Ava and Brig. Lookin' good!
At Grandma's house.
That smile says it all.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Another resolution: More pictures
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Bored Housewife
I don't care who you are, when you stay home all day wiping noses and butts there are days...weeks...months where you feel like you are living on the edge between boredom and insanity. I know, Michelle Duggar with her Relief Society sweet voice seems as if she's the exception to the rule but I bet some days she's dying to get behind the wheel in that huge bus of theirs and try jumping the grand canyon like a crazy dress-clad Evel Knievel. Or maybe not. She seems pretty sane...oh, except for giving birth to 19 kids!
Some women train for a marathon to have their minds all to themselves for a couple of hours. Some women escape into a career outside of the home. Some women lock the bathroom door and lay down on a beach towel while the shower runs and don sunglasses and pretend they are on a beach somewhere. I highly suggest the third one. Just pretend the kids yelling on the other side of the door are catcalls from passersby.
The point is I am not bored because I have nothing to do. Far from it. There's always another dish to be washed or clothes to be folded or a boo-boo to be kissed. The truth is that the nature of housework is mundane and mind numbing. And all the work we do is undone within minutes which is extraordinarily frustrating to me. I find myself wildly fluctuating between being a nazi with my daughter about keeping things clean to letting things fall apart with little resistance because my efforts will always be futile anyway.
I've found my own ways to cope. I salsa in the kitchen to Conga by Gloria Estefan, shake my booty to
Getting Jiggy With It by Will Smith or tippy toe around to Vivaldi wishing I had a tutu. Last week I found a fake lion tatoo. I've never desired a real tatoo and have always thought those fake tatoos were for the 10 and under set. Not so. I'm hear to tell you that the look on your husband's face when he glimpses a lion tatoo peeking out of the neck of your blouse is priceless. But when your daughter asks what it is you quickly explain that it is a new mole. She'll totally buy it. Not.
This year I made a resolution to do something every day that is unexpected and brings me joy. Sometimes I feel as if the core of myself gets buried beneath the daily grind. The person I was before I was someone's wife and mother seems far away. I'm trying to get back in touch with that person. I realize I will never be the care free girl I was before I grew up, and most days I don't wish to be, but I do miss certain aspects of that girl. She laughed a lot. And peed her pants a lot. Well I guess some things never change.
Some women train for a marathon to have their minds all to themselves for a couple of hours. Some women escape into a career outside of the home. Some women lock the bathroom door and lay down on a beach towel while the shower runs and don sunglasses and pretend they are on a beach somewhere. I highly suggest the third one. Just pretend the kids yelling on the other side of the door are catcalls from passersby.
The point is I am not bored because I have nothing to do. Far from it. There's always another dish to be washed or clothes to be folded or a boo-boo to be kissed. The truth is that the nature of housework is mundane and mind numbing. And all the work we do is undone within minutes which is extraordinarily frustrating to me. I find myself wildly fluctuating between being a nazi with my daughter about keeping things clean to letting things fall apart with little resistance because my efforts will always be futile anyway.
I've found my own ways to cope. I salsa in the kitchen to Conga by Gloria Estefan, shake my booty to
Getting Jiggy With It by Will Smith or tippy toe around to Vivaldi wishing I had a tutu. Last week I found a fake lion tatoo. I've never desired a real tatoo and have always thought those fake tatoos were for the 10 and under set. Not so. I'm hear to tell you that the look on your husband's face when he glimpses a lion tatoo peeking out of the neck of your blouse is priceless. But when your daughter asks what it is you quickly explain that it is a new mole. She'll totally buy it. Not.
This year I made a resolution to do something every day that is unexpected and brings me joy. Sometimes I feel as if the core of myself gets buried beneath the daily grind. The person I was before I was someone's wife and mother seems far away. I'm trying to get back in touch with that person. I realize I will never be the care free girl I was before I grew up, and most days I don't wish to be, but I do miss certain aspects of that girl. She laughed a lot. And peed her pants a lot. Well I guess some things never change.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Gullible's Travels
I admit that I've always been a bit gullible. Especially growing up. Unfortunately I'm a little more cynical than I used to be. But growing up you could tell me something and I would look at you wide-eyed and innocent and take your word for it. I once believed my friend (who shall remain nameless) when she told me she was pregnant with her cousin's baby. We were all of ten I think. I had no idea how one got pregnant but even I knew that was scandalous news. When I told my friend I had noticed she had put on weight she said, "I'm not pregnant! I was just telling you that." Boy did I have egg on my face. The question is why did she tell me such a ridiculous story? The answer: because I'd believe it. She was not the first or the last person to tell me something that I quickly took as the gospel truth. In one case I believed a story for years before the guilty party admitted she had made it up.
