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Jul. 9th, 2008 01:33 amI've been reading this book, American Daughter: Discovering my Mother, by Elizabeth Kendall, and it's been disturbing me, angering me, making me cry...it's very readable, very well written, by what could be a grown version of Ananda; an adult who looks back on how she pretended to believe in her mother's God, did what she thought her mother wanted her to do in general while feeling trapped into it by a lot of unspoken convention. The author talks about how she was lost in "the flood of babies" and wonders why her mother would want to turn a tidy pair of two children into "an unruly mob of five", and describes in a deadpan way the hospital emergencies surrounding the births. She recalls being the chubbiest one in a leotard at ballet class. There are a lot of differences, too, Grant and I really love each other and he's an involved father, which is not how it was for this woman, and this is certainly a different time and place but ...I don't know. The author was a quiet, observant, pinched and complex sort of child that really just feels so much like my oldest child does, never just *doing*, not knowing how to exist in the moment. And the mother dies, when she's 23. That's not a spoiler: it's plainly stated in the first chapter of the book and on the back cover. But still I just got to it chronologically within the story, near the end, and that's where the crying came in. My mother has a 50% blockage in her cerebral artery, she's had at least one small stroke and at least one TIA (temporary ischemic attack), I'm not ready for her to die. I'm not ready to die and leave my children, not at all, no Sir. I wasn't ready last fall and I will never be. Mothers dying at all...it's a little too close for me to deal with right now. I've been bonding with my mother in law, who had a minor heart attack in January, and has a similar blockage to my mother's, but with Teresa it's in the heart rather than the brain. Our mothers (Grant's and mine) are in their forties. They both still have THEIR mothers. People need their mothers. I wish I could read the memoir my oldest daughter would write in the future, about now. I wish I could know what's in her intense, frustratingly inarticulate head. The author of this book spends decades numb, dreaming of her mother, feeling homeless and lost, and it makes every page I turn have this terrible, terrible weight that somehow frightens me senseless.
This author, Elizabeth Kendall, is also acutely aware as a college student at Harvard in the 60s of how some women were choosing to write rather than to get married, and how some poets of the past had described marriage as a prison that held women back, and she wonders how held back her own mother was, and what she is going to do, herself. Frequently I feel nothing but ecstatic gratitude about my own marriage. And my children. Other times I feel very trapped in chosen, loved circumstances that nevertheless keep me from being able to do things I want to do that have nothing to do with my family. It's a paradox that gives me a horrible headache, to know simultaneously that there is no room for me in my own life, and that I wouldn't change anything that makes it that way. Some of the bonding with my mother in law has had to do with her talking to me about the 2 or 3 years she got to spend at home with Grant, when he was born, and how special they were for her. It's very clear listening to her that she thinks of it as an idyllic time, possibly the best time of her life. Even though she cried and yelled to her husband, "How are people supposed to live like this?!" over the sleep deprivation and lack of adult companionship. And I understand. And she reminds me to be grateful, for so many hugs, for lying on the carpet with Isaac talking about what Heaven would be like.
Dinner tonight was awesome: I made risotto, steamed brocoli, sliced tomatoes, a big pan of bite sized chicken pieces and sliced mushrooms in olive oil with seasoned salt, and some from-a-frozen-bag whole wheat rolls with smart balance and honey. We also had a jug of icy cold Welche's White Grape Pomegranate juice to go with it (so good).
Food in general is still really out of control with me, and I'm horrified by my weight, and really eager to devote some therapy time to that. My next appointment is Thursday, a regular one hour one since Grant won't be here and Laura is babysitting. It's like I seem to be doing well, with this whole ptsd thing, but that's within the context of eating almost constantly, often when I'm very uncomfortably full and/or wishing very much that I could stop eating. I'm also shoppingvictoriously extravagantly, collecting every piece of Paul Cardew's Alice in Wonderland collection bit by bit on eBay as the auctions come and go. So I'm not sure how a day would go with those coping mechanisms removed, and am not sure I'm interested in experimenting to find out.
