mousy. I know it's not easy to be five. We will fumble our way through it together. At the end of the world, radio jobs will have long fallen away. Not so the love we have for one another.

a tree grows in annapolis

This is what happens when Martin Luther King Day, lots of ice, and two early dismissal school days fall in the same week. Frances and I get down to business. The business of crafting, that is.

It's funny, because on Monday we fought like cats and dogs. It was an ugly, snarling sort of mother-daughter row that seemed to have no root in any discernible cause. I ended the day deflated, baffled by our useless quarreling and the immovable tension between us. When I heard the phone ringing at 5 am the next morning, I knew school was canceled. I wanted to cry. The idea of enduring another round of baiting and taking the bait was more than I could bear.

But it wasn't that way at all. Our ice day at home was completely restorative. Why we were able to come together so effortlessly after that awful day of friction? It could be grace, fatigue, lack of will power, or some combination of these, along with other subtle internal shifts and recalibrations made overnight - but in the moment, I didn't wonder why. I just relished our easy intimacy.

We made bread, listened to Brazilian pop music (see the soundtrack) and worked on a felt valentine garland. Here is what it looked like Tuesday afternoon. It was, for lack of a better word, dull. Boring. Another bit of holiday-themed decor to cover the window that is missing a curtain panel because last summer Frances cut it in half while lost in some alternate imaginary domestic universe with a toy ironing board and a pair of scissors. Instead of making a new one, I tell myself that having an open window to decorate is preferable. (A little labor-saving self-deception never hurt anyone, did it?)

And so, feeling very dissatisfied with our results (though entirely satisfied with our process), I set out on a walk with Gabriel this morning looking around for fresh inspiration. After a wander down the familiar dead end of collecting far too many dried magnolia seed pods, we found one enormous, awesome stick.

It struck me: a valentine tree! Gabriel was lukewarm, but he did want to paint some rocks found near the stick, so back inside we went to begin assembly.

Soon Frances was home to help us, and her ethusiasm gave the project wings. She brought down six stuffed animals from her bedroom to participate, and with their help she and I made a long sparkling bead garland to loop around the branches and more felt hearts to hang, in addition to our original garland that now looked far more interesting, tied to little jutting knots in the branches.

 

We worked quietly during Gabriel's nap. At a certain point Frances told me I was not allowed to look at what she was making. It is something secret, a surprise for our whole family, and we are forbidden to open it until Valentine's Day. It might be a paper clip. Or a crumpled bit of foil. Whatever it is, it fits inside this little envelope, and magically carries the spirit of our unexpectedly happy crafting days this week. I will forget by the time the holiday rolls around, so here is my reminder: that odd item or scrawled picture is not something to thoughtlessly toss in the recycling bin after bedtime! It represents the mysterious ways that love can quietly string us together again, melting our hurts away with a gesture as humble as a shared handful of sequins. 

fly me to the moon

A friend handed me last Sunday's New York Times Magazine folded open to an article by Judith Warner entitled "Fear (Again) of Flying." I read it that evening, curled up next to a mountain of unfolded laundry while my husband talked about Middlemarch, one of my favorite novels, in seminar at St. John's. Notwithstanding Warner's convoluted arguments, had I read this a year ago, I might have felt - rather painfully - like a nail hit squarely on its head. She suggests that women today, in rebellion against their 1970s mothers who took flight to work, second husbands, and journeying into the wide world, have turned inward. We apparently seek self-realization in shallow, private pursuits like yoga and taking care of children. Public life no longer beckons as a route to liberation.

Don't get me wrong. I still wonder about my inward focus over the past few years. In earlier days of stay-at-home mothering, I felt a sense of anxious urgency about my professional future. If I grope around a bit, those feelings are still there to be found and stirred up whenever complacency threatens. But it's different now.

