connected & in constant motion

I met Emily Rogers in 2002, during our first week of graduate school. I remember scanning a cavernous room filled with women (and a tiny handful men), all milling about during an orientation meeting for the social work program at Bryn Mawr. I spotted Emily right away. She had a long braid, beautiful posture, and an air of quiet confidence about her that made me want to be her friend. We discovered that we both lived in Center City, and along with another excellent new friend named Patrice, we began carpooling back and forth to the Main Line together. 

I haven't seen Emily in over five years, ever since she and her husband Gregory left Philadelphia to return to their native Austin. But somehow she has remained a presence in my life, and I'm unfailingly enriched by my occasional virtual brushes with her sensibility, perspective, and clarity of expression. She has always struck me as a profoundly honest person, which is why I invited her to write a guest post for Homemade Time. I am so very grateful that she agreed.

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I started, actually re-started, potty training my four year-old this week. At this point, we have several failed attempts behind us, but we took the leap out of diapers even though Lena’s ability to communicate still hovers well below her chronological age. Since there isn’t any way to explain to her in words, pictures, or gestures that she absolutely must use a toilet any time she needs to go, I’ve chosen a method that combines the regimentation of a production line with the social isolation of house arrest. 

Surprisingly, I don’t hate it. Her toddler brother, Simon, has spent the last few mornings with his grandparents. I’ve pared down our schedule to the minimum trips away from home. The result is that I’m spending more time alone with Lena than I have since Simon was born more than a year and a half ago. The single-minded focus that I have on her bodily functions echoes the time when we were mother and first-newborn when I kept a chart tracking all her input and output. The co-existence of tedium and joy has given color and texture to many of our days together.

The readjusted pace that potty training has imposed on our family has opened a small clearing in our usually frenetic schedule of learning opportunities and therapy appointments. From this vantage point I can see back to an old way of being that is barely comprehendible any more, a time when my own self-interest was all there was.  As I’m sitting on the edge of the tub in my tiny bathroom with my knees resting against my daughter’s knees, I can foresee a time when all of us will be more engaged with the outside world, and it will be a good thing. Between Lena achieving steady, albeit delayed, progress in her development and Simon marching steadfastly through the toddlers’ milestones of autonomy, I wonder what kind of parent I will be in response to their expanding worlds and my own.

The encompassing dependency of babyhood and the amplified attention I’ve given to Lena’s special needs, have marked the perimeter of almost my entire experience of being a parent. When my children were babies, I spent most of the day physically connected to them: nursing, wearing them as I went about my day, and sleeping next to them through the night. I functioned as an extension of them with my whole self eclipsed by their need to eat and feel comforted in a world that was completely alien to them. And since Lena hasn’t yet formed a relationship with the world outside a very small circle of comfort, our normal total mother-infant absorption morphed into a different type of relationship that in terms of time and energy is very similar to what I would give a baby.  While I don’t see their need for all of me vanishing overnight, it’s clear that as time goes on there will be ever-widening clearings in my life and eventually something else will fill them.

At first I thought the vague agitation that grew out of this expanding space was about my need to participate more fully and permanently in a career, but I think that is only part of it. Parenthood transformed my own trajectory to one that mirrors the development of my children. As our life course spins us away from one another, we are still bound by some cosmic gravity. Having children presents a constant pull and tug between intimacy and independence, between confidence and doubt, and between having expectations and releasing expectations. Being connected and in constant motion has created a new sensory awareness of the world in me, and I am curious to find out how it will alter my own perceptions and experience from this point forward.

Emily Rogers lives in Austin, TX where she is surronded by an extended family and many supportive fellow parents. She works part-time, bringing a social worker's perspective to a community-wide planning body on ex-offender reentry.

field explorers club

So after four days away from my family, I did not slip back into the waters of daily life with my kids like a jumping silver dolphin who slides gracefully into the sea after a brief flirtation with the air. Nor was I like a sea turtle who suddenly moves smoothly and effortlessly after flopping around on the sand. I was not like any creature who belongs in the water at all. I was more like a kid who has not yet learned to swim but thinks the water looks awfully inviting, and so jumps in only to find it's cold and foreign. Thrashing about in utterly exhausting futility ensues.

