Endless Weekend

Interesting fragrance name for a Bath & Body Works shower gel.  A picture on the label of a couple riding in a convertible, the woman's arms stretched upward, going on some kind of adventure, I suppose.  I thought about the seemingly endless weekends I've had of late, none of which involved a ride in a convertible. 

The first one was my maternity leave with Hazel.  A nervous new mom, I had no idea what to do with a baby and went weeks at a time without setting foot outside.  The winter set in quickly and I began to understand the mind of an agoraphobic. I had panic attacks when I went to Kroger.  I was doing it all wrong, and by 4 months I was longing to go back to work.  Pass my baby on to a professional so I could get back into the lab.

Next unending weekend started on March 10, 2015, the day I handed my resignation to Mars, with a 10-week-old Vera in the infant carrier. I was determined to make the most of it.  I had brunch dates.  We took walks.  I cooked eggs from the backyard chickens and made pesto from the basil in the garden.  I loved H deeply for the person he became through all our misfortune, and decided to be a better wife. We worked hard to put family first and never looked back.  I applied for jobs while Vera napped.  She got bigger, more interactive, and I worried I'd never find a job, but knew that it would be OK no matter what because I had my family.

And here I am again, the first day of my last Maternity Leave, and I am wondering what this endless weekend has in store for me.  The finality is strange, knowing I will never have another summer off of work - at least not one where I'm still paid and still technically employed.  This is it.  I fold the laundry, knowing that I will never wear most of these maternity clothes ever again, and it feels like a chapter is closing in my life's book.  A chapter that correlates as strongly with age as it does with, say, choice, and I am more aware of just how much older I have become.  Time is passing and I'm aging, and this is what happens.

Here we go, for one last Hurrah.

Nanny's Eyes

Nanny,

I remember after your cataract surgery
You came home with those big sunglasses.
You would lie down on your bed and ask me to put eyedrops in
And you were so bothered by the dirt in the light fixture
Which you weren't able to see before.
You decided that your nose looked too big without glasses.
So you would wear your glasses anyway
To hide your nose
Even though they made your vision blurry.
And I wondered whether the surgery was worth it.

But today I wouldn't mind sitting on your bed
Listening to you complain about the dirt in the light fixture
And talking to you
While I put drops in your eyes.

Old Beginnings

Here I am, staying in some kind of shopper's Mecca outside Nashville.  And I'm looking through my rental car windshield at everything, wearing the "Could-this-be-my-next-home?" lens.  Only this time, it's every place I've ever lived.  It's Christiana and Broad Ripple.  It's Mason and King of Prussia.  I figure, why not take a few hours and get all that shopping done, now that I'm finally alone and can go buy all those things I was too distracted to shop for, with a toddler and stroller with me all the time.  But without all those distractions I have an immediate and profound realization that I don't actually need anything.  And besides, everything I'm seeing is junk anyway.  And I start to feel lost, in this town I've lived in a hundred times before.  As I drive back to my hotel I'm strangely aware of Chic Wigs and The Honeybaked Ham Store.  And I just don't know if I can do this again.

Mission to Mars

You knew this was going to happen at some point, didn't you?

You know, I sure did. I wonder why I didn't do anything about it. Like spend two full weeks applying for a tenure track professorship, writing a research proposal from scratch while H did all childcare and housework, in addition to s full time job with an hour commute.

But why didn't you find something inside P&G?

Ah good point, everyone. I should have taken something I didn't want. I should have applied to all those positions I was reading that sounded dull where the work I didn't want to do is managed by an idiot boss I didn't want to have. Boy I really should've made a lateral move to immediate discontentment. At least there wouldn't be any uncertainty about my job satisfaction.

The more I mull it over I guess I felt like if anyone is up for the challenge, it's us. The brave who stayed among us. The agile, the fearless. The loyal dedicated to the cause, and to each other.

As for my boss, the one I recently said I'd want with me in a plane crash or on a survival mission, well maybe my wish is being granted.

Try to plead with the company who sold me to take me back? Come on.  Mom taught me better.

Cold Rain and Snow

Some of us - there is a name for it, I'm sure - awake in the fall, when the gunmetal November skies return, the cold rain falls, and an icy swirl forms on the insides of storm windows in the old farmhouse. The frost is on the pumpkin and the mud freezes into ruts.  The soft cushion of leaves turns to a stiff crunch underfoot, layered with a top frosting of first snowfall.  The woods quiet down, the helter-skelter of noisy summer heads south, and we are left with whatever sound rings true - the rush of a brook, the squeak and skid of strong oak limbs in an upsurge of wind, and the hoot of an owl calling out across the ridgelines.

There are times in these dark woods when you imagine that cities have never been built, that the era of humans has come and gone.  You notice the direction of the wind - a southerly blow means a change of weather - and you know just how much daylight is left after what weakly passes for the sun drops down below the western ridgeline.