Working fifteen hours a week, which I began nearly a year ago, provided me with the opportunity to exercise parts of myself that I feared had ossified into stone, to collaborate with adults I respect, and to get a break from my kids and their unceasing need. It has also had the unexpected effect of helping me to appreciate the time I do spend at home caring for my family, and to realize that I love it. I don't want to leave them for fifty hours a week. I don't want to give up bread-making and crafting and reading together. I choose this.

This criticism of inward-looking mothers helped me to stand back and realize with some surprise - and gratitude- that I possess an unusual degree of peacefulness about where I am and what I'm doing right now. How did this happen? My anxiety about work and the future was becoming habitual for awhile there. But finding small ways to reach out beyond the walls of this rainbow-hued split level house has provided some balance, allowing us a life in which we can at least imagine prioritizing what matters most.

Judith Warner suggested that our tendency toward inwardness and the banalities of yoga is a sad regression to an earlier time. Our second wave mothers at least had the chutzpah to ditch their kids and embark on journeys away from the shackles of home. Neither extreme here is particularly appealing. The way she characterizes each generation suggests there is something madness-making about the lives of women in general, and each cohort must seek escape in its own way.

What she misses is a more moderate approach, one that requires a bit of compromise and creativity, and one I feel I am meandering towards, slowly but surely. There are ways to assert oneself in a public way while embracing the pleasures and quiet joys of life at home. Being a homemaker sounds ridiculous, anachronistic. But add a hyphen for me and it shifts. Being a home-maker? A maker of a real home? That seems an essential and honored function, one that need not wholly define us, and one that ideally we do with our partners, each contributing as he or she is able and inclined. As my children get older, and my public self begins to emerge once again, I understand how being a home-maker naturally leads into being a community-maker. We are called to so many things in life, and each moment allows for its own form of response. Right now the social worker in me is advocating for better food at Annapolis Elementary School via involvement with the PTA. It sounds quaint, I know, but in this moment it satisfies that yearning to help create healthier communities.

I feel particularly grateful to be raising young children at a moment when movements for local food systems, sustainable living, and a general return to a more intimate relationship with the material world around us are growing and expanding their influence in our culture. I never have to look far to seek validation and support for what I intuitively feel is important for me and my family: cooking and eating together, allowing open time for creative expression and play, developing our relationship to the natural world, limiting our exposure to the grand marketplace forever buzzing around us (see the Carol Flinders quote here). This creative work of making a home doesn't feel escapist. It's too hard for that! In its best moments, it feels like the opposite of escape. It feels like opening my arms to all the pain and joy life can deliver.

I'm not running an innovative new health care center or advocating for immigrants in Congress. I know I'm not going to be making headlines any time soon. My ambitions have brought me here, to this moment. I feel certain they'll carry me on to more public pursuits as we all grow older, though I have no idea what shape these might take. I hope then, as now, I can find time for a little yoga here and there. I recently learned a new asana, introduced to me as poet's pose. You find your balance in half-moon pose, then lift your lower supporting hand and rest it lightly on your heart as you gaze toward the sky. It's not like flying. Rather it feels like floating gently, swaying with one's breath - one of those amazing paradoxical yoga moments when being very strongly rooted creates a sense of lightness and motion. Yoga metaphors probably make Judith Warner gag. Not so this author! Deep, strong roots are the only place from which I can imagine taking flight.

the silent stick game

On a recent meditation-related internet wander, I found this very cool website with all kinds of creative ideas for practicing yoga and mindfulness with kids. I ended up drawing from this activity for a meditation blog I write for work, and then trying it out at home with Frances and Gabriel.

 

I called it the silent stick game, and we played it with toothpicks I found in the back of the pantry (last used in the creation of paper helicopters). Each person playing silently places one stick on the table when it is her turn. With every turn, another stick is added, and a collaborative picture slowly forms.