Exhibit A: This picture of a lovely blond girl rocking her sky high eighties hair resembles in many aspects my older sister circa 1991. Yes, she's blond and beautiful and I'm not at all bitter that the Cooper-Clark genes conspired to give her the best mix. Not one little bit. Anyway, back in the day I used to long to get my hair to do that perfectly hair sprayed bang wave. My sister was a pro. I on the other hand being five years younger was just coming out of the phase where my mother did my hair. From grades one through five you could find me on the playground sporting Laura Ingalls' classic pioneer braids. I can't blame my mother too much. What was she to do with super thick frizzy hair?
The alternative as I soon discovered when I picked up a brush for myself was a white girl afro. I found my sixth grade school pics the other day and when my husband saw it he exclaimed, "Woh!" I swear he suppressed a shudder. Let me just say this, a green body suit mixed with a horrible vest and hair pulled up to the middle and slicked down with hair spray while the rest of my hair floated frizzily around my shoulders like a lion's mane does not exactly attract Dylan Daines' big brown eyes. Ah Dylan, how I pined for your colorful Girbaud clad self to look my way. I guess if my awkward hair and shy personality didn't turn him off, me accidentally farting during reading time probably did. But that's another story for another day.
I will come back to my fibbing older sister in a second. Let me detour from my regrets over my sixth grade sense of style to avert your attention to the five guys pictured above. NKOTB. If you don't know what that means then you weren't a teenage girl in the early nineties. These guys were the original boy band. Trail blazers years ahead of their time. They are New Kids On The Block. My personal favorite: Jordan pictured center in the red and black jacket. What a hottie. Look at that hair. Oh my.
Although my sister would probably deny it, she liked these guys first. I didn't even know of their existence before she liked them. Something went terribly awry though. My sister got into a phase where she was too cool to like these dorks. Too mature. Also, she discovered grunge. These guys? They are the polar opposites of Kurt Cobain. Obviously as I dreamed of meeting Jordan and making him fall in love with my sixth grade self my sister mocked me. Still I stayed devoted and kept the faith.
My sister went on vacation with her best friend's family to southern California around this time. When she got back I listened with rapt attention as she divulged the following story. Her best friend and her had been walking along Venice Beach. A couple of boys approached them. One of them looked familiar. Famously familiar. His name? Joey McIntyre. The youngest, dare I say baby faced member of NKOTB. He's the one on the far right that looks like he's wearing a tad too much blush. So Joey and his friend asked my sister and her friend out, but guess what? They said no. Turned them down flat. Because as my sister implied, they were too cool for those dorks. I couldn't believe it. My beautiful sister had been asked out by a member of New Kids. That's what the hard core fans call them, just New Kids. Well of course she had. I didn't doubt for one second she was telling the truth. After all I had grown up idolizing her. If she would have told me that Tom Cruise asked her out I would have found that story credible too.
Time passed. Lots of time and years later I brought up her brush with nineties fame. The result? She laughed. Laughed as if she couldn't believe I had believed for all those years her conjured story of teen romance and rejection on Venice Beach. And that's the longest I've believed a made up story. I think.
The alternative as I soon discovered when I picked up a brush for myself was a white girl afro. I found my sixth grade school pics the other day and when my husband saw it he exclaimed, "Woh!" I swear he suppressed a shudder. Let me just say this, a green body suit mixed with a horrible vest and hair pulled up to the middle and slicked down with hair spray while the rest of my hair floated frizzily around my shoulders like a lion's mane does not exactly attract Dylan Daines' big brown eyes. Ah Dylan, how I pined for your colorful Girbaud clad self to look my way. I guess if my awkward hair and shy personality didn't turn him off, me accidentally farting during reading time probably did. But that's another story for another day.