At first, I thought that the winder woods were about nothing - an antidote to a world stuffed with everything.  The winter makes you work for it, makes you reach out and grab whatever truth is buried in the hills and swales.  Summer offers itself glibly, like some garishly suited hawker of entertainment.  The winter work is worth it for those who can sift through the stanzas of triple meaning, how a leaden sky offers release from quotidian burdens.

You think of disturbing the universe with a new thought.  Maybe all that has come before has no meaning, or perhaps there is no meaning at all.  The signs of human ignorance are everywhere; a dead fox decomposing into an upper pasture, bear tracks in soft snow, a great horned owl gliding silently through a thickly wooded hollow.  I sift through clues to observe what lies behind the dark curtain of forest.

I fall asleep, dreaming of November woods, with no fear of waking.  Let others drown in what might have been.

-Christopher Kimball

Death

Access Hollywood was on the TV and I had my laptop on the couch shopping for ridiculous cubic zirconia rings for going out and fake-impressing people.

And I half heard something on the TV about Roger Ebert winning an award, so I went to his Wiki page  to read what was going on.  And I eventually read the following statement that he made, while confronting his own impending death from cancer:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

And now I'm reminded of my deathly fear of death.

And I don't feel like buying costume jewelry online anymore.

Sharpie tattoos and a betadine belly

I took a 12 week Lamaze course when I was pregnant.  I was there to learn how to refuse medical intervention and manage labor pain without anesthesia.  I read two dozen books on ways to limit medical procedures during labor and delivery.  I wrote about 15 versions of my birth plan and talked to every single doctor in my practice (7) so they knew I wanted no intervention and no medication.  This was all for one reason: I wanted to avoid major, invasive surgery that is a cesarean section.

Little did I know, just one year later, I'd be gassed, cut open in 4 places, shoved around and stitched back together.

Five Below

I hate how people only ever use the word "balmy" in a sarcastic way in the wintertime. It ain't funny no more.

Going Gray

Life is pretty funny, in a completely non-funny way.  All my life I've been about as Pro-Life, Anti-Abortion as a person could possibly be.  Without, of course, being one of those crazies who holds up signs about God hating people.  In 6th grade CCD (c. 1991) I remember making a poster, with the Virgin Mary holding her Baby Jesus and the caption: What if Mary were Pro-Choice?  I got the award, BEST PRO-LIFE POSTER IN THE HARRISBURG DIOCESE that year. I've had more than my share of ethics debates, and I never wanted to consider the outliers, the anecdotes, "What if a pregnancy is non-viable?" "What if it threatens the health of the mother?" etc.   Those stories are just meant to confuse the black-and-white moral issue.  Even through my first pregnancy and birth of my baby, I proudly powered through as one staunch Pro-Life advocate.

But for some unknown reason, here I am, today.  Personally, medically, physically in this situation that occurs less than 1% of the time, facing the exact choice myself that I used to stick my fingers in my ears to ignore.  It's a no-brainer.  I'm thankful that there are drugs which can help me survive this situation.  Knowing there was never a baby, a heartbeat, a viable life in question.  It's been eye opening.

Work, between Christmas and New Year's Eve

Top 5 things people say:

1. It's really quiet - so I can finally get stuff done!

2. Perfect time to really focus and concentrate.

3. Not all of us have vacation days to spare.

4. Great time to write reports and clean out my desk.

5. I get more work done in these couple days than I do in a typical month!

Top 5 things people think:

1. I want to piss around and not do shit.

2. I'm saving my vacation days for an actual vacation.

3. More time at work = less time with in-laws.

4. I only take vacation when my boss doesn't.

5. I am getting away without doing a single fucking thing.

Weather

Everyone says, "This is the best time of the year!" Clutching their pumpkin spice lattes and walking to work in knee high boots and short sleeved shirts in mid September. Then the first 40F rain hits and the wind blows hard and those giant orange leaves actually start to cover the ground and it's dark outside by 5pm and all of a sudden everyone stops talking about those lattes. And you start to see people at work with scarves that have little to do with fashion and all the labor intensive hairdos get covered by oddly functional hats and you get to see what people's real faces look like without the distraction of jewelry and hairspray. We all look much more human. And a little more silly. That is why I love the fall.

Marriage Lesson 1 (TBL)

I always imagined that having someone love you as much as you loved them was bliss. And simple. And peaceful. And required minimal effort and you could both just blissfully exist.

I swear to God this is what I believed.

