Getting Older

2006-08-03T19:26:42Z

What do you do when all you want is to sit outside and smoke cigarettes? I feel like I spent so much time nurturing all of my bad habits - now, it will take me twice as long to change them back. I'm running out of my own patience, if not time. So young... I'm so young, there's time to fix everything: time to finish school, time to heal my lungs, time to fix my credit. Time.

I'm making progress. Slowly all of my bills are being paid off, one by one. Even more slowly, my credit score is starting to rise. Not that I need credit. While I'm busy staying at home and raising our child, Chris is off in the workforce, bringing in all the money we need. I should be grateful. I should be praising the spirits for all that I have, my beautiful Lyra, wonderful Chris, lovely home and furnishings... the sense of security that we have. But is it enough?

I don't feel that security anymore. All I have to do is read the paper. I've never been in a war, never seen death (of a human) firsthand, but I still flinch like a war-wise veteran everytime I hear a plane or a helicopter overhead. I'm scared. The picture of the rescue-worker carrying the dead little boy out of the rubble in Lebanon: is it to much to ask of myself to know why they're fighting? Because I don't know. Unlike half of Oregonians, I do know who is running for governor and what they stand for. But I don't know why the Isrealies and Hezbollah are shelling each other, nor why the Israelies don't seem to be dying as quickly. I missed that article. What I do see are the dead on the front page.

Even Seattle - 10 deaths in 17 days - if I was a fundamentalist Christian I really would think that the world is coming to an end. But I'm not. I'm not anything. I pray to God, but I believe each one of us is the source of God. So, I pray to myself. I pray to the trees, to the animals, to the rocks, but I still believe that I am here to be rewarded or punished, and I believe that I will be punished for smoking, for being a less than perfect mate, mother, and friend. I don't seem to focus much on the reward part - a symptom of my childhood days of Catholicism, I'm sure. At this particular moment, I don't even know what I could be rewarded for.

What do you do when all you want is to sit outside and smoke cigarettes? I don't want to eat. I don't want to draw with Lyra on the floor (or the carpet, the walls, or the furniture). I have this perfect child (who is, not coincidentally, now needing my attention more than ever), and I only feel angry at myself. I have always loved being Lyra's mother... but now more than ever I just want to crawl in a hole. With beer. And cigarettes.

Today is my father's 60th birthday. I used to think that was so old... now it seems so young. Like he says, to his mother, he's still a little boy. She's 94. He's been saying that she's not doing well for the last ten years, but I don't believe it anymore. I won't be surprised if she lives ten more years, but what I think is really happening is that she's waiting to die. I don't think she's confident that her children can really take care of themselves. She hasn't seen enough proof yet, I guess. So she'll stick around, ten more years, until she's just sick enough of all of them to close her eyes. Honestly? I think she'll be back.

What has happened through all of these years? I remember my childhood like it was a past life, not a part of the life I'm currently living. I remember being so incredibly hopeful, and excited. I want to say, "Look at me know." I've barely seen my father in the past ten years. I've seen my sister even less. Yet we were so close when I was a kid... the four of us, my mom, dad, me and sis - we were always together. Not just in the same room, but happy, you know? There were fights and displays of pride and anger and everything else, but (and I fully blame my parents for this) there was also a lot of laughter. So much so that without all that laughter, the laughter that you only get when all of you laugh your laughs at the very same time - without it I'm sinking. It's like the ritual that brings you back to who you really are, and I can't do it without somebody else.

I'm going to go smoke.

Words

2006-07-22T06:01:02Z

It’s twelve-oh-three pm, Wednesday, and I have officially yet to put on clothes. Something about the morning air in the summer here, cool, but like it’s hinting about getting hot, that makes peanut-buttering toast and slicing bananas butt-ass naked feel just grand. You would never guess this by looking at Lyra, of course, overly snug in her full-length jammies that I make her wear, summer or winter. Or by the way that her luscious little toes, no longer protected by the cotton layer of “feet,” are still icy cold. These same feet would lead, minutes later, to an explanation of the phonetic difference between “toes,” with a “z-z-z,” and “toast,” with a “s-s-st,” which were co-mingling unappetizingly on the kitchen table. Toes, Lyra is used to. The toast, I feel, it a word too inconsequential, though I think she understood the difference. More vital in her world are the words “down,” “that,” and “dog,” all of which sound nearly identical.

