was not any of the animals, but: the unsolicited kindness of other women: the solo one who, while walking the opposite direction, saw my three-year-old trip and fall, and stopped to make sure he was okay before proceeding on; the field trip chaperone who, in the cramped and stuffy indoor desert exhibit, noticed me trying to get through with a stroller and barked at her pack of unruly adolescent boys (who either didn’t see me or didn’t care) to move over, there’s a baby right there, and allowed me to pass; the older one in the ladies’ room who saw me trying to manage my four- and six-year-olds while also trying to change baby’s diaper, and asked me if there were anything I needed; the college lacrosse player in line for the restroom at sheetz, where we stopped on the way home, who noticed me holding my three-year-old and was the only one of her large group of teammates who allowed me to cut in front of her in line; and all the other moms pushing strollers and holding tiny hands who smiled at me in quiet acknowledgement as we crossed paths: I see all of you, God sees all of you, & I hope that He rewards you greatly. Because women who, for no reason at all other than plain & simple kindness, go out of their way to help other women as we try to navigate this hectic world: you really are, imo, some of His best ideas.
Category: (journal)
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in a certain mood or at a certain hour & if a certain type of song is playing, this little wisp of an idea alights upon my skin like a feather, tickling, and it occurs to me, I start to think: maybe i should try & write That One Book again… the one that i’ve written start-to-finish approx 4x in the last fifteen years, started rewriting at least 25-30x, re-drafted endlessly in my head, endlessly, and furiously, depressedly thrown in the trash approx 500 times… the one that i once printed off a physical copy of and literally buried in the backyard and planted a melon-sized rock on top of its grave, to try & put it to rest once & for all… the one that i keep swearing off, that keeps haunting me (it’s never gonna leave me, is it?) (wtf is it about that one?!), but man, i tell you what, literary agents everywhere can count themselves lucky, LUCKY!!, that i quite literally ain’t got time nor the thickness of skin to deal with all of that right now, who can relate?
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*TW – pregnancy loss*
At first I felt a lot of guilt. What if it was something I did?, what was wrong with my body?, etc. I got over that in time; I no longer feel like it was my fault. It just happens. 1 in 4 pregnancies, in fact.
But now, five years and eight months on, I still have guilt, just of a different kind. Two different kinds, really:
I’m no longer sad about it on the day-to-day. So I feel guilty for not feeling sadder. And also, I feel guilty for feeling sad at all: for grieving the baby that I lost – because if that baby had survived, I wouldn’t have my living daughter.
Three long, agonizing months after the miscarriage, three months of grieving inconsolably and waiting impatiently, I finally became pregnant again, this time with a baby that stuck. That “rainbow baby” went on to be born in June: three months after what would have been the lost baby’s due date.
March 14, 2021 was their due date, in fact (pi day baby). So if they’d lived, they’d be turning five right about now. – But as it is, I have my bean, my beautiful, funny, mischievous 4.5 year old bean who will turn five in June, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.
There’s no possible universe in which they both exist.
So like how do I do this? I can’t be sad that pi died, because that implies wishing that pi had lived, which implies wishing that bean had never existed. Which I do not and could never.
But – do those implications really necessarily follow? It seems so to me, logically… but maybe not all things are subject to this kind of logic. Things can be both bad and good. It can be hard to see things that way, especially tragedies; but this whole miscarriage conundrum really shows me how true it is: our little labels of “good” and “bad,” which we are so quick to slap onto our perceptions of events and occurrences – the stories we make up to make sense of things – are really so inadequate, so futile. Maybe in the grand scheme they’re actually even kinda meaningless.
The tragedy of a thing doesn’t make the joy that it made space for any less joyful. Nor does the joy really alleviate the sadness. They don’t cancel each other out. They coexist. Both are true at once. It’s weird. Human brains aren’t really capable of seeing things from God’s perspective, but situations like this kind of give us a hint, I think. In the mind of God, there are none of our human limitations. Both can exist there, both siblings side by side, equally, eternally alive.
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was my four-year-old’s straight-faced, matter-of-fact reply this afternoon when I begged her to explain to me why, why, why she was still whining and angry and tantruming even after all of her requests had been fulfilled (a bandaid for a tiny boo-boo that wasn’t even bleeding, quesadillas made with cheddar only (because last time i had the audacity to make them with a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella, in an attempt to use up the giant bag of mozzarella shreds in our cheese drawer) (she ate 1/4 of these btw), and her cup of water brought to her on the couch. Why was she still mad? Sometimes, when they’re in this mood and I’m overstimulated, I’ll start loudly singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to lighten the mood a bit (it really helps, you should try it!), but today, I just pleaded with her to explain to me why. As an ILI in socionics I have creative Te which means I want actions to serve some purpose — why?, what for?, what is this accomplishing??! I can’t deal with pointlessness — and also vulnerable Fe, which means I struggle with loud and histrionic displays of emotion. “Why are you mad?!” is probably a dumb question to ask a whining four-year-old. I’m aware of this. But sometimes it slips out. Being an ILI mom of littles has its unique challenges.
But now that I’ve been informed that, apparently, my four-year-old simply has this intentional, regularly-scheduled Scream Time written into her little daily agenda, I guess I can understand it a little better. “There always has to be a part of the day where I’m screaming.” I guess it serves a purpose for her. She’s a clever bean; maybe she’s on to something. Maybe we should all schedule some daily scream time. Maybe that’d be good for us. As someone with vulnerable Fe, though, I think I’ll stick to just rambling on this stupid little blog. This right here is my scream time.
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, but I do have one perhaps-slightly-redeeming quirk, when it comes to housekeeping.
