398.2

My title is a Dewy Decimal joke... just for all you storytellers and librarians out there.  Also, this is apparently post number 398 on my blog.  Just so you know.

Lots going on:
~One really dumb AHA!  moment that I'll probably share with all of you later.
~Trying to figure out what to register for at the Oklahoma City Storytelling Festival Workshops.  I'm so excited, but I have a class that day.  Kicker?  I'm offering my students extra credit if they attend workshops at the festival.
~Classes start tomorrow at OC.  I'm teaching only one section of Comm 2, but I'm excited.  I've worked pretty hard on my syllabus and on the class in general- changing a speech for a story, creating my quizzes and tests ahead of time, and putting everything on a calendar before the semester starts so I'll know exactly what I'm doing well in advance.

I guess it doesn't sound like very much is really going on, but with Jonah and Sweet Caroline demanding as much attention as any 3 year old and 3 month old will... well, it's been a lot.  Fortunately, it's started to cool off a bit outside and Jonah can spend more time playing outside (now that the temperature is under 100 degrees) and that leaves me with a baby who is highly entertained by the rotation of a ceiling fan.  That's how I plan to grade test and quizzes anyway.

Maybe my moon or more...

Complaint

by James Wright

She's gone. She was my love, my moon or more.
She chased the chickens out and swept the floor,
Emptied the bones and nut-shells after feasts,
And smacked the kids for leaping up like beasts.
Now morbid boys have grown past awkwardness;
The girls let stitches out, dress after dress,
To free some swinging body's riding space
And form the new child's unimagined face.
Yet, while vague nephews, spitting on their curls,
Amble to pester winds and blowsy girls,
What arm will sweep the room, what hand will hold
New snow against the milk to keep it cold?
And who will dump the garbage, feed the hogs,
And pitch the chickens' heads to hungry dogs?
Not my lost hag who dumbly bore such pain:
Childbirth at midnight sassafras and rain.
New snow against her face and hands she bore,
And now lies down, who was my moon or more.

More on this later...


(LATER)


I got this poem in my inbox from Garrison Keilor's "The Writer's Almanac."  I read it and immediately thought of The Seal Wife.  The entire poem has a feel of loss, but the loss of the relationship seems only to be subtext.  The greater part of the complaint is over who will care for him.  Who will do all of the work she did that now lies undone?  He even goes so far as to blunt refer to her as his "lost hag."  Not the most endearing term.  


I've been puzzling over the heroine's journey, lately.  It seems so different than the hero's journey, and yet there doesn't seem to be any sort of consensus on the fate of women.  In many stories they end up old crones, wicked witches, or jealous queens, and in others they destroy their relationship with their husband and flee to a kind of solitude.  What does a fully realized heroine look like?  I'm not sure I can find that answer in fairy tales or mythology.  We see so many men in stories able to reach self-actualization.  They come full circle and become whole as men, but women seem to have a different cycle or cycles to fulfill.


The question I am asking isn't simply a story question.  As a woman I want to be able to understand the phases of my life, and how I am called to change through each one.  While I don't believe that story can offer us complete understanding, it can offer us a direction to look into- a path that we may explore.  Stories evolve through the collective wisdom of their tellers, as they are passed on gaining bits of truth and wisdom like some cosmic oyster of human truth.


And yet, stories seem to leave women only the option of becoming undesirable and used up- missed mostly for the work they leave undone.  Perhaps I need a different perspective.  


Anyone out there have one to offer?

Joy

"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain."  


and 


"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. 


~Joseph Campbell

Is this...?

Dragon Seasoning?

Please go back and reread that post because it was quite a long time ago and I wonder if anyone really remembers it.  I didn't.
As a matter of fact I had completely forgotten about that meeting all together.

I am thinking of several of those seasoned tellers that were there- the old ones- the dragons.  They all went through many years of life before they came to be the storytellers that they were.  And each of them were good storytellers with much wisdom and heart.

