Category: Blogapalooza

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The Writer Who Doesn’t Read

This post is part of ChicagoNow’s monthly Blogapooloza Hour where a writing prompt is given at 9PM and bloggers have one hour to complete a post.  This month’s prompt is:  “Write about something in your life you’ve given up, but that you wish you still did.”

I used to be a reader, but now I’m a writer.  That sentence doesn’t makes any sense, but it’s my truth.  My sad and shameful truth.

A few years ago, wow — it might be ten years now, or even more — I met one of my writing idols at the Printers Row Lit Fest.  Jane Hamilton.  It felt like I was meeting a rock star / celebrity / idol all at once.  She had written some of my favorite novels (The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World among them) and was just so good.  So damn good.

I remember working up the courage to ask a question during the Q and A period after her reading.  I was talking to Jane Hamilton.  Me.  And Her. Talking.  It wasn’t actually a conversation, but, you know, we were communicating.  I made a comment that I wasn’t a writer, but that I was a reader and asked her a question about her process.  Pfft.  Kind of pretentious, but I didn’t care.  She received my question so kindly and remarked that most writers hoped for readers like me.

Afterwards, she signed my copy of The Book of Ruth.  It still sits on my shelf.

Evidence from the not to distant past that I was, in fact, a reader.
Evidence from the not too distant past that I was, in fact, a reader.

Reading was something I was always, always around.  My mother was a voracious reader and worked at the local library.  She literally read a book a day.  Even as a child I was a bit awed by her appetite for books.  My Dad read, too, though less frequently, as he was often trashed from the work day.  His tastes tended towards Irish history, Chicago history, and non-fiction.  Books were valued in our home.  We often took family trips to the library and lingered for a few hours.  I grew up knowing the value of the written word.

Somehow, after my daughter’s cancer, I lost my capacity to read.

I can’t concentrate.  I lose interest.  I feel burdened and overwhelmed by all the words on the pages.  At first, it was books.  Magazines like Vanity Fair and The Atlantic were still in rotation.  Now, even those sit on my bedside table, mocking me while they gather dust.  I am so sick of waking up to Angelina Jolie’s eyes staring at me from across the room every damn morning.  But I refuse to recycle that issue of Vanity Fair because I choose hope.  I choose to believe that someday the ability to read, to escape, to learn from another’s words will come back to me.

The eyes that stare at me, accusingly, every damn morning, "When are you going to actually read me?" Angelina asks, with a smirk in her voice to match the steel of her gaze.
The eyes that stare at me, accusingly, every damn morning, “When are you going to actually read me?” Angelina asks, with a smirk in her voice to match the steel of her gaze.

Do you know what a sham it is to be a writer who doesn’t read?  I feel like a fraud every damn day.

I miss it.  I miss it a lot.

Every six months or so, I pump myself up, head to the Barnes & Noble, and look for the book that will bring me back to the reading fold.  The relationship porn novel that will seduce me and bring me to that place that I neglect my kids because I must keep reading, turning the pages, hungry to learn what happens next.  I want to lose myself in the words.  I want to submit to the knowledge that this book and these characters own me for just a little while.

Yeah, I miss it.

Last month I read a book.  It was good, too, but not so good that I jumped into another one.  Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes.  Solid relationship porn, which always tended to be my favorite genre.  It was recommended by a few Facebook friends after I made the also bi-annual plaintive wail of “I no longer read, but I have the urge, what do you recommend?”  I was raised by Catholic readers, you see, so I feel the need to confess, clearly, my non-reading ways.

Like right now, I am imagining a huge confessional that hold thousands of you, dear readers, behind a metal cutwork screen.  I enter the tiny, tiny room, and I say to you, “Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned.  It has been 27 months since my last book.”

I miss reading.  I hope it comes back to me.  And fuck you, cancer.  Oh, yeah, and fuck you, too, Angelina.

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I Am a Mom

This is part of the ChicagoNow Blog-a-palooza challenge.  Once a month all bloggers are given a writing prompt at 9:00 PM and instructed to write our little hearts out until 10:00 PM when all involved post simultaneously. Here is today’s prompt:

Write about something you learned or experienced since you woke up this morning.

