Welcome To This Broken World, Sweetheart (2013)
photo by Jenna Starr
Amid the commotion of our family’s ordinary daily lives, I do pay some attention to the news. The violence in Egypt this week is particularly heartbreaking to observe. The rows of bodies — mostly young men — waiting and waiting in the Cairo heat for a proper burial…that image, along with the one of an elderly woman trying to stop a bulldozer from plowing over an injured young man…those images have lingered in my mind all day today. Meanwhile, there are a thousand tasks to attend to, toys and crumbs and, who-am-I-kidding, whole meals to pick up off the floor as we scurry about just trying to keep up with laundry and dishes and stay thirty seconds ahead of our energetic, feisty toddler.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to think carefully, at length and without interruption, about the whole big decision to bring a child into this broken world, but I do still think about it now-and-then. What is this place where there are simultaneously so many countless joys and delights and equally countless ways to be hurt and to hurt each other? Someday before too too long, she will start noticing things, she will start asking questions. There is so much pain in this world, so many ways that people are brutal to each other, often right in front of our eyes.
At one of our regular museum play areas this week, I spent some time observing the way the kids a few years older than our Little Bean interacted with her. I noticed that most of them, regardless of race or age, seemed threatened by her, this baby who they assumed was going to “knock down [their] tower,” “get in [my] way,” or “play with [my(!)] toy.” One little girl, probably 4 years old or so, kept moving to sit in the little chair that our Bean was clearly interested in sitting in, and then occupying it for as long as Bean was in the vicinity. I could only surmise that something about power was going on here. Here was a baby that either reminded some of these kids of a younger sibling who’d bothered them in the past, or who was clearly a less powerful being that they could exert their power over (or both). It was disconcerting to watch. Is this how we instinctively are with each other? I’ve noticed that older kids — 9, 10, 11 years old and older — seem to “get over” this competition-with-the-baby thing and are interested in playing with her at her level, so I’m relieved to see that. But I continue to mull on what it means to be a Little Person in this world, and what we are letting our children experience when we don’t pay attention.
There was a piece back in July on The Kojo Nnamdi Show that I happened to hear most of while I was in the car running errands, and it has stayed with me; it’s worth a reading of the transcript, particularly if you have more than one young child at home. One of the insights expressed on the show by Dr. Joseph Wright was that “There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that risk for depression, suicidal ideation are linked to the unattended impact of behavioral aggression in young children.” Watching the kids at the museum this week reminded me of this radio discussion so much I wanted to share it with some of the other parents who were there…but all the parents that afternoon looked so dazed and exhausted, spacing out on their smartphones while their kids romped and sometimes screamed at each other…well, it’s hard to exactly know when to make an issue of something. I am learning to observe, to gently explain to our Little Bean what I see going on if she seems confused, and otherwise, to let her play, while she enjoys just playing. She doesn’t seem to take it at all personally yet when a kid runs in the other direction rather than playing with her, or doesn’t play particularly nicely; she still has so, so much to learn and experience about how all people, of all ages, are. She gravitates towards the ones who smile at her, usually adults who look like her Grandma R. And for right now, that’s just fine. That’s all she needs to focus on for now — who is kind to her, who will help her get what she needs and wants, who will listen to her and help her as she struggles and strives to communicate. Some people do, and some people don’t. For now, I’m standing by, watching, learning from the kids a few years older about what our Bean will someday be experiencing and expressing herself, and pondering how to guide our beloved child into this world where so much more love, healing, attention and understanding are needed.
Red Light, Green Light, Slow Year, Fast Year
At 7:44am, one year ago today, our Little Bean finally came out into the world, with what felt distinctly like a “plop!”
From that moment on, things have felt like they are both, at one-and-the-same-time, in slow motion, and speeding by.
The first six months sometimes included what felt like the longest days I have ever known. I remember watching the clock, breaking up the hours in my mind into half hour segments until my partner and co-Mama would get home, and only allowing myself to think about getting through the next half hour. The baby would fall asleep in my lap and would wake up if I moved, so I didn’t move, sometimes for 2 hours or more. I remember being hungry, famished actually, and just being still and waiting. I remember having to go to the bathroom but not strategically being able to figure out a way to do that that would be safe for the baby. Our Little Bean was colicky and probably also reacting to our cross-country move when she was six weeks old—who can blame her for being fussy-pants? And, still, there were days that felt absolutely interminable, nights when she was crying at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., or both, when I literally thought “how are we going to keep doing this?” At times I felt incredibly angry that no one had sat me down and really spelled out how incredibly hard those first six months can be, how absolutely soul-draining.
