Edie and I went for a long walk in the woods today.
Before we went, though, we stopped by Trader Joe’s, to stock up on provisions for the journey and to look for “Kermit the Crab” (Carl the Crab is a plush toy hidden somewhere in the store; If you find Carl, somebody in a Hawaiian shirt will hand you a basket of organic lollipops and let you pick one. Edie has the adorable habit of repeatedly calling things by the wrong name. Like yesterday for dinner, we had “Huevos Mancheros.”). Edie approached a man wearing a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and said, “I like your shoes!”
The man, whose shoes were ordinary and black, didn’t hear Edie. He leaned down and said, “I’m wearing this mask on my face to protect myself from germs. I can’t get sick because I have a new heart!”
I laughed and told him that Edie liked his shoes. He laughed and thanked her. He said he assumed she was asking about the mask. I had assumed the same thing. Maybe she was curious about his mask but thought it better not to ask and so she complimented his shoes instead.
We bought a couple of dried fruit bars. They come two to a package, back to back. You have to peel them apart so the leather is less chewy. Edie asked me to open hers in the car. We were both really hungry because picnic- and record-shopping at the store next door took a little longer than it should have. I opened the raspberry fruit leather and, remembering that there are two strips in each package, pulled one out and bit into it as I handed Edie the other piece. She told me to stop but I didn’t.
“There’s two! We can share! You can have the other piece of the strawberry one when we get to the park!”
“NO MOMMY! I DON’T WANT TO SHARE MINE! STOP EATING IT!”
But it was too late. I hadn’t even realized I was hungry until I’d forced Edie to share her snack, after she’d trusted me to open the plastic wrapper and hand it back.
“I’m so mad that you didn’t listen to me. You ate my snack.”
I apologized. I told her that I was sorry, and that I should have listened. I explained that I was really hungry, and that she could have the whole other strawberry fruit leather.
She told me, “you didn’t listen to my words, and so you get a consequence! So no KNITTING for the rest of the day!”
She stumped me. I told her that it doesn’t really work like that, that she doesn’t get to give me consequences…but I lacked conviction. Why shouldn’t I have consequences for breaking the same rules I expect her to follow? She gets in trouble if she doesn’t listen to me, and I should be setting an example for her to follow.
Like I’d go a day without knitting.
So we took a long long walk. We parked at the top and walked down the trail, through the woods. We followed the progress of the creek, winding its way to the beach alongside our trail. We saw lots of people, geared up for rain. We got rained on a little. We talked to the ranger’s wife, who lives at the bottom of the park. We ate dried mango. We watched the water streaming. We got our hands sandy and peed in port-a-potties at the beginning, middle, and end of the hike. We ate salads in the mist. We walked through a tunnel. We pet multiple doggies. We stopped in the middle of the trail to dig up rocks with our walking sticks, and I am tossing around the word “we” to imply a harmony that was not always there. For half of our walk, I was pushing and pulling and prodding the child.
Eeeeeeeedeeeeeeeee! Come on! Let’s go! Keep moving! I’m not stopping anymore!
Then we settled into a rhythm. I slowed my pace way down, but kept walking no matter what. I let there be an uncomfortable amount of space between the child and myself; and the distance became comfortable. I told her the story of the Tortoise and the Hare to illustrate how keeping a steady pace might be more effective than short bursts of running followed by pretending to be stuck in the mud, begging to be carried. I am proud to say that I only carried her for a little while, at the beginning of the ascent. Then, we found suitable walking sticks and plodded like tortoises. Edie’s stick soon had a voice of its own, and I walked backwards so I could watch her and her stick interacting with imaginary things.
“You didn’t see that trick I did, did you!?”
“What trick?”
“That trick of imagination back there.”
Edie stopped at a “resting bench” that was sitting in front of a smaller trail. She told me she had to show me something. Three things, in fact. “They are back there. Come on.”
We walked a bit up the other trail, as I protested that I didn’t know where it led, and didn’t want to get lost in the woods (which happened awhile back when we went exploring in the rain). Edie said, “It’s just after we climb over those logs, there’s the thing I want to show you.”
