I need some help

I'm sorry I suck so much & haven't been posting. I'm sure most of you know that Guppy #2 is now sucking of most of my time with her nursing. We have finally gotten to a point where I am bathing regularly, but I'm still barely keeping my head above sea level. Biggie has finally relented & is paying for someone to come clean our house a few times because he is working such insane hours he is really not home enough to be of much help. Our house isn't that bad, honestly. It's more that I am stuck in this house, sitting on the sofa nursing, trying to revel in the beauty & wonder of motherhood, & I feel so guilty that our house isn't clean & resentful that I can't clean it & have to sit in it that we're going to try this to see if it helps my nasty mood.

Yes. I'm in a nasty mood. I love Guppy #2. She is an awesomely happy, beautiful baby. I am so lucky to have this new little ray of sunshine in my life. She is all good. The problem is with MiniMe. & boy, am I heartbroken.

She isn't resentful of Guppy #2. She seriously thanks me if not daily, sometimes more than once a day, for her new sister. She loves her dearly & honestly threw her hands up in the air one morning when I was driving her to school saying, "Praise God, (for my new little sister)!" I'm not kidding. It was sweet & I had to stifle my giggles at the Jerry Faldwellness of it all.

However, MiniMe is seriously not happy. & I'd have to say it's mostly with me. She has told me nearly daily for the last 2 weeks that I am the meanest mom ever, that she doesn't love me anymore, that she wishes she could go live in another world where I am not. One night when my mom was visiting & I asked her to pick up the tea party of toys that had been going on under the dining room table for 3 days she said that she, "...wishes lighting would strike my mom & die her." I expected all this eventually, just not at age 4.

So, I'm heartbroken. I know I need to stop expecting her to understand so much. She is four, & sometimes she is so mature I forget that her maturity in most things is exceptional & shouldn't be expected at all times in all circumstances. I know I need to be patient with her & listen to her so that she feels she is important to me. I know I need to find ways to not resent that now that I have less time to spend on her she needs more because things have changed & she's doing it out of a need for security. But I'm having a hard time of things with her & I am really sad that this girl who has consumed my life for the past four years now suddenly seems to be scared of me. It hurts. A lot.

I feel like all could be righted by a return of our bedtime ritual of stories followed by ticklies in the big red chair while I sing her lullabies. I thought that the reason I was having such a hard time with the ritual before I gave birth was because of my big pregnant belly. Now I realize that in fact MiniMe has grown to a size where she no longer really fits very well in my lap. Coupled with the fact that Guppy #2 has a pattern of wanting so be really high maintenance in the hour before & the hour after MiniMe's bedtime, and I cannot remember the last time I got to read MiniMe a story & give her ticklies.

She feels so lost to me. I tell her when she sees all of the things I do for Guppy #2 I want her to know that I did all of those things for her when she was a baby. When she tells me that Guppy #2 is the sweetest & most adorable baby in the whole world I tell her that while that may be true now, I think she was cuter. I lay in bed at night after I've finally gotten Guppy #2 to sleep, trying to quiet my mind in the midst of Biggie's snoring, & tears roll down my cheeks. My heart telegraphs across the house to where MiniMe is sleeping. I get up & go in & I pick her up. I rock her on edge of her bed & sing her the song from I'll Love You Forever.

the best gift

Once we got in the car things really seemed to get going. Of course we were almost out of gas. Of course my contractions got more intense. The one I had as we were leaving the subdivision had me whining like MiniMe, pushing my feet against the dashboard, calling out to The Huz. I listened to my hypnobabies tracks on his iphone as The Huz drove up I-75 at 90 miles an hour.

I realized no one had called Christina, the midwife, to let her know I was on my way up there at this point. When I called her I couldn't really talk at first because a contraction hit as soon as she answered. I got through that, told her what was happening & she asked us to come to the birth center before we checked in to the hotel. We had to wait for a while because Christina was seeing another patient. I was okay, leaning over things, bending over at the waist through contractions, which were slightly less than 10 minutes apart at this point, but some were closer to 5 minutes. I don't remember much about the exam except that I was dilated to 3 cm, 90% effaced, & the baby was at 0 station. All signs pointing to baby coming soon. We had to go to the hardware store to get a coupler to run a hose from the faucet to the birthing tub & Cheryl was having a hard time finding a birthing tub for me. I had procrastinated, not gotten one myself, & had asked her to take care of that for me. Now she was having a hard time doing that.

When we got to the hotel we were disappointed. I had done a lot of research to find a hotel with 2 separate bedrooms so that my mom & MiniMe could be there comfortably, as well as a kitchen. The space was huge, but not as clean as we would have liked & awkward in ways like the toilet was too close to the wall.

Biggie left for about 15 minutes to get us some food. I hadn't eaten very much at all & had thrown the nachos up in the middle of the night. Even so, I couldn't really eat more than three bites. I don't know if it was excitement, fear, dread, or any combination of the three, but I just couldn't eat. Even though I was most scared of running out of energy, it was like my body didn't care about being reasonable. I guess this could be called Lesson #1 in Go with The Flow. No matter how much I thought I needed something, my body had ideas of its own.

I remember I was sitting on the sofa near the window when Cheryl got there. She came & hugged me before she brought in her things. We were excited, but not as excited as I had thought we would be. I remember that I had told myself to prepare for waiting a long time before she got there because I would have a long labor. I didn't feel like we had been waiting very long. Honestly, everything was just going along so smoothly. Yes, I had been having regular contractions for almost 24 hours, now but they were more than tolerable. I had actual breaks between the contractions where I could walk & talk & pee & just be fine. The difference between this labor, my labor, & the labor that was forced upon MiniMe & I was about the size of the Grand Canyon. I could do this labor, in fact, I was. & it was at this point that I really realized that I was. My mom came in with MiniMe around this time & I hugged her goodnight. They went upstairs for stories & ticklies without incident.

Cheryl kind of took over for Biggie at this point when I had contractions. When one came, she knew, & she got to applying the counter-pressure in my lower back quickly. While her hands weren't as strong as his, she had brought a sock filled with rice that I wish I had spoke out about, that it was more helpful so she would have used it more. She suggested I move to her birthing ball & I sat on it while leaning over the arm of one of the sofas. I remember talking to her while I was sitting there, as if it were just another day, & I wasn't pausing from time to time for a contraction. Things seemed so normal. I didn't think about how things were going, how quickly things were going, because I felt like I was going to jinx myself. In the split seconds that Biggie called attention to how regular & close together my contractions were, I acknowledged it briefly, but with caution. It wasn't that I had a sense that something was going to go wrong; not at all. I just felt like things were going so well that if I said so somebody else would correct me, saying something like, "Oh, but your contractions are only (fill in the blank) this long," or "Yeah, but I really don't think you're going to have this baby tonight." When I look back on it now I can articulate that I somehow didn't feel like I could have a normal birth experience because I was so afraid I couldn't.

At some point when I was sitting on the birthing ball I got up to go to the bathroom & had blood, bright red blood, coming out of me. I was alarmed & called Cheryl to the bathroom. She said it was normal. I had to ask her a few times to repeat that it was. I went back to the ball, still having what I felt were good breaks between the contractions, but the contractions were becoming more commanding, more authoritative. Biggie & Cheryl asked me if I thought the should start getting the birthing tub ready & I said yes. Cheryl had not been able to find a tub for me but had instead borrowed the back-up one from the birth center. When they were almost done filling it I had gotten up to go to the bathroom again. After I got up from the toilet, another contraction hit. I leaned over the sink waiting for someone to come help with the counter-pressure, & I felt a pop that I knew was my water breaking. Cheryl came in & confirmed that it was & that there was no meconium staining. Biggie didn't believe that was what it was because there wasn't a lot of fluid. Both Cheryl & I explained that because the baby was so low her head was acting like a cork, keeping most of the fluid behind her in the uterus.

