Mother's day

This day has always been a complicated one for me, being the "other mother" in (what was) a two-mom family. In the wake of the "gayby boom", much has been written about the experience of being the non-biological mother --the ambiguity, the difficulty and awkwardness of that identity, or lack of identity really.
I remember my first mother's day, just a few months after our first daughter was born. We rented a house with a small group of friends for a long weekend up in Mendocino. I didn't think of myself as a mother yet, despite the late night feedings and everything else, but I was bothered that our friends--who certainly should've "known better"--wished my ex a happy mother's day but not me. Did they think of me as the "father"? No, but clearly I was not the mother either. Who was I in all this anyway?
The problem was that even I didn't know that answer to that, having never imagined myself in the role of parent and barely understanding the notion of family. No room in any blog to explain all that, or rather no reader with patience enough to get through it--suffice to say I missed out somehow on a lot social programming.
One of the first things I learned as the other mother is you get really good at being comfortable with little lies. I can't tell you how many times moms in the playground would comment about how much my daughter looked like me or would ask me about when and where I gave birth. Now you may be thinking, well, that's not so different from women who adopt, they go through that same thing don't they? True enough, but they are not partners with or married to someone who did give birth to their child. There is a legitimacy associated with being a biological mother that by default makes the other mother an imposter. And then of course there's the assumption of heterosexuality in most of these interactions as well. Small lies or the silences that are their shadows become the necessary grease in these interactions with strangers--people with whom it is just too much trouble to explain everything. You'd think it's be easy after a while but that shit wore me down.
Anyway, it's nine mother's days later and I've learned since that first one that mothers of all kinds--single, married, straight, lesbian, whatever--are confounded in their own ways by the identity of mother. And though I'm a little wiser for the years, I still struggle with what it means to me, especially now because when I am with my daughters I am a single parent, the only mom. But through it all, I am constantly surprised at how much I like that and more so that I'm actually quite good at it.
Sometimes, I think back to how I was before--only really feeling responsible for myself, how easy that was, so much so that I didn't even realize it. What would my life be like now if I didn't have these wonderful girls? I can't even imagine myself without them, they have become such a part of who I am. I wonder sometimes, how did that happen? I know but I don't know. Another happy mystery.

welcome back, dark side

Everyone has a dark side, which is not necessarily a sad, suffering, evil, or unwanted part of ourselves but merely a place that is normally hidden from the light of day for whatever reason. I am a big fan of dark sides. I think they are the only thing that keeps the light side light. And not to promote some bullshit notion of the suffering artist, but for me, some of my most creative work emerges when my eyes are adjusting to the darkness at the bottom of a well. Although sometimes I just try and make something meaningful and creative out of the pile of raw sewage down here in order to get through the day. This post being a case in point.

But my day didn't start this way. It began with longing, desire, and transcendance--thank you perfectly fitting girl who is so much more than that. Indeed I felt transcendant through most of the day in the way Kant describes it--when our knowledge of something precedes our experience of it. How wonderful that is.

But then I dropped her at the train, did my grocery shopping, and suddenly I was a destabilized mess, wanting to cry, wondering why I hadn't really cried in some 4 months, feeling needy and insecure and hating myself for feeling that way--so not myself, but then if these feelings are not mine, whose are they?

A short jag of crying sufficed today, not the heaving sobs I know are down there, but it's a start. Part of me says what do I really have to cry about? Isn't suffering just part of a life filled with desire? But I don't want to negate my desire, and buddha didn't have two wonderful daughters to worry about.

into the brighter day

I've been too busy to post anything these past two weeks, and also I suppose unable to articulate certain missives from my darker regions. I did jot this down this admittedly hormone-inspired spelunk in my notebook a week ago though...
This fog of fear and longing is thick as my will is thin. I can't see beyond my outstretched hand and what I do see shifts its shape and meaning with the changing light. Why move at all from this place? My feet march on though, legs snap woodenly forward, my top-heavy remainder following that, teetering dangerously back before tilting forward once again. But my feet don't know they walk in circles, and my head only suspects as much because I feel inexplicably dizzy.
I need help.
I recognize this vibration of air as my voice. This amazing orchestration of body parts--lungs to larynyx to tongue, teeth, palate, and lips, and then ears for verification, looping feedback--this tiny miracle is not lost on me. But the real wonder is that my brain conceived the words at all.
Despite what you may imagine, I can tell you a rock does not get lonely, an island is content to be uncharted until it is swallowed by the sea. But this analogy only goes so far with me today. I am not solid and impenetrable, remote and unknown, worn down only by the unrelenting forces of time and water. Today I am smashed apart by a six-year-old's innocent words in under a minute, and it doesn't take oceans, just a few salty tears to dissolve what remains.
Well, this is just part of being a parent, I am tempted to say. And it's true.
Later I was surprised and thankful to have a shoulder to cry on, to melt into actually, about this, all of this which I can't write about here. I was expecting nothing, except to wander and eventually find my way as I always do, but she somehow found me in this fog, grabbed my hand and led me back into the brighter day. Who is this strange visitor to my island?

