A big smile and two big ears - that seems to be me.

I got to write this weekend, for 14/48. What a gift - to write, to have the impetus of a deadline, to remember how to flex those muscles. And 2011 will hold See Me Naked, and by golly I'm gonna write more.

I'd like to write now, but it's 7:33pm, and my husband is talking to me, and my son is talking to me, and I love them both - and I guess I could just transcribe what they're saying because I certainly cannot hear myself think.

Sometimes they talk and talk and talk to me, they can see me typing, but it's like the laptop doesn't exist for them. Sometimes I think I just appear to be one gigantic ear. Two gigantic ears, ready to listen to them forever. Maybe I'm smiling in their imagination - a big smile and two big ears. That's me, that's the mom and the wife.

I need my own goddamn house.


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I need a little kids school...

For anyone who's been reading my Facebook posts, this will probably all be old news... but I thought I'd go ahead and post on here. In hopes of drawing it all together for myself, maybe. That's why we tell stories, I think. To organize our experiences for ourselves, primarily; to make sense of our lives.

I am having some monumental mom guilt at the moment, let's just get that out there right now. Why didn't I insist/push/just-do-it find a good pre-k program for Finn last spring when we got here?

I don't remember. I tried, I know. Three co-op preschools were full. One CDSA site had space, but we fell into a weird income hole and were too poor to get one subsidy and couldn't get another unless I went to a job-searching class 40 hours a week, which was senseless to me. I guess I got tired, and then it was April, and then it was Well, let's just wait.

And he was going to pre-K anyway, I thought. Then he had a growth spurt - emotionally, communication-wise - as I posted last time.

And truth be told, I started kindergarten when I was 4. I was "smart". I always took pride in that. And all the kids Finn was born with began kindergarten last week. I didn't want him left out. So we were off to kindergarten with high hopes.

Then he started wetting his pants, right after we visited his school for the open house. He's never done that. Ever. And it was constant. And then he went to school, and he started crying. Not for a little while - he cried for three days straight. He kept getting lost in the halls, his teacher said, because he didn't know how to stay in line with his class. He wouldn't let her leave his side at lunch.

She told me all this on the playground in the morning, when the kids were lining up to go in. She didn't email or call me. I didn't have much time to process the information. It's her first year teaching. She's very sweet. If he was ready, I wouldn't worry about experience on her part - but he's a guy who needs some special care, I think, some knowledge.

And truth be told, I don't think he's ready for the kindergarten that exists now. He told me, very clearly:

"I need a little kids school."

Maybe if we hadn't moved.

Maybe if he'd had one or two years of pre-school.

Maybe if dad and mom were different people (not sure how, just different somehow - the kind of people who don't move, maybe, and who make sure they own a house before they have a child, and who make sure that child goes to preschool...)

So now, the decision is what pre-K program?

The sweet, sweet, small one a mile away, with 4 staff members for 15 to 20 kids? The one where most kids with him will be 3 1/2 to 4 to start, then catch up to being 5 along with him? The one that meets Mondays through Thursdays from 1pm to 4pm?

How will I work at all if he goes to that one? Even my work, my freelance writing and coordinating and teaching work?

Or the school program that seems somehow less desirable - the site we're considering is further away, for one thing, but not tremendously. 9am to 3pm, 5 days a week - shorter days not an option. Where they nap from 12:30 to 2pm, no matter what. Finn hasn't napped in two years. He'd have to rest quietly on his mat during that time. He hated naptime when he had to endure it at his San Diego preschool. The school with an executive director who is reviled by folks I know, although the teachers at this site seem lovely.

A lot more freedom for me. A lot more hours for me. To work, write, whatever.

What do I do?



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Reprieve...

The job is not there, the one he was going away to do. My husband is staying here, at least for now.

He may travel north, to help another friend, soon - and I hope that he will, that he does, I hope this for him.

And I feel a little, tiny bit guilty. Because truth be told, I was silently screaming to the heavens:

"DO NOT LET HIM GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

I was afraid. Afraid of being the ONE, single parenting, and afraid on a superstitious level that something BAD might happen. That he might not come back.

I was afraid of a lifetime of single parenting. And I was afraid of losing him. And I was just plain afraid of the inconvenience and stress and all of that, of driving Finn to and from preschool and working and hiring babysitters and and and blah blah blah...

the hamster-circle of worry.

And now I don't have to. He's staying here, with us.

For a little while, anyway. Yeah, maybe he'll go up soon, to help Bret on the big paint job. And I'll be okay with it then. Really, I will. I promise. I won't scream silent prayers for divine interference, for adjustments in the cosmos that allow him to stay here. With us.

My husband. My bipolar bear.

He sits outside in the sun right now, talking to his friend. Sounding remarkably mature, calm, spiritually fit, loving.

Will he sound like that when he comes inside? I doubt it. Maybe he'll surprise me. But I seem to get the wounded, snarling side more often. I don't know why.

Have you ever felt that? Have you ever been that?

What side of me do I give him, I wonder...





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Single parenting... Survival... Holy crap.

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I have an active imagination. Ever since I was small, I have imagined terror and trouble, just to see what I would do...

8 years old, in church: "If TIGERS escape and come in here, in church, how will I escape? Could I climb up the altar? Could I then jump to the lights? Could I hang there until rescue came?"