I got right in the tub after that & the contraction I had almost immediately was absolutely devastating. I couldn't move, it was so crushing. I was scared. I thought when I got in the tub things would calm down a little bit like they had that morning. It was the exact opposite experience. I crawled over to the side of the tub & clutched Cheryl's hands. I remember begging her to make Christina be there. She assured me she was on her way. When a contraction would come she would remind me to "breathe for the baby" which I knew I needed to do, but I still found annoying. I was going to tell her it's hard to breathe when you're trying to keep from biting off your own tongue, but she was pretty pregnant herself at that point & I didn't think it was appropriate. Biggie asked me if I wanted him to get in the tub with me & I gave him a resounding yes, as if it was the stupidest thing he'd asked me in days. The tub felt so big, & I so unsteady, I felt like I had to hang on to the side or when a contraction came I might just drown. I remember at one point that Cheryl was on the phone with Christina. I was starting to get panicky that I was going to have the baby or something was going to go wrong before Christina could get there. I was mad. It seemed like years I was waiting for her to get there!

When Christina finally got there the first thing she did was check the baby's heartbeat. I haven't remembered to ask her about this, but when she first tried to find it, it seemed to me it wasn't there. It seemed like she then tried lower & got it, the precious sound, but like it was much lower in my abdomen then she had expected. It was there, nonetheless, & it reminded me that I was going to meet our younger daughter very soon. At that moment I felt a glimpse of this girl's personality. I felt that she, like her older sister, was going to be a force. I felt her preservearance & strength. Her beauty.

The contractions had now become at least four times bigger than myself. Not the pain, but the shear force of the contractions was terrifying me. I vocalized my fear & everyone reassured me. When Christina had first got there I realized my body was pushing the baby out on its own, but I had been scared to release myself to the power. Now I couldn't hold anything back. It was almost mechanical, electrical. I asked Christina to check that I was actually fully dilated; that there wasn't any bit of my cervix in the way, & I think she kind-of laughed at me. She did reach down there & told me that there wasn't anything there but the baby's head. She encouraged me to reach down & feel for myself, but I was too scared to. I felt like if I didn't have myself in the right position when a contraction hit I would collapse, doing something like fall into the water or out of the tub or just something completely ridiculous but completely reasonable to me. I wanted to tell Christina how ridiculous she was, maybe I did, but I know I did panic at this point. I knew I was going to tear & I was trying keep it from happening. At the same time, I didn't feel like I could endure very many more contractions. All of the planner & obsessive parts of me were freaking out: "You can't push- you'll tear!" "You have to push; you're going to run out of strength!" Polar opposite, classic gemini thoughts running around my skull, waving their hands in the air like they were keeping bats from getting in their hair. Finally it occured to me that I didn't have very much say over pushing or not because my body was pushing the baby out & that it didn't seem to care very much that I might tear & that her head was the biggest part of her body & after that, it was all but over. So I relented. I just let her come & the force was so humbling, I was truly beside myself that my body was so amazing.

Biggie caught her & I had to be told she was out. She came so fast & so powerfully that I didn't even know until I heard her sharp cries. I turned around, sat on my butt & they handed her to me. It didn't seem real. It was so normal & so strange at the same time. But she is here: Miss Violet Caroline. Seven pounds, nineteen & one quarter inches. At 9:45pm on November 12, 6 days before her due date. Only THREE hours of hard labor, with really no pushing on my part but for maybe two contractions. I did tear enough that we had to go to the hospital, which is a story in itself, but I'll post this & let it be for now. I'm sorry it took me so long.

Parenting Rationalizations & Pep Talk

MiniMe started VPK (Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten) last week at the local Catholic School. She did great adjusting to the mandatory white leather shoes. She got up & put her uniform on all by herself. She thinks it's cool that I turned one smaller drawer of her dresser into a school-clothes only drawer & as long as she picks from that drawer, she can wear whichever shorts, shirt, sock combo she chooses. I wonder how long it's going to take her to figure out that there are seven sets of exactly the same shirts, shorts, & socks in there.

MiniMe 'signing in' on her first day

The way that they transition the kids is pretty good. Half of the class came on Wednesday, the other half on Thursday, then everybody comes together on Friday, then everybody gets a weekend back home with the fam before they start again. Sigh. Well, today, the Tuesday of the first full week, sucked. I forgot a few things I had learned back when I was still a working mom & MiniMe went to 'school'. They are my parenting transition rationalizations & they have proven true several times, so I'm sharing them.

1. Even if kids don't have separation anxiety, they will be difficult. When they go somewhere new, like a new school, new dance class, etc., they don't really know anybody. Because it's a new place with new people, many kids don't feel comfortable speaking up when they really want to. They don't feel secure, yet. Even in a very assertive child such as MiniMe, they don't know even who to go to when they have a problem or need help. They don't know if their needs are going to be met. It takes time, experiences, for that comfort level to be built up. The rules & expectations need to be felt out so that security can be established.

2. When kids are with their families, they know what to expect. They feel loved. They trust that they will still be loved. They feel secure enough to be themselves. They feel secure enough to work through the feelings accumulated throughout the day & unwind.

3. Because I am Mommy, I get the shit. Because I have done such a great job providing MiniMe with that sense of unconditional love, been consistent, holding fast to the rules & expectations, all while maintaining a cool, calm attitude, I am rewarded by being the dumping grounds for all the frustrations, challenges, lack of hugs. I am supposed to be comforted by reminding myself that the reason MiniMe is such a nasty little viper when she comes home is not because she thinks I deserve to be spoken to this way, but because she knows that even if she does, I am the only one (at least that's around) that will see her act this way & still love her. It's like she's trusting me with a secret; that she can be reaaalllly beastly, ugly, mean.

4. My job is to find a balance between reassuring her that she will find her way, that things will get more comfortable at school, and not letting her turn me into her own personal punching (& kicking!) bag. I have to remember that she still needs all the hugs, kisses, ticklies, snuggles that she has always gotten, but we have less time to squeeze them in. I cannot allow her to shout & bellow for me to, "(fill in the blank) RIGHT THIS SECOND!" I must make it clear that she is still expected to maintain a respectful tone & attitude, speak in her nice voice, use her words, cooperate.

Okay, now that that's out there, can I just say that it sucks & spend my time between laundry & dog-washing to have a little pity party for myself? Oh, & how long do I have to wait to teach her the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Catholic School Girls Rule"?

Before Biggie & I went to Michigan I asked him a favor. I asked him to not reveal our birth plan to his family. I asked this because we are planning a homebirth vbac, I don't think that they would understand, & I don't want them to be worried. I have also been trying to figure out if I wanted to put this out there on this here blog, because I was afraid of the comments I would get. I'm not scared anymore. I know what we are planning is the right thing. I thought that maybe if I put this out there I might help one more woman trust her intuition & that is worth whatever comments anyone could throw at me.

I was induced at 37 weeks with MiniMe. My OB had told me that if I had started dialating she would 'strip my membranes'. I didn't ask what that was, because I thought she knew what she was doing & if it was risky, she wouldn't be doing it. I had been in the office for a routine non-stress test when she did it. Biggie was sitting right next to me. When she pulled her arm back out of my body, with my blood dripping off her gloved hand, Biggie gave me a look that I'll never forget. The look said, "Just say the word & she'll be out cold". I couldn't speak, I felt so violated. I was reeling, thinking I couldn't trust this lady, & I didn't know what to do. The next thing I remember was Biggie telling her that I was out of breath all the time. She asked me what my pulmonologist had said at my last appointment with him, & I told her my blood oxygen was 96%. She practically leaped from the room, coming back to tell me to go immediately to the hospital. She was afraid the baby wasn't getting enough oxygen & I was going to be induced.

