the busy heart

We're moving to Alabama. Sam landed a job teaching at a University there. This one. The move came as a shock. I hadn't planned on moving back to the South. We'd felt inclined to move all the way out here, from Boston to Arizona, and now we were going to move back across the country? And why, exactly, had we come out here? Nothing has really worked out the way we'd hoped. In fact, many of our ideas for surviving here have outright failed. Sam began to say, "You know when I found that five-leaf clover  just before we moved? I'm thinking I found it so I'd know I was already lucky. I wish I'd known I was already lucky."  He also began to suggest we name our next child Equity Dwindle, which is rather a beautiful name, right? (No, I'm not pregnant.) If nothing else, we've learned this year. We've grown up this year. We've enjoyed being close to family. And the two of us have had time to hang with Henrietta constantly for the first ...

Golly. You know how everything is going along sort of normally and then you decide to move and chaos reigns? You don't think you'll give up every single excess thing you usually do, but it turns out you severely underestimated the moving beast. Moving is a beast, right? And it's a bummer because I have all of these things I've meant to tell you, posts that flit into my head and flit back out again when I crash for the night without having written them. So here is a brief report on all of the ones I can remember. *A few weeks ago we got ourselves bamboozled into an in-home presentation from an earnest and awkward vacuum salesman. Even now I keep thinking of him carrying these little filthy filters--round white circles black with dirt--over to us very carefully, like the dirt was sacred. He did this half a dozen times--on our carpeted stairs, on our couch ottoman. He told us about bugs that live in our bed and feast on our dead skin. He told us if he vacuumed o...

On a Friday a month or so ago, Sam and I were driving to the art museum in Worcester. It was sunny and glorious outside, and we were talking, again, about Sam's dread for the coming school year. He's been on paternity leave, as I've mentioned, but he's dreaded the end of that leave every single day, and we've discussed his dread most days. The job is a bad fit for a number of reasons, few of which I'm interested in going into here. We thought that a move closer to the school would help (his commute was horrendous previously), but it hasn't, so as we talked, driving along, I said what I had started to say when this subject came up, "Don't go back then. We'll figure something out. Don't go back." Prior to that Friday, this would lead to some circling around the possibilities, and end with one of us saying, "No, it'll never work. We can't do it. We'll stay one more year and see how it goes. It's bound to get better....

Enjoying a restaurant spoon--a baby's best friend. Henrietta is hungry. I realized this after about a week of much more fussiness than usual, and waking up about 4,000 times a night. But let me back up to why this was not immediately clear. When I got pregnant, it felt like I was required to choose a mothering identity: would I have a natural birth, or a medicated one? And the identity spread out from there: cloth or disposable diapers? Breastfeeding or formula? Babywearing or the opposite of babywearing (whatever that is)? You get the idea. These felt like big decisions, decisions that didn't have to do with the decision themselves so much as who I was . I can say, six months in, that I've ended up rejecting the false opposites here and doing a little of both in almost every case, which is all well and good, unless you're me, and you long for nothing more than to pick one side of the spectrum and endorse it and love it and become it entirely, to enthusiasti...

I've been posting on this blog for five years. Sporadically, mostly. Sometimes very sporadically. But somehow I always come back to it. And at several points since I've had this blog, I've felt inclined (or prompted?) to take it more seriously, to post more, to try to do something with it. But let me tell you, there are a lot of ways to talk myself out of doing that. I'd try, but then I'd get too busy, or I'd post something and get zero comments, or I'd post something and actually get comments (which was almost more terrifying, somehow?), or I'd think I had nothing to say, or I'd worry that what I had to say was something I was not supposed to say, on and on, you get the point. Recently, I had that feeling again, and I was talking to my sister about it, and she said I ought to just do it. I'd been turning the idea over and over in my head for weeks, thinking really hard about it while I did other things, asking myself the hard blogger questio...

I've learned I'm really good at spending money in order to save it. You know what I mean? Buying a bunch of stuff, so you won't have to buy it later. I'm so good at that. A few weeks ago, when I got my last paycheck, visions of Costco danced in my head, and I headed out, leaving the baby with Sam, planning to stock up so we'd have plenty when my income stopped. This is not a bad idea, right? But somehow, though I put a bunch of stuff back at the last minute, that total made me gasp inside, and tremble. I did not intend to spend so much. It seemed too late to do anything about it, and I was so frazzled I couldn't think what we didn't need, so I handed over my card and made my way to the exit. As I pushed my cart out the doors, some customers were approaching speaking another language, and I felt like an enormous American pushing her enormous cart full of enormous food. The whole drive home, I felt bad. I mean, this is the sort of thing I really feel ba...