I will come back to my fibbing older sister in a second. Let me detour from my regrets over my sixth grade sense of style to avert your attention to the five guys pictured above. NKOTB. If you don't know what that means then you weren't a teenage girl in the early nineties. These guys were the original boy band. Trail blazers years ahead of their time. They are New Kids On The Block. My personal favorite: Jordan pictured center in the red and black jacket. What a hottie. Look at that hair. Oh my.
Although my sister would probably deny it, she liked these guys first. I didn't even know of their existence before she liked them. Something went terribly awry though. My sister got into a phase where she was too cool to like these dorks. Too mature. Also, she discovered grunge. These guys? They are the polar opposites of Kurt Cobain. Obviously as I dreamed of meeting Jordan and making him fall in love with my sixth grade self my sister mocked me. Still I stayed devoted and kept the faith.
My sister went on vacation with her best friend's family to southern California around this time. When she got back I listened with rapt attention as she divulged the following story. Her best friend and her had been walking along Venice Beach. A couple of boys approached them. One of them looked familiar. Famously familiar. His name? Joey McIntyre. The youngest, dare I say baby faced member of NKOTB. He's the one on the far right that looks like he's wearing a tad too much blush. So Joey and his friend asked my sister and her friend out, but guess what? They said no. Turned them down flat. Because as my sister implied, they were too cool for those dorks. I couldn't believe it. My beautiful sister had been asked out by a member of New Kids. That's what the hard core fans call them, just New Kids. Well of course she had. I didn't doubt for one second she was telling the truth. After all I had grown up idolizing her. If she would have told me that Tom Cruise asked her out I would have found that story credible too.
Time passed. Lots of time and years later I brought up her brush with nineties fame. The result? She laughed. Laughed as if she couldn't believe I had believed for all those years her conjured story of teen romance and rejection on Venice Beach. And that's the longest I've believed a made up story. I think.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Sisters
I've gotta say this: I admire women that have more than two children. How they do it and keep themselves semi-sane is a mystery to me. So kudos to all who fit that description. Ava the other day in the car though did say this to me, "Mom I don't want any more brothers or sisters. I don't want to be like the Brady Bunch!" I tend to agree in the middle of the night when I feel like I've been run over by a truck. But then I see Brielle's face light up with a big toothless grin when she looks at me or feel her soft chubby cheek against my chest as I hold her and like some fool in love I never want it to end.
Last night after I had fed Brielle I got up to get a drink. I came back and just looked at Brielle as she lay in the dim light of the moon shining through the window. The plump curves of her face relaxed in sleep and she looked thoroughly satisfied as her soft breath came in and out. Her position in sleep mirrored her Dad's sleeping a foot away from her in our bed. I couldn't help but feel as satisfied as Brielle looked. I know it's sappy, but sappy is my default mode so deal with it.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Coming to the Surface
I sink. The weight of the water pushes me down, down, down to the bottom of the pool. I struggle and my limbs barely respond to my brain's panicked urging. Swim. It seems so easy. But nothing happens and I lay on the bottom of the pool the world above hazy and distant. I can see my family walking around up there. "Mom?" I hear my daughter ask. I try to respond, but it seems terribly hard. Her face blurs. I'm numb. Nothing really matters down here in the depths.
This is how I described the way depression makes me feel to my therapist several months ago. It took some time for me to finally admit that I had been struggling with depression for quite a while. It's always seemed an indulgent disease to me, selfish even. But having lived through it and denying it's existence in my reality I know firsthand that you don't choose to be depressed. There were days I thought to myself, I had a happy childhood, a relatively uneventful adolescence, I have a husband and a child...why do I feel this way? The feelings of sadness and worthlessness engulfed me totally.
Two summers ago when everything started to unravel for me, where I started to acknowledge the failings in my life I was attending a baby shower with a close friend. I hadn't seen my friend, the mother-to-be very much since high school. But there was a time that I had spent many hours at her home getting to know her family. As we walked through the doors her mother, who I had always admired and liked greeted me. She faced me and said, "It's been so long, let me look at you." As an insecure 16 year old she had made me feel special and beautiful when all I saw was a girl with non-trendy curly hair and a big nose. She had once told me I reminded her of a Greek Goddess. You can imagine a compliment like that leaves quite an impression. As her piercing blue eyes probed my face I felt terrified and panicked that she would see through me. See in the depth of my eyes all the sorrow and turmoil that had been bubbling up in me for years. I turned my face from her and went to greet her daughter.