I remember in the car, a moment where Biggie & I questioned what we were doing. We didn't get why we were doing what we were, but we were doing it anyway. I ended up with 3 12-hour doses of cervadil, a suppository that is used to soften the cervix. I laid on my left side for the majority of 21 hours because I was terrified that our baby wasn't getting enough oxygen. I writhed in pain for most of this time, to which nurses responded with little empathy, only believing that I was legitimately in pain when they held the sides of my body when I was given an epidural.

After the epidural, which only worked on one side of my body, the next doctor on call broke my water & started me on pictocin. In my records, it says that I was given the option to stop everything, sleep, & start the pictocin in the morning. I don't remember this, but when I think about it, this seems crazy. There is no way I could have slept before the epidural. My lower back felt like someone had beat it repeatedly with baseball bats & the contractions were mind-numbing. Once the pictocin was started, I went from being dialated at 3 to 6 within an hour. I was excited; I was making progress. I remember the doctor wanted to put an internal monitor in. I didn't know why. She explained that I had been in labor for a long time & they were worried that the baby wouldn't be able to handle much more. She didn't explain that this meant they were screwing a wire into her scalp. Handy little welcome to the world, eh?

Suddenly, people were looking at the paper coming out of the monitor with concern. Shaking heads, making marks, leaving to get other people to come in & do the same. The doctor told me that that MiniMe's heart was a little too high & not coming down. She said if it didn't start coming down, we would need to consider a cesarean. It seemed like as soon as she left the room she was racing back in. Apparently MiniMe's heart rate did go back down, but so far down they were panicked. The pictocin was turned off completely. I was told that I would be getting a cesarean immediately, that it wasn't a choice, that MiniMe was dying. When they rushed me into the operating room I thought that once they got me settled they would let Biggie come in. They roughly shaved my lower belly with a cheap single blade disposable, nicking me several times. They tried to get some sort of medicine in my iv, but it wasn't working. On a good day my blood pressure is low, but after laying in a bed for a whole day, it was at a crawl. They had my arms strapped down like Christ on the cross while they poked me with needles & panic at the same time. It hurt. I cried. I asked for Biggie. They told me that there wasn't time & they were going to have to "put me out". They said if they couldn't get this one last iv to flow they would have to put in a central line. They didn't say this to me, but to each other, as if I were already "put out". A central line, in my jugular vein. So, not only would I have a scar on my belly, but on my neck, too. I pumped my fists & let myself weep. My heart rate went up & the iv flowed. I was unconscious.

MiniMe was born two days before my birthday. On my birthday I was still in the hospital, but to celebrate Biggie agreed to watch Funny Girl with me on the laptop. We ended up fighting because MiniMe was having trouble nursing & he was afraid she was starving. After he left to go home, because I asked him to, I ended up dripping little drops of clostrum into her mouth with a medicine cup, weeping because I was terrified that I wasn't doing the right thing.

While the first week that we were home was one of my favorite times in our marriage, Biggie only had one week off & after he went back to work things were not okay. I did not have post-pardom depression; I was very closely bonded to MiniMe before she even came out of me. I couldn't take my painkillers because I was alone most of the time, was afraid I would fall asleep & not wake up when she needed me. My incision became infected & Biggie had to clean it out with peroxide for me twice a day. I drove 45 minutes each way to see a lactation consultant twice a week. MiniMe couldn't go for more than 4 hours without eating for the first 3 months of her life, & this was only to be once a day. The rest of the time she had to eat every 2 hours. So for the first 3 months of her life I never got more than 4 hours of sleep at a time.

I went back to work, full time, when MiniMe was just 9 weeks old. My marriage suffered terribly. We bought a new house to be closer to our work & MiniMe's school. I think if had been thinking more clearly at the time I would have just stayed in our old house & quit working. It didn't occur to me.

It took me nearly two years to figure out that my reaction to MiniMe's birth was not normal. I sought therapy & was told I had indicators of post traumatic stress disorder. Throughout the therapy I had nightmares that were largely flashbacks. I realized that I was terrified of having another child because I didn't want to go through what I had again. My therapist recommended a new movie tht had just comeout on video, "The Business of Being Born". I watched it with Biggie & that was one of the handful of times I have seen him cry. He was furious. It was exactly what had been done to me.

So I've been investigating what our options are for the last two years. & this is what we've come to. I'm excited, not scared. I just wish we could decide on a fricken name.

For Mimi...

My mom was a single parent, essentially, living 4 hours from my father. I spent a considerable amount of time in day care, with babysitters, some family, for most of my early childhood. I remember very fondly the sweet Montessori school she sent me to when I was 3 & 4, run by the Dominican Sisters & a bit of a drive for her. I remember learning how the calendar worked in 1978, when I was four, & the feeling of pride I got from understanding. I remember generally gazing over the classroom & being proud of the sense of order that there was, with everything having a place, & knowing there were still discoveries for me to make. I felt comfortable with my teachers as well as my peers; I had a sense of community. This was a primary reason in me wanting to send MiniMe to Montessori, & I know she found her experience to be as satisfying as mine.

When we moved into the City, 3 blocks from the very house my mom grew up in, I was to go to the same elementary school as she did. On the first day of kindergarten I had an awful experience I remember very vividly almost 30 years later. The teacher was going over the alphabet, probably to get a sense of where we, the students, were in our understanding. I was bored. I reached over another student to grab a Little Golden Book, opened it, & read quietly to myself. The teacher scolded me for not participating with the group. I told her, "I already know that, though. I've never read this book before." She mocked me. She ended up bringing me up to the front of the class, where she was standing & all the other students were sitting in front of her on the floor. She didn't believe that I could read, so she literally dared me to read the book aloud. I knew that she expected me to fail, which was something I hadn't really experienced before. I read, slowly, but certainly. The kids in the class didn't seem to understand that what I was doing was a positive thing. All they understood was that the teacher was mocking me. The fact that I could read was irrelevant. I was disobedient. I did not conform. I was to be punished. I was to be mocked. 

I went home that day & cried more than I had when my Brittany, Missy, had run away. I was beside myself. I didn't understand. Thankfully, my mother understood exactly. In fact, she had even endured the cruelty of the same kindergarten teacher herself as a child. She made an appointment with the principal of the school & I did not go back until after we met with Mr. Castle. 

When we met with him I remember he & my mom explained to me that I would be given some questions on paper & I was to just do as best as I could. There was no right or wrong answers, they just wanted to see how much I understood. I remember rows & columns of words that were somehow related. I had to circle some things, or underline them, or simply read them aloud. I was comfortable. I didn't feel like I had on that first day of kindergarten & was relieved.

The decision was made to just put me in first grade at 5 years old. I remember my teacher, Ms. Shirley, who used phonics before they were very popular. She used to put words on stars around the ceiling & we would take turns reading them aloud as she pointed to them with her pointer. I was not afraid to succeed or be proud. 

I remember in 2nd grade I left the rest of my regular class for a few hours a week & went to the library with other kids from other classrooms. We did special projects where we got new markers, new books, & it was there that I first heard that I was gifted. In the 4th grade, my best friend, Rachel Hernandez, & I were moved out of the same class as our other friend, Ramona Castro. Ramona's mom tried to get her moved into our class, but they wouldn't let her. I remember how mad Ramona was at us, but we didn't understand why the grown ups did what they did. Rachel & I were put into a 'split' classroom, where there were about another 8 students our age, 4th graders, but the rest of the class were 5th graders. My mom made the decision to put me in private school before I got to junior high because she was a juvenile social worker, she knew too much, & she didn't want me to be 10 years old going to school with pregnant girls.