Turns out it's slightly different. Turns out it's still a charade of emotions and pushing back and tip-toeing and apologizing and losing your temper and freaking out and screaming and needing your personal time and hating him for being near you and hating not being alone so you make him go for a walk and then you start questioning what the hell you signed up for and scheming how you can change things back to the time when it was just you and you had as much alone time as you wanted, and even much, much more alone time than you wanted, which makes you realize that you kinda liked having this fellow around after all and maybe you don't want him to go for a walk.

And then Google Latitude comes in handy.

September 11

Yeah, I remember where I was. I was 16 days into my 21st birthday and going out every night. And I had this boyfriend who wasn't that into me, who never wanted to see me, so the best compromise we could agree on that semester was lunch every Tuesday, usually Burger King. So after class I walked to the Union only to see the second plane hit on TV, and I called him to see where we should meet for lunch.

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" he asked me.

"Yes, I saw it on TV. Are we still meeting for lunch?"

… of course we weren't.

And I remember having difficulty feeling whatever it was I was supposed to feel at that time. And I went out to see my family one night that week and when I was driving back to college, all the people who lived in the farm houses were standing lined up by the road holding candles. And those people seemed to stretch the entire way back to campus. And I remember starting to feel something.

Little Sisters of the Poor

Sr. Grace called out "Honey!" to catch me before I entered the dining room alone. After a limp handshake she started explaining how tonight was going to work. It was interesting for me to hear a nun with a Chinese accent, gesturing with her nun arms just like the best of them, but speaking with that accent and not having blue eyes.

I thought my first night would be spent helping serve food to the residents, not be seated at the table and have the nuns serve me right along with everyone else. They were ladling cream of mushroom soup into Corelle bowls for everyone, passing out rolls and cheese slices and pouring hot water for tea. The main course was chicken patties and corn, with two kinds of chocolate cake for dessert.

Even more charming were the two ladies at my table, L'Jean and Joyce. They were fairly new - 6 months and almost 1 year, respectively, and both talked very highly of the place, listing things they liked to do and places they liked to go. Joyce asked me what type of work I did, and when I told her I was a chemist, she kind of looked me up and down, blinked slowly and said, "Well I didn't know that." I mentioned most people seemed surprised when I tell them I'm a scientist and she said, "Well sure, they probably assume you're a secretary." I shared that my sister was an English teacher and my other sister a social worker, so we'd all gone different ways. She said, "All you need is a doctor in the family!" When I told her I had a PhD (I was told ahead of time she was highly educated too) she said, "No, I mean a medical doctor. I have a PhD too, well I have several degrees, but I didn't mean that. Are you a reader, Colleen?" and she went on to tell me how much she loves to read. And it showed.

I was introduced to Madlyn when everyone was done eating, and Sr. Grace informed me that Madlyn was a third person I was expected to visit, and how I was supposed to call Sr. Grace beforehand to let her know precisely when I would plan to visit and with whom and for how long, so that she would make sure they remembered and were prepared. And that if we decided to play cards, we had to talk as well, because we ought not focus on just the game but one another.

I stayed a long time standing in the dining room with L'Jean and Madlyn, just chatting, and mentioned HF lived separately from me. Madlyn said it reminded her of when her husband played baseball and had to travel around, and how she had her daughter when he was overseas in The War and how when he came home, she didn't know who he was and how bad he felt about that. Then she told me she had two great great grandchildren. L'Jean will be 90 this summer. Madlyn will be 89. Oh, and Joyce is 92.

L'Jean was showing me to the lobby, and I asked about her name, and whether the "L" stood for anything. She explained, "Well, a hundred years ago it would have - I'm saying that because I'm almost a hundred. When I was born there were so many Laura-Jeans. The doctor said there were enough Laura-Jeans and just wrote down L apostrophe Jean. I never had to explain it to anyone until I came here." I said goodnight when we got to the lobby, and she pulled me aside, "By the way, did Sr. Grace call me "Luh-Jean" instead of "El-Jean" earlier?" I told her that yes, she actually did, and when I saw L'Jean rolled her eyes I told her not to worry - I know how to pronounce it now.

Tuesdays with Adaline, The Denture Edition

I let myself in her screen door one Tuesday around 7:00, and when I was sitting down at the kitchen table, her bright white smile made me hesitate for a second. I didn't say anything. When she was talking, she sounded different. I noticed her teeth were straighter and much larger than normal. Maybe I made a face, maybe I was staring and her mouth while she spoke, but for whatever reason she decided to share, "Pete don't like when I wear these dentures. He says, 'Mom, you don't look like yourself.'" I laughed but didn't want to tell her I agreed with Pete.