I bought some zinnias for the new house that are deeply satisfying me. I'm going to have to get a whole lot more of them, and more soil, and more of the little flowers I don't know the name of to go in between them and fill the space, but so far I've got 6 of them, with spacers in between, all in a row of cleared land filled with rich black dirt. We're going back tomorrow to do more, while Grant is working. Ananda and Aaron can carry bags of soil if they work together, and they're good at pulling up weeds and moving rocks while I shovel away old mulch and more rocks, and then Jake loves to put the seedlings down in the little holes we make. Elise trying to pick everything is the only obstacle, and that's easy enough to get around...my fingernails are going to be outlined black for a long time, I think. We're lining the whole deck with them, outside, and that's a lot of zinnias.
I really love the way the house is coming together. It makes me happy just to be there. Aside from the zinnias, it's also extremely satisfying to organize the library. I keep thinking of Dama and wishing she was there to see; kids' chapter books here, story books here, collections of stories or poems here, then Christian books there, neurology on this shelf, new fiction by the door, cookbooks near the kitchen - I think all the time about this possible Johnson Family Florida vacation bringing her to my library.
I've ALWAYS wanted to have a library in my house. And at this point, as ridicuously spoiled as this sounds, we really kind of need one: I keep taking over laundry baskets and drawers filled with books, and then bringing them back to refill: more and more and more of them from kitchen cabinets (cooking) and the dining room (educational) and just EVERYWHERE, and I keep having the feeling that I'm just denting it. Grant has at least 10 books on CHESS from years ago, for crying out loud.
I spent an hour or more at a local shop earlier today: The Paradise Tree. Custom framing place with some art for sale. I told the owner, who helped me, that Grant used to be a member of the Homestead Art Club and had been a part of a gallery showing there in the store that they did, and then he wanted to know who I was and other ways we surely knew each other. This is a small town, it's like that old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. We came up with:
-He had a studio at ArtSouth when I was going there often
-He was fairly close friends with Memo for a year or more in between times I was close to Memo
-Both of us know Alex, and Melissa and Sara
-My mother in law puts his ads in the Newsleader
-both of us wonder if the artist with the last name Vallejo with things for sale in his store is related to the artist with the last name Vallejo who's paintings we've seen at ArtSouth
-we both do all of our book purchasing through Spellbound Books
Other than all that, yeah, total strangers.
I also learned a lot about the care and keeping of oil paintings, types of matts and how incredibly expensive custom framing is. I mean, damn. We laughed and joked about haggling with the prices. It was really good to be out by myself having an adult conversation in an interesting place. I really want to go back and buy this one original thing A LOT, but it's so much, and we're still deciding on a lender and amount for the Home Equity Loan, and at some point we have to stop spending money on everything in the world...right? It's really easy for me to justify supporting a local artist to have original art in my new house, though. I told him I might be back.
( I'm back to this old Robbie tug-o-war inside myself, that I used to deal with all the time )
This author, Elizabeth Kendall, is also acutely aware as a college student at Harvard in the 60s of how some women were choosing to write rather than to get married, and how some poets of the past had described marriage as a prison that held women back, and she wonders how held back her own mother was, and what she is going to do, herself. Frequently I feel nothing but ecstatic gratitude about my own marriage. And my children. Other times I feel very trapped in chosen, loved circumstances that nevertheless keep me from being able to do things I want to do that have nothing to do with my family. It's a paradox that gives me a horrible headache, to know simultaneously that there is no room for me in my own life, and that I wouldn't change anything that makes it that way. Some of the bonding with my mother in law has had to do with her talking to me about the 2 or 3 years she got to spend at home with Grant, when he was born, and how special they were for her. It's very clear listening to her that she thinks of it as an idyllic time, possibly the best time of her life. Even though she cried and yelled to her husband, "How are people supposed to live like this?!" over the sleep deprivation and lack of adult companionship. And I understand. And she reminds me to be grateful, for so many hugs, for lying on the carpet with Isaac talking about what Heaven would be like.