When I was older & we moved out of the City into a more affluent suburb, I had a hard time. I was the girl from a broken home with the wrong clothes. I had a hard time adjusting socially & because of that my grades suffered initially. Eventually, I grew into high school, but while I did have a few close friends, I was behind socially. When my classmates turned 16 & got cars, my parents tried to compensate by buying me a moped. I didn't turn 16 until the summer before my senior year. I started college when I was just 17, and I wasn't very street smart. I had a hard time in college because I didn't know what to do with myself. For the first time in my life, I had to study, & I didn't know how. 

I have been thinking about this a lot because MiniMe is going to four in a few short weeks & she is eligible for the Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program, which covers a big portion of the cost of her to be in certain pre-school settings starting in the fall. (You know, the fall, when I'm due to have another rugrat to suck up my time as well as my breastmilk) She is desperately in need of being with some sort of a peer group, as we live in a seriously unbalanced population. She was used to being in group care from 9 weeks old until just last summer, so she is incredibly social. But the choices for schools here are, well, let's just say that the state of Florida is currently ranked #49 in the country for quality of education. 

In raising MiniMe thus far, we have cultivated a love of learning in her that is nearly unquenchable. She is caught between wanting to be an astronaut, a violinist, a veterinarian, a scientist, and a dancer. The library is like a fantasy to her, where any question she has can be explored. She has asked for Gray's Anatomy (the book) for her birthday because she is fascinated with what is going on in there. I love to hear her questions, as they are already so thoughtful, it is possible to have an intelligent conversation with her. I am afraid, however. 

I feel as if there is a choice where you have to cross a boundary, & I feel I am upon its' precipice. As we have let MiniMe's desires lead her, she knows all of the planets in the solar system, but does not recognize each letter of the alphabet. She can tell you what a gardenia, bougainvillea, hibiscus, plumbago, & bromeliad are, how banyan trees grow from the top down, but she cannot grasp why twenty-ten is not a number. 

We have chosen to send her to the local Catholic school because, well, we are, & this is the first year they are participating in the VPK program. Another part of my rationale is that if we are still here (God forbid) for the following school year & cannot get her into the arts magnet elementary, at least we would have the option of keeping her at the Catholic school as it goes through 8th grade, & we would be able to provide her some sort of continuity. I am worried, however, that they will squelch our passionate girl. 

I remember, sitting in Calculus class, & being irate with the teacher. I could not grasp the concept & was trying to get him to help me visualize what the concept was. He lost patience with me & told me to just follow the directions. It was the first class I ever failed. This rutabaga cannot just follow processes very well without understanding how the process related to something tangible. I learned math in Montessori, which uses a series of manipulative beads to illustrate the concepts. I realized that while I was given a firm foundation of loving to learn, a gift of having things taught to me in a way that I fully understood them, I never learned to just memorize for the sake of memorization. What a waste, I thought, of my time & my thoughts. 

The Catholic school expects MiniMe to be able to write her name when she starts in August, & I am expected to teach her this. I'm annoyed. This is yet another fine example of where No Child Left Behind has gotten us; children must learn how to test well. We both have such better things to do with our time. When she decides she wants or needs to know this, she will, & it will take her all of a half hour at most. But to force her to sit, at not quite 4 years old, & learn this thing that someone else has decided she needs to know, I don't know if I can do it. Part of the reason I think the Catholic school would be good for her is because I don't want her to be in Calculus class one day & be in that place that I was. I want her to know how to study. But at the same time, I hear Yeats, whom I share a birthday with saying, "Education is not a filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire."

I know she is smart. I don't care if someone thinks she's gifted; in fact, I hope no one ever labels her as such. It's an awful kind of pressure. I'm more worried about squelching that little flame. It is so beautiful, it lights up my days. 

Warning: If this doesn't make you tear up you have no heart

On Easter we went to Mass, came home, I made cinnamon rolls & chicken sausages. MiniMe found her eggs & basket. She proceeded to hatch & heal the plastic eggs all day long. She completely reinforced the idea that we need to obtain a living situation where we can have a couple of chickens. She loves them.

My mom came over & we all sort of tag teamed dinner. It was rich & we all ended up splayed over our sofa. After growling over the car shows that Biggie chose to subject us to all day, I insisted on watching The Sound of Music. He groaned. It was 4 hours long, due to the fact that it was on ABC Family & had commercials. He said he has seen it before, but I don't think that was a true statement. I think a true statement would be that he has been in the room before when it was on, but I'll elaborate on this further later.

I am ever-so-glad I insisted on watching this movie. I love Rodgers & Hammerstein. My Gram was one of those women who would chirp about the kitchen, humming these old classics, & was famous for making up her own lyrics when she couldn't remember the actual words. I can't listen to Blue Indigo without tearing up, remembering how she changed the lyrics to be about how sad she was without me around. My friend Kristi & I used to play a travel game where we would sing snippets from show tunes & the others in the car had to guess the show. But in the Hierarchy of Show Tunes, anything once sung by Julie Andrews is known backwards, forwards, sideways, in reverse ala Black Sabbath. I have VIVID memories of The Sound Music viewings with my Gram. I knew that MiniMe was finally old enough to at least stop & stare a few times at the screen. She exceeded my expectations.

First of all, through the viewing of the Good Night Song, MiniMe has perfected her curtsy. She has requested a "twirly" dress every day since then, so as to have sufficient skirt to hold to the sides of her body n the event she stumbles upon what she believes is an appropriate time to curtsy. Say, to Farmer Red, the farmer we buy our greens from at the Farmer's Market. 

She chirps around the house, I am certain in her head she is flanked by matching siblings, prancing around Salzburg. She has requested a white dress with a blue sash. She has consulted with many people she thinks are smart to attempt to come to a solution on the problem of Maria.

By the last scenes of the movie, when the von Trapps are attempting to escape the Nazis, my mom had gone home, & MiniMe was snuggled in between Biggie & I on the sofa. I explained that the men in the matching suits were trying to make The Captain leave Maria & the children to fight in a war he didn't believe in. Biggie made me absolutely speechless, saying that he didn't think it was fair to the family to leave the lavish existence behind, that he would have just gone along. Apparently he didn't pay much attention in history class about the Nazi's. I explained that there was no way they would have let Maria, a Catholic, stay in that house with the children. They surely would have taken it for some senior officer. As far as The Captain, there isn't even any certainty that they would have even put him in command of anything, given his outspoken disagreement with the Third Reich; they may have just taken him away & killed him to prevent him from lending his support to The Allies. I told Biggie, in no uncertain terms, would he ever have left us to fight a war none of us supported, and that we would all be better together than separate with more material wealth. His life is priceless to us.

At this point, MiniMe looked up at him and said, "Daddy, I'd die for you."

Heart. Shattered. I couldn't speak, I just hugged her. I looked over her head at him with tears in my eyes & told him she had heard Father David during the homily talking about how few of us realise we have people in our lives that would give their lives for ours. I make no attempts to force our religious beliefs on anyone, I am just relaying the concept. But, still. She loves. 

The one thing that I've always said is the most important value for me to teach to my children, she's got it. At 3 years old. I will hold this memory up for those times when she is screaming at me to stop, even when she's a teenager telling me she hates me. 

She Used To Be My Girl

When I was in college I got sick of waitressing & did a stint at a copy store. While working there, I noticed another girl that worked there with dyed black hair, wearing Doc Martens. She was snarky enough that I noticed, & when I overheard her talking about going to see The Cure on a cigarette break, we became friends. Her name is Natalie, she used to be one of my best friends, but she isn't anymore.

When I was still in school she lived in a house right across the street from campus & I lived 20 minutes away, so I would hang out at her house between classes. We'd go through pots of coffee, packs of cigarettes, & watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer instead of studying. I don't know when she stopped taking classes, but she sort of just gave up on graduating, it seemed. After I graduated, she became a manager at the copy shop. She moved on to other retail jobs. She had crappy boyfriends & so did I. But we talked almost everyday & shared a lot of formative experiences through our twenties.

