For those of us who feel…human sometimes:

Rock me to sleep (from Tom Hunter’s album Bits and Pieces)

Charlotte, 2 months

It’s Saturday. I’m sitting in my new little writing cove, tucked in a corner of our bedroom. Sun is streaming through the window to my right, and the house is quiet. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night and N and Eli both have colds. I’m probably coming down with one too. The house is a mess, toys and burp rags, dust, dirty dishes, laundry, kitchen utensils (E plays with those endlessly), sealed and unsealed mail littering every surface.

But I’ve such a swell of hope inside, such gladness to be alive. I’m coming out of the hardest adjustment phase of a second child - we all are. I’m excited to get back to this computer, however meager and chopped up my hours here are (N’s out with the kids for a little while) - to resume baby steps toward finishing my novel, expanding non-fiction endeavors, dusting off short stories and getting them off to find homes.

And I heard geese today (I think that’s what they were). Their calls came through the bathroom window, cracked to release steam from our un-ventilation into the outside stillness. The world outside was sleeping, blanketed in layers of frost. My sick boy was up on the other side of the door, husband dealing with his varied frustrations, but I heard them. I heard them speak into the sunrise. My bleary eyes and weary bones were caught up in a rush of hope at the sound. That hope flew out the window and joined their brisk formation, coming back happy and cold.

While all of these contrasts swirl around me, every reason to want to get up in the morning and a thousand more to want to stay in bed, I’ll leave you with a quote I read last night, one hand holding a book, the other a baby. It’s from David James Duncan’s book of essays titled My Story as Told By Water:

Our eyes, it has been said, are the windows of our souls. Since the soul is not a literal object but a spiritual one, eyes cannot be the soul’s literal windows. But they are, literally, openings into and out of living human beings. When our eyes are open, they become not one of our many walls but one of our very few doors. The mouth is another such door. Through it we inhale air that is not ownable, air that we share with every being on Earth. And out of our mouths we send words - our personal reshaping of that same communal air.

Seeing, I have come to feel, is the same kind of process as speaking. Through our eyes we inhale light and images we cannot own - light and images shared with every being on earth. And out of our eyes we exhale a light or a darkness that is the spirit in which we perceive. This visual exhalation, this personal energizing and aiming of perception, is the eyes’ speech. It is a shaping, it is something we make, as surely as words are a shaping of air. I feel responsible for my vision. My eye-speech changes the world. Seeing is a blood sport. (p 46)

With unhelpable bouts of negativity along the way, I’d like to try to see my seeing as something I can shape, to let my eye-speech smith a world, among so many other options, where hope peaks out from unexpected places. Where alongside whining toddlers and whining selves there are moments for writing, sun-streaked writing coves, geese in frigid skies, sounding their clumsy-elegant call: See the sun rise. Come: see.

My mom has been in town all week, helping our expanded nest with its transition back to “normalcy”. Normalcy. The word feels shrouded now in a fog so thick, even Fresnans might balk at driving in it. Everything feels new and unknown, like: when will I get a good night’s sleep? Like: how will I keep from pulling out every last hair if it rains all winter (like it did today) and Elijah can’t get outdoor time? Like: did our apartment suddenly shrink with Charlotte’s birth…or was that me actually wishing today that it was even smaller, and there weren’t any walls at all so that I could go pee or get lunch or change my clothes without worrying that Elijah might be “playing” with the baby? Like: how long can an introvert-leaning contemplative go without time to recharge (read: be alone for more than 30-second chunks at a time)?

But I digress. So my mom (god bless her soul) has been here all week (god bless her soul), and we’ve (read: she’s) accomplished tons that I could not have done alone. Our freezer is packed with food. Our tub is clean. The laundry is washed and folded. I decided that this was the week for some clothes-shopping, too, since my wardrobe feels nearly entirely unwearable at this point, and the thought of going shopping on my own with an infant and a 2-year-old makes me want to turn myself inside out. So off we all went to the mall, after the 75-minute diaper-changing-snack-packing-spit-up-wiping-teeth- brushing-tantrum-taming-nursing-burping-diaper-bag-packing-double-stroller- smashing-into-messy-trunk warm-up was accomplished.

It was drizzling out, and this was the time of day Elijah normally spends running around at a park. I had in my head a vision of my mom running around the outdoor parts of the mall with Elijah while I pushed the stroller, indoors, with the baby sleeping in it, to any number of racks of clothes that were made for me, that practically screamed “I was made for the body of Kristin” and flashed same phrase for momentary lapses in my hearing. The dream was as good as real when we pulled into the parking lot.