And I understand, as a wise grandmother said to me recently, that when someone shares the news that they’re expecting a child, “it’s hard to know what to say.” So we say “Congratulations,” and we send gifts and make meals, and we hope they’ll be okay. That they’ll make it through those first rough weeks and months.
And then, at some point between five and six months, things eased. Some combination of the following had occurred: we’d adjusted to our new reality, Little Bean was becoming more and more delightful, and we started having a babysitter come help for a few hours a few times a week. Now, finally a year later, there are a whole host of things I have a new appreciation for. One is just the combined set of feelings a parent can have about a child’s birthday that, before becoming a parent, I had no awareness of. I feel this sense of relief, gratitude, accomplishment and celebration, all mixed up together. We got her through the first year, the year of not yet eating “regular” food, the year of moving across country, this first year with its particular first-year-worries like SIDS and initial reactions to vaccines and solid foods and basic growth-and-development stuff and all of that.
I also feel truly amazed at what occurs in a human child in one year. In 365 days, she goes from being a “plop” to being a little person with a feisty spark and touching gentleness about whom another mom at the National Building Museum today observed: “she has such a sweet personality.” She most definitely knows who her Mamas are, she knows that as much as she’d like to, there are a great many things she should not put in her mouth so she looks at us first to check, she knows that she loves drumming and she knows how to press “play” on the CD player (over-and-over again; she’s still learning to press “play” once and then step back and enjoy the music). She knows that she loves bananas and avocados and she is eager to try whatever it is we are eating. She knows how to fall asleep on her own and most of the time she knows how to scootch on-and-off the bed safely. She knows the baby signs for “more,” “all done,” and “swimming” and she loves to wave “bye-bye” and “hello” to just about anyone and everyone especially if we don’t tell or ask her to, first. She knows when she’s at home. She knows her name.
There are so many things that have happened in this first year that I understand now why people say “it flies by.” It’s truly astonishing how much changes just from week-to-week and month-to-month. I’ve taken probably thousands of pictures and I probably haven’t taken enough, because there is so much that is uncapturable. She is growing up so quickly. In fifteen years now, she can get a learner’s permit — or, wait, fourteen years? That can’t be right.
But perhaps it is. Right. Right that our children would grow up just fast enough to take our breath away and make us want to pay close attention to them, every day. And right that those first six months don’t go on forever. As my partner and co-Mama says now: “what’s five months of hell?” I understand now why people say “it’s worth it.” I understand why people say that when you have a baby “everything changes.” Yep, and yep, and…wow.
How Many Summers Left?
I do not love hot weather. I do not love intense humidity and stepping out into the outside world and feeling myself gasp. And, for better and for worse, I live in Washington D.C., where this is how it is in July and August.
On the other hand, my grandmother turned 90 years old this year. I hear that the summer right now in the Portland (Oregon) area is beautiful, and that she and the many people that I love there are really enjoying it. Savoring it.
One of my mantras is “Life is for Living.” Living, as fully as we can, as compared to surviving, or enduring. So I try to find ways to embrace experiences that I could all too easily grit my teeth and bear. So even though a part of me would love to hide out the hot days inside in the air-conditioning, we are going camping with friends this weekend. Outside.
Earlier this week I shifted my thinking about the summer from weeks and months to seasons. When I think about the summer as a whole season, I think about the way we yearn for it to come in the long nights of winter. I think about all the particular enjoyments of summertime — lemonade and long evenings, neighbors outside, thunderstorms, fireflies, ice cream.
Perhaps because of all the intense talk of mortality, racism, violence and death earlier this week, or perhaps because of thinking about my grandmother enjoying her 91st summer, I asked myself a question I can’t know the answer to, a simple question that is also hard to ask: “how many summers do I have left?”
I find this a powerful question. It makes me pause. I have no idea. I certainly have hopes for many, many more summers, in good health and with people I love and enjoy. But I don’t know. And just asking the question challenges me to notice what is special about this day, this week, and appreciate it. Asking the question propels me to treasure life, to savor the mess of camping gear piled up in our living room right now, to acknowledge my worries about heat and our family as indicators of how much I love these people and care about them. Seasons are big enough that really, in the arc of our lives, we don’t get to really savor all that many of them. And so I ask myself again: “How many more summers will there be, for me?” I hope there are many, even hot and humid ones. We will come up with some fun and messy water games on this camping outing, I know it. We may well drive around in our air-conditioned car to get the baby to sleep in the 100 degree heat index, and if so, we will be grateful for our car, our modern convenience and our privilege to own it. And along the way we will be savoring our lives, grateful for another day, another hot and, yes, splendid season on this earth.