She dug my Artsy-Fartsy genes & we would hold "NBA nights" (No Boys Allowed) where we would make 5 course meals, make frozen girly drinks, do bong tokes, and make crazy things. We would take things to the pawn shop so we'd have enough money to go to the bar. One summer night she had a BBQ at her house & I had helped her get ready all day, but had to work some stupid 6-8pm shift at the copy store. She told me to just leave my sweet dog, my beloved Casey Jones, at her house while I worked. "He'd be fine." Well, when I got back to her house, Casey was missing. After a frantic hour of searching for all seven pounds of him, someone showed up with him. I ended up having to take him to the emergency vet clinic because someone had given him beer. Should have taken it as a sign.

After I graduated we still kept in touch. My first job out of school was for a non-profit, so I was actually making less than I did waiting tables. When I did start making money though, I was excited to be able to buy Natalie some nice Christmas & birthday presents. She had lived in Paris one summer & I was so proud & she so happy when I bought her this 3-foot wire sculpture of the Eiffel Tower from Pottery Barn that I knew she had wanted. I bought her a huge glicee of a Mucha print, had it matted & framed & sent it to her. I liked to do things like that for her. She appreciated it. 

When I met Biggie, Natalie was the first of all my friends to meet him. She was skeptical until she saw his hair. Good hair genes are hard to pass up. Of all of my friends, she was the only one who actually came to visit me when I moved in with him. She & Biggie got along famously. When he decided he was going to propose, it was Natalie whom he consulted with on my ring. When I moved out of my house, she helped me pack a little. I still have a box of my Keith Haring prints & personal photos that she boxed up. On the top she wrote, "Pictures of You (I Miss You)". 

During the planning of our wedding, Natalie was pretty broke. Had she not inherited most of my furniture when we moved to Florida she wouldn't have had much in the way to sit on. I paid for her bridesmaids dress. I didn't care. She did things like take care of me the morning after my bachelorette party when we had to be out our hotel at 11am & I still needed to sleep, but lived 1200 miles away. 

The winter after I had MiniMe, Natalie lost her job, they didn't give her her last paycheck, & she had little hopes of finding a new job. She was going to get evicted. We had just bought our house which had a huge bedroom & bathroom off the garage. I bought Natalie a plane ticket to Florida. Biggie had her come to work with him. She drove our "Home Depot Mobile", a 1995 Cherokee that ran well but needed a paint job. When they came home from the dealership, she would help me, a new mother that worked full time, by cleaning the kitchen after dinner so I could get MiniMe to bed. She also helped me with the mopping, vacuuming from time to time. We charged her no rent & let her drive the car for free. She lived with us from December to August. 

We had told her we needed her to find a place to live because we were putting our house up for sale & trying to move out of state. Things had gradually degenerated at that point to the extent that she didn't really eat dinner with us anymore. I rarely saw her at all. I'm sure it was hard for her pride, living in our house, going to work with Biggie everyday. I had tried to talk to her, but honestly, some things she said did piss me off. She had managed to find the money to fly home for Mother's Day, for example. I didn't try to pry into the situation of her finances, but considering I didn't have the cash to buy plane tickets, I did speak up on that one. We had asked her to water our plants & walk our dogs when we went to North Carolina for a week. We came home to dead tomato plants & dog shit all over the floor. Biggie had bought a used car that a customer had traded in for her to drive pretty quickly after she had moved in. She never had it plated or insured until the week she moved out, & even then, he really had to give her an ultimatum. I was embarrassed. I didn't understand why she was doing this.

After she moved out, we had made plans to meet for lunch. I was going to go pick up some sandwiches for us & meet her up at the dealership. Biggie had moved on to another dealership at this time, so he wasn't working with her anymore. When I called to ask her what kind of sandwich she wanted, they told me she had called in sick that day. When I called her cell phone she didn't answer. She did call me back a few days later, apologizing to my voice mail, calling when she knew I wouldn't answer. I was hurt. I waited a few days & called her back. I got her voice mail. Weeks became months & she still hadn't called. When we were coming upon her birthday in November, I told Biggie I was going to call her. He told me not to. When I asked why, Biggie told me that he didn't think Natalie cared as much about me as I did about her. He told me mean things she had said to him about me. Stories about things I did in college that husbands don't really want to know about their wives. Stories that were elaborated & embellished to be specifically awful. She told him she & her boyfriend use to snicker about my relationship with my dog & how I was just a little too attached to him, insinuating something out of middle school urban legends. It hurt to hear him say these things, but I could hear her voice in my head saying them. I knew it hurt him to hear them. I felt betrayed in a way I never had before. I felt taken advantage of.

I hadn't thought about Natalie for months until we moved & I saw her writing on a box of "Maturnity Clothes". At first I wanted to go find a sharpie & fix the misspelling. Then I was annoyed that her writing was on my box of precious things. Then I wondered where she is now. If she still has the nice gifts that I bought for her, driving the car we bought for her, if she thinks of us at all. I remembered that she is in the home movies from MiniMe's first Christmas, her christening, her first birthday. What will I say to her about this person? Then I thought about how surely one day someone will hurt MiniMe the way this friend hurt me, & there is nothing I can or will be able to do to stop it. I'll have to teach her that it's okay, I've decided. Because in the end, I did what my heart told me to. I helped someone whom I thought was my friend, not out of guilt or for gratitude, but out of love, & there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in that. 

 

Letter to a Home

Between the years of 1993 & 1998 I moved 14 times. Yes, three of those times were to dorm rooms, but I still count them because they did require a major analysis of my belongings, paring them down to only the bare necessities, to fit into a very small space. When I think of those moves now, one thing is very noticeable to me regarding then in comparison to now. The majority of those moves were expected, except for somewhere around number 8, where I had a literal crackhead steal most of everything I owned, which to her credit did make things pretty simple. I did not fret much then about how I was going to pack, how things would be relocated, what would get broken. I occasionally made the decision of the next place within days if not hours before the actual move. Like I've said before, I was a leaf that went where the wind blew me.

We have made a decision on the next place we will be living, signed the lease, paid our money. It was stressful for all of us. No, it doesn't meet any of the qualities that MiniMe had requested & it is far out from most of the places we like to go. Regardless, MiniMe told us she likes it. She includes, "I want to go to the new house!" in her daily list of laments. We are happy with our decision & it is truly a nice house. I'm still not okay. It's not the new houses' fault. 

It's not the loss of our current house that is bothering me. It's not the bankruptcy. The decision to file for bankruptcy is unquestionably the most right decision we have made in the past year. There are things about our current home that I will be glad to be relieved of. It is the loss of our home that I am mourning. 

A sense of place, experiences tied to the context of the environment, is a very essential part of my personality. It is why I studied architecture & became a planner. The concept of place is something that preoccupies most of my thoughts. Very many important things have happened to me, to us, in this place. This home. 

This is the place where I sat & nursed MiniMe for hour upon hour. I painted this room "Blue Collar" the second week we lived in the house, when MiniMe was just 3 months old, & we had no power because of Hurricane Wilma. Biggie put the beautiful crown molding up, using the compound mitre saw I got him our first Christmas in this house. Where I sang Audra, Nick Drake, Innocence Mission to her. The very last time, when I sang Into the Mystic, into her ear, while my father listened over the phone. Just this past Christmas she realized that as I was singing Barbara Streisand's The Best Gift, I was telling her that she is The Best Gift I've ever received, in this very spot. We still sit here to read bedtime stories together every night before bed. The majority of the most profound conversations she & I have had have been in this place. We have discovered each other, more than any other place, in this place.

This is the place where she took her very first steps, the Wednesday before Mother's Day, in 2006. She was so nonchalant about it all. I couldn't comment for what seemed like forever because it looked so strange to see this little 15 pound person actually upright & independently mobile. I was mesmerized.