Gosh. That doesn't sound too good. It hasn't been terrible; it just hasn't been smooth. Wednesday was my birthday and I felt mad at Frances especially for not being nicer to me (perhaps a misplaced expectation to have of a six year old, but it bothered me all the same). Maybe she and her brother were punishing me for going away. But maybe I was asking for it: I felt behind in various areas of my life when I got back, and commenced to multi-task at a fiercer than usual rate around the house. Such as simultaneous laundry-folding, email-checking, pesto-making, inner wheel-turning...all while I am ostensibly listening to one of my kids tell me about his dream last night. Sort of.

Between their acting out and my evasive distractedness, I have been missing the feeling of true connection with my kids. So this morning I finally made a move to break our bad habits. I proposed we form a field explorers club.

Inspired by a new favorite from the library, Field Trips by Jim Arnosky, each child packed a notebook, binoculars, and pencils in a newly designated field bag. Frances brought along her bird books. Then we set out across the 30 feet that separates the back deck from the garden, and began to record our observations. Gabriel planted himself on a garden path and began drawing a daddy longlegs he found on a zinnia leaf, and Frances gravitated towards the swings, where she listened to the birds in the trees and tried to identify them by their calls.

We were driven indoors within 30 minutes by the fantastically aggressive mosquitoes, so the club members continued drawing indoors, aided by books. We have not yet made membership cards, but I think that would be a good idea.

 

Because maybe a membership card tucked in my wallet might remind me that sometimes all it takes is a deep breath, an intention to slow down and look around (if only for a half hour!), and join together in a simple, common pursuit. Creating our club was hardly a silver bullet (I nearly strangled Frances about two hours later) but it did gently realign something inside me. On a hot and humid July morning, that slight adjustment in my vision made all the difference.

grunts and squeaks

In the end, I spent nearly 48 hours with Rachel, Kehry, and little Louisa, who is not yet two weeks old. When I walked into their cozy home on Saturday afternoon, she was sprawled along a nursing pillow on Rachel’s lap, head tipped back, eyes nearly closed, limbs draped heavily in every direction. It was the most iconic, adorable portrait of a milk-drunk newborn imaginable. I put down my bag, sat down next to Rachel on the couch, and cried.

I don’t know why. Maybe I cried for her tiny perfection, or her abundant black hair, or her intimacy with my sister who had been so recently transformed into a mother. I think I cried simply for her incontrovertible thereness -- she had not been there before! It boggles the mind. 

Also, I had not known that I would love her right away.

Being at their house brought me right back to the time-out-of-time mode that defines life with a newborn. Day and night become less meaningful concepts; the world is reduced to a room, or a couple of rooms, where the ins and outs of nursing, sleeping, and diapering dominate the agenda. Being in newbornland elicited vivid memories from my own first days of motherhood: sitting with day-old Frances in our packed up Philadelphia apartment that sweltering June, admiring her golden skin, distracted by how very hard our futon couch suddenly seemed. (But really, after an episiotomy, what sitting surface isn’t cruelly firm?) I remember the novelty of being attached, of our bodies operating in tandem. At times it felt oppressive, relentless (especially at night), but at the same time I could not ignore the strange ache that set in my arms if we were separated for more than an hour or so. 

But there was plenty of breathing room between me and my niece, who is ultimately not my responsibility, and so being in her presence was a simple, easy pleasure. (A window into the joys of grandparenthood!) Louisa did make me think also of my own parents as they must have been when we were born, young and beautiful, tired out, admiring us as we flung our arms wildly around in a bassinet. I thought of my in-laws, imagining them hovered over a tiny Mike: watching his irregular breath fill his belly and then draw his delicate ribcage into relief, fingering his toes, nuzzling his head, laughing at his baby grimaces and worried brow, relishing the smell and feel of him, perfect and precious.

We were all so once. My husband, who is off talking about Hegel at St. John's College; my neighbor Barbara who was widowed last year and loves to garden; Miss Bernadette the mail carrier who always has a kind word and regularly delivers our mail to the house next door. We were all covered in soft, paper-thin skin, possessed of impossibly tiny fingers and toes, unable to lift our heavy heads. 