O Parenting: You Humble Me
photo by Jenna Starr
Our Little Bean is starting to stand, ever-so-momentarily, on her own. Meanwhile, our lives careen on with her a central part of them: family trips and visits with friends, work and projects, housekeeping and grocery shopping. Occasionally I am blessed with the help of a babysitter or nanny. And as I introduce that person to our home and our quirks, I can’t help but remember to myself my own thoughts and, yes, judgments about people I have babysat or nannied for in years past. Little things make so much more sense to me now. Realizing the judgments I had made while having not-a-clue what parenting really entailed is humbling. There’s no way to really explain it all to a new person entering into our lives. And all of this is humbling: our messy home, needing someone who is initially a complete stranger to come and help, the intimacy of showing someone all the details of how to care for our child, and remembering my own judgments, now years past.
I remember, for example, being quite struck that one mother I nannied for regularly would go to the grocery store and buy bags and bags of groceries and then bring them home and leave them, still fully packed, sitting on the kitchen floor. I mean: the refrigerator was right there. Those eggs were getting warm, sitting there. But now I’ve done the same multiple times: brought in a load of groceries from the car and left the bags sitting on the kitchen counter or floor while I run to the bathroom, deal with a crying kid, check in with my partner, or, I dunno, take a breath and look at the mail for a second. So many things that used to seem like immediate necessities have taken a backseat. Some days The Babysitter comes and I haven’t made the bed yet. Or had anything to eat. To say nothing of the state of the kitchen floor upon which the baby is probably crawling and picking up little fragments of things she’ll inevitably put into her mouth….
There’re all the subtle realities of parenting and letting-go, too. I know there are hundreds of things, little judgments, I made in my mind before becoming a parent and while observing other parents. “I will never let my kid hang out in a poopy diaper.” “I will never feed my kid processed food.” “I will never get angry and snap at my kid.” Blahblahblah I could come up with a hundred, a thousand more of these little judgmental thoughts I’m sure I had, that I still have. But as we approach the end of year one, I’ve learned a hundred times over that pretty much anything I’ve said “I will never…” about I will, at some point, do. Yet again my tendency towards black-and-white, all-or-nothing ways of looking at things rears its head and reminds me: try for the middle ground. Try for “average,” a mentor told me once, for “mediocre.” Accept my own humanity and imperfectness and get on with things like making dinner and doing the dishes.
I’ve just had the pleasure of delving into a delightful mystery by Louise Penny that was given to my partner and which I totally took over sometime during a recent long, multiple-times-interrupted-by-a-wide-awake-baby night. In this first in the series, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache teaches his trainee the four most important sentences to use in their detective work: “I’m sorry.” “I don’t know.” “I need help.” “I was wrong.” What a beautiful teaching. We could all use these sentences in our lives, and certainly as parents. Every day, as our Little Bean learns a dozen new things, I learn at least a few along with her. And often, it’s that I was wrong about this-or-that, or so arrogant some years (or months, or days) ago. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I pretty much always need help. And there’s so, so much about which I don’t know.
But I am learning, and I am grateful. Holly Near has a song about this that I love the first verse of especially: “I am open, and I am willing, for to be hopeless, would be so strange…” But maybe I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know? Maybe you knew this song already? Along with Norah Jones “Humble Me”? And so it goes. Thanks for reading.
Beautiful Wordlessness
photo by Jenna Starr
I’ll try to keep this post short. Because that’s what I’ve been appreciating lately: few words. At almost 11 months old now, our Little Bean is right on the cusp of being able to say…something. And what I’m finding is that I’m savoring every moment of this Beautiful Wordless period.
Because she can communicate just fine. She points at anything and everything these days, to see what I’ll say she’s seeing, or to indicate that she “wants that,” or is going to go crawl after something. She grunts and grimaces very clearly when she is “all done” with what she’s eating, and she can (and sometimes does) also sign “all done.” As for the other end of the digestive cycle (forgive me, child), it’s very, very clear from her red grunting face when she’s pooping. When I put music on or pull out the vacuum, she claps her hands with excitement and gladness. She waves hello and goodbye when people come and go. And this week, when she’s ready to sleep, she just crawls right into her co-sleeper and lays her head down.