This is the place that I was the very last time I spoke to my Dad. I was stripping the wallpaper off of the wall. My mom was there helping me. He was talking about things he had seen on his route the past week, driving through the Upper Peninsula. He told me he was so glad he had a daughter that understood him; that understood why he preferred driving on little State Routes where there was little traffic, simple people, simple food. When I told him my mom was there with me, he asked me to tell her that he thought of her every Monday, when he crossed over the Laughing Whitefish River, as they had made that trip when they were married, on his little Triumph. I marked the sense of nostalgia in my heart. It is the place where I was the last time I got to hear him tell me he loved me.

This is the place I was standing when my step-mother told me my father was dead. She had called, hung up after 3 rings, before I could make it to the phone, & then called back not 2 minutes later. I had sensed something was wrong when I went to answer the phone. I had dreaded that moment for years. I paced in this doorway, not crying, just nodding, listening to the flood of sorrow my step-mother poured over me. I stayed in that spot to call my husband to tell him. My mother, too. I remember thinking that maybe if I stayed in that spot I would be able to continue to not cry. 

This is the place that Biggie was sitting when we healed our marriage. He said awful things to me & I let him. I let him say them, meaning I actually listened, because I knew he didn't mean it. I knew, finally, that it wasn't about me. It was about everything before me. He saw that I let it go. He knew that I had every right to be justified, self-righteous, hurt. He saw that I let it go because We Are More Important. Whatever it is, We Are More Important. He acknowledged the sacrifice of my spirit to do this. That acknowledgement brought us back & gave us hope.

Although we lived in another house when we were married, when MiniMe was born, it is in this house that I became a mother & the mother of my husband's children. This place is inextricably tied to the history of our lives, of our family. I am sad that we have to leave it under these circumstances. It has served us well. I have been proud of it. 

I wish we could know the next occupants. There are so many places, houses, homes that are losing their stories & context. It's messing up so many families. In the telling of stories, you have the who, the what, to what extent, & the where. For so many, the where is being forcibly & traumatically changed.

post script- I could have developed the concept of place & its' meaning more fully, more eloquently, but I'm too weepy. I wanted to get this out there & done. Maybe after we are closer to the light at the end of this particular tunnel I will come back to this, but for now, it is what it is. & yeah, I might be a little busy for the next month, but I'm around. I'm sure I'll have some funnier, more uplifting stories of moving antics.

The sacrifices & compromises

In my last full-time position, I was given the opportunity to actually do the work I always wanted. I had not one, but two large-scale true urban renewal projects. Fort Myers isn't exactly a metropolis; but I was the project manager for two of the most dense, urban scale mixed-use projects in the City's history. It didn't really hit me until the day before I realized I was pregnant with MiniMe. My company had sent me to the State Planning Conference & I was very actively pursued by several other employers. I felt like the new, pretty girl at school. Except this had nothing to do with my appearance & everything to do with my brain. It was a profound moment in my life. Trying to talk about it makes me stutter. 

I was completely unprepared for becoming a mother in so many ways. Yes, my own mother worked through most of my childhood, but of course that first year, when she stayed at home with me, I don't remember that. I didn't realize that finding a caregiver was so hard. I didn't know that I would feel so torn; that I would come to resent my career for taking me away from MiniMe. When my boss tried to dangle a carrot in front of me that she might want me to take her place when she retired, I was already feeling the weight of what I wanted. I was honest. I told her that I wanted to have a child, & I knew that she worked longer hours than I would be willing to with a new baby. She assured me I could do it. It was a vague statement, & I remember feeling like I was expected to just smile & nod & move along. When I complained later of the trouble I had getting MiniMe to sleep the woman actually suggested I drug her. It's what she did with her children, after all.

I remember being three years old & refusing to speak English to my mother. She was away from me most of the time. I resented the changing of rules between when she was around & when she wasn't. "No es Mama!" I would shout. I believe it's something that made me a better mother to MiniMe, who so greatly needs to know what to expect. 

I never expected to be on this side of the Stay-At-Home/Working Mother battle. I always felt that I didn't deserve to have a choice. I spent so much time & money on my education. I am talented in my field. I felt the choice was made, if not for me, because of me. But when I think back to that the panic I felt when our nanny pulled the rug out from underneath me & I suddenly had no childcare, I shudder. The relief I felt when I found the wonderful, but outrageously expensive Montessori school that she attended for the majority of her first 3 years, was monumental to me. 

When I remember that first day back to work I get angry, but mostly at myself. I was lucky in that Biggie was the one who took her in, that I got to pry her from my breast in the privacy of our own home, was given the time & space to try to get ready for work in solitude & silence (except for my blubbering).  When I rushed in on my lunch hour to nurse her, she had already been fed & was asleep. I was full of milk. I had left my pump in my office. I just sat in a chair & held her & wept. Ms. Kim, who would become one of the people I am most grateful for, brought me Kleenex. I hadn't wanted them to let her go hungry. I was glad she was taking the bottle. I just didn't know it was going to be so hard. We had an appointment with the pediatrician that afternoon & he had told me that if she wasn't yet eight pounds he was not going to sign for her to be in daycare. I nursed her in the waiting room until they called her name. She was eight pounds, one ounce. As we drove home, I had expected to feel relieved. I could go back to my work & feel I was doing a good job as a mom, too. That's not how I felt. 

It is so hard for me to put into words how I feel about this scenario. Saying I am mad at the way that families are treated in this country is an understatement. No, I don't think parents should be given special treatment in society. I certainly think children should be. I'm not saying they should be allowed to run around like hooligans. I'm saying I think that we were made the way we are for a reason. The whole thing I went through of going back to work when MiniMe was just 9 weeks old?? Yeah. Never shoulda happened. It was torture for a reason. Both my body & her body were designed to put us through bloody hell if we were separated the way we were because it wasn't in our best interests. Now, I know there are some mamas out there that NEEDED to go away from their kids for a few hours (preferably to somewhere with someone playing a harp & a king-sized tempurpedic bed) when their kids were nine weeks old. It's alright. I get that. However, the majority of women, & babies if they could, would tell you they'd probably be better off, & choose to be, together. 

We have to screw with everything. We have to take every single natural process & try to make a buck off of making it better. I am completely not surprised with the whole formula thing. I wonder if anyone has ever taken it as far mentally as I have. Wouldn't be shocked. Follow me, here... 

It's no secret that men love boobs. But truthfully, boobs are meant to serve the purpose of nursing, producing food for the babies. Now, I know that there are a lot of women out there that can't nurse successfully & I'm not trying to make any judgements on them or the families who simply choose to use formula because they don't want to nurse. But the pushing of the formula!! The gallons upon gallons of free formula given to new or soon-to-be new mothers! We've got a perfectly good system of feeding babies, but we can take this thing that was invented to feed orphans or kids with sick mothers, tell everybody it's better than breastmilk, make tons of money off of it, our wives can go back to work & we get our wives boobs back to ourselves, again! (I literally had a dream involving Mad Men about this)

Then, there's the cereal... It will help them sleep better, it will help them gain weight. It has been found to increase the likelihood of diabetes! Yeah! Not only that, it tastes like wallpaper paste!

Sometimes I feel like in the effort to free women from the trappings of motherhood, we kind-of made it an expectation. I feel like people use these 'advancements' to pressure mothers into spending more time away from their babies than they really want to. I feel like shaking a fist in the air & it's not because I want to stay home with my little offspring, gloating in the wonderfullness of bon bons. It's because it's what I feel I am supposed to do. I don't resent her. I resent that I'm going to have take a hit in my career for doing what I thing is the right thing. Anyone who knows me knows I take this work, of being a parent, seriously.