Last Wednesday we went into Boston so I could clear out my office. We brought Henrietta, and I met with my (former) boss and she got us a box, and I put everything in it: My notes to myself, my pictures of Sam, my lemon pepper for my lunches, my purple velvet ballet flats I used to change into after wearing my snow boots into work, my framed prints. I threw out stale walnuts and old soup and dozens of sandwich baggies and grocery sacks I'd kept just in case I needed to bring something home on the train. My coworkers gathered around the door to my office, there to see the baby and say hello. They were so kind and asked nice questions about Henrietta and said how pretty and alert she was and Sam told them about our new house. I cleared out all of my files while Henrietta fussed, and Sam held her, telling her we were almost done, it was almost time to go home. It was cold that day, very cold. My car temperature said it was 12 degrees outside when we left home, and it felt cold...

Have you seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi ? I watched it the other night while I was getting the baby to sleep, and it was such a lovely film. It's a documentary about an 85-year-old man in Japan, Jiro Ono, who has dedicated his life to making the perfect sushi. He has a small restaurant (just ten seats!) and it's ranked as one of the best in the world. It takes three months to get a reservation, and a meal there costs $300. He obsesses over quality ingredients, over how long his assistants massage the octopus to make it tender, over the seating arrangements of his customers. And this is what gets me: he is so happy. He says all day, as he makes sushi, he's ecstatic. He says the way to live your life is to find something you really love doing and dedicate yourself to it. I wonder if that's so. When I first watched it, I thought he was right, and I wondered what on earth I could give myself to with that much ecstasy, but then I read this review by Roger Ebert , and Ebert ...

Whew. So, was that the most depressing post ever, or what? Thank you for showing up here to read it, and for all of your really lovely and compassionate comments. I appreciate them, every one. And I think it was good for me to get all that out there, even so publicly, though as soon as hit publish I worried one just wasn't supposed to be so honest. The next morning I woke up feeling better, and mostly that's held. I still have bouts of sadness--usually once a day, to be real--but I'm able to have a bit more perspective over all, and I'm learning what's essential to my sanity. Not long before I got put on bed rest, I heard about a Buddhist meditation practice that involves the simple question, "Who am I?" asked over and over again. It's asked not with the intention to answer it, per se, but to peel back everything that surfaces that's not really an answer. That idea has been in my head a lot lately, as I navigate this new reality. It feels like I...

Thank you, really, to all of you who commented and wrote me emails.  They really mean a lot to me.  And mostly I'm just checking in to say I'm feeling better.  The way I came to feel better seems important, so I thought I'd record it: *I prayed, and it wasn't pretty.  This was flat on my face, weeping aching praying, saying, over and over again, "You have to fix me.  You have to heal my heart."  (Yes, precisely in those words.  I can get a bit sassy and demanding in my praying.)  I felt broken and I felt like I spent all day trying to fix it and everyone else was trying to help me fix it, and no one could do it.  I wasn't asking to stop grieving, just to be functional and believe in good things again.  I felt deeply then, more than perhaps ever in my life, that there was this gaping hole in me that I needed God to fill. And, after many days of praying like that, and a turning point conversation with Sam (up next!), something lifted, sh...

On Sunday I said two awkward things.  Two things that made the people I was talking to raise their eyebrows or laugh nervously.  I'm the type of person who is still thinking about those things I said two days later.  It's not that I offended anyone, it's just that sometimes my brain works differently, and what I think/say comes out a little weird.  Sometimes I love this about myself--that my brain is not like other brains--but most of the time I wish it wouldn't be so.  I wish, in some deep part of me, that I could always be the good girl, to think how you think, to please you, World. I realized today that Sam is sort of the opposite of this.  If he says something shocking, something surprising, this is a good day for Sam.  He may worry, occasionally, about his students reporting him to someone who might be concerned about the edgy joke he made, but mostly, when he makes his students laugh nervously or raise their eyebrows, he feels like he's done hi...

I've always been obsessed with self-improvement.  From the time I was small, I've been making these lists that divide my life into categories--health, money, talents, etc--and writing out ambitious and nearly-absurd goals for myself.  Examples: I will create five new recipes a week. I will exercise for 2 hours on our rebounder trampoline every day.  I will read a book every day.  (Mind you, I was 11 years old.) Maybe this sort of system works for other people, but for me this was a recipe for discouragement.  Fast forward to my life now, and my goals have gotten more elaborate, no less plentiful, and no more doable.  And basically, for all that I hope to change, and for all of the ways I want to change, I had grown to completely mistrust my ability to do so.  Sort of like: why bother? I'll just fail anyway.  That sort of thing. Last year, in another effort to change my life ...