I’m also appreciating the beautiful wordlessness because it’s so unique. Every other relationship and interaction in my life involves words. Establishing a new working relationship, sorting out a misunderstanding, keeping up with e-mail, or even just reviewing a complex day takes so many words, so many sentences, so much effort. There is something truly sublime about how a baby at a certain age and developmental stage can do all those things, pretty much—connect with people, transition from one event to the next, express frustration or love, unwind from a day—all without words.
For several years before I got pregnant, I was not particularly enthused about babies. I used to shrug about them, really, thinking to myself specifically about all that crying about who-knows-what. The lack of words, which I associated with an inability to communicate, actually kind of concerned and worried me. What would I ever do with a crying baby? Well. I’ve had plenty of opportunity now to learn, to try things, and to sometimes just be present with her crying self. We’ve endured together. I’ve learned that usually the crying is about one of a handful of things, or she just needs to “get her cry out,” as we say around here. Which, honestly, don’t we all sometimes? But as mature adults it can take us hours of talking things through to accomplish the same result.
There is so much we all already communicate without words; I know this, but I like to remind myself of it. Just the hint of a smile or a glance away from the person in front of us can convey so much—I know, I read all about it once. For now, I love to watch our Little Bean playing, reaching for things, moving around our apartment, figuring out how to get from one place to another, discovering the world, all without words, touching everything, looking at me to see if I’ll shake my head no and say that blur of phrase I know she recognizes: “noooo, not-in-your-mouth,” before she moves on to the next thing and the next and the next. Discovering. Beautiful wordlessness.
Being with her on thunderstorming afternoons like the one we had today reminds me to appreciate every person in my life with whom I’ve shared wordless time. A hike along a long trail with 20 feet of sweet silence between us, a bowl of ice cream with only the sound of our clinking spoons after a long day, sitting on the front porch listening to birdsong, pulling weeds and picking sugar snap peas in the garden at twilight—whenever or wherever it’s been, thank you for that sweet silent time. I’m going to be looking to create more of that this summer.
May you also have some beautifully wordless time in your days.
Doing It All…A Little Bit.
I am going to have to go back to work eventually. I mean, two women and a baby can’t make ends meet on one part-time income in Washington D.C. forever, even with a lot of family and denominational support. I’ve been aware of this since before R was born, thinking about it, trying to figure out what form, type, schedule, and mode of working would fit me well with our new Lives With Baby. Before R was born, I was a full-time parish minister for 6 years, and for many of those years my ministry was my primary focus. I had a nice life, but I did work some significant portion of every day. I often dealt with e-mail until 11pm at night. I often had evening meetings, I often worked on Saturdays, every book or article that I read or movie that I saw usually fed into the coming Sunday’s sermon. I can’t yet fully imagine going back to full-time ministry and doing it in a totally different way than I did before.
And the character challenge for me is that I have tended to be, thus far in life, a pretty black-or-white person, all-or-nothing, doing something fully or not at all. Having a baby is nothing if not an opportunity for reorganizing one’s life and one’s relationship to work. These past 10 months, I’ve had a few moments here and there to think about what I’d like to be doing, if I could be doing anything at all, and though I’m well aware that it’s not unique, what I’d like to be doing is writing more. So as we start to approach the very significant first birthday of our Little Bean, I find myself wondering if I can learn some new things at even just a quarter of the speed that she does. Can I learn to do a little bit of a variety of things instead of just one thing full-bore? Can I learn to juggle with some semblance of grace some part-time ministry, some continued forays into personal and creative writing, some cooking of new and healthy recipes for myself and my family, some yoga and other exercise, some housecleaning, some keeping up with friends and family, some household & family plans and projects?