Doesn't it change things somehow, to look around and remember that we were all once exquisite, small, and helpless, too?

the journey to louisa's house

So there I was, standing outside the Minneapolis airport after midnight last night, using up my last reserves of energy for the purpose of remaining upright. Countless other stranded, tired passengers joined me. An airport worker stood smoking listlessly nearby. One by one, at least fifteen hotel shuttles pulled up who were not there for me. Each time one turned the corner, my hopes were lifted, only to be dashed once the logo on the side of the van came into view: Ramada Inn, La Quinta Inn, Best Western, Hampton Inn, Embassy Suites. Who knew Minneapolis boasted so many chain hotels? My peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a distant memory. I was wearing the wrong shoes. Desperation set in.

But then I heard this guy on a cell phone behind me. He was a handsome man in his fifties, traveling with a strikingly fit and put-together wife, and he had come unhinged. “We’re in Minneapolis. No, really. It’s fine. I like it here. We’re going to go to the goddamned Mall of America, that’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go buy myself a hundred gold watches there, I swear to God.”

I started giggling. I looked at his wife, who was smiling placidly. I found someone else who was also waiting for the mythical Hilton shuttle. She was a fresh-faced, earnest young woman who crunched numbers for the Department of Education and was traveling to a 50^th high school reunion in Sioux City to collect data on people who had taken part in a wide-ranging longitudinal study called Project Talent. They had been asked questions about their career ambitions as 10^th and 11^th graders, and now she was going to see how it had all turned out (in a quantitative survey sort of way), fifty years later. She couldn’t have been older than 24, in a messy blond ponytail and flip flops, slinging a bright green tote bag with the Project Talent logo on it. I somehow resisted the urge to hug her and wish her well on life’s way when we parted at the hotel.

Then I slept. And showered. A nice man brought me an enormous vegetable omelet and two cups of coffee in the hotel restaurant this morning. The world was looking a lot brighter. 

I was the only person on the hotel shuttle heading back to the Minneapolis airport, so the driver and I talked. He is a studying international business at the University of Minnesota. Born in New York, his parents emigrated from Nigeria, and he speaks three African languages (in addition to French and English). We talked about traveling, about how Africans laugh all the time (me: I think I would like that, maybe I belong in Africa? - him: it’s kind of annoying though. Will somebody please get serious?), about his experiences traveling in Zimbabwe, and having to stop the car for an elephant crossing the road.

Who else have I met in the course of my airport adventures? Squirmy, three year old Ethan of the beautiful blue eyes, reunited with his military Mommy after a month’s separation while she was in training. Boy scout Troop 90 of the Chippewa Valley Council (the braces, the gangly limbs, the hatwear…!) hoisting sleeping bags and backpacks over their shoulders, en route to a doubtlessly memorable camping trip. A middle-aged Dominican couple hoping to finally make it to Las Vegas before the holiday weekend was over.  A Middle Eastern man carrying the most outrageously trimmed lap dog you can imagine, attracting the attention of every child within a hundred foot radius. He held it over the wide trash can in line in security, joking that he couldn’t take her through so he’d have to dump her, much to the delight of one particular airport security worker who clearly loved dogs. And all of this, all of this was set to the music of so many Minnesotan accents floating on the air around me.

Sometimes I just love America. I love it. Who knew getting stranded on my way to visit my new niece Louisa would inspire this kind of overwhelming love for my fellow man? And woman? And country? Maybe it’s the solidarity that comes with these kinds of experiences. Maybe it’s because our new suburban lifestyle has deprived me of city streets and buses and the diverse strangers one is privileged to inhabit those spaces with. But honestly, where else in the world could I have met the above collection of people? Where else do they brush up against one another and share daily life?

Despite persistent and frightening xenophobia that courses through American culture and politics, this country continues to be the place that admits more immigrants legally than all the other developed countries of the world combined. What distinguishes us more as a nation than that? What better to be proud of, than a young man who speaks five languages, who wakes at 4 am to drive the hotel shuttle to pay for college, who is more New York than Nigeria – who is so decidedly, so extraordinarily American?

I’m about to board a plane for Cedar Rapids, Iowa now. Things just keep on looking up.

Happy Fourth of July, friends!