It made me remember a time when I was 15 years old and it was summertime and Poppy was driving me in his truck and dropping me off at St. Anne's Home on weekday afternoons. I remembered Velma, the tiny 94-year-old woman who I would push in her geri chair to the physical therapy room, and how she would grab my arm and smile and tell me how much she loved me and how beautiful I was. And I would respond by telling her how beautiful she was, because her smile was just so joyful, contagious and beautiful. And then I remember the one day all summer when her son decided to visit, the obligatory semi-annual check-in, or whatever it was. I was invisible walking by her geri chair in the hallway, because she was looking up lovingly at her son, smiling a gigantic toothy smile that made me confused. Later I wondered if Velma's son wanted to see his mother smiling with teeth that resembled her teeth from long ago, or whether he preferred her natural toothless joyful smile.

I liked the first smile I saw on Velma's face. And I liked Adaline's first set of dentures. And even though I am more ashamed of my teeth than most other physical parts of me, I was thinking today about how when I get dentures (not too long from now) I'll probably ask them to replicate the same shape teeth as I have now.

Sweetums

There's a woman at my work who reminds me of that big muppet who marches in on The Muppet Show on the bottom floor, kind of stomping, leaning to one side and the other with each step, the big muppet with long body hair and long arms and a big bottom frowny lip on its face.

There was a lab tour organized so that business partners outside our department could come by and learn about our capabilities and measurement techniques and other services we can provide. I went through the tour just out of curiosity/nosiness and to support my coworkers. When I went into her lab to listen to her presentation, I noticed that she was wearing eyeliner today. And I thought, "She was getting ready this morning, remembered the lab tour was today, and decided to put some makeup on." And I thought about the days I have some important meeting or a presentation to give, and how I pick out a special outfit and do my hair really good on those days. There was something so innately human to it, and I felt a kind of connection to this person with whom I otherwise have little in common.

Really nice woman but kind of reminds me of that muppet.

Time

Someday someone will look at our wedding picture and say, "Wow, she looked so young in that picture." And another day, someone will look at our wedding picture and ask, "Who were they?"

Coolest Greatest Most Excellent Thanksgiving Day Ever

When people asked if I could go home for Thanksgiving this year (which I couldn't), I was still excited because it meant I could have two turkey dinners - one with the MF's parents and another one on Saturday with his aunt and cousins.

But I got up this morning and something just didn't feel right, and I was making juvenile mental attacks on his family all day, and I knew that it wasn't anything they were doing wrong - they're wonderful people - it's just that they're not my family. And so when I irritably texted "Save me" to P, she thought she was doing a good thing by calling back with my little niece on the line to cheer me up, my niece who, when I asked her what she ate for Thanksgiving responded by singing a song to me. "Mary had a little lamb, Cah-ween." And it was so precious and so dear, that when I hung up the phone I couldn't bear to make eye contact with anyone, only stare at the little photograph I have of her, when MF's mom asked, "You're really missing her, aren't you?" and I had to run out of the kitchen before bursting into tears, because I should be with my family tonight.

On the drive home I thought about that Thanksgiving when P was working at John Herr's Grocery and had to ring up an old man's cold cut turkey and loaf of bread, which was just about the saddest thing I could ever picture, but here I am now, at home by myself, eating ramen - ramen that is cold and leftover from last week, because I just didn't have the appetite for turkey today.

Shut your stupid pie hole, Beyonce!

On NPR on the way home from work, there was a program about how pop music has a different share of the market now than they had a decade ago, about how fans are no longer interested in full albums but in great singles they can buy separately and load into their ipod, and how sound clips on commercials and TV shows get just as much exposure and attention as cable TV networks.

Then the dude played two examples of "great" pop singles that are out now. One was Pink, the other Beyonce. I actually started crying in my car, and not because the songs were beautiful. These were the worst, brainless, trite, idiotic lyrics I'd ever heard, and I knew that there were some girls in this country who actually think these kinds of songs are empowering.

The line, for example, "If you like it, you should've put a ring on it" is NOT empowering. It just reinforces the same dependent/materialistic/traditional ideals our culture needs to overcome.

She totally didn't even write that song herself. You know a stupider man wrote it for her.

Tisn't the Season

My parents really mean it this year: no gifts. At least nothing store-bought. They say this every year, they really do, and we always end up going overboard with gifts and last-minute shopping and spending and it turns into a huge present-party every Dec. 26th. But this year they mean it, and considering what's happened to our family in light of the housing/credit/mortgage crisis, we're actually listening to the parents this year.

My first response was pissy. I was just thinking, you know, I am the one who is far away and it's really hard for me to do the IOU coupon book doohickey, with the Good-for-one-Netflix-movie-night and the I'll-cook-you-dinner coupons. But then I thought about it a little longer, and realized, I can do a couple cutesy things for my family, and never have to worry about Christmas shopping.

Let me repeat that: I am not Christmas shopping this year. In fact, I get to avoid the mall scene until after the new year. It is so freeing and so empowering, to know that I am not a part of the commercialism of Christmas, at least this year.

I might actually stop to enjoy the Christmas season for the first time since I was a kid.