bedtime story

Tonight, at bedtime, my daughters asked me to tell them a story about when I was a girl. This happens a lot and I almost always dread it because I have so few memories of my childhood, at least any that make good bedtime stories. But their persistent (and by that I mean whining, pleading, incredulous pestering) requests did prompt several memories.
I told them about the time my parents decided to teach me a lesson about not leaving my bike out in the yard. I was probably eleven or twelve and they always were bugging me about bringing my bike onto the porch or into the house. It seems improbable to me now that it might have been stolen from our yard, but that was their line at the time. And with due respect I understand now how parents fabricate all kinds of stories for different reasons to get their kids to do certain things for somewhat arbitrary reasons. But I would get home from a ride, promptly dump my bike in the yard, and that would be that. One day, I went back out and saw that my bike was gone. I was devastated--this the bike I had modified myself from a girlie banana-seat high-handle-bar cruiser to a cool bmx dirt bike was GONE.
I remember, almost viscerally, the feeling of panic as I ran inside and told my parents what had happened. They just looked at me calmly ( and with what I now recognize as a certain parental smugness), and said "Come with us." They led me around to the side of the house, where they has stashed my bike as a lesson--in what, I still don't know. But I felt only ashamed and betrayed in that moment. Did it teach me me to bring my bike in from the yard? No, and even though I did bring my bike in after that, the real lesson was that my parents were capable of deceit, were not beyond question.
Of course I didn't tell my daughters that, instead delivering the story as a moral lesson in responsibility, etc. This is the funny thing about being a parent who is also a grown-up child, as we all are, you are constantly being thown back into your own childhood self as you try to parent. In my case, I haven't decided whether this is valuable or not.

stuff inside

I was walking on our old street this afternoon with my younger daughter and we passed by our old house. This always makes me tense up a little, wondering if seeing the only home they knew up until a few months ago makes the girls feel weird, displaced, sad--they never say anything and my own feelings seem to always get in the way in the way of asking.
Today though, there was a big debris box out front and the windows were papered down. The new owners must be gutting the place. For my daughter, I kept my eyes ahead and feet moving forward, but in my mind I was bounding up the steps by twos to peek in. I wanted to see if it looked like my own insides, gutted of old hopes and dreams, brittle and crumbly like the plaster in those old walls, which when touched with any force at all, end up as a fine dust over everything nearby.
Just then it started to snow, big fluffy flakes, my daughter laughing with delight as they landed on her nose. She said when they landed on you, the snowflakes were kisses and when they missed and hit the ground they died, but the ones that kissed you wouldn't die, they would go inside your body, kill any germs and other bad things they found there and get them out of your body. We must have looked like a pair of drunken sailors, weaving about the sidewalk trying to manouever ourselves into the paths of all those snowflakes.

Charlie Porter Quartet

Piano, upright bass, drums and trumpet. A classic jazz quartet. A small room and a table with an intimate view of the pianist's hands. Me. You. A complete surprise and delight in the middle of an already lovely day. How am I so lucky?
They played a few standards, some inspired originals. I got lost in some of those pieces. Some took me away, all took me to you.
I would have said thank you thank you thank you, do you know what this really means to me, the passing of music between us, the easy, perfect weight of your arm around my shoulder, are you really here with me, here and now, and as you say, how is that possible. But there was no room for words in that moment, no moment for words in that room, and even though you have trouble believing in things, I know you felt this too, know this to be true.

one of three

Whatever you think about the psychology of birth order, I will tell you this: being a middle child does make you a good mediator, even-keeled and sorely lacking in expectations. It also makes you an expert in passing along sibling aggression, beatdowns, sadistic teasing and practical jokes--also known as fun to the one dishing it out. My friends and I had our share of that with my little brother, who being three years younger was easy prey.
One day, during one of my routine invasions of his privacy--ie, snooping though his room for candy, comic books, or other items I was sure he had taken from my room--I found a small diary. I remember feeling simultaneously shocked--he was only seven, and a boy, what was he doing with this thing?-- and filled with evil glee at my luck: ah, the teasing that would be had now!
I opened to a random page and began reading. The first, and only, thing I read was this: "I feel like a cat that is purring but doesn't know what the sound is." What's this? And then I felt all the weight and feeling of what he wrote settle on me like a heavy blanket, warm and familiar, and somehow I knew I must close this book and put it back, carefully, where I had found it, and never open it again.
Maybe these wonders of self are easier to see when we are younger, more open to new things, not yet formed into the hard shapes we become. I continued to tease and torture my brother for years, but it was with a little less glee, more like following a script. I wonder if he knew and what he wrote about that.