As I mentioned earlier, I had a sit-down talk with myself about the future of this blog, and whether or not to renew my domain name. It ended up begin decided for me by the autorenew feature with the hosting company.

I have not been writing. (Yes. I am a black-belt master of the subtle art of stating the obvious.) I have been horribly overworked, on the road far, far too much, and a little at odds about where to take this little site.

In short, I have been a bit too busy living my life to have any kind of coherent commentary on it. Which has its own sadness. I think that I have been so overwhelmed that I have drifted through the last year or two on autopilot, without any time for appreciating the experience.  There are some writers that use the virtual world of their own creation as a substitute for genuine living.   But I think, like most, I use writing as an outlet for prolonging a moment in time and exploring, not so much the literal experience, but the truth hidden underneath it.   I think that without that outlet I have cut myself adrift, and I would like to return to it.

But my current lifestyle means I can no longer leave myself the luxury of unstructured writing if I am going to keep doing it.  I think I need to start giving myself underpinnings if I am going to keep disciplined enough to write every day.  I am just starting to form ideas about what that framework is going to be.

I also need to stop thinking about the readers.   Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate every one of you out there who bother to come by and spend any amount of your precious time reading what small coherences I manage to put out.  But too many times, I spent time crafting things that other people want to read – and not necessarily what I want to write.  It had started to suck the fun right out of it.  I find that I write best if I just simply sit, without a target audience in mind, and write.    Not that there isn’t refinement and rearrangement, but the initial structure of each thing I write is a creature unto itself.  It builds itself and pulls its first breath as I pour out words upon a page, and then the sculpting of the fine features comes later (or not at all, as I am inclined – sometimes I just abandon the poor hapless things).  I need to find my voice again, and not take on the one that I think everyone else expects to see.

To bring this long, rambling, monologue to a point, I am back.   I hope.  I really just need to be.

Harry: I want a Lego Star Wars Birthday Party.

Mommy: You do? Well I will have to look into that.

Harry: Just log on to www dot lego star wars dot com forward slash birthday party.

Mommy: Um.  Did you see that on TV?

Harry: No. That’s just the way it works.

… the more they stay the same.

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

~ Robert Kennedy, 1968

I was 4 years old.  The age my son is now.

I reached a crux with this blog where I had to decide whether or not to renew my domain name and hosting package.  Ultimately the damned aut0-renew made the decision for me (my budget, it hurts!), but my commitment to writing, unfortunately, has not been on autorenew. I have read in several place that blogs are going the way of the dinosaur, that Twitter and Facebook have taken over as the new norm, and that nobody really wants to take the time to read a blog anymore. That makes me sad and somewhat alarmed.  We have become such a soundbite nation that I fear we have been overtaken with a collective attack of attention deficit.  I don’t think it serves us very well.  Looking at snapshots leads to snap decisions, which are rarely very good ones.  I don’t think that mindfulness should ever go out of fashion. I think that slowing down to collect my thoughts was a useful exercise for me, and I don’t think my one-year attack of ennui has done me any favors, either.

But I have lost my muse to a certain extent.  Depression is only partly to blame for that, but I think the other part is I was feeling increasingly slotted into the Mommyblogger pigeonhole.  In and of itself, this does not bother me, this categorization.  I did 25 reproductive years as not-a-mommy, so I find this curious, this sudden drop into the bottomless pit of mommy-identity.   The most eloquent writers I know writing in the medium (and I refuse to use blogosphere, it annoys me), are moms, writing about their kids and about being moms.  No, it bothers me only because I find my concerns and thoughts on motherhood and my son increasingly disconnected from those of my peers.

I do not worry about my son’s mental health, or developmental states.  When he has red days, I don’t really see it as anything more than a phase.  He’s going to the public school he’s districted to go into, and I don’t really worry if it will ultimately get him into Harvard.  Mostly, really, I simply celebrate him BEING.  I celebrate the entire little person, with his individual quirks, that are just a part of  his about-to-turn-five personality and are no sign of anything bigger.  I am simply grateful that I was able to make his acquaintance.

This is not to say I do not have fears for his future and well being.  I do.  There are times when I lay awake at night, and I wonder what the hell kind of world I am leaving him.  I worry about methane levels above the Artic Circle.  I worry about dead zones off the Gulf and Pacific Coast.  I worry about islands disappearing into the sea, and animals that will cease to exist.  I worry about our utter and complete dependence on fossil fuel.

In short, I worry about the things I can do so very little about.  But the things within my control?  Well.   I just trust myself to make the best decisions I can with the information I have.    It’s gotten me this far.