I don't know what she saw, but like my unhappiness in my marriage I told myself I was hiding my sadness well. I'm sure that wasn't true at all, just like my pretending everything was fine with my marriage didn't fool anyone close to me either. For me admitting that something was wrong with me was a shameful sign of weakness. Other people get depressed, but I'm fine. I can deal with it. It's laughable that I thought I was dealing with it. There were days at my worst where getting off the couch in the morning and taking a shower seemed like a monumental task. I don't know how to explain it to someone who has never experienced it besides everything seems inflated. Every problem, every task at hand, is huge. And the constant stream of negative thoughts poisons any confidence you have in your ability to achieve things. At least this is how depression manifested itself in my life. I guess I can't speak for everyone who has ever experienced depression.
I wrote a poem when my daughter was two entitled Of Dishes and Laundry where I express my desire to be a rain drop that can be evaporated up into the sky, and I wish that I would never feel anything ever again except to fall from the sky and be taken back up over and over again. Reading it now I feel so sad for the woman I was, for the experience I was grappling with, for how isolating it all was. I learned as a child in a family of five children that the best I could do was to pipe down and not complain. To blend into the background because I wasn't that important. My sister was important. My brother was important. But I wasn't. I didn't need to cause problems. I didn't need to be a burden to anyone. In fact my role was to lighten the mood. To smooth problems between others. I was the happy one, the one that dealt with things and no one needed to know if there were issues in my life. If someone hurt me I just pretended as if I was okay.
Reflection on that attitude has taught me that I don't need to pass that legacy on to my daughters. Speak up. If something is not right you say it. Voicing your feelings...good and bad is very validating. I never want to make my children feel as if they need to hide what is going on in their lives to make my life easier. It has not been healthy for my life to be this way. It kept me in denial for years about what was actually going on around me. It served to simply allow those who would hurt me to do so with my permission.
When I started going to counseling with my husband it surprised me that as I spoke candidly about my experience that a pattern emerged. What I had supposed to be the cause of all my unhappiness...my marriage, really wasn't. It was part of it, but in the grand scheme of things it was only as they say the tip of the iceberg. The anxiety that had pervaded my life for years it turned out is not experienced by most people as I assumed. Other people don't obsess about their daughter being kidnapped night after night, or a fire ravaging their home, or you name it...any other calamity that can happen in a person's life. Other people don't feel their chest tighten in the middle of the night as scenes of these possible scenarios play out. At least mentally healthy people.
Counseling has helped me enormously. I never envisioned myself needing therapy. Once again, I thought it was for weaker people than myself. Because I'm super strong and "normal". When I left my husband and my marriage I was running from an unhappiness I had not yet fully examined. I'm glad now that my husband was so persistent about us going to counseling. I had zero faith it would help our situation. Now months later I feel like I'm closer to knowing myself. To being honest with myself and those around me. To know that getting help for something as debilitating as depression and anxiety is not a sign of weakness.
I'm not advocating that taking a pill is a cure all for the symptoms of depression. With my doctor we decided on a course of treatment and an anti-depressant is part of that treatment. I feared being mired in those same feelings after the birth of my second child, and so far I'm happy that things are different. Of course being a woman, I feel guilt that with Brielle I am able to bond and manage my mood better with her and feel as if Ava was robbed of the full interaction of a loving healthy mother. I can't change the past. All I can do is be truthful about my experience in the hopes that honesty can help others who may be struggling know that they are not alone.
This is how I described the way depression makes me feel to my therapist several months ago. It took some time for me to finally admit that I had been struggling with depression for quite a while. It's always seemed an indulgent disease to me, selfish even. But having lived through it and denying it's existence in my reality I know firsthand that you don't choose to be depressed. There were days I thought to myself, I had a happy childhood, a relatively uneventful adolescence, I have a husband and a child...why do I feel this way? The feelings of sadness and worthlessness engulfed me totally.