We climbed over the logs, and Edie looked around, thinking.
“Here is what I wanted to show you – it’s these plants all over here.”
I told her that they are called ferns, and that I like them too. I tried to head back but she said, “there’s THREE things I have to show you! The ferns are one.”
Then she walked toward a little thicket of thorn sticks. I don’t know what plants they are, really. They are just thorny sticks, sticking out of the ground, thickly. I told her they were too thorny, let’s go. I guess I was tired, or maybe it was just cold and rainy and three hours into our walk by then. She said there was one more thing she had to show me and, not wanting to wait for her to think of a third thing, I pointed to some lichen growing on a tree. “Here it is! Show me this lichen!”
We walked back to the main path and climbed further up. She was moving so slowly, and stopping so often, that I used her trick on her. I was far ahead of her on the path so I ducked off to the side, where there were a few trees and some clear, hilly ground. “Hey Edie! I need to show you something, come here!”
She picked her feet up and marched up the hill to where I was.
“What is it, Mama?”
“This is our house, Edie. We live in the woods.”
“You mean this is where we live?” She hurried under the trees with me.
“Yes,” I told her, “where do you want your room to be?”
She picked out a spot, overlooking the creek. “My bed is here, by the window.”
I told her it was a great spot, and picked out another spot like it on the other side of the house.
“My bed is over here, by this window.”
She wanted to go outside, by my bedroom door. We sat on the porch for a minute, enjoying the view.
There are more shades of green in Washington than anywhere else. Probably.
“This is where I have my coffee in the morning, Edie.”
“Can we come back to our house next time we come here?”
Of course, I told her, and we headed up the hill to sit on another resting bench.
On the way home, Edie’s shovel became a train. She picked up a lot of little passengers – pebbles who kept to themselves, mostly. Miles, Jill, Kendal, Edie, Kenneth, Paul. They fell off a lot, but Edie rescued them every time. It took so long, but by the end of our walk I didn’t mind at all. I could have watched her trudging up the muddy path through the darkening woods for hours and hours, while she made up stick songs and screamed tiny pebbly cries of distress whenever the rock family fell overboard.
Pretty soon it was time to go to Grandma’s house to get changed, and then to Daddy’s house for a sleepover. “Tomorrow is a school day, and after that is a Grandma day, and another after that, but after that is a stay home with Mommy day, and we can come back here again.”
Oh, Edie.
Today we went to see the Muppet Movie. Near the end, Gary is giving a pep talk to his puppet-brother, Walter, about needing to believe in himself. Edie whispered to me, “I believe in myself all the time, every day, so that I can grow up to become a REAL BALLERINA!”
And then at bedtime, while trying to decide which story-record to listen to, Edie said, “If you left and the record player started playing itself all by itself, I would be like, ‘Hello, Record Player.”
“So what would the record player say?”
She pauses to think, then responds in a frightening, sentient-appliance voice, “MEAT BALL!”
The following is a direct transcript from our story making session. Edie started picking letters off the keyboard and naming them, then she had me spell a couple of words (easy, quinoa). Then, she started to pretend like she was writing a story, so I started to actually type what she was saying. But as you can see, she typed a few letters and numbers here and there, and at the end she was experimenting with making grown-up letters and kid letters (upper and lower-case)
DMNXTBAQEZKS92
123E3E30S EASY QUINOA EE
EDIEEEED/NVVV
she hurried down the stairs, and she ate breakfast. cuz she couldn’t dance. now999, she even got to eat cereal! yy then shme went back to her room and danced, cuz then she was supposed to dance. So she went back up so that she could dance. and then, she hurried back up to go outside and see what was wrong with the roof, cuz the roof got broken so santa couldn’t get in…on her first birthday. When she couldn’t dance she had breakfast…on her birthday. then she hurried up the stairs all the way to the roof to see what was happened so that santa couldn’t get in from the roof because the roof shrinked!
That’s bad.
Yeah.