This realization, that my worries and my attitudes about parenting are so very diametrically opposed to those of my peers has stricken me rather speechless.  I just don’t know that I have anything people ultimately want to read,  or that speaks to them in any way at all.   I have no greater wisdom, no advice, and surprisingly little angst about parenthood.   We are all just making shit up as we go along in a giant experiment where there are no do-overs, and yet, we produce surprisingly few serial killers.

I am beginning to suspect that my standards may be a bit low.  At the end of the day, if we are all still alive and can laugh about it, my job is done.

I can live with that.

The Dark Side might have Cookies.

But the Light Side has…

…Elevators.

Just ask Harry. The current foremost expert on all things Star Wars.

I have NO IDEA where he gets this.

Behold, my son in his Pirate Sweater!

Get a good eyeful, because it’s likely the first and last time he will ever wear it.   I finished it in time for the weather to warm up, and even though it’s only cotton, I am thinking that it won’t manage to stay on him for any temperature over 75F.  And he will certainly have it outgrown by Fall.

Knitting for kids is an exercise in perfect timing.  The entire time you are working, they are growing, and you just have to project for that perfect alignment of size, weather and dumb luck to get any wear out of it.  Likely I will have this little photo memory, and Harry’s cousin, Solomon, with have the sweater by fall.

They grow up, and this is just another one of those wistful reminders.

Ah.  Well.  The moment was worth it.

I wish I could, but no, I am feeding just about a hundred. My time is taken up with cooking a 5-course dinner for 100 of my closest friends this weekend. I know that catering seems too close to work for a real hobby, but to say I enjoy cooking may be an understatement along the lines of “the Pope is Catholic” or “Robbin loves to knit.” And with a certain level of vanity – I am actually not bad at it. I am not about to open a cafe anytime soon (did I mention I don’t actually like to work on weekends or evenings?), but by and large the number of culinary disasters has been minor.

Anyway, here is the menu:

First Remove – the Warm Up:

Cheese and Sausage Stuffed Bread
Butter

Second Remove – the First Main Course:

Greek Rosemary Grilled Chicken
Spiced Couscous with Pine Nuts and Raisins
Stuffed Grape Leaves

Third Remove – Intermezzo:

Green Salad with Red Onions and Vinagrette
Feta Cheese and Olives
Crisps

Fourth Remove – Second Main Course:

Peppercorn Roast Pork Loin
Honeyed Spice Baby Carrots

Fifth Remove – the Cooldown:

Lime Ices garnished with Mint

And all this – for under $5 a person.

Bon Apetit!

I do try to keep religious holidays religious.  I am not fundamentally threatened by cultural traditions such as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but we do try to keep them tied into the theological meaning of the holiday despite all attempts of the retail-fueled popular media to the contrary.  We have Christmas down.  I am happy to report that the Baby Jesus was mentioned almost as much as Saint Nick, and that’s about all I can expect from a four-year-old living in arguably the most commercial society in the known universe.

Easter is a bit more of a challenge.  Easter is, well, kind of bloody, really.

The aforementioned attack of fear experienced by my son in response to the aliens-come-bodysnatcher cartoon has seriously hampered my attempts to explain the pivotal symbolic event of our religion.  There is absolutely no possible way to explain Easter to a four-year-old without Christ coming off as a zombie.  None.  He let me get about five minutes into the explanation of the Crucifixion and the miracle at the Tomb, when he blurted out “Mommy, can we talk about something else?” in obvious discomfort.

Of course, I am not sure that the “Be Amazed” video montage in our Easter Sunday praise service helped our cause any.  While not explicitly graphic, the actor representing Jesus did an amazingly good job of portraying the Passion of Christ in every painful facial expression he could muster.  In a world of chocolate eggs, painful death and empty tombs are a hard sell.

We live in a sanitized world and to a great extent, we have sanitized our religion as well.  Christmas is big.  Of course – it’s got babies and presents.  Who can resist babies and presents?  But Easter is the single, defining moment in the Christian faith and while it does celebrate re-birth, the emphasis is on RE-birth.  Which brings us back to the suffering horrible death part.

I have mixed feelings about that reality.  On one hand, every fiber in my being fights to preserve my son’s innocence.   In that, I am a product of my time.  99% of the parents in all of human history did not have that luxury, and somehow we managed to survive long enough to overpopulate ourselves.   We glorify violence at the same time that we almost trip over ourselves to avoid confronting the cycle of life.  Growing up as the daughter of a farmer, I had no illusions about where my food came from, but I am not eager to introduce my son to the fact that his pork chop came from Babe the pig.  It’s hard enough to get him to eat as it is.  He’s about one step away from becoming a vegetarian, and because he doesn’t actually like vegetables, I am afraid that will be the death of him.  I don’t think that many macaroni-and-cheese-atarians make it to the age of reproduction.