I keep thinking about the interview I did for Storytelling Magazine.  I have been thinking that (maybe) a lot of what I said was a lie I was telling myself about who I am and what I am doing with my life.  Perhaps I didn't lie when I told Rachel Hedman that these years were to prepare me to have the stories I needed to be able to tell.  Maybe they ARE the seasoning I need.

Rocking

Every night about 8:30 my sweet Caroline stops being so sweet and starts being upset.  Jonah did the same thing and usually I can settle her down pretty quickly by wrapping her up, popping in her pacifier and rocking her in the rocking chair.  Tonight it was extra difficult to get her to calm down, but when I did Jonah was already in bed (they share a room) so I gave him a quick kiss and told him goodnight.  I was on my way out when he told me he wanted to rock in my chair.  I had spent so much time trying to calm Sweet Caroline that I hadn't really said good night to my Sweet Jonah and he was wanting my affection.  So I scooped him up and rocked him in the chair too.  He's so big that it's not as easy as it used to be, but a Mama's arms can stretch wide enough for even the biggest boy.  

I rocked him there, next to Sweet Caroline's crib- bed that used to be his bed- in the rocking chair I was given just before Jonah was born.  It's a chair that used to be my Granny's chair.  It sat in the living room at her house and it was reserved only for her.  I can still picture her sitting in it.  She would be sitting with her elbows resting on the arms, leaning forward.  Her toes just resting on the ground, pressing down in a slow rhythm to rock it back and forth.  She would be wearing her dark green housecoat and her glasses.  The time I am remembering most is when I was teaching myself to crochet and she was looking at the scarf I was making.  She would lift her chin and then look down through the bi-focals on her glasses, slightly frowning in a concentrating sort of way.  Her hair was brown with silver-grey mixed in- much like my mother's is now.  I can see her clearly pulling out row after row in my scarf because I had made a mistake almost a foot up.  I was compelled to start over.  She wasn't a perfectionist- she just believed in doing a thing the right way the first time.  

Today is the anniversary of the day that she died.  Not the most important day of her life, but one that I cannot shake, today.  And here I am, tonight rocking my oldest baby in her chair in my own slow rhythm.  She never met him.  I regret that very much.  But I am rocking him in her chair and I am trying to remember any lessons I might have learned from her.  

Like learning to keep your mouth shut when necessary.  She was apparently a feisty woman with a quick tongue when she lost her temper, but I rarely saw her lose it.  I think she must have learned to tame both as she got older.  

Like taking time to laugh and talk with your children.  I always remember her and my mother, anytime we would visit, sitting up after everyone else in the house had gone to bed.  I don't know what they would laugh about all the time, but I know that sometimes it was at my Grandfather's booming snores.  Often I would fall asleep to the soothing mumble of their voices.  I try to remember to spend time with Jonah, and someday Caroline, just listening to what they have to say and laughing with them.

And like doing things right the first time.  Like being unafraid to start over when you dropped a stitch so you can fix a mistake.  Repair it before you get so far that you can't imagine how you could possibly go back and fix it- even though it seems so very small.  

Small like my children.   But they will grow, and I will rock them in her chair, trying to do things right so things don't have to come unraveled later.  Just like she taught me.  

This Part of the Journey

There is silence all around me.  Everyone else is in bed.  This seems to be the only time I can really write.  Between relearning how to nurse, potty training, keeping the house clean, trying to nap whenever possible, and cleaning up after a cross-country trip, I find that these rare moments of quiet in my house, and in my life, are the only moments when I can sit to put thoughts down before they disappear, like my full coffee cup from this morning.  Where on earth did I set that down?

I have goals and things I want to accomplish, for myself certainly, but also for Jonah and Caroline.  I'd like to learn to sew, finish Sweet Caroline's baby blanket, write one new story every week, teach Jonah his letters, finish reading "The Heroine's Journey" ....

But instead it seems that I have only enough time to scribble down a few ideas between the endless dishes, laundry, nursing, kissing the owies and the fifty million other things that never quite come off my to-do list.