One of my peers, who seriously is a mentor, but so funny & humble she comes across as more of a peer, has a daughter in her second year of college right now. The friend is beautiful, witty, an excellent cook & hostess. She has an illustrious career. The daughter is darling, insightful & charming. When the daughter was graduating from high school I was leaving that last full time position. My friend told me in an almost self-deprecating way that I was doing the right thing. My friend was sad & was questioning her past decisions to not stay home for a while with her daughter. I don't want to be watching MiniMe graduate from high school & feel like I missed something. I'm grateful for this time & glad we, as a family, found our way to it.

This is where you were on this day

Yep. I made her shirt. The woman who handed me my ballot asked to read the back of her shirt. It reads:

"...and it means taking full responsibility in our own lives- by demanding more time from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism;

they must always believe that they can write their own destiny..."

The woman got all teary. So did I. Because, this pretty much sums it all up for me.

5 years=Wood?! (snickering)

Five years ago today, I became a Missus. We got married at one of my favorite places on this planet, Cranbrook House in Birmingham, MI, where I snuck in & skinny dipped in younger days. We had our reception in an old bank in downtown Pontiac. It was a blast. It was beautiful. But, to give you some context...

My husband sold me my first new car. People find this hilarious & say things like, "That must have been a great car!" (Har! Knee slap!) It was a crazy time, in the end of 2001. I was trying to decide if I was going to move to Colorado, because it would be a huge difference in cost of living. I was always afraid I was going to meet a guy that would make me want to stay in MI. So was my Dad.

One of the clearest memories in my life is when Biggie was putting my license plate on my new car for me. I wasn't use to this much chivalry or customer service. He was asking me why I'd want to move to Colorado because it was so snowy there. He told me as soon as his lease was up he was moving to Florida. I froze. I knew if I wasn't careful I was going to end up moving with this guy. Florida? Ick!

I did love my new car. I always bake about 10 different batches of cookies around Christmas & box up some to give to people that are new friends or acquaintances. I dropped a box off for Biggie. Our first date was 2 weeks later at the International Auto Show. He thought it was cool that we could have a logical discussion regarding the benefits of a rotary engine. When we had dinner afterwards at a Detroit standard, Cyprus Tavern, he started a tradition of asking me what I thought he should order. I'm an excellent orderer. He had the Moussaka.

Our second date was in Downtown Plymouth, where I lived at the time, to the ice sculpture competition & for dinner at a great place that I miss a lot, The Box Bar. We sat at the bar, drinking, joking around. At one point he got up to go to the bathroom & he just kissed me. It was abrupt. I was kind-of pissed. I felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me. But at the same time, I was glad he did it.

As time went on, I started to get worried. I really liked this guy & he was going to move to Florida. He told me after we had been dating for about four months that he wanted me to move to Florida with him. He had the opportunity to go to several different cities in Florida, so he told me to just figure out where I wanted to go & that's where we would go. Things between us have always just rolled along. One of the first jobs I applied for was with The City of Fort Myers. They flew me down to Florida, interviewed me, & offered me a job on the spot. I got up the next morning, found a condo for us to rent, & flew home. It was just kind-of understood that we would be engaged before moved. He's told me I ruined his plans for a romantic proposal. I was all bitchy that night when we went out to dinner & wouldn't let him get a word in. He ended up just asking me in his apartment. I like to think I let him off easy.

My life at certain points is much like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Even though I'm Catholic too, I still come off as incredibly waspy. My husband is first generation Canadian, with both of his parents from southern Italy. His mother, from Calabria, moved with her family to Niagara Falls when she was around 12. His father moved to Canada from Sardinia when he was 18. They had two boys, my Biggie the second one, then a girl. They were divorced when Big was a teenager. His mom suffered a traumatic closed head injury that left her in a coma for a year. She's functioning pretty highly, but she isn't the same person she was before her accident, I'm told. Between them & I, there is a large cultural barrier. Between his father & I, let's just say there is a division of responsibility barrier. With his mom & I, there's an additional strain because of her accident.

In the last three years that we have been parents, our marriage has been seriously strained. I have gotten to the point that I can look at things in a macro sense & see that there will be ups & downs. The down seem to coincide with lack of sleep. The up seem to coincide with gifts. (I'm kidding.) No, the ups seem to coincide with progress, as in the meeting of challenges. The process of parenting & seeing our affect on MiniMe has helped our relationship greatly, lately.

There was a long spell of great tension in our relationship that stemmed from unresolved resentments. We would have a disagreement & it would never get dealt with because we didn't want to fight in front of MiniMe. I started to notice that her behavior would change. She knew there was a problem & she didn't like it. She would be terse & make abrupt, angry little grunts. By the time I would get her to bed, Biggie would be sleeping, too. Things festered. There were shouting matches & threats. When MiniMe started shouting at us, I realised something had to be done.


I thought about it & realised that it wasn't right for MiniMe not to see how problems got resolved. The reason it would be inappropriate for things to be resolved in front of her was because of the way Biggie & I talked to each other. I tried to talk about my theories to Biggie, but as in parenting, setting the example was far more effective. Biggie is an expert at getting me "spun", as he says. When he would say things that were nasty, I asked him quietly to not talk to me that way in front of our child. When I stopped reacting to him, & instead asking how I could help him to not to say or do these things, He noticed. But also, so did MiniMe.

Biggie knows things he says hurt me, make me angry. He knows it's not okay. I do the same thing sometimes. When I don't react or retaliate it reminds him that I love him & settles him down. My love, my restraint, they humble him. They remind him of the promises we made to each other & they show our daughter how people that love each other treat each other. It is a powerful thing.

On our wedding day, it had been cloudy, drizzly most of the day. Right before the ceremony it began to clear. I remember getting ready to walk down the aisle, trying to not be too sweet to my Dad, because I knew he was on the verge of crying. I concentrated on squeezing his hand, yet not making eye contact. Looking at this picture the photographer took, I wonder if this is the way between many brides & their fathers.

It made me flustered, & when I stood at the top of the steps to the garden where the ceremony was, I looked down to see my dress was too long for some reason. I've been told that when I stepped up to the top of the stairs, the sun came out from the clouds behind me & lit me up. The church across the street was ringing it's ancient bells, completely unplanned on our part. I heard people gasp, thankfully taking me away from cursing myself. My dress was too long because I had forgotten the slip that went under my dress. Typical me. Too late now. People were gasping at me! *blush*







But it was the sound of Biggie, weeping, that truly made me present. My machismo Italian was weeping for me. He was overcome with tears of joy at the sight of me, his bride. It was audible. It is one of the things that gets me through those times when he can be, frankly, a major trial.



I remember a lot of things from that day, but the tears & this moment, below, are my favorites. I knew it was going too fast. I just paused because I could, & because I knew these things would sustain us. I remember how I felt with his breath on my face, his smile, this very moment. This was a celebration of our love, corny, I know, but in times such as these, very necessary.

Where hoppytoddle comes from

I bought a pretty little journal (It had rick-rack. I love rick-rack.) when Mini Me was just 1 year old, with every intention of writing all of these sweet little stories in it for her of all the wonderful things that happened to make her who she is. I didn't write in it until a year ago today, when she was over 2 years old.

My dad died on Sept. 19 of last year, unexpectedly. Every time I sit down to write in that book since then, I think of him, & I just haven't been able to write. That's a big reason why I started this blog. I wanted to tell somebody about him & still manage to get some of the stuff that seems so mundane down for her. I'm sorry this is so sad. I'm not always this depressing, I promise. Just bear with me.