Another scenario, albeit a similar one: "If a FLOOD came into church, how will I escape?" etc....

Sometimes even moral implications and consequences would enter my pondering:

"What will happen to my family? Will I save them? Will I even try? Or will I just scramble to my own safety?"

It would while the hours of mass away. Which was essential, considering I went to mass six days a week.

My penchant for bad fantasies has stayed with me all my life. I once read an interview with Mary Steenburgen, where she said she used to think she was insane, because she daydreamed about horrible things happening to her and her family. Then, when she was studying Meisner (an acting technique), she realized she was just an actor.

Lately, since I got married, my fantasies have primarily been about my husband leaving my life. Never, ever my son leaving my life - there I do not wander. Ever. Some places are unimaginable, even for bad fantasy time.

But my husband - he leaves a number of ways. Sometimes he dies. A pleasant, peaceful death, that's over before he or anyone knows it. Sometimes he just disappears. Sometimes I leave him.

No matter how he goes, the fantasy is pretty much the same - I grieve and grow wise through my grieving, maybe I even write a book about it, and I become a noble, wise, spunky single parent. I am Finn's friend, his mommy and his daddy. Somehow, inexplicably, I am 35 again. We explore the world, I make lots of money (somehow), I buy a little home for us (huh?), and eventually I meet my soulmate who becomes the best second dad for Finn that you could ever imagine - a sweet, calm, quiet, giving, smart, generous, patient, saintly kind-of-fellow, a guy who's a world away in temperament from my current bipolar bear.

and I drift off to sleep thinking - "Yeah. I will survive...hey, hey..." as Gloria Gaynor echoes in my head.

And now - NOW. Oh Good Lord, NOW - I am going to get to actually practice.

My husband is leaving.

Not for good, and not for bad. Actually - let me be clear with my language.

He is leaving FOR GOOD. He's leaving to go back to Seattle to work with old friends, and make a lot of money for us, his family, and regain a bit of his soul, hopefully. And then he is coming back here, to us, in San Diego. (note - I did not say "home." Since none of us are at all sure where that is.)

He is coming back. That's the plan. After a MONTH. FOUR WEEKS.

I work. I work full-time, at a job that will grow increasingly demanding over the next four weeks. There are many graces - we are an office of women, half of us mothers, and I am the boss of me. There is no one to hover or disapprove. I can bring Finn, I can leave early to get him from daycare, I can do many things -

and I have daycare, thankfully, at Finn's beloved preschool. I don't know if he'll love daycare as much as school, but it's in the same place - that has to count for something in his affections. I hope.

And I can ask for babysitting. I have one person I can ask. Maybe I'll find more.

It's just that I will be the ONE. I will be the ONE who drives him to school, goes to work, then picks him up from school; the ONE who takes him grocery shopping to the park and on errands and the ONE who makes his breakfast and dinner and the ONE who brushes his teeth and puts him to bed - I will be the ONE doing this, while at work I will be the ONE artistic directing the whole shebang.

I am terrified. I suspect that I will not be noble, or wise. I'm pretty certain that I will not wake up and find myself 35 again. I'm afraid of the new map of furrows that will arise on my already weary face. And I know, in my heart, that I may shriek more than I laugh.

Now, without being the ONE, I barely keep my head above water. I paddle along, breathing hard, until I fall into bed at night. How will I paddle for two?

My only consolation is that I will be alone, after Finn goes to sleep. I will not have my husband here to help (him helping me) - but I will also not have my husband here to help (me helping him). I'll be alone - and that may be a blessing. His troubles brew large, much of the time. He takes up a lot of psychic space, my bipolar bear.

So maybe the respite from his worries will compensate, a bit, for being Finn's ONE.

Or maybe I'll just die.

Mary Steenburgen would understand.

A Year? Unbelievable

I had such good intentions.

I was gonna write every day, or at least some days...

...describe my journey, join the blogosphere, have lotsa readers, touch lives, be known, be read, be wildly successful, whatever that looks like.

And I never came back here to write. Not until now, nearly ONE YEAR to the day of that first post.

I did write. Just not here - I wrote, as I have all my life, in scrawled journals. And in emails. But did not write all that much, I guess. I kinda shut down.

I shut down to survive.

It turns out Moving is Hard. Moving can Suck.

Moving means you might end up in an apartment with shared walls and an drunken neighbor who falls asleep with two TVs BLARING (one tuned to ESPN and the other channeling porn) while your new city bursts into flame and your new co-workers confess they work 50 to 60 hours a week (but didn't think to tell you that when you interviewed) and your not-new husband had a brand-new kind of breakdown. Moving means you have to find a lawyer to break a lease and then find a new home and learn how to set boundaries at work in a brand-new way and figure out exactly what the "for worse" part of the marriage vow means. Moving means you have to make new friends and Moving means you realize that is much different in the decade of 40 and the decade of parenting than it was in the decades of 20 & 30 and "I'm in theatre so let's be friends and do a Play!" Moving means your son might not have anyone at his 4th birthday party except his mom and dad, instead of the 30+ entourage of friends and family who attended his first 3 extravaganzas.

Moving brought me closer to despair than I've been in many, many years, and nearly a year later I am not entirely sure we're out of the woods.

So maybe I'll write some more on here soon. I'm not done Moving yet, that I know.