I don’t think we glorify either violence or sexuality any more than our distant and not-so-distant predecessors.  In Victorian England, nude photos of children were coveted and displayed in places of pride because they were seen as capturing a window of innocence.  Today we would be appalled, and we strategically cover the important bits when we take the obligatory first-bath photos of infants.  Violence?  14th century Europe had it all over us when it comes to the glorification of violence.    And yet, we are not comfortable confronting the fact that Christianity fundamentally began with bloody martyrdom – at least not in the detail.   Take one look at the media treatment of commercial animal farming, and it becomes painfully obvious that we are not a society that handles the concept of sacrifice well.

I am not sure we serve ourselves well by it.  When we distance ourselves from the particulars of what really constitutes “sacrifice”, we inure ourselves to the bloody reality of it.  Death is neither pretty nor glorious.  It is painful and ugly, no matter how high the purpose it serves.   By separating ourselves from it, I wonder if we are also separating ourselves from the value of it.  We make it easier to take it for granted – to take life itself for granted.  Whether it is the cow on our plate, or the soldier in the field, have we made it easier to waste the gift that is given by the taking of life?  Whether it is the gift of security or nourishment, or redemption, are we more likely to squander it?

I don’t have an answer.

I think, however, I will wait a little longer before I explain the pork chop.

One of the earliest people that encouraged my blog was a fellow scientist mom Whymommy of Toddler Planet.   We had chosen different paths in our efforts to balance motherhood and career and it was refereshing to compare notes.  She is a scientist with NASA, and the mother of two young boys whose ages bracket my son’s.

About a year after we made acquaintance, her life, and the content of her blog, drastically changed.  She was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer with a very high recurrence rate.   Her blog became of chronicle of her fight against the disease and her struggle to both promote public awareness and to raise her children with dignity in the face of a grim diagnosis.

I have watched her struggle, seen how surviving the disease has threatened to overcome her life, and how she has worked to forge meaning from it.  Somehow, in the back of my mind, I thought that odds were made for other people, that nobody whose life touched mine would be on the downside of those odds, but recently her cancer has recurred and she is trying to iron her resolve against another possible surgery, another round of chemo, more radiation being poured into her already tired body.  I fear for her.  I ask God daily to grant her that much more time with her boys.

Her fight has tapped deep into the wellspring of my worst fears.

Mid-life is not for sissies.  When you reach that point where the balance between the years behind you and the years before you start to tip into the negative, it’s natural to start more seriously contemplating your finite-ness.  Mortality is serious business.  I know from my conversations with Will, who watched both of his parents decline and pass in the last year, that my near-obsession is not a lonely one.  But when you throw a small child into the mix, the ruminations take on a sense of urgency and stridency that can take your breath away.

My worst fear, the one that shakes my soul, if I am honest, is not death.

It is being taken away from my son.

The eventuality that I will not survive to see my son into the fullness of his manhood is the thought that I cannot follow.  When I do, the fear grips my heart in an icy steel grip that stops my breath until by force of will I banish it from my mind.  I have literally lain gasping in bed at night when the thought of leaving my son motherless has held my breath from me and the tears burned hot in my eyes.

But the flip side of that coin is even more unthinkable.  That my son should precede me in death is beyond imagining.  And there lies one of the fundamental conflicts of parenthood – the conflict between the rock hard belief that nobody, NOBODY can successfully raise your flesh and blood as well as you can, the possessiveness, the aching need to see them achieve their full potential,  and…

…the absolute conviction that you would, despite all of that and without a moment’s hesitation, take the bullet of certain death to save them.

Parenthood is this constant battle of pushing and pulling.   The selfish need to stay alive to see how the story of your child’s life plays out, and the necessity to sacrifice all of it to allow it to happen.  Even in the absence of the heroic bullet scenario, you are in a constant state of letting go from the moment they draw their first breath.  Your entire job is to become unnecessary in bits and pieces,  from weaning, to the first steps, to the first day at school, to the first date.

In an ideal world, they will leave you behind.  In an ideal world, you will be there to celebrate it.

Lord, please let me live to see the day of my own obsolescence.

The detritus of a full week in the sun with no electricity and nominal running water is now filling my kitchen. My lips are peeling, my nails are non-existent and I only felt something approaching truly human after a long, hot soak in a very large mound of bubbles scented with something bearing an exotic floral name.

It was totally worth it.

Totally.