Who nurtures the nurturer?  Who comforts the comforter?  Who cleans up after the cleaner?  Who mothers the mother?

It doesn't seem that there is an answer to these questions.  I have gathered that somehow these things are supposed to come ethereally from the inherent goodness of  my own actions as a mother.  In some way I am supposed to feel loved and appreciated and feminine as I stand over a sink of dirty dishes.  And yet I do not.  Somehow, I don't think I'm just doing it wrong.

Do not misunderstand- I don't regret having my babies.  I am not resentful that this life has needs that I must meet.  I simply do not understand why meeting those needs should make me feel whole as a woman, or even like a woman at all.  Instead I feel more like communal property, or simply the one who gives.  My biggest fear is not that I won't be appreciated or loved- every time Sweet Caroline smiles and Jonah touches my moles, and Josh wraps his arms around me, I feel loved.  My biggest fear is that one day they will move on and I will not know myself.  Without someone to hover over and care for I will be left feeling, all the time, as I do anytime I am surrounded by people I do not know.  Uncomfortable and shy.  


In these quiet little moments I try to find myself under the laundry and dishes and piles of toys and goodness-knows-what-else that demand so much of my attention.  So much of my life has changed because I have changed so much of myself over the last few years.  I want to get to know this new woman that I have become.  


I guess that's what this part of the journey is about.  I take this time to fill my pack with the people I love and trudge up hill to a place where they will be able to walk on their own, and in the mean time I keep in touch with myself, so when they take their own paths, I am able to choose one for myself

Mama

There is another storyteller I met once and have kept half an eye on over the years.  She was interesting, and close to my age.  I've been staying up too late reading her blog, tonight.  It was a bit shocking to realize just how deeply the reflection of my own personal disconnect was found in her words... and yet, was not.  She is still working on her stories, and writing poetry and doing so many other things that I have allowed my children to be the justification for quitting.  Part of my soul is drying up, and I am allowing my family to be the reason.  One day I will resent them.  Maybe I already do.  


When did my name become "Mama"?  I don't remember.  Honestly.  Even Josh doesn't use my name anymore.  


Names are important things.  A name holds power over the person or object that it is given to.  


There is a verse in Revelation that I've always found especially interesting.  It says, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it."  


I don't really understand this verse (or much of the book of Revelation, for that matter) but there is something I understand about being given a new and special name.  It is something to be cherished- and I do cherish being called Mama.  It is a term of the deepest love and endearment- a word that has deeper meaning and greater connotation than any other word I can think of.  


But I was given a name by my mother when I was born.  That name, along with parts of myself seem to have been stolen.  


When we were children, my mother would get so tired of hearing us say, "Mama! Mama!" that she would change her name.  She told us that her name was Griselda.  We couldn't say Griselda, so she would pretend not to hear us for a while.  


Who was Griselda, really?  I think I may be becoming my own Griselda.


There's a story here.

Night Owl

I can't help myself- I'm still awake.  I turned the light off and I tried to sleep but the list of things I have to do just keeps floating around in my head.  Tomorrow we are leaving on a 21 hour road trip with an infant and a boy who I hesitate to say, is almost completely potty trained.  
Bags are packed, suits and dresses purchased for the wedding, snacks for the car ride packed, rooms reserved, and yet I am still nervous about this trip.  So many things could go wrong.  I'm having visions of poop, hours of screaming, sleeplessness... more poop.  How does a mother control her mind and make it still?  Isn't our job to care for our families, and provide for them?  There are so many facets to that job that there are times when I cannot find peace enough to sleep at night.  How can I be prepared for every eventuality?  


I can't.


I will lie down and sleep in peace,
       for you alone, O LORD,
       make me dwell in safety.  
                                            Psalm 4:8


I'm letting go tonight.  I'm trying to let go every night, and every day.  I cannot anticipate everything, and I'm tired of trying. While I lay here hoping to think of that one eventuality that will make everything go smoothly... I realize that I will do my job best, if I recognize who is really the caregiver for my family.  
No more night owl... At least I'll try.