Absence and the heart

"Oh, the liquor was spilt on the barroom floor! And the bar was closed for the night! The house mouse peeped from his little mouse house! In the glow of the pale moon light!"

What the hell is she singing? Pynchon and I exchanged confused looks as we zipped up the 401 to this unexpected musical accompaniment. The mouse, it turns out, drinks all the spilled liquor off the floor and gets belligerent, looking for the 'gol-darned cat!' Gramma had been coaching Munchkin on the lyrics the whole week she'd had Munchkin to herself Way the Hell Up North.

While Munchkin was on her holiday Up North, I was in England, at a conference, and Pynchon had to stay in Small City to work a ton of overtime, and so our whole little household blew apart to the winds for a week, with no Internet or phone connections between us. And when Pynchon collected me at the airport, and then we collected Munchkin at her Auntie Soosee's, we all looked at each other afresh.

Holding down the home front by himself for the week, Pynchon secured his dream job, full-time and permanent. On her holiday, Munchkin learned how to swim and was determined to now tip the scales at a full 50 pounds. Away in England, I tried to get by for a week with no Internet, by doing yoga on the pebble beach at Brighton. I got a tan. Things are different; we are different.

It's amazing what happens, sometimes, when you give everything a little breathing room.

So, err, yeah. You can see the segue into the blog business coming, right? The blog has had several months of breathing room. I didn't quit, but I didn't write. And now coming back and having a look around, I am both amazed by the detail and richness of the record of my life that's contained here and also by the really incredible community of support and friendship in which it circulates. Circulated? There's a lot of stuff from Munchkin's early years I would not remember if I hadn't written it down here; there's a lot of Stuff from Munchkin's early years I felt at the time like I would not have survived if you hadn't supported me.

But do you know the most amazing thing that's happened since I started this blog? I became Mom. It's a role I now inhabit fully, like I have mothering toes and mothering hair follicles and mothering knuckles. I don't feel like I'm ... pretending, or faking, or muddling, or not-quite-mom-enough yet. That feels pretty good--it feels natural, or at least naturalized, now.

(Yeah. We've got all our ducks all in a row over at our hizzouse.)

I certainly don't mean to suggest that I'm perfectly confident, or free of ambivalence, or well-accomplished, or not sometimes pulled in different directions by different parts of my life (mother, wife, woman, professor, sister, daughter, researcher). That's not it. Rather, I don't think that "Mom" is someone I'm not sure how to be. It's what I am, already, even as some of the tasks associated with the position are ones I haven't tackled yet. Dealing with ever-changing new stuff is part of "Mom," so I guess I'm doing it right.

And so, thinking about what "Mom" means has lost some of its urgency for me, and maybe this is why blogging has lost some of its urgency for me. There is a kind of irony in blogging, a kind of 'meta-' to it, as though writing about what it meant to be a mom would turn me into a mom that knew what it meant to be a mom. I think I know, now.

But I like doing this; I like writing about my family life, if only so that I can remember it later. I like sharing it with however many of you still haven't moved me to the 'defunct' folder of your reader. I have other things going on now, too, now that mothering has become more verbal, more interpersonal, and less physically and psychically gruelling. I'm doing a lot of yoga; I'm more and more engaged in my research work in social media; I am working on my home reno and interior design skills.

All the blogging guides tell you this: find your niche. Maybe it's your passion, maybe it's strategic, but find your little corner of the world and work it like crazy. Do that one thing and do it, do it, do it. So blogging as a new mother seems likely to succeed in the standard ways--pull together an audience, get some numbers, get known, in that small niche. That was then. Blogging for me now, like my mothering, is more diffuse, not so reliably niche-y. More like my life now: really full, but not of the same thing all the time.

"Mimi on the Breach"--it was about me, ostensibly, right from the start. "Me," when I started this (Christ--FOUR YEARS AGO), was about trying to get a toehold on this whole 'Mom' thing. "Me," now, is about more things, not instead of but in addition to mothering. So I guess we'll see what happens now.

Goodness, back when I started, 'Miss Baby' was two months old and went to bed at 2am. I had three reliable commenters (Her Bad Mother, CinnamonGurl-that-was, and Bubandpieand-that-is-now-Bea. Imagine!), and a total weekly readership of six people. Now I get more PR pitch emails every week than I used to have legitimate readers. Weird.

How about you? Are things changing for you? How are your families? How are your lives?

Tighter, Closer, Sweeter

It's nice, isn't it, to buy American money lately? Friday, I bought 200 US dollars for $207 Canadian. Miracle! I tucked the oddly shaped green bills into my wallet and double-checked my passport in my laptop bag. Slinging my lovely, soft-brown leather weekend bag over my shoulder, I started up my podcast, slipped on my sunglasses and boarded the bus.