As I might have guessed, this was a challenge for both kids. Gabriel is still too young to abide by rules like no talking and waiting for turns, but Frances and I gave him a pile of toothpicks to work with on his own, which kept him happily employed. Frances was initially disturbed by the fact that she would not have ultimate control over the image we were creating, and by the absence of discussion. My daughter undertakes very little in life without talking about it at great length before, during, and after the endeavor in question. I knew this would be on the growing edge for her.

But the rolling pile of rainbow colored toothpicks on the table proved so enticing that she endured the discomfort and tried out the game in earnest. Success! It was a pleasure to surprise each other, to discover something unexpected, and to watch Frances relax and enjoy being creative in a quiet, collaborative way. I must confess, we were far from silent, but we didn't direct each other either.

 

We played a couple of rounds that resulted in an angular flower and a wacky-haired dancing person, then both kids enjoyed making their own stick pictures for awhile. I loved the quiet, charged air of focused energy in the house - while it lasted. In the future, I don't think I will try this on a tabletop that hovers over a green shag rug made of countless toothpick-sized lengths of wool. Nor will I get over-confident and leave the kids playing with hundreds of pointy toothpicks while I start dinner. (Hopefully I will remember a certain two year old's proclivity to throwing things when frustration hits.) But don't be deterred; I am sure all of you are wiser and more cautious than I am in these sorts of circumstances. Try the silent stick game for yourself and tell me how it goes! 

doing stories

I present to you 2010's most triumphant innovation in our family's world of creative play: a baking dish filled with dry beans and lentils for Gabriel's tiny construction vehicles to dig and dump. He has spent countless happy hours engrossed in his construction-themed tales, operating the machinery and adding new props to this Pyrex dish-turned-portable theater like shells, acorns, and plastic animals.

And this is The Cup, home to many delightful creatures including horses, dinosaurs, a wiggly snake and a diminutive Spider Man who is in a permanent crouch, forever ready to spring into action. All of them are willing actors. Sometimes when we are in the kitchen together Gabriel will tell me that he'd like to do some stories. I take down the play dough and The Cup off the shelf, and he gets busy making play dough islands, trucks, and roads and populating them with the cup inhabitants who invariably fight, build, and wreck stuff.

That's what my kids do. They do stories. Nowadays Frances like to use paper, pens, and art supplies to do hers, but she still likes a good satisfying round of play dough storytelling too. She tells stories to her pals, the embroidered birds on the shower curtain, every time she uses the bathroom (if you are ever visiting us and wondering where Frances has disappeared too, that is the first place to check). She spends long stretches of time lost in making books featuring protagonists with names like Scary McSee. 

Sometimes I feel like my job is to create an environment that will facilitate my kids' storytelling and story-listening, and then get out of the way. Put out a dish of split peas in a quiet room and let them go at it.  When they tire of that we can read a stack of books together. I am just as hooked as they are; one of the greatest joys of parenting small children for me is the daily consumption of children's books. (It is unfortunate that the pleasures of reading aloud are usually reserved for librarians, teachers, and parents of younger children. I hope my kids will indulge me and tolerate reading aloud together til college. And beyond.)

When my kids do stories, I watch them become pint-sized masterminds controlling a tiny universe, creating and destroying at will. How satisfying! Story making is a kind of counterweight to the relative powerlessness they cope with in a universe run by adults with their maddeningly arbitrary ways. I like to think it gives them a sense of agency in the big wide confusing world, just as it did - and still does (hello blogging!) for me.

every happy family is happy in its own way

Socializing in Annapolis is so often planned. People live farther apart, our St. John's friends have demanding schedules, there is a lot more school to contend with, and the end result is that when a family comes over, it becomes an occasion to clean the house and make some nicer-than-usual food. It's so different from visiting in Lancaster. We knock on friends' doors without calling first. My kids hop on and off the neighbors' porches in their pajamas. And we all enjoy being welcomed into the warm kitchens and lived-in living rooms of friends.