Thing is, I’m neither tidy nor organized nor much of a clean freak, and left to my own devices I’ll neglect a mess until it can be neglected no more. I don’t have adhd (that i know of) but i do have a plethora of “doom boxes” incl. doom baskets, doom corners, doom kitchen drawers, & doom piles in every room. The whole basement? One big doom box. Tbh I’m just lazy. What am I even doing, I sometimes wonder.
Also I suck at cooking. This one is partly nature, partly nurture. I never really cared about cooking, and my family of origin never really ate meals together or had much in the way of family tradition around food; then in my early teens I developed an ED that stuck around, so food and I just never really got along. Zero joy in that relationship. Can’t cook, can’t clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring: my husband, he has weird taste. What do I do well? I’m such a scatterbrain my preschooler and toddler are constantly reminding me of things I forgot to do. Why did I come into this room? What am I doing here?
My one thing, the one small streak of neat-freak-ism, my little pet organizational neurosis, is: the dishwasher.
The dishwasher has got to be loaded a certain way. Specifically, the silverware. The silverware container has separate compartments. You must put spoons in one, butter knives in two, forks in three, baby utensils in four, and so on. Why would you not do this. Why would anyone not do this. I don’t understand people who just shove any utensil in any compartment haphazardly, jumbling them all up. It makes more work for you later.
If I open the dishwasher in the morning to unload it, and I see that someone else finished loading it last night, and the spoons and forks and knives are all jumbled up, I am hit with a palpable wave of horror and disgust. “Eugh!”, I’ll inadvertently exclaim, recoiling, my nose wrinkling as if something smells. The sheer overwhelm. Hands wiggling at my sides like they don’t know what to do. Because where do you even begin?! When the spoons are all in one hole, you can just grab a fistful of spoons and go. Then a fistful of forks. If they’re all mixed together, what do you do?! I have to sort them into the correct compartments before taking them out of the dishwasher. Is it just me?
But I’d never harass my sweet husband about loading the utensils the “correct” way, because that’d be anal and naggy, and I’m honestly just grateful to have a husband who helps with the dishes. Because really, the silverware is such a miniscule matter. Twenty seconds saved, maybe less. Really, if I think about it, this is not even really a “redeeming quirk” at all. So like what am I doing here.
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I fully admit that it was my fault. I was micromanaging. Water boiling for instant mac & cheese on the stove, and I had to rush out the door, so he was taking over the mac & cheese prep. & I was all “make sure you do it this way,” “don’t do it this way,” etc.
Because fr, have you ever made those annie’s white shells, in the purple box?! It’s trickier than you think. If you don’t sprinkle the powder just so and whisk it a certain way and scrape the pan a certain way, it clumps up and you don’t get a creamy sauce. You get a separated, vomitous mess. And my sweet husband, being a man, doesn’t like to follow instructions, and prefers to just feel his way through things. And i wanted our kids to have a decent dinner (because yeah, instant mac qualifies as a decent dinner, in our house).
So anyway that’s my excuse.
He took it as patronizing and condescending, like what, you think I can’t make instant mac?, you think i’m incapable of basic tasks?? which is fair; it’s true, i did not think that he was capable of making instant mac. For a few minutes we were doing this little semi-serious verbal dance like “i’m not mad, i just…” and half-joking “all I meant was…” and then i left.
he was still simmering when i got home an hour or so later, so we did a few more minutes of the “i’m not mad, i just” “all i meant was” and then he abruptly goes upstairs for a “shower”, which takes longer than usual. and when he emerges from the bathroom… his beard, his beautiful beard… is gone.
No shouting, no insults or profanities, just my husband’s pink chin, bare and smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Now, my husband is a handsome and healthy man of 40 years old, and normally, bearded, he looks maybe mid-thirties. but beardless he looks about 22. I’m 36 and look every minute of it. so when he shaves, it makes me look like a dirty cougar next to him. like a leonardo dicaprio.
He’s done this once before, shaving his beard out of spite. That was years ago, in that townhome, in the before-kids era. I don’t remember what that fight was about. I’m sure i deserved it that time too.
Both times he’s insisted he didn’t shave out of spite. He insists it was just a coincidence. It was just time for the beard to go.
but I know better.
“Irrational,” he calls me. I call it highly intuitive. He says I make up stories and bend logic to suit my imagined order of events. I call it seeing obvious connections. We actually love each other very much.
I did admit that i am a control freak and a micromanager. He did admit that the instant cheese sauce clumped up and separated because he wasn’t listening. Apologies were exchanged.
But apologies cannot bring back the beard. Some wounds, only time can heal. Sometimes you just have to let the instant mac be clumpy.
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yesterday i was in the checkout line at the [name of grocery store redacted] and in front of me there were these two dudes, about my age, one taller and broader with a messy ponytail and head-to-toe Carhartt, and his slighter, slicker, short-haired friend (brother? I mean basically) wearing khakis and black pullover (and the cute little girl in the shopping cart coulda been either of theirs; still works) and they were just out grocery shopping together and i was just 🤭🥰😄 bc in my peripheral/through furtive glances the situation read very “just dudes being bros on a thursday” (but come to think of it, maybe they were a married couple (which, c’mon, they basically are 😉)), but then one of them (idk which, i was too busy trying too hard not to stare) was so courteous as to retrieve that little plastic divider strip (which was up by the cashier, out of my reach) and place it on the conveyor belt behind their stuff so i could start putting my stuff down, and he just looks my way and goes: “here ya go” and i was just 😮😳😶 and i’ve been giggling/cringing about it ever since. And would you believe I am thirty-six.
MiTHology (4.0) 