Between the car and the first store I intended to enter, however, Elijah proceeded to race around so maniacally that it was I who chased him – I who am 31 to my mother’s 57, I who have watched the child long enough to know the dangers he’s capable of barreling himself, wide-smiled, into. I, who had major abdominal surgery 3 weeks ago and am still so pitifully weak from a heart-problemed pregnancy that running hasn’t yet occurred to my atrophied muscles as something sane people do. We reached Macy’s with me thinking: 1) I can’t leave Elijah outdoors with my mom; that wouldn’t be kind, and 2) I’m exhausted and my nerves are fried. The sight of clothing stores makes me want to climb into deep, dark holes on my very best days (nothing ever fits me, everything is too expensive, the cheap stuff sucks, the myriad racks with the myriad options over-stimulate/whelm me), so I knew the outlook of this particular outing wasn’t good. Was actually bad. Quite terribly so.

Elijah immediately tore off down an aisle. I tore off after him. I picked his wriggling body up and carried him back to my mom and the stroller. “He can knock down manikins,” I told my mom. “He can get lost. Are you up for chasing him? Is this a bad idea?” She said she was game. I set him down, his legs egg-beating before touching the ground. The two of them were off and out of sight before I took a breath.

Okay, I thought. Here I am to get some clothes. Let’s do this.

But when I looked up and tried to face all those racks, I couldn’t see any neon signs at all. I couldn’t hear any voices, telling me where to go. None of the unsubtleties of my dream were remotely getting realized. All I could see, in fact, was a blur of light and color through tears streaming down my face. I wanted to run far away, far from the stroller with all the snacks and diaper bags and carseats and babies, far from the racks that blindly hate me, always, far from the rain that had made my feet cold and wet and the sleep-deprivation that made me so raw in the first place. In a blur that needed no tears for its creation, my mom and Elijah passed by. “I can’t do this,” I blubbered to their backs. “I can’t shop.”

And with that, we loaded Eli into his seat and left.

I’m thinking about the experience tonight, laughing, yes. But crying, too. This is a stressful season, a crazy-making season with young kids and their constant needs and not enough sleep or time alone for me. (Or clothes!) I’m looking longingly across the fence at other’s struggles, thinking first, how much I’d rather have something else to struggle with than what I actually have, and wondering next whether that’s just the way of things: people looking across fences, sure that what the next person’s got is much better. Much easier to wrestle with or struggle through – not to mention, of course, the stuff that looks like easy-breezie, or just plain happy living.

Could it be that my primary challenge, my primary pathway toward peace, is to accept the challenges I face as what is my “is” – to somehow, even in the midst of the occasional or constant bout of tears or chafing at my “is”, nestle into it, or at the very least look it in the eye and shake its hand and say, “Here we are. So here, in fact, we are.”

I’m too tired and raw to end with eloquence. Have any of you found peace with the struggles you face? What are some ways you’ve found, or are trying, to find it? I’m ears. Lots of them.

This is quite the liminal time for me, a season of transition and finding my bearings after losing them to a difficult pregnancy. As happened after Elijah’s birth, I’m shot with a surge of hope and creativity, a longing to get my hands and feet and face a mess in art and music, poetry, prose.

This time, however, I have a toddler besides the baby, with needs and frustrations and a keen sense for knowing what boundaries to push. And when. And though baby sleeps huge chunks of each day, Eli sleeps but a fraction.  All my creative energy is funneling into daydreams and lists of things I only want to do, scrawled quickly in my journal. My outsides, and the tasks of my days, are not aligned just yet with the yearnings that innerly spin.

Superficially, I yearn for new clothes. Clothes that actually fit, and that bear witness to the me of today. Part of me feels silly for hating my wardrobe; it’s mostly in good shape, and provides the warmth and covering I need. Other parts, though – my inner artist and psychologist and sociologist – know that clothes that fit well and that express outwardly what one feels inwardly (freedom, rather than stodginess, for example, or confidence instead of fear) are actually part of creating reality. They matter. Balance has to be made between wanton consumption and joyless, pious, under-consumption, but given my history with the latter, I’d like some newer clothes. And I’d like to make a plea to stores everywhere to stock clothing for very tall women. Consider that shouted from rooftops.