Then, she stand on one foot and did a arabesque! On the roof! Where Santa was! Right Now! and it was funny.
yes. g
and, it was scary too. u and she even liked it, the scary part. then she hurried downstairs again, to tell her mom that Santa the clause Couldn’t get in the roof because it was birthday and the roof shrinked! So, now, um, the roof is not shrinked anymore, said the girl, and because I fixed it. Now Santa’s coming down the roof right now! She even stomped her feet to see if Santa was down the roof yet to give her a present that was…A NEW PUZZLE!
z she even liked to write her name, Connera, or Shanuadsfxioyyo (I helped you press a number!)
64vmmnnhklllpm (this actually says she even loved to write and draw and read. but she couldn’t know how to read and draw and write, her name. So she ran down the stairs to tell her mom that she couldn’t WRITE! and DRAW! and READ!
“well, just go back up the stairs, and go back to your room, and pick out one of your favorite books, and try to write and draw and read!” that’s what her mom said. fezvrrmmmmm
notsq trots tromps3 now cat dreep
she always liked to fall in the waterfall without wearing her swimsuit, only her this dress! That’s wasn’t her swimsuit, only her bad shirt, where the bad kitty comes real and eats her! scary.
He throws up in his house and in 7his chair.yuxcoiuuuuuuuuuuuuooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuo
ouuuuuuoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllkkkkkkyyyyyyccccczzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeedddddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee00000000000000oooooOOOOOOOOOOOooo0000000000 10 20 30000000000000000000000000ooooooo000000ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq/eeeeeeeeeQDXxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXEDIE ZefxXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSSSSSSSSssssssssssssEZEEEEEEEEEEE0OOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo000000000001234567890000oooooooooooooooooooooooooOoooooooooooooOOOOOOO2S SSEWWW6666DGGGGGGGGGG CCCCCC
I’m super irregular. I can go for months at a time without bleeding, and it doesn’t concern me since there’s nothing to worry about, unless I’m scheduled to bear Baby Jesus, the second coming.
I was discussing with my sister though, the sneakiness of that dot, Aunt Flo, who, instead of calling to warn me of her surprise visit, simply floods me with despondence that my brain likes to rationalize, by creating ideas to be sad about. Things that normally don’t bother me, do. I get sad. I mull over everything that’s wrong with me. I analyze interpersonal relationships and wonder why, why, why is everything in my life so awful and not-worky.
Then, blood in my drawers.
And I am reminded once again not to take my feelings too too seriously. But no matter how many times you tell yourself not to take your feelings seriously, you still have to feel them. And sometimes, while you are feeling your feelings, your brain has to make up reasons for them. Even though feelings are just made out of chemicals, acting and reacting. Feelings aren’t made out of the things people do, or how badly I play the violin.
Everything around me right now is about learning. Learning to choose optimism, learning how to write a college paper in proper form, learning which bills I can ignore and which ones to put on which credit card. Learning how to deal with a stubborn, defiant, surly, reactive, talented, sweet, funny, and brilliant, among a million other things, daughter. Learning how to reconnect with her when I’ve barely seen her for 4 days, and she is hell-bent on getting the attention she craves no matter if it’s negative or positive. Learning how to decide which classes to register for (you mean I’m responsible for keeping track of my degree requirements!?), and learning how to study. Learning how to keep my feelings of crushing pressure at bay so I can achieve big things.
But. There are doubts. I miss the way things were, the where I’ve been. I’ve set aside some dreams so I could reach further back and dust off an even older dream. I am behind. I was supposed to do this before I became a mother. I KNOW there are different paths, and I KNOW I’m on the right one for me….but those little chemicals fire at will and I feel what I feel.
I feel alone. Quite thoroughly out of place and at odds wherever I go. I’ve connected with a few people at school, but there is a huge bubble around me, I put it there and it needs to be there so I can focus, but it is pretty isolating as well. SPU is a small school and most of the students there are away at college for the first time, living in dorms and living their whole selves on campus. I can see them getting close together while I still just show up when I need to be in class, and then disappear as quickly as possible. I’m lonely because I have more in common with some of the professors than with most of the students. But academically, I’m twenty again. I feel the most authentic when I’m trading parenting stories with the professors, and I feel like a cheater when I do well on tests. I got one of the high scores on my psych exam, which was graded on a curve, and before I could get too proud of myself, a little voice told me, of course I did well, I’m a 30 year old woman in a freshman level psych class.