Well, we didn't move last week.  At the last minute on Friday, I called our realtor and he said it was looking less "100%."  And so we decided to stay for another week.  Our cats hadn't finished destroying the furniture anyway. And now, we're finally, really moving in.  We have the keys.  Some of our stuff is even inside.  And I have to say, I've been worried that when we got inside I wouldn't still love it, but oh I do.  I walked from room to room, turning on lights, reminding myself, and it was seriously one of the most beautiful experiences to know we were buying it, that it was ours.  It felt, well, like home.  And thennnnn we bickered.  We are moving, after all.  Deciding where to put the cat litter will take a good two months of intense negociation. But the reason why I gathered you all here wasn't really to tell you that.  I wanted to record my three part method of emotionally/mentally processing this moving mes...

Today marks three weeks we've been living in a hotel room.  While we've been here, the weather has turned to a delicious Autumn theme, which would be so much more charming if we had packed our sweaters and coats and rainboots.  Three weeks was not the plan, but it's how it turned out.  Tomorrow, hopefully, maybe, possibly, we'll actually move into our new place.  Maybe.  Possibly.  I feel like the girl who cried house.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up about it, but this morning my brain woke me up at four and immediately commenced imagining every room of that house, everything I'm excited to unpack and put somewhere, the shopping trips we'll need to take to get a few rugs and pieces of furniture.  Can you blame me for being excited?  It's been a long haul with a fair amount of hopelessness and the most absurd collection of absurd happenings I've ever experienced in a three week stretch.  Observe ...

                                                          [present house, fireplace guys] We move tomorrow afternoon, and this morning I took one last run through our little neighborhood.  I saw a family of wild turkeys (?), a mama and two baby turkeys, on the side of the road as if waiting for a bus.  We've loved our neighborhood, and not for the wildlife, since that's rare, but because it's just beautiful here.  And on my run I was thinking about all that's happened here in the last year.  A lot, that's what.  So much that it doesn't feel like there's time to go into detail before I go to work, but work is part of it.  Sam and I weathered the bad job situation here....

[I usually forget to smile when I'm taking pictures of myself.  Sam had already left for work, and it took concentration...] It's not the bravest color combination, but I felt pretty.  I've recently caught onto this wearing skirts higher on the waist thing, and I dig it (hides the tummy!).  I don't know why it takes me so long to see trends.  I had to be sitting on the train with a woman standing directly in front of me with her skirt up high and her shirt tucked in to realize ohhhhhhh. 

Well, we got it. And here it is. This isn't the Queen Anne Victorian. It's a condo we fell in love with when we first started looking, that we went back to look at four times, that we couldn't for the life of us get out of our heads. And so we'll stay in the same town, and live here, among all the wood and windows and sunlight. We couldn't be more thrilled. Come see us. There will be plenty of room.

After three full days of outrageous, pummeling, constant rain, the sun is out today. It's nearly 60 degrees, which feels nothing short of a miracle. So after eating my lunch, I decided to walk down to Copley square to drop off some film. I listened to my iPod, watched all of the people taking pictures and eating their lunches and wearing pretty shoes, and felt so happy I thought I'd burst. I was literally just grinning (as in last post) like a fool, giggling occasionally for no reason at all except that life, at the moment, is good. Reasons to rejoice: a. Sam's parents are in town, and they're just lovely people. They take us to dinner and tell me stories about Sam as a wee boy. b. After over a month of searching, I am the swooning owner of a new work bag. See below. I got it on etsy, and probably paid too much, but what else can one do when they see it and gasp and know deep in their heart that they are beholding the bag of their soul? See the pretty insides? S...

Since this new job involves reading all day (I mean, literally, all day. Finding stuff to put in anthologies. It's not a bad life, I tell you.), I've been posting things on the other blog that catch my eye/heart. But somehow, this belongs here. Maybe because of subject matter. Anyway, my dad loves this book, Eternal Man , by Truman G Madsen, and he got me reading it. It's short, but fathoms deep, and I feel like I'll have to read it seven more times to "get it." But this part, I think I get. On freedom and commitment: "We talk as if freedom consisted in having the greatest variety of options and that a 'once-and-for-all' decision coerces our initiative. But is freedom increased by every new flavor of ice cream? "Actually, it is only when we rise above trivial options and ask ourselves in the depths, 'What do I want to be ?' that we emerge from the bondage of a flitting and faceless mode of life. The most majestic wonder of our fr...

After all that thinking last night, I got called for an interview at that big fancy publishing job downtown. This was just hours after I told the chair I wouldn't be back next semester. Who knows if I'll even get the job, but that story doesn't really sound so bad. Working around the corner from Boston Commons? Come on now ... Also, I got a poem accepted for publication. Today is okay by me.