His death was sudden & as unexpected as it could be for someone who was an alcoholic, smoked 2 packs a day, occasional Swisher Sweets, & who drove the route through the Upper Peninsula of MI so he could get pasties. He wasn't always a truck driver. When I was born he worked at the Penn Dixie plant on Little Traverse Bay south of Petoskey. My dad lost his job there when the land was sold to the state, because they were drilling so far down for the limestone it was having negative affects on the fish in Lake Michigan. The selling of that land to a developer years later, who blew the remnants of the bed into the lake to make a marina for Bay Harbor, was the final push I needed to change my major to Planning. In between, he worked in foundries, as a welder, a journeyman. He did have a college degree, but he always worked with his hands. It wasn't until he died that I figured out that he preferred to work with his hands so he could have his mind all to himself. He was always thinking.

My parents got divorced before I was 2 & when they did, my mom moved back downstate. She worked hard to make sure I got to see my dad. If it wasn't for my mom & my step-mother, we probably wouldn't have really known each other. It was just too hard for my dad to see me, be reminded of both my mom & the fact that he would not get to see me grow up, really. I suspect that the reason my mom pushed so hard was partially because she's a martyr, but also because she was secretly hoping I'd decide my dad was as awful as she thought he was. It backfired.

My dad drove to stay with me in my dorm room at Michigan State. When I went to the University of Detroit, he helped me move into the dorms there. He looked at the bulletholes in the dorm & told me I was becoming an architect in Saigon. He helped me move into my first apartment, a flat at Van Dyke & Lafayette. He didn't say anything, but I knew he was scared for me.

One of my favorite stories to tell about him was when I was in Architecture school, he welded my friend Jordan's shock plate for his 1980 CJ Jeep. I was staying in this house with like 7 guys & they couldn't believe I knew the difference between an XJ, TJ & CJ. When Jordan could not find, or more accurately, afford a new shock plate, I took one look at it & said, "Let's drive out to my dad's on Sunday. He'll fix it on the spot. Just bring your one hitter." They couldn't believe my dad would just do something like that for someone. I told them, you're not just anyone. You're my friends. Jordan had a super sweet girlfriend, that I think he married, so it wasn't about that. It was a bumpy ride on 94, but it was fun, as we told stories about our families. It took all of about 4 minutes for Jordan & my dad to find something to talk about. Dad welded the plate with the torch he kept in the barn. I went to pick blueberries & made blueberry bread while they worked. I grabbed some Squirt out of the fridge & headed out to the barn. Jordan & my dad were doing hits out of the one hitter. The bread didn't last very long. We all sat around the table in the barn and gabbed. I can't for the life of me remember what we talked about, just how I felt. See, I spent a lot of time feeling sad about how my dad wasn't what my mom needed him to be. That day I stepped back, looked up, & thanked God. Maybe my dad wasn't who my mom needed, neither for herself or for me, but I was so glad he was my dad. On the way home, Jordan told me he'd never see me the same way again. It wasn't that I had a dad who got stoned every once & a while, it was that I had a dad that I could just be myself around. It wasn't just that our love for each other was palpable; we actually liked each other, too.

Dad never felt like he could ever criticize my decisions. He felt like because he didn't raise me, he didn't get to have say. Even when I begged him for his opinion, he wouldn't give it to me. He did tell me things he didn't tell anyone else. Like how he spent weeks building a landing strip in Laos, only to have to hide in a bunker for 3 days while it was destroyed. Then he had to go out & bag the bodies of his buddies that had been laying there all that time. He told me about how he got a letter from his high school sweetheart his first week of boot camp telling him she was pregnant & going to marry someone else because she knew he was going to get killed. He told me that my mom was the love of his life & never had a bad thing to say about her, except that she was a little messy. This meant a lot to a child who had no memories of her parents loving each other.

There were a lot of things about my dad that were hard to deal with. He had a gift for saying the absolute worst thing at the absolute worst time. He was not right in the way that someone with PSTD is, combined with a healthy dose of OCD. He had a combustible temper combined with remarkable shooting skills. Many times I was somewhere with him & had to quietly beg for him not to reach under the seat of his truck for his gun because he had witnessed something that he didn't know any other way to handle. There were also many times I wished he had witnessed something that someone did to me. When I was about eleven there was an incident where I gave him an ultimatum that I didn't ever want him to drink around me again. He stuck to it until I was of drinking age, & even then, he never really got drunk.

He would come stay with me at the little house I lived in in Plymouth in my last years at EMU. He would bring some Black Label, or Bell's if he was trying to be fancy. He'd sit at my kitchen table, which had been a wedding gift to he & my mom, while I cooked and baked. We would talk & eat. Walk my dogs. Drink some beer. Talk some more. He'd ask me to explain things I studied in school like situational ethics & how trusses work. We'd listen to Johnny Cash, Brenda Lee, The Dead, Jessie Colter, Jimi Hendrix. When I was just about to graduate, he saw a list on my fridge that I'd made of things that I was going to buy for myself when I got a real job. He picked the most expensive thing on the list & drove to Sears to buy me a brand new 32-inch televison that very day. His only concession was that I not tell my step-mother.

I would leave parties at ungodly hours, drive the 2 hours to his house, & we'd go fishing in the north channel of Lake St. Clair. By sunrise, I'd have caught something & fall asleep in the bow. He'd do things like put vodka in my coffee while I was sleeping.

When I met my husband & moved to Florida, I killed a part of my dad. His own dad died about a month after we moved down here & he was left with no one else to fish with. We talked every Saturday afternoon, unless something special was going on. He would call occasionally during the week too, & in his messages he would always tell my husband he loved him too. Pretty amazing for someone from stoic Finnish stock. The song we danced to at my wedding was "The Promise" by Tracy Chapman. I always thought I'd move back to MI before he passed.

I can't tell you how much I miss picking up the phone & hearing him say "Hoppytoddle!?" like some teenage Beatles fan. I want to tell him Mini Me has his giggle. Those moments, of seeing her beautiful face make that sound that pierces my heart, are the very definition of bittersweet. I went through pictures looking for ones to take with me to his funeral and didn't find very many of just him. As I dug through the boxes, I realised just how many pictures there were that he took of me. And they are all my favorite ones, because when you look at them you can see how he saw me. He made me feel beautiful just because of who I am, not because of who made me, but because of what I made of myself.

In the last year I've realized some things about my dad that I never would have when he was here. My mom is currently furious with me for planning to move out of Florida. She moved down here all of 3 months after we did & she is in the process of packing my bags for the kind of enormous guilt trip only an Irish Catholic can orchestrate. My dad said so many times that my family was me & my husband now, that he loved us, that he missed us, but we had to live our lives. It is amazing to me that a man who was so challenged in so many other ways in regards to relationships, seemed to manage to let both my husband & I know that he loved us immensely, missed us terribly, but never made us feel guilty about moving away. When we went to visit him the last time, I didn't have to say a word about not smoking in his own house. Then man who lived on bacon, bread, cookies & coffee had stocked his fridge with every single organic thing they had at the little country store by his house for Mini Me. There was always a little Squirt "pop" for me, too.

More than anything, my dad taught my husband how to love me, & how a father should love his daughter. When I pulled in the driveway, he would stand outside the barn with his hands in his bibbers, smiling ear to ear, just waiting for me to come hug him. He would bend his knees up & down like a little excited kid. That man knew everything single evil, stupid, thoughtless thing I ever did, & he still found a way to make me feel like I was the best thing that ever happened to him. He taught me one of life's hardest lessons: that relationships are work, & that if you love someone, you have to love all of them, not just the fun stuff. He never took me to the doctor when I was sick, or ran me to dance class. I think he only paid like $500 towards my college tuition. But he changed the oil on my car every time I came to see him. He helped me change the alternator on my car over the phone between my shifts waiting tables. He never told me to be quiet when we were fishing because I would scare away the fish. What we had to say to each other was always more important. He celebrated my achievements as my own with absolute glee, understanding the difference between being proud of me & admiring me. He made sure to tell me the latter. His only wish for me was that I would have everything I ever wanted.


& now, most days, what I really want the most is his voice on the other end of the phone.