Basically that voice is coming from the meanest part of my soul. When I do well on something, it reminds me that I am feeling proud for accomplishing what 18 year olds are expected to accomplish. When I do poorly, it snaps at me because I have no excuse, and because I’m going further into debt for this than ever before.
The doubts pile up. I could go into and into and into them, and obviously that is my first instinct. The thing is, my doubts are behemoth, lumbering zombies. They are deaf and dumb and absolutely terrifying, but I can outrun them. As long as they don’t amass too deep or high or whatever form of space they overtake. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing and God is not speaking very loudly to me, or very often. I don’t know if I’m a good person or a total asshole, I suspect both most of the time. I do and say stupid things that I cringe about later, or assume that a professor has judged me for. I can’t stop saying things in class, even when my crickets say “close your mouth, child. put down that hand.”
But. Here is what I do have.
I have a handful of moments, that I set aside for times of enormous, crushing doubt. There are moments when people cried when I played my violin. A disabled girl volunteering in our class held her head up and looked me in the eye for a long time, which her caregiver told me had NEVER happened in the 13 years she’d been working with her. That memory turned to agate. There’s a moment when a baby stopped crying after I placed his hand on the speaker and played a song with a strong heartbeat. Then there’s a new moment, from a recording of an old Nordoff and Robbins Creative Music Therapy session. It’s my favorite source of encouragement right now.
I know I’ve rambled on and on but if you’re still with me, I think this is the whole reason I sat down to write this blog. Because this new moment, in the recording, is the best way I know how to explain why I want to learn Music Therapy.
Session one: We are introduced to the child in the text. He is 4 or 5, still in diapers, at a daycare center for psychotic children. He is nearly impossible to communicate with, because he throws tantrums with little or no provocation, that last for hours. He is not expected to learn to talk. (this is only what I remember from the introduction. probably not entirely accurate.)
in the recording, The child is screaming. Bloodcurdling screams. Screams that are impossible to listen to. (I am literally clinging to my desk, trying not to cry.) Nordoff is on the piano, playing music which matches the pitch and intensity of the child’s cries. Robbins plays drums, in time with the child as he jumps and stomps on the floor. The screams continue. (they are so intense and so disturbing, that we all feel the powerlessness that must haunt this child’s grownups.)
We skipped ahead to the 9th session with this child. He was singing, “Hel-lo” with the therapists. His voice was full of light, his voice was bells. He was laughing, and making up little riffs which the therapists mirrored back to him on the piano and drums. All three were laughing, and there was a tangible sense of joy.
That’s the general memory, but it fits in the palm of my hand as one clear sound: “Hel-lo!”
Magic.
Music is magic.
And if music is magic, and i can make music, then i can learn to make magic. I’ve stumbled over it by accident, plenty of times in my experiences as a mother and teacher, but there is a method behind it. I never wished for musical powers but I spent a lot of childhood dreaming about magical powers. When my professor asks, in the spring, for our reasons for pursuing this career, I can either write things about serving humanity, helping people with my gifts, and making a difference in people’s lives while practicing my own musicianship….or I can be completely honest and say that I want this because it is the best way I know how to develop a superpower, and it’s about time I started being a superhero. I want to be able to bring “Hel-lo!” out of the darkest corners of life, and turn bloodcurdling screams into tinkling peals of laughter.
Edie has been obsessed with the idea of becoming a teenager lately.
My theory had to do with the maxi-pad that Edie tried to apply to her own tiny pair of underwear, before I told her, “those are only for people who are bleeding.” She asked me, “Well when do I get to bleed?”
And I told her, “When you’re a teenager.”
To test my theory, a few days into, “when I’m a teenager” this and “will I be a teenager” that, I asked her. “Hey Edie, what is so exciting to you about becoming a teenager?”
Sure enough, “Because I’ll get to wear a pad in my underwear.”
It was totally my period.