Two summers ago when everything started to unravel for me, where I started to acknowledge the failings in my life I was attending a baby shower with a close friend. I hadn't seen my friend, the mother-to-be very much since high school. But there was a time that I had spent many hours at her home getting to know her family. As we walked through the doors her mother, who I had always admired and liked greeted me. She faced me and said, "It's been so long, let me look at you." As an insecure 16 year old she had made me feel special and beautiful when all I saw was a girl with non-trendy curly hair and a big nose. She had once told me I reminded her of a Greek Goddess. You can imagine a compliment like that leaves quite an impression. As her piercing blue eyes probed my face I felt terrified and panicked that she would see through me. See in the depth of my eyes all the sorrow and turmoil that had been bubbling up in me for years. I turned my face from her and went to greet her daughter.
I don't know what she saw, but like my unhappiness in my marriage I told myself I was hiding my sadness well. I'm sure that wasn't true at all, just like my pretending everything was fine with my marriage didn't fool anyone close to me either. For me admitting that something was wrong with me was a shameful sign of weakness. Other people get depressed, but I'm fine. I can deal with it. It's laughable that I thought I was dealing with it. There were days at my worst where getting off the couch in the morning and taking a shower seemed like a monumental task. I don't know how to explain it to someone who has never experienced it besides everything seems inflated. Every problem, every task at hand, is huge. And the constant stream of negative thoughts poisons any confidence you have in your ability to achieve things. At least this is how depression manifested itself in my life. I guess I can't speak for everyone who has ever experienced depression.
I wrote a poem when my daughter was two entitled Of Dishes and Laundry where I express my desire to be a rain drop that can be evaporated up into the sky, and I wish that I would never feel anything ever again except to fall from the sky and be taken back up over and over again. Reading it now I feel so sad for the woman I was, for the experience I was grappling with, for how isolating it all was. I learned as a child in a family of five children that the best I could do was to pipe down and not complain. To blend into the background because I wasn't that important. My sister was important. My brother was important. But I wasn't. I didn't need to cause problems. I didn't need to be a burden to anyone. In fact my role was to lighten the mood. To smooth problems between others. I was the happy one, the one that dealt with things and no one needed to know if there were issues in my life. If someone hurt me I just pretended as if I was okay.
Reflection on that attitude has taught me that I don't need to pass that legacy on to my daughters. Speak up. If something is not right you say it. Voicing your feelings...good and bad is very validating. I never want to make my children feel as if they need to hide what is going on in their lives to make my life easier. It has not been healthy for my life to be this way. It kept me in denial for years about what was actually going on around me. It served to simply allow those who would hurt me to do so with my permission.
When I started going to counseling with my husband it surprised me that as I spoke candidly about my experience that a pattern emerged. What I had supposed to be the cause of all my unhappiness...my marriage, really wasn't. It was part of it, but in the grand scheme of things it was only as they say the tip of the iceberg. The anxiety that had pervaded my life for years it turned out is not experienced by most people as I assumed. Other people don't obsess about their daughter being kidnapped night after night, or a fire ravaging their home, or you name it...any other calamity that can happen in a person's life. Other people don't feel their chest tighten in the middle of the night as scenes of these possible scenarios play out. At least mentally healthy people.
Counseling has helped me enormously. I never envisioned myself needing therapy. Once again, I thought it was for weaker people than myself. Because I'm super strong and "normal". When I left my husband and my marriage I was running from an unhappiness I had not yet fully examined. I'm glad now that my husband was so persistent about us going to counseling. I had zero faith it would help our situation. Now months later I feel like I'm closer to knowing myself. To being honest with myself and those around me. To know that getting help for something as debilitating as depression and anxiety is not a sign of weakness.
I'm not advocating that taking a pill is a cure all for the symptoms of depression. With my doctor we decided on a course of treatment and an anti-depressant is part of that treatment. I feared being mired in those same feelings after the birth of my second child, and so far I'm happy that things are different. Of course being a woman, I feel guilt that with Brielle I am able to bond and manage my mood better with her and feel as if Ava was robbed of the full interaction of a loving healthy mother. I can't change the past. All I can do is be truthful about my experience in the hopes that honesty can help others who may be struggling know that they are not alone.
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