Less superficially, I long for contemplation. Meditation. Spiritual practice. I’ve constructed and discovered the outlines of a lifestyle that enlivens my soul and questions that spur growth and connect me more deeply with others and God. It feels, though, as if such outlines don’t exist if existence implies experience of them. There’s hypocrisy in all my lofty ideals, as the me of my actual life is far more consumed with doing than being, with trying to squeeze in sleep instead of prayer, with wiping bottoms a thousand times oftener than examining life or soul.

And somewhere in between my surface and my depths, I feel like I’ve outgrown this site. I want a new design, a new focus, a different story to tell. Which layers of me do I reveal here? Which thoughts do I explore? Do I lean more toward ups and de-emphasize downs? Portray myself far more serenely than this tattered, visceral me?

Time will have to tell. Or not, as the case may be. In the meantime I’ll live the gangliness of mis-matched me’s, outers and inners askew. I’ll keep snatching moments for daydreams. Keep scrawling out my lists. Keep hoping things into glimmers of existence, and consider that prayer.

And honestly, those booties, they’ve got to be wiped.

Family photo, November 15, 2007

Well, she’s here!  Charlotte Makenna was born last Thursday.  Surgery went very well, and we’re home now, embarking on that joyous and perilous journey called “adjusting to a new family member”.  So far Elijah is hanging in there.  Day one wasn’t pretty.  Days two and three were much better.  N and I both read “Siblings Without Rivalry” this fall (thanks to those of you who suggested it!) and are SO glad we did.  We both can’t recommend it enough.  Whether you have kids or not, or even whether you have a significant other or not, it’s so helpful for understanding the ways that we shape and are shaped and *were* shaped by dynamics in our homes.

But that’s a tangeant!  I’m feeling so grateful to be home, to have the scariness of surgery over, and for the initial plunge into new babyness to be made.  And not least by any stretch at all, to get to see dear Charlotte, daily, face-to-face.  I feel like I’ve emerged from a long, dark tunnel (pregnancy is unquestionably miraculous, but honestly, for me, this one was very hard), and the parts of myself that were necessarily on hold for so long are returning to life.  I can’t wait to begin exercising my body and mind and soul again in the ways that I used to enjoy.  Such things feel wonderfully imminent.

Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers and good wishes!  I hope to return my own offerings, by means of essays and conversations in this and others’ spaces, in the very near future.  For now, I will let this adjustment journey continue its new course.  From what I hear, the paved part begins a little further on.

Much love to all,
Kristin

Me and Elijah at last Saturday’s Halloween parade

Hello again, dear readers. I’ve missed you! My mode these days has been survival (baby’s due in two weeks!), and it’s been all I’ve been able to do to wrangle our little clown and keep our family clothed and fed. I’m looking forward to the day when naptimes and evenings are freed from sleep for things like, oh, engaging the world that I only assume still exists beyond the walls of this confinement pregnancy.

The good news is that I’ve been able to maintain my novel-writing sessions throughout these crazy months (would you believe that sitting in front of a computer is actually easier than watching a 2-year-old?), and last week I completed a revised outline of the whole thing. I have to say that out loud to buoy me through all the things I haven’t been able to accomplish…like emailing and blogging and reading and keeping up with the people I care about! To those of you whose emails have gone unanswered, or answered after great delay, I send heartfelt apologies and all my best intentions of being back in touch soon.

Our c-section is scheduled for November 15, so barring unforeseen labor, that’s when my body and heart (and lungs and intestines and veins and…) will be breathing big sighs of relief and embarking on the new, but, at least from where I sit now, more appealing challenge of caring for a newborn.

Thank you so terribly much for your love and prayers and words of support through these months. I’ve treasured them all.

Until soon (I hope!), and with love,
Kristin

It’s evening and Elijah’s asleep. The dishes are done, and the air outside is cold enough to warrant closed windows. So it’s quiet. Much more than usually so.

I came here to check my email quickly, to browse a few blogs, to put some music on an iPod I’ve never used, which N won in a raffle, with the aim of tackling, to music, more things on my list. The time it just took to figure out the iPod makes me feel old and a generation removed from cool. And then this, a Ben Harper ballad from a CD my dear friend made me, starts playing in my ears:

Beloved One

I’m feeling vulnerable these days, daydreaming, often more subconsciously than consciously I think, of being loved and rocked and tended like a child. Elijah’s been teething this week, waking often before dawn, needing to be rocked and sung back to sleep. And I have often been awake already, tossing and turning in this body that won’t sleep. I want a mama to help me to sleep, too. I want to be sung to. I want to be smiled on, throughout my days, and have meals prepared for me and activities chosen. I want to know viscerally that this body, with its burgeoning belly and veins, its racing heart, its squished up lungs and the aches that make me feel 80, is beautiful. Miraculous. A thing of awe. All things other than what I now feel.