Off to a meeting point with out-of-town colleagues and friends, heading down the highway for a conference in the US! A weekend of computer dork un-conferencing, hotel room to myself, drink ticket in my registration package, an id tag with a QR code and my (work) Twitter handle. Sunshine and passports and networking. Blessed focus on my intellectual life. The freedom of throwing myself into it, totally! The freedom of that one little bag, the foreign currency, walking through someone else's historic district on my own time, my own dime.

Fantastic.

But this?


I missed it like I never thought I could. Gone for, what? About 52 hours? I felt an ache for my Munchkin like I never felt when she was smaller. I guess that's what's so surprising. "Mom!" she yelled over the phone, "When can I come to Michigan?"

To break my heart, I tell you.

I used to make fun of these people, these mothers or lovers off on fantastic adventures, moaning and crying and pining for the absent objects of their affection. I mocked them: how on Earth can you be missing your Real Life when you have this sanctioned brief escape? My god, it's two days, sheesh louise you see your kid / your partner / your dog every day your entire life, enjoy the novelty of the now.

Ha.

Adulthood, I think, is the capacity to experience conflicting realities, simultaneously. Or maybe it's just a condition of motherhood: one of the hallmarks of my pregnancy was this odd thing where if I laughed--really laughed, a good lose-my-breath belly laugh--inevitably it ended in heartrending sobs. But oh, what a ride!

I feel like I live like that quite a lot now. Begin as you mean to go on, Mimi!

So, now I reno'd the dining room

I've been obsessed with painting and decorating again. I tackled the dining room over Reading Week, with help from Pynchon and my dad and a soundtrack of cowbells from the Olympic skiing events I played in the background for company.

From this:

We went to this:


You seemed to like my breakdown of the kitchen reno, where I told you what I did and what it cost and scoffed at the shelter and lifestyle magazines' idea of 'low cost' versus my somewhat more parsimonious one. So I'll do that again!

First, though, some more photos of the finished space. I'm just moving from one corner of room, sequentially around to the other three, okay? Think of it as a cheapo 360 degree tour ;-) These were all taken during the daytime:




What I did (and Pynchon did, and my dad did), and what it cost (cash money, and time):

1. We changed the lighting fixtures. The one fixture in the room was that dated 70s thing. It was too small, used weird bulbs, and was in the dead middle of the room. We bought two brushed-nickel and frosted glass fixtures at Crappy Tire for $40 (sconce--but that came with us from our other house, so I'm not counting it!) and $70 (chandelier). Electricians created a spot for the sconce over the sideboard, and moved the chandelier so that it was centred with the dining table, not with the room. Both fixtures are controlled by dimmers. The electrical work probably cost close to $200, because getting the fixtures where I wanted turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. Totally worth it though. Total for lighting: $270.

2. We painted*. This took a HUGE amount of time. Probably 30-40 hours. The trim, as ever, was a total pain in the ass: sand, wash, prime, three coats of white paint. The other thing with painting dark wood trim white, is that once you do, you see that the wood (over 93 years) has shrunk away from the floor, the walls, and all the joints are gappy. This is when you get your dad to come visit, and fill all the blessed gaps with silicone caulking that then needs painting. Results totally worth it, though. The white is Polar Bear by Behr, in a semi-gloss.The brown on the wall is Oat Straw, the same colour we used in the living room, in a flat enamel finish that is already proving itself nicely washable. Hooray! Two cans of paint, and a portion of the giant bucket of primer: $60 (got the paint 25% off this summer ...)

3. We added storage. The antique sideboard came with us from Edmonton to the apartment, then the first house, and now here. We keep our table linens in it, and the fancy cutlery. The smaller wood cabinet is used for hiding sunglasses and CDs and my chequebook and Pynchon's doodads and a bunch of Munchkin's toys. It's a Billy bookshelf from Ikea ($79), with doors (2 x $40, plus brushed nickel Attest knobs, $8). So we forked out $167 for storage: but no more clutter? Priceless.

4. We decorated. The room is dark. It faces northeast and is pretty grim most of the time -- that's not good because this is the central room, the hub, of our main floor. So the idea was to maximise the light by adding fixtures, painting out the dark trim, and using art to brighten up the room with colour and bounce the light around. The three prints above the sideboard came with us from the other house; it's framed calendar art. The big silver frame was $19 at Ikea, and is framing a sparkly and fun .... piece of wrapping paper ($4). The two abstract paintings bring me joy unaccountable, but the big one was $70 at Ikea and the smaller one (above the stereo) was $60 at Bouclair. Those brown-toned flower paintings flanking the window are going to go somewhere else soon: in their place, two 2' by 3' silver frames, with more wrapping paper in them, in a sort of green wallpaper patter (all in, $70). Speaking of the window, I removed the ancient drapes and hung simple, wide, 'faux bois' white blinds: $70. The piece de resistance up is the big silver mirror, $60 at Bouclair. Munchkin came to help me pick it out. She's a great helper:

Oh right! I bought a plant ($20) and a white ceramic pot ($30) for the corner, too. Decorating total: $400.