It doesn’t look like so much when I write it up as a list like that. It’s at 11pm at night, still, when I long to “call it a day” and there are still a dozen things on the day’s “must-do” list, it’s then that I feel overwhelmed and tired. Usually a good night’s sleep is enough to renew me for another overly-optimistic day, but not always. It’s so easy for me to feel like the best way to cope with the feeling of overwhelm is to do less, do less, do less. That’s been my way of coping for a long time. But what that has meant in the past was cutting out things that matter even more to me now. Like during my first year of ministry, while I was living alone and also juggling two other part-time jobs to make ends meet, I thought it was a revelation at the time to eliminate cooking. “Look at all the time I’ve saved!” I remember exclaiming to a friend—no shopping, no food prep, no dishes to clean up. I ate mostly microwaveable meals and things that don’t require cooking, like cheese-and-crackers. Well. You can imagine the outcome of that—I didn’t feel so great, I gained weight, and, frankly, I enjoy cooking, though it’s taken me years and years to really remember that and make time for it again. My all-or-nothing autopilot way of approaching things has meant eliminating, for stretches of time, lots of other things that nourish me as well—exercise, friendships, trips with family, reading for pleasure, writing creatively, gardening, outdoor activities, and so on.
So as I start to seriously contemplate stepping a toe back into the pool of workers, I want to broach my own take on what I think will help me find, even if elusive and fleeting, that notorious balance of work-family-play. I do and will strive to “do it all”…a little bit. I want to work on practicing contentment with doing things halfway. A little bit of exercise instead of the 8-month yoga-teacher-training class I signed myself up for three years ago now. A little bit of cooking new recipes instead of feeling like I need to cook each of my favorite cookbooks from beginning-to-end Julie-and-Julia style, in order to be thorough. And spending time with our beloved kid does not have to mean never leaving her with a babysitter to give me a break or allow us to go out for a night. It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing in order to be meaningful, rewarding, and worthwhile. Um…right?
Into the Summer Daze
photo by Heather Rion Starr
We want summer to be leisurely. We want it to be restful. We want it to involve sandals, long meandering days, the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass, a steady stream of lemonade or ice tea.
We don’t, usually, want it to involve more to-do lists and travel details than the winter holidays. And most of us don’t want it to fly by, though we all acknowledge that it does.
What is just one of your hopes for the summer months? I am asking myself and my family that question these days, as we charge full-bore into a busy summer. I suppose it will fly by, but I am not at all a hot-weather person and I live in Washington D.C., so it’s just fine with me if it at least scoots along pretty quickly. I am looking forward to particular moments of various trips—moments I can already imagine myself wanting to freeze and grasp and hold. And I am also a little overwhelmed by all the details of traveling with a toddler. “It’s an adventure, it’s an adventure, it’s an adventure,” I keep telling myself, but if every day is an adventure, when do we get to relax? In the hubbub of summer activities, when and how will we pause and breathe and do what feels most summery to me: savor our lives, in all their fullness?
Photographs are one way that I savor the beautiful moments—I love taking photos and I love going over them, looking through them again and again, making cards and books from them. I’d like to figure out some other, more familial, interactive ways to pause and savor together as a family and as the groups of families, friends, colleagues and communities that we will be dancing in-and-out of this summer. What do you do to savor the summer?
On Keeping Up
I have a half dozen ideas for things I’d like to write about swirling about in my head. Reflections about reflections. Thoughts about thoughts, about how the mind works, about how the mind works when there’s so little time to write or read or have a meandering relaxed conversation with a friend, but there’s lots of time spent washing the same dishes, cooking the same food, reading the same A-B-C book out loud, and singing the same bedtime songs. Contemplations about time, about how a month can seem interminable if a baby is crying all the time, or it can seem like it’s going by so fast if the baby is a delight to be with. About the gradual, subtle, almost-imperceptible-sometimes, beautiful transition from perseverance to savoring, the difference between getting-by, between “keep keeping,” as in Sandra Cisneros’ beautiful piece, and keeping up, living life in each full cascading moment and enjoying it. Ever since we hit 5 months, Life With Baby has been easier for us, more manageable, which doesn’t mean it’s been easy, but it’s been so much better than those first 5 challenging months. And now we are in the halcyon days, the sweet days of amazement at what our child discovers each day, the days that I think we thought having a baby were going to be like, and they may only be a smidgen of what having a baby is actually like, but they are amazing, amazing days.
