Muchness and Light

The print is smaller than the ants in the grass, I'll have to put it away now.

For the last eleven years or so, any time I would fill out a form that required my occupation, I would write in "Mom".  I didn't use "Homemaker" or "Stay-at-Home" anything for my profession.  Most of my work did involve my home, certainly, but that wasn't the primary focus of my daily functions; it was my children. 

Sometime around the beginning of 2011, I started to answer "Writer" if I were feeling particularly brave.  Muchness and Light was a few months into its existence, and I was working on the original version of the first Junkture story.  (That's all been altered now, and the characters were repurposed for Persona Non Grata.) 

I was sitting by the neighborhood pool last week while the boys were at swim practice.  I was reading my editor's notes and marking up her copy even further, planning the revisions I started that night.  Another mom walked by and asked what I was studying.

"I'm reading... for edits," I said tentatively.

"You're an editor?" she asked.

"No," I replied, "I'm a writer."

She was surprised, though there are a lot of women who run in my Mom circles who have no idea about what I do.  I don't know them very well outside of the confines of PTA or school functions, but I know them well enough to feel confident that Muchness and Light isn't their cup of tea.  I sense they would likely brand me a heretic and suggest I wear some scarlet letter.  (I would suggest F, to be funny, but that would just knot their knickers even twistier.)

Even when I wasn't sharing what I was doing, I was almost always writing.  There are lots of short essays and stories on my computer that no one but me has ever seen.  Occasionally when I need an idea or to remember something that was once much clearer, I'll go back to those pieces and see what goodness there is to be culled from the crap.  Every so often, I'm surprised when I read something really old and try to find a way to work it into another piece. 

I started to think yesterday about what makes me a writer.  It's not the success.  I make virtually no money now with my writing, and I have a small but growing fan base from all over the world.  No one was more surprised than I was that anyone else wanted to read what I had to say. 

There is something visceral in me that needs to write.  It's as natural to me as breathing.  I do it almost every day and often for hours.  Tiff and Mo and Mandypants know I will call them when I need to work through something—which seems to be all the time—but I also turn to my computer screen when there's something bothering me.  I used to write terrible poetry all by hand, and the process of physically creating the words in my uneven script was soothing to me.  I loved the sound of pen or pencil scraping across clean, white paper.  Now it's the soft clicking of the keyboard that soothes me.  I love the uneven syncopation of the process of thought taking on a more tangible form, the start and stop of the energy of creating words that have never before been combined in such a way.   

I've been stuck for hours in the middle of a new scene for Persona Non Grata, unable to find the way forward for those characters in their moment.  I decided to put it away for now and write something else, namely this post.  Already I can feel the shift in vivacity.  Taking the time to think about something else in a completely different voice will let the other voices rest for a while until they're ready to murmur their refreshed truths to me once more. 

I'm braver now to tell other people that I'm a writer.  Even when they ask if I've ever published anything, I can only answer with my blog.  Sometimes they'll go read it; sometimes not.  But it doesn't change what I do and why.

So what are you?  What makes you what you are?  Is it what everyone else thinks you are?  Is it what you think you are?

Teach your children well.

The day you become a parent, there's a dramatic shift in your priorities.  There's suddenly this little thing that you're responsible for.  Whether you've given birth or adopted an infant, your main goal in life is to keep the freakin' baby alive.  It's almost like a time management video game: feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, write down how many times it's pooped and peed, bathe the baby, clothe the baby, get the baby to sleep.  Somewhere in there, you have to try to get some rest and food for yourself, and maybe even a shower.  If you've launched the baby from your loins, it's complicated by trying to heal the damage your beloved little monster just did to your body. 

It's only a little similar, I suppose, for people who've adopted an older child.  There are different complications, and I don't want to minimize the new difficulties of that journey.  It's just something of which I know very little, so I'm limiting my focus (as usual) to what I mostly know.

For weeks and months and even years, my parental focus was on keeping the babies alive.  As they got older, the fear of their starving to death was replaced by all kinds of other fears: strangers, car accidents, asteroids exploding into my house.  I quickly learned that maternal instinct is just a fancy term for paranoia.  A mild SSRI helped to mitigate the anxieties of parenting when my elder son was a baby, and it was a crutch I leaned heavily upon for nearly ten years. 

This is also not a post about anti-depressants or prescription drug use.  That was a path I needed to take for my sake and my child's, and I don't regret it at all.  I eventually came to the end of that path and needed to make a turn away from that daily dose.  If you're someone whose living is made better through chemistry, more power to you—do whatcha gotta do to get through. 

But eventually the process of raising the children shifted, very gradually, away from providing for their every need.  The boys are old enough now that they can get their own drinks and snacks.  They can be helpful citizens of the household.  They can take care of themselves for short periods of time.  Neither they nor I require the constant watchful eye of Mom. 

My goal now is to raise them to be happy, self-sufficient young men.  That was always the ultimate goal of being a parent, but it becomes more and more evident with each advancing day.  They are just a few, short years from jumping out of this nest, and I have to make sure they're capable of maintaining themselves in their world. 

Right now, I'm teaching them how to clean and cook and do laundry. 

Like most kids, they hate chores, in general.  Each of them has things they like to do in specific.  My younger son loves to vacuum.  Santa brought a real vacuum a couple of years ago instead of a toy one.  The same son saved up some money and bought himself a rechargeable, battery-operated leaf blower.  I try to persuade him to use his tools for good and not evil, but he still sometimes likes to taunt the cat with the DustBuster. 

As they groan and argue about loading the dishwasher and putting away their laundry, I remind them that Mom won't always be there to do these things for them. 

"I'll just buy new clothes when I need them," they argue.