Dinner tonight was awesome: I made risotto, steamed brocoli, sliced tomatoes, a big pan of bite sized chicken pieces and sliced mushrooms in olive oil with seasoned salt, and some from-a-frozen-bag whole wheat rolls with smart balance and honey. We also had a jug of icy cold Welche's White Grape Pomegranate juice to go with it (so good).
Food in general is still really out of control with me, and I'm horrified by my weight, and really eager to devote some therapy time to that. My next appointment is Thursday, a regular one hour one since Grant won't be here and Laura is babysitting. It's like I seem to be doing well, with this whole ptsd thing, but that's within the context of eating almost constantly, often when I'm very uncomfortably full and/or wishing very much that I could stop eating. I'm also shopping
I bought some zinnias for the new house that are deeply satisfying me. I'm going to have to get a whole lot more of them, and more soil, and more of the little flowers I don't know the name of to go in between them and fill the space, but so far I've got 6 of them, with spacers in between, all in a row of cleared land filled with rich black dirt. We're going back tomorrow to do more, while Grant is working. Ananda and Aaron can carry bags of soil if they work together, and they're good at pulling up weeds and moving rocks while I shovel away old mulch and more rocks, and then Jake loves to put the seedlings down in the little holes we make. Elise trying to pick everything is the only obstacle, and that's easy enough to get around...my fingernails are going to be outlined black for a long time, I think. We're lining the whole deck with them, outside, and that's a lot of zinnias.
I really love the way the house is coming together. It makes me happy just to be there. Aside from the zinnias, it's also extremely satisfying to organize the library. I keep thinking of Dama and wishing she was there to see; kids' chapter books here, story books here, collections of stories or poems here, then Christian books there, neurology on this shelf, new fiction by the door, cookbooks near the kitchen - I think all the time about this possible Johnson Family Florida vacation bringing her to my library.
I've ALWAYS wanted to have a library in my house. And at this point, as ridicuously spoiled as this sounds, we really kind of need one: I keep taking over laundry baskets and drawers filled with books, and then bringing them back to refill: more and more and more of them from kitchen cabinets (cooking) and the dining room (educational) and just EVERYWHERE, and I keep having the feeling that I'm just denting it. Grant has at least 10 books on CHESS from years ago, for crying out loud.
I spent an hour or more at a local shop earlier today: The Paradise Tree. Custom framing place with some art for sale. I told the owner, who helped me, that Grant used to be a member of the Homestead Art Club and had been a part of a gallery showing there in the store that they did, and then he wanted to know who I was and other ways we surely knew each other. This is a small town, it's like that old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. We came up with:
-He had a studio at ArtSouth when I was going there often
-He was fairly close friends with Memo for a year or more in between times I was close to Memo
-Both of us know Alex, and Melissa and Sara
-My mother in law puts his ads in the Newsleader
-both of us wonder if the artist with the last name Vallejo with things for sale in his store is related to the artist with the last name Vallejo who's paintings we've seen at ArtSouth
-we both do all of our book purchasing through Spellbound Books
Other than all that, yeah, total strangers.
I also learned a lot about the care and keeping of oil paintings, types of matts and how incredibly expensive custom framing is. I mean, damn. We laughed and joked about haggling with the prices. It was really good to be out by myself having an adult conversation in an interesting place. I really want to go back and buy this one original thing A LOT, but it's so much, and we're still deciding on a lender and amount for the Home Equity Loan, and at some point we have to stop spending money on everything in the world...right? It's really easy for me to justify supporting a local artist to have original art in my new house, though. I told him I might be back.
( I'm back to this old Robbie tug-o-war inside myself, that I used to deal with all the time )