These spontaneous moments of shared, messy regular life offer a window into the mystery of how another family works - the inner logic and boundaries that give a family its cohesive shape. I have been intrigued by families since I was a kid, but now that I'm a responsible party in my own family (I'm so culpable! They will tell their therapists about me someday!) I can get pretty weird and twisted up inside. My old anxiety-driven perfectionist impulses start making grumbling noises.

I admit it: I have succumbed to feelings of inadequacy before the many happy, strong families we are lucky to call friends. Instead of taking inspiration when I see a friend modeling a novel way to engage a child, organize a meal, or encourage positive behavior, I sometimes think: why don't I do that?  I tabulate the multitudinous errors of my mothering. I settle into making mental lists of all the things I will do better. It is so disappointing when that happens! The competitive parenting vibe one encounters at the playground or preschool with relative strangers is one thing. But to recognize those feelings of competition, judgment, and anxiety with friends completely sucks. The cruel gesture of objectification required to compete with another person is extra problematic in family friendship. Being a parent is hard enough! Why would I mess with the much-needed solidarity?

At a certain point during the holidays though, the grumblings quieted, and I was able to appreciate that our friends and family's differences are a beautiful thing. Besides sharing different pursuits, work, books, music, passions and relationships, other families share with us a different internal organization, because they are made up of different people. I know, it is nuts that I am only wrapping my head around this idea now. Happy families are not alike, after all. How could they be?

I have a five year old who gags on vegetables, has an insatiable appetite for all things theological, screams in terror because she hears a mysterious noise on the way to the kitchen, writes poetry that takes my breath away, and sits in the bathroom talking earnestly to the birds embroidered on our shower curtain that she has named John and Michael. As if I could employ the same disciplinary tactics or bedtime routine with her that a friend does with her equally extraordinary and one of a kind kid!

When I can accept and embrace our particularity and strangeness, I can learn from the dear friends in our life without feeling threatened or judged. I can take inspiration from their generous, unique example, letting it fill my sails with a strong wind so that I might continue in my own direction.

Today was the first regular day back, after a week away packed with family and friends, and we did so many deliciously regular things. Gabriel and I dropped Frances off at school, went to the Rec Center, and played at a friend's house. I set up a better work space for myself during naptime, and made hot chocolate for the kids after school. We pretended to be birds in a nest on the couch, snuggled in the big blue blanket, reading stories. There is much for us to learn and do as a family, and many ways to grow. If I can loosen my grip a bit, our dear friends will help us with that. But it is also nice to know that being ourselves, right here and now, is a-okay. 

1.1.11

Even though our thermostat has been set at 48 degrees for the past week and there were sad old dishes waiting for us in the sink, even though our goldfish Jim was barely alive and belly up in his bowl, and despite the rainy darkness pressing all around our lonely-looking house when we pulled up this evening, walking into this place felt like falling into a deep, warm embrace. We all heaved a satisfying, happy sigh of relief. Finally - home!

We spent many days at my mother's in Lancaster surrounded by beloved friends and neighbors. And do you know what? I wanted to go home. We all did. How strange! It seems we are finally shifting our center to this fledgling life we are slowly but surely building by the Bay. I know it is a good thing, but it still made me a little sad. Grief works in unusual ways, washing over you from unexpected directions when you least expect it.

Even so, it was a good week, full of simple pleasures. 

 We read books about trucks over and over.

With bated breath and an awed smile, Frances fed her new baby cousin Caiden.

 Many girls drew lovely pictures during a dinner with neighbors.

 Gabriel took pictures of me with his kaleidoscope at the farmer's market.

Frances gleefully discovered my charm necklace from 1987 on a "treasure hunt" through some neglected desk drawers. My old love of 7Up, baseball, and skiing came flooding back! (Not really.)

Onstage at the Fulton, after the show. Our dear friend is playwright in residence at the theater and gave us a memorable tour that included trying on Liesl's dress, climbing the set mountain, and wearing red clown noses in the actors' dressing rooms.

Happy new year, friends. May 2011 bring you happiness, health, and the peace that comes with being truly home.