"That will be expensive," I reply. 

"But what's the cost difference in a washer and dryer and water and electricity, versus new underwear?"

They also asked if it was feasible to only ever eat off of paper plates.  We talked through the ecological pros and cons of reusable dinnerware. 

When I've had enough of their moaning and eyerolling, I have to patiently remind myself that I have a responsibility to them (and the world at large) to make sure they can take care of themselves.  I know too many young men who went off to college or their first apartments with absolutely no idea how to load a dishwasher or do their own laundry.  One guy I used to know was convinced until he was twelve that there was a laundry fairy who just magically washed and dried and folded his clothes, placing them neatly on his bed in pre-sorted piles. 

I don't want their days to be nothing but mandated housework, but these are skills they have to learn sometime.  And it's up to me to teach them.  Sometimes it's fun—teaching them to cook, for instance—and sometimes it totally sucks—teaching them to load the dishwasher in a neatly-efficient manner. 

I try to temper their complaining and resistance with normal kid fun.  They are still children, after all.  But they'll only be these sweet, funny, little boys for a relatively short period of their lives.  So it's okay if they play video games or watch cartoons between loads of laundry.  It's fun to bake cupcakes or play board games to the rhythmic turning of the dryer drum. 

They may never thank me for taking the time to teach them these basic skills, but I know they'll eventually appreciate knowing how to do these things for themselves.  And I'm betting their life partners will be appreciative of it, too.

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Mo and I talked the other day about how there's a difference in confidence and self-worth.  Just because you can get up in front of a crowd and be naked, she pointed out, that doesn't mean you feel like you deserve that attention. 

I was almost always an outwardly confident girl.  I could be flirty and bawdy and loud in the midst of almost anything, which can be a kind of naked in its own right.  It's more like wearing the emperor's new clothes, though.  It's a matter of showing off what you think are your best attributes while desperately trying to hide your most glaring flaws.  You think you're covered, but anyone looking a little too closely will see that you're more exposed than ever.

In some ways, there's strength to be found in that.  There's something edifying about curtly acknowledging your shortcomings and telling them to fuck off, that you're going to be who you want to be, no matter what.  But when the pretty colored lights stop flashing, detracting from the real you, it's obvious there's still just a performer trying to make everyone believe in a certain persona.

That has often left me feeling worth not much of nothin'. 

There's a personal dishonesty that comes with crafting your personage, in molding yourself into that image you want to project to the world.  Certainly, there are times when that's a beneficial skill; not all of life requires unmitigated honesty and truth. 

But once the make-up and the glitter come off, you're still left with the cracks and crags.  The insecurities are still there, now just not so well-concealed.  And when you stand in front of the glaring mirror and have to look at the fractured facade of yourself, the reflection can be glooming .  It can seem like there are so many faults and weaknesses that you'd be better off to give up, to quit even trying to spackle those gaps and to just walk away. 

This is where the component of self-worth comes into play. 

I've written about this before, about what gives a person value—what gives me value, in particular.  I'm not so special that I think my value is inherently more than anyone else's, but I can only readily empathize with my own worth.  I know that each person has inherent value, just because they are a unique soul, but I can only feel what it's like to experience the impact that soul's value has on the soul itself by being me.  I know what my husband and children and friends are worth to me; I will never know what they feel worth to themselves. 

It took me a very long time to get in touch with that sense of inherent worth in myself.  It didn't matter if people told me they loved me.  It didn't matter if people told me I was great and amazing and wonderful, even if they went on to expound on all the hows and whys in which I made their lives better.  And I could appreciate their affection and support, even when I couldn't share their views on Stephanie.

I could never see any of that in myself, feel any of it for myself, and that made me feel pretty damn worthless. 

But something shifted.  I don't know all of the impetuses for the change, but there was a confluence of shit that forced me to alter my own angle of reflection, to look at myself from a minutely different stance, and to reexamine my face in the mirror. 

What I finally saw looking back at me was Stephanie. 

It wasn't just the Amazon or the blonde or the mom.  It wasn't just the green eyes or the big, dimpled smile or the spattering of freckles.  And it wasn't just the history or love or heartache or laughter.  It was all of those things and so much more.

The ghosts of angry, broken little girls were still there, trying to claw their ways out through any crack in the facade.  But there was also a light, golden and soothing and peaking from deep within.  The little girl Stephanies all stopped, startled for just a moment, to look back toward the glow.  As they were cast into shadowy silhouette, their furious faces calmed for an instant, I could see them as broken but beautiful.  They'd never deserved the shit that had been done to them, and they didn't deserve to still be battling for recognition and attention. 

I called out to them—all at once and one by one—until I had each of their attentions. 

"I'm here, and I hear you, little girls," I told them.  "I'm sorry I didn't take care of you before, but I couldn't.  I didn't know how, and you didn't know how to explain to me to do it.  We were all just little girls.  But me, I am the grown-up now, and I got this covered."

I took each of them by their sweaty, grubby little hands.  I used their tears to wash their pretty faces.  I brushed their hair and kissed them each on the sniffling nose. 

"Go play," I told them finally.  "I'm here to take care of everything.  Go be sweet and laugh and know that I can handle whatever comes up for us.  You deserve that, and I deserve that.  We're worth it."

That is how I found my self-worth.  It wasn't from listening to what other people told me about myself.  It wasn't through retribution or anything external at all.  It was from shifting my position so I could see the glimmers of light that were always within me, always shining and glowing no matter what or who else tried to dim that glow.

The cracks are still there.  Some will scab and scar.  Some will always be open to the audience.  But those are the ones that let the light shine, that let me step out of the external spotlight and beam from within, brilliant and blinding if you're close enough to see.