I want to be able to sing Beloved One to myself.

Christine wrote a beautiful post today at her Abbey of the Arts, about bathtime. Its womb images, so poignant to me in this “season of expansion”, sooth me. Vicariously I feel the love I want to be given, the love I want to give myself, and feel myself surrounded by.

I press repeat on Beloved One, offering it as a prayer. Receiving it as an answer.

There’s a place inside of me I miss. A place where wonder pulses like a heartbeat - now quick with in-loveness for everything - a word, a sight, a sound, a person - now slowing with the lull of the crickets outside, or the fans that make these summer nights bearable. It’s a place that’s full with beyond-mere-survival, or rather, that knows survival as integrally related with music and contemplation, good books, deep thoughts, conversations with friends. It’s where words and the unworded stuff of experience mingle, tickling each other with the joy and utter frustration of remaining mostly, but never altogether, “other” from each other. The place from which my writing springs.

I’m in it tonight, though, miraculously. My body creaks and groans still with this pregnancy, a wooden ship made better for the wiry frame of a single captain and few supplies than for barrel upon barrel of rations: blood, fluid, tissue, fat. And this not even mentioning my second passenger. I love her already, and know it a privilege to navigate her passage.

But I creak. I groan. I bail water (four? five times a night?). And rarely get to that part of the ship I so treasure.

But.

Here I am tonight. I have no idea when I’ll return again, and even less what tomorrow’s winds or seas might bring (fortune? pirates? peace?). But for now, I’ll light a candle. Dip pen in ink. Open a scroll. Try to forget the fatigue that makes my heart beat strangely, the stomach that doesn’t want to hold my meager offerings.

The sun sinks well below the western sky. The pines that guard this strip of dwellings blacken. I hear crickets, fans, a distant plane’s propeller. The click of N’s keyboard.

Past place and surroundings, I hear groanings of people I love - strong people whose strength is pressed to breaking with sufferings they don’t deserve. I hold them in the Light of this flickering wick, this quickening heart. I pray the womb of this Ship, this Mother that’s bigger than all of us, this Sea that we all of us sail, will give them safe passage. Will take them through their night. Will birth them and rebirth them as the tender, beautiful, honest, beloved creatures I know them to be.

And I hear joy. The paradox of it! Joy and suffering both on this Ship. And my own little vessel. Just now joy’s un-words resist being worded, though. Fair enough.

I try to move on, but the winds upstairs have shifted and I need to check my sails. More stores must be unpacked. A belly needs filling.

I give my candle an earnest stare, my quill, my surroundings. Be well, dear room. I love you.

Hi everyone! Just checking in to say hello.

I’m now half way done with a challenging pregnancy, which is both wonderful and also unnerving, considering I still have 4 1/2 months of challenge yet to face. The nausea of the first trimester subsided wonderfully at about the 3 month mark, but was replaced by a heart problem that handicapped me until we could do the many tests and appointments necessary to discover its remedy. I am on medication now to slow down an over-active heart. The risks of NOT taking this, to me and the baby, far surpass the risks of taking it, so…pills I will take.

Our mid-pregnancy ultrasound also revealed what looks like the development of something called placenta accreta, which means the placenta may have imbedded too deeply into the wall of my uterus. If this is the case, it is very likely that the uterus will have to be removed at delivery, in order to avoid life-threatening bleeding that could happen if the placenta and uterus are attempted to be separated. We go back in a couple of months for another ultrasound to determine whether this condition continues to be present, and if it does, to more concretely plan for what we’ll do about it.

So…I have been a little preoccupied lately.

In between sleep and doctor’s appointments and novel-writing and trying to keep up with a lively toddler, I’ve enjoyed a few books that I’d love to tell you about sometime soon. Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die (an exploration of sanity and insanity) and his Eleven Minutes (an exploration of love and sex) are two of them. I’m mid-way through Reza Aslan’s No god but God: the origins, evolution and future of Islam as well, which has been a wonderful read for this mostly Islam-ignorant girl. I’m amazed and intrigued by the similarities between Islam and Christianity, or more specifically, between the people who identify with these traditions. Humans look and act like humans no matter what, I think.

But that’s for another review…

Mainly just saying hello. Hope you’re all enjoying a summer rich with the things you love!