I’ve been saying to friends and family that the phase we seem to be entering into is “keeping up.” And because it took almost 10 months for us to get to this point of joy, of truly enjoying the moments and not just surviving them, I am embracing this keeping up. Keeping up means that I am managing to completely empty the sink of dishes and now-and-then have an empty dishwasher as well. Keeping up means I am starting to think about what I’d like to cook, and maybe looking up a recipe, more than 5 minutes in advance of needing to eat right now. Keeping up means that we are blessed with the resources, ability, and energy to be feeding our little eater vats of healthy, home-cooked and home-prepared food, and she is loving it: tofu, quinoa, carrots, avocados. Keeping up means that I’m excited and eager to start making more complicated things for her to eat, combinations of things, food patties and to-go food. Keeping up means that there is just the littlest bit more spaciousness in our days, that I feel like I have gotten enough sleep, and that I can think ahead to next week and start to imagine going to a yoga class or to the gym. I have not prioritized exercise as much as I’d hoped to by this 10 month point, but I’m aware of that and working towards it—and that, there, that’s keeping up. “Aware and working towards.” It feels like the clouds of “putting one foot in front of the other” are lifting. The other night (while washing dishes, of course) I noted the distinct and surprising feeling of “being elated,” being elated for no particular reason. I noted it, enjoyed it, and kept washing dishes. Because I am just keeping up.
Who Decides What Is “Value-Added?”
For whatever reasons having to do with time but also interest, I am the one in our family who sits down and pays the bills. I like doing it. I get a feeling of satisfaction from being able to pay the bills, a sense of security and peace of mind, however ephemeral, that we were able to cover our expenses for another month. So perhaps that explains the somewhat-embarrassing and totally obvious revelation that crossed my mind recently—a complete sentence which I almost, but thankfully did not, say out loud—“We are not making any money on this venture.”
By this venture I suppose I meant “our life right now,” in sum. Living in Washington D.C., in the District so that it’s easier for us to get around and my partner can (and does) often bike to work. Having and raising a child, and my staying-at-home for the moment as we adjust to all the new responsibilities and tasks of parenting. As happens to everyone in some way at some point, we’ve also had or will soon have a series of additional complications and expenses this year–unexpected hospitalizations for our kid, a cross-country move, legal fees for same-sex co-parent adoption, dental expenses for me, a much-needed new computer, and so on. We are so not making any money on this whole “life” venture at the moment.
Maybe that’s why the phrase “value-added” got stuck in my head earlier this week. I’ve overheard it a bunch, on the radio and I’m not sure where all else, but it’s out there, this phrase. What does it really mean? Who decides what has value? In our home, we mostly do, though it’s far too easy for other people’s opinions, values, judgments, and commentary to influence our own thinking. We’re human, after all, we are part of communities that we value and learn from, are inspired by and sometimes stressed out by (as in, we “should” think about moving into a bigger place soon, or “really we should have our kid in daycare for socialization and optimal learning” and so on and on). I’m as susceptible as anyone to this stuff—perhaps more than most. So I find myself this week stewing on this phrase “value-added,” mulling it over in my mind, trying to get a handle once again on who’s in charge around here. Am I deciding what has value in my life, or am I framing and highlighting (and judging and doubting) particular aspects of my life because others have impressed upon me that that’s what has (or doesn’t have) the most value?
My grandfather used to pick me up at my mom’s house when I was little girl and and say that he had $20. Then he’d ask me: “Should we buy a hamburger with it, or put it in your college savings account?” I was six or seven years old. I always knew what the right answer was, and also that we’d probably get to stop at McDonald’s too. I loved, loved, loved going to McDonald’s when I was a kid for “2 cheeseburgers, please, small fries, and what’s your special shake?” Back then, McDonald’s had a different “special shake” flavor every day–banana and peanut butter were my favorites, egg nog at Christmastime. Back then, knowing about their special shake, having that routine with my grandparents, and being able to choose for myself: that was what I valued.
These days are not all that different. Though I’m no longer a McDonald’s regular, I still value knowing my favorite things at neighborhood establishments, knowing the storekeepers, knowing my neighbors, being a part of a community. I still value having a routine and I still value being able to choose for myself. I am certainly grateful to be able to stay home with our Little Bean, even though I am truly exhausted some days and I do wonder if it’s really worth it. Does it really matter if I’m the one who reads to her, plays with her, changes her diaper or cleans up her mealtime messes? As she becomes more and more self-assured, I can see already that it does matter, that we are teaching her, in the ways we’ve best figured out that are doable for us, that she can trust us and trust the world, at least the world she’s interacted with so far.
I am fascinated, this week, by the way economic terms infiltrate our day-to-day language. Just in this post, I see the words and ideas of “value,” “venture,” “trust,” “cost,” “product” and “outcome” over and over again, words that we use for different purposes depending on the context. Has all this double entendre, um, benefitted us (pun intended) or muddied the genuineness of our language? Do we know what we mean when we speak anymore, even in our own heads? Do we know what we value without anyone else’s…assessment?