This morning, about eight-thirty, I had become dimly aware that Lyra was awake in her very own bedroom, and not the happy kind of awake. I admit that I had all too quickly gotten used to her week-long routine of sleeping in until nine-thirty, and had celebrated the night before by staying up until two-thirty in the morning, at which point I went to bed but proceeded to stay up until three, reading back-logs of babycenter journals on my laptop. Damn high-speed internet. In my still blissful-but-fearing-that-I-must-now-be-awake state, Christopher is bringing Lyra into our room. She’s now happy as a clam, in her long pajamas, and chattering away. “Dassa Babee?” she says when she sees herself in the mirror. I love how she says baby, like it has a capital B and a long, long eeee, lilted up sharply at the end. BaBEE? BaBEEE! She finds babies everywhere, in the diaper aisle, in magazines, in the loose color ads in the Sunday paper. Lyra also sees Daddies everywhere, too. I used to think that it was just Christopher, then I thought it represented all males. Then, I realized, as she held up a section of the paper, pointing to a picture of this beautiful woman who had been killed by a hit-and-run over the weekend, cheerfully crooning, “DADEE!” that in Lyra’s world, people are only divided into two categories: Daddies, and Babies. Separated only by size, and whatever else factors into Lyra’s mind.

What about Mommies? Is it just me, or are mothers everywhere insanely jealous that after all that stretched out pregnancy and having an infant dangling from your boob at any given moment, the children all latch on to “da-da” like it’s some epiphany? Dadee! Is the common refrain in our house. Last night Lyra did mix it up a little bit : throwing some DaDoos and DaDohs in with the DaDees and DaDas. But, with the exeption of rare and gloriously imaginative moments on my part, Lyra has hardly ever uttered Mama.

This is not to say that I am worried about her language development. Of course, I was, say, yesterday, but not anymore. Lyra’s vocabulary has exploded into the universe in a vocally mass: today it was lion, knee, eye. This week it has been toes, head, ball, book, poopy, smell, down, done… does it make me a bad parent if I can’t remember them all? Every time she practices a new word I make a mental note, to jot down later. Right. I’ve been telling people that her vocabulary holds over thirty entries for almost two months now – what are we at now, five hundred words? I honestly don’t know.

It doesn’t help, of course, that I am generally the only person who can understand her. Unless she’s saying “hi,” or “bye,” other people just don’t get it. They all lack imagination. Lyra sidles up to them with her hands twisted up behind her back, kind of flirty, kind of like she’s secretly practicing the hand motions for the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. She grins. And then she starts talking. Azzzzha-du ju-uu-uu-OOS? Mo?Mmmo? Mmmmmmmmmmo? She likes to hold out the mmm in “more” to the fullest possible extent. It adds emphasis, I think. “She just wants more juice,” I explain. This, despite the fact that she hasn’t yet had any juice. And that the juice is really beer. Honestly, I’m never really shocked by their skeptical raised eyebrows. If I didn’t live with Lyra day in and day out, I probably wouldn’t believe it, either.

A new day, new words. Today, they’re bubble, teeth, watch (as in watch me while I endlessly hide myself behind the closet door, only to magically reappear again), and the inevitable bye-bye. I’m not sure why today, of all days, bye-bye has become important, but it certainly has. Like a light-switch suddenly flipped in the on position, her eyes grew wide with comprehension. We were headed to the library. “Bye-bye,” we told the dog. “Bye-bye,” we told the door, the table, and the chairs. “Bye-bye!” Hands waving all around.

At this moment, it occurs to me how much learning we must do just to become a part of this word. Until now, Lyra has always belonged to a separate universe – a new visitor from a foreign planet. Her giant blue eyes seem more Elvin than human, and when they cast their gaze on me, I feel petty and malign. Like I have somehow betrayed my own true purpose, and she is the only one who knows, who remembers, where our true natures lie. Why is it only she who makes me feel so humble? Only her heart that makes mine grow so wide? I don’t know – don’t know how a body who once shared my own can still have such a lasting connection. But I love her, I do, I love her with more than all the particles in my body combined. She is the essence of me, or maybe I am the essence of her. I don’t know, and I don’t care. It hurts too much to ever know for sure.

Living the Life with Lyra - Day 515

Getting Older

Words