I cried in the Chevron, right after the woman changed one of my dollars into quarters and told me to try 7-11 for changing the other one. Just started sobbing.
“Why are you crying?”
Because I had to raid Edie’s piggybank for laundry money. Because Edie ran to get her piggy bank when I said I needed laundry quarters. Because she handed me a thick stack of nickels and said, “here are quarters because they are white,” but nickels don’t fit in the slots of the washer and dryer downstairs. Because it was Edie’s bedtime and instead of reading stories in bed we were trying to change two wrinkled dollars, three dimes, and four nickels into 10 quarters because one load of laundry takes 12 quarters and Edie had already given me two. Because we were out of dry sheets.
“I had to get money out of my daughter’s piggybank for laundry,” might be what came out of my mouth between sobs.
The lady gave me the look she gives all the crazy drug-addled customers who wander in causing drama. “What?”
“Maybe it’s my period or something.”
She didn’t understand and neither would I have. I thanked her and walked out with the 4 quarters she gave me.
The last time I cried in public was a few months ago, when the break-up was so fresh it was still squirting blood and I had to drink a bottle of wine every night just to dull the sharp edges. Something related to the break-up had set me to crying as I drove Edie home and I just wanted to get her in bed so I could be as sad as I felt, but she stayed awake and awake and awake. Then she told me that her ear hurt, but she was so close to sleep I thought she’d just drop off and we could deal with it the next day. She didn’t. She was crying in pain and I was still adjusting to being the only adult in the house, since we moved out of my mom’s house in April. Finally I bundled her into the carseat and drove to the 7-11. On the way there she said, exhausted, “Mommy, I just want to stay in the car while you go get medicine.” The 7-11 is fronted by all glass windows and I thought it would be a quick in and out trip, so I planned to lock her in the car and run in. When I parked the car, though, there was a woman sitting in her car, a space away from mine, staring at me with her mouth in a straight line. She stared at me as I turned off the car, stared at me as I got out, stared at me as I walked around to Edie’s door to tell her I’d be right back, and stared at me as I hit the power locks (by then feeling pretty creeped out). She stared at me until I walked past her window and then she said, “That’s illegal.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You can’t leave your kid in the car, there’s murderers and rapists and it’s because of people like you that kids get stolen from cars. That’s illegal.”
“I just need some medicine for my sick kid!” I said, but she kept on ranting at me about what a horrible parent I was, while I tried to say something about how she had no idea what kind of parent I was, but she didn’t listen and kept talking, until the words “FUCK. YOU.” escaped my mouth.
“Oh, fuck me? Fuck ME?! I’ll call the cops on you right now and report that you’re leaving your kid out here to get kidnapped or whatever!” while she got out her phone.
I said, “Well, I’m not leaving her out here with YOU so there’s nothing to report!” and then I opened Edie’s door so I could unbuckle her carseat. As I did, this woman started calling me a dog and a whore and all kinds of things so I shut Edie’s door, turned around, and ROARED at her “DO NOT SWEAR AT ME IN FRONT OF MY KID!!!
The 7-11 clerk who looks like Lister from Red Dwarf came out and stood on the sidewalk in front of the store but didn’t say anything. I said, “This woman is harassing me…and I just need some medicine for my kid!” and he turned and went back inside. I whisked Edie past the parking lot troll as she stood in the space between her car and mine, on the phone with 911, and hunted for children’s tylenol in the store that had condoms, energy boosters, and grown-up tylenol, but no children’s tylenol anywhere. I stared at the products while Edie pointed out something random in a black package, “there it is, it’s the black medicine!” and while I was telling her, “they don’t have children’s medicine, we’ll have to go to another store,” I burst into tears. The 5 people in line and the clerk all turned to stare at me, along with the woman in the parking lot who was still on the phone, while Edie was asking, “why they don’t have any medicine here?” and I ran out of the store, crying. I buckled Edie into her carseat, but before I could even unlock the driver’s side door I started wailing loudly, uncontrollably, like a baby. I got in the car to get away from the woman, but it was about 5 minutes before I could compose myself enough to drive. Edie was understandably terrified, and I was such a wreck that when she asked why I was crying I told her “because that woman wants to call the police on me for leaving you in the car.” Edie spent the rest of the drive to Fred Meyer’s worrying about the police while I tried to assure her that I hadn’t done anything wrong and the police weren’t going to come get me. “I don’t like the police,” she said.