“You’re Keeping That?”
While nursing lately, I’ve been watching the sun move across the dusty piano. “I’ve got to dust that, the moment I get up,” I think, and then promptly forget, again. But I’ve also been wondering if that’s exactly why spring motivates us to some version of cleaning-tending-sorting-purging-reclaiming of space in our lives—is it simply because the sun comes out and shows us where the dust has gathered? Why is it that my whole neighborhood seems to engaging in some mostly-silent, totally-uncoordinated-yet-simultaneous ritual of cleaning up the corners and closets of our home spaces?
I have moved, have relocated “home” a lot in my life, far more times than I can even count right now. I’ve lived in six states and it feels like close to six places in each of those states. And, at the same time, I come from a family of readers and accumulators (not hoarders, no, not hoarders, not not not hoarders!), and so every time I move I feel like I’m moving, shlepping, hauling, lifting, lifting, lifting…well, more than is logical. Something irrational causes me to keep all this stuff. In some ways I think a lifetime of moving has contributed to my attachment to things–I don’t have the walls of a house to hold memories in, I have this photograph, that journal, that well-worn cookbook, that piece of art from my no-longer-living grandmother, and so on. I keep things that I know I couldn’t find again in a store or a library or on Ebay, because they’re meaningful to me. But too much stuff leads to a blur of things that clutter. Too much stuff leads to tripping in the night. Too much stuff leads to our soon-to-be-toddler not having enough room to jump in her jumparoo. And I know that the feeling of clutter makes me feel bogged down, less spacious in my mind and heart, less open to welcoming new things, new interests, new projects, new people into my life.
So we are gearing up for a May 11 Neighborhood-wide Yard Sale, and we keep adding things to the pile that we’ll be putting in The Sale. There are things that will be hard to part with that day, but I know it’s time for them to go. It will be interesting to see what-all people put out for sale; hopefully we won’t be inspired to come home with more than we put out. Last fall, my partner and I downsized from a 2-bedroom house with a bonus room, a garage, attic, and a basement, to a 1-bedroom apartment with a bonus room. With the addition of a baby to our lives, the theme of the stuff that gets strewn about our home has also shifted markedly. It takes me almost an hour some nights to do the sink full of dishes that has accumulated over the course of just one day. I know that if we had fewer dishes, fewer cutting boards, fewer knives, one less blender–there would be less dish-doing, too. But for each thing we’ve kept this long I’ve formed a reason—in some cases, a campaign!—for keeping it.
For years now I’ve been inspired by the Tiny House movement. There are whole families raising their kids in 400 square feet. I remember being particularly inspired by a woman who knew exactly how many things she had: two hundred; and how she made sure that for every new thing she acquired, she let go of something else. Her tiny house was far less cluttered than our apartment is now, and it looked light and bright. Freed up from days of housecleaning and home improvement projects, she spent more time with friends and out in her community. Motivated by such stories, the objective of having less of an impact on the environment, as well as the challenge of simply doing voluntarily with less, I spent at least 6 months in the high desert of Central Oregon living without a fridge—just a cooler on the back porch with a block of ice in it, which I could buy at the nearby market. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice, really, and it saved me the awful noise of that particular refrigerator rumbling all night long.
My very cleaned-up dining room in Oregon
as I prepared my house to be rented out
I was energized by the idea that this was a step towards living more “off the grid,” that if I could unplug this one fundamental contemporary appliance, I was on my way. But then I moved out of that rental and into a house of my own, and set aside for a time the idea of continually paring down. And just setting aside the idea for a time meant that inertia and entropy exuded their forces and stuff gradually came to fill every spare cabinet of my more spacious new home.
I fully recognize that the whole movement of “voluntary simplicity” is precisely and only that: voluntary. For people who don’t have enough of what they need, this is an entirely irrelevant and even painful conversation. But for a good many of the rest of us, stuff just seems to accumulate. Why do you keep the things you keep? How do you decide to let go of things, even things that you have moved multiple times, from one home to the next, or taken great care of?
I am getting better and better at letting go of things, I think. That Sale is coming up, it’s a week from now. That morning when I wake up, what will I feel that I actually need or genuinely want, and what will I be ready to let go of? We’ll see, we’ll just have to see. In the meantime, I’m going to at least clear off the dusty piano.
