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.