The trip to Fred Meyer’s was pretty calm, except for my silent weeping as I located the pharmacy aisle and found the medicine we needed. That woman’s face kept floating back into my mind and a fresh batch of tears would come, and there is something about crying in public that lends itself to more crying. It’s like trying not to laugh in church…trying to stop only makes it more powerful. When I cry in public I cry harder than ever, because it is just SO SAD that I am so sad I can’t even keep myself under control in the middle of a store. The checkout lady had the good sense not to ask me how my night was going, after looking from the medicine on the counter to my red, puffy face. She just said, “hope it gets better…” and it did, after a dose of tylenol and a peaceful drive home with Edie sleeping in the back, a bottle of wine and a couple of phone calls.
So when I walked out of 7-11 this evening with the same two crumpled dollars we’d walked in with, after Lister denied my request for change because he needs his quarters, I flashed back to the night I couldn’t find medicine in his store and started to feel the same frustration. Then as we walked toward the Chevron station across the street, the tears just came and I couldn’t stop them.
And when Edie saw my tears she got very mothery, saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll get some money,” and “do you need me to give you a hug?” which was sweet and terrible at the same time. I am her mom but sometimes we get mixed up and I find she is leading me by the hand. She is strong and brave and smart and independent, but she is still a child. A child who feels like she has to be in control because there is so much around her that is out of control, and it’s partly on me.
I’ll say it one more time because it’s still true and important: I hope I grow up before Edie does. Let me be the one with quarters to share.
Whoa there Blog. It has been awhile hasn’t it? Edie and I moved into a new place, with no internet access. I think I’ll get some soon though. I really miss writing in this here blog.
Today I rolled around in the tall grass of my mother’s backyard with Edie, trying to make crop circles. It was fun but as soon as I stood up my arms and back started to itch like crazy. Then I broke out in hives and couldn’t stop sneezing. That’s all. I have to go to the store and buy some aloe vera.
How come every time I am at my mom’s house lately, I turn into a petulant tween? There is some thorn in 15 year old Kendal’s side, and she keeps trying to get my parents to pull it out. Settle down there, angry Kendal. You can’t hold MY parents accountable for your problems, you are concentrated in a different moment of time! My parents are now grandparents, and they get to act from a new place of understanding, healing old wounds through interaction with fresh souls who bring them joy and light in exchange for the kind of loving attention only grandparents can bestow. So chill out, angry teenage Kendal. When you get a little bit older, things will shift and the world will not seem so dismal to you. You’ll find out that you have really special things to share and sharing them will make your hurts disappear. But not forever. Those thorns will keep scratching you until you figure out how to stop walking through other people’s rose gardens. And then you will remember that time heals all, but more than that, sleep fixes everything. So go to bed and meet me in the future, when your dreams become my reality and I will not have you complain about the state of things when you get here. Because we got here together, and there is work to be done.
My good friend Andrew made a bunch of mixes for me a while back…and covered them in drawings but not names or titles. I listened to them a lot. They were some darn good mixes. Even now, when my ipod is on shuffle and something amazing comes on, I look at the track info and it is almost always an unidentified track from one of those mixes. I’ve gotten used to only knowing those pieces as part of Andrew’s mixes, and not who or what they are. Once in a while, though, I will stumble across a piece of music and recognize it from one of the mixes. And it always has a greater impact on me, I think, than if he’d just told me what everything was in the first place. I used to think, man, if I could just chase down some of these artists and hear more of their music…and I have squeezed some of the track info out of him (remember that one song with the lush strings and the japanese vocals with the tabla…who was that!?), but now I love having mystery music in my heart.
Heard another mystery song tonight – it was Kronos Quartet, from the Nuevos album. But who and what it was didn’t matter so much as just hearing it in a different context while lights dance in my head.
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