So that's the dining room! Since we've modernised the paint colours and hung modern / contemporary art and fixtures, our existing dark wood sideboard and dining set don't seem so overwhelming dark. And the room is so much brighter that the electrician and the cleaning lady both spontaneously remarked on it when they walked it.

Total total? Labout total? 9 days of one-and-off work by me, Pynchon, and dad. Money cost: $900, that we paid out in stages over about 2 years (electrical in 2008, paint and storage in 2009, decorating items 2010).

Now I need a drink of wine. You?

----
* painted: First, Pynchon had to repair the window wall--it's an exterior wall, obviously, and since we had a MILLION HOLES drilled in our exterior walls to have them insulted. So he sanded and patched, and sanded again. Dirty work.

And how was your day?

"Mom, Mom!" she interjects, as I take a break from telling Pynchon about something I read in the paper earlier to take a bite of my salad.

"Mom! Is it my turn to talk?"

"Sure. What would you like to talk about?"

"Um ... um ... Today-I-went-to-preschool-and-I-played-and-played-and-then-we-had-snack-and-when-we-went-outside-I-fell-down-but-it-was-okay-I-laughed."

She pauses. Takes a bite of cheese. Reflects.

"Tell me about your day, Mom."

We eat supper together almost every night, and we've consciously been working on table manners: asking for more milk by saying "please," using cutlery, waiting until everyone is seated before you start, wiping your fingers on a napkin instead of the table. I'm surprised to discover that at the same time we've been teaching her a more subtle set of skills. Munchkin is learning the give and take of conversation, its rhythms and pauses, the scripts that orchestrate who gets to speak, when, and about what. At dinner, we all take turns speaking. At dinner, the main topic of conversation is "your day" and speech is invited by direct questions to that effect.

So sophisticated is her understanding of the operations of mealtime that she even knows that breakfast is something different: at breakfast, everyone reads the newspaper, including Munchkin. If by 'read', you mean demand the section of the paper that has the most interesting picture on it, and have it propped up nice and high in front of you so you can make up stories about it.

Wow. And that's what family meals are for, I guess. Civilizing our barbarian toddlers while ingesting home cooked meals that feature some kind of green thing along with the cheese, the barbarian toddlers somehow and suddenly learning how to divvy up the morning paper and how to listen to mommy rant about her students.

When the fever breaks

Munchkin is adjusting to my return to normal daily family life. She is adjusting, as I begin to see is her pattern, by freaking out with abandonment issues after the absent parent is once more firmly embraced into the crush of daily family life.

That is, she misses me with great passion and hurling cries now that I'm home again.

I went to bed so early last night that I wound up sleeping in the guest room by myself. I awoke at 4 to sobbing cries of "Mommmmmm-eeeeeee". She pulled me down close to her, whispered in my ear, brokenly.

"Mommy, I missed you so much when you went to yoga, I was so worried. Mom, I missed you."

I tucked her up tight, covered her gently, shushed softly in her ear. But as soon as I crawled back into bed, I could hear her crying again, like her heart was broken. After a couple of rounds of this, feeling like she really did miss me and that was the problem, I asked, "Do you want to come sleep with Mommy tonight?" Like a shot, she leapt out of bed, grabbing her pillow and heading straight out into the hallway. She wrapped herself tight around me, sobs quieted and breathing getting deeper. I thought she would fall asleep right away.

She didn't. For the next 90 minutes, she lay there, quiet and awake, stroking my face and neck with her palm, with a fingertip, with the back of her hand. With her cheeks, even. She tucked her feet up between my thighs, snuggled her belly up close to mine. Every now and again she'd sit up and exclaim, "Oh Mommy, I love you soooo much," and then lie down again. Every now and again I'd slit one of my eyes open to see if she was asleep, only to find her an inch away from me, with a blissed out smile on her face. She pulled one of my arms up and around her, tucked my fingers under her ear and nuzzled me.

It took me back. The guest bed is where she and I used to sleep right after she was born, breastfeeding through the night and sleeping in spurts. She didn't much like me to hold her then. She was squirmy and angry and this affection now, in the night, on this bed, is all I could have dreamed of then, my barfy colicky squirmy 9 pounder. She feels surprisingly big in bed now, obviously not like sleeping next to Pynchon but not at all like sleeping with that baby three years ago. Except maybe for the smell, and maybe the softness of her hair.

As she patted and rubbed and sniffed and snuggled me, I realized that I needed it as much as she did. We were skin-hungry for each other, I think, that mother-daughter connection of touch that has anchored us. Sometimes the kids know best, know when some limit has been breached, and just what to do to make it right again.