Dammit.  I have not left the house today.  I did manage to change clothes, though, but that was sort of a bonus and not really intended.  I was standing in the downstairs hallway, just outside our laundry room, and realized I had been wearing the exact same clothes since Monday.  Today is Wednesday. That’s over 48 hours in the same fleece and Lands End stretch pants, and yes, underpants.  Ugh.  I stripped naked in the hallway and added them to the mounds of laundry, already separated, just waiting for me to take it to the next laundry level.

What in the hell has happened to me?, I thought to myself, standing naked and shivering in the cold hallway — I’m such a mom cliche.  Like a bad mom cliche.  And then it hit me:  I am a mom.

Whoa.

When in the Sam Hill did that happen?

Well, technically, it started about 8:10 AM on the morning of July 20, 2005, when my oldest child was born.  But that is when I became a mother, not necessarily a mom.

Those are different things, you know.

Today, all day, throughout the day, were these kind of, sort of LOUD announcements that I am a mom.  Standing naked in the pile of laundry was one.  An obvious one.  Doing dishes three times today was another.  Feeling stretched between my crying, hungry baby and my little boy home sick from school with a fever was in there.  Seeing my hair pulled back in a ponytail was one, sure.  Oh, yeah, and there were those piles of Christmas boxes needing to be brought back downstairs and no one to do that but me.

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.  “MOM!  Can you put my juice on a coaster?!”

I honest to goodness never aspired to motherhood.  In fact, I think I was the least maternal woman I knew.  But things change, and so did I.   And now, right now, being a mom is the most important thing I do.  It is a repetitive gig. God love motherhood, but it is mind numbing at times.  The dust and the dishes and the laundry and the bed making.  I about want to scream some days.

But then a baby smiles at me in a way he smiles at no one else.  And I swoon.  And find the strength to wash his bottles and bibs.  Again.  And again.

Today, late in the day, really, the baby was sleeping and my boy was comfortably watching television.  I crept downstairs to tend to that laundry, still in progress.  For the first time in hours (days?) I was alone.  No one in my arms, no one clinging to my neck, no one asking for a snack or art supplies. I took in a full breath and moved the laundry.

Rather than cart the clean laundry upstairs to fold and put away, I opted to fold it downstairs.  It felt luxurious, that folding of laundry all alone.  I clicked on the television and those Real Housewife bitches (who you never see doing any damn laundry — real housewives, my ass) kept me company for the 20 minutes it took to fold the bibs and burp clothes and towels and boxers and super hero t-shirts.  Dare I say, it was relaxing, those twenty minutes of solitude and laundry.

As I made my way up the stairs, I heard a whimpering, a sniffle, a padding of footie pajamas on the hard wood floor.  Is that Mary Tyler Son, I wondered?

It was.  And he was scared and crying and looking, suddenly, not much bigger than his three month old brother.

“Mom, where were you?  I was worried,” and then another round of fresh tears burst out.

The poor honey.  I dropped the laundry, scooped up the boy and cradled him in my arms just like I would the baby.  You don’t really get the chance to cradle four year olds much anymore.  I soothed him and assured him and apologized profusely.

“Mommy’s here, pie.  Mommy’s here, sweet pea.  Mommy’s always here.  I will never leave you.”

I am a mom, a MOM, dammit, and these little people need me, rely on me, worry to the point of tears when they don’t know where I am and think I have left them all alone on a cold winter’s day.

That is some serious stuff, my friends.

So today I learned, that I am a mom.  And I have the kids and laundry and dishes and dust to prove it.  I am a mom.  That makes me one damn lucky lady, laundry and all.

Laundry

 

 

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Figuring It Out

This post is part of the ChicagoNow monthly collective “blogapalooza” wherein one topic is presented at 9 p.m. and bloggers are afforded one hour to write their little blogger hearts out, publishing whatever they have by 10 p.m. Today’s topic:

Write about a great challenge faced by you, by someone else, by an entity, at any point in the past or in the future.

Eleven weeks ago today I stood in a labor and delivery room and watched another woman birth her child, who is now my child.  What kind of riddle is this?, you ask.  This is no riddle, my friend, this is adoption.

Rewind to four months earlier.  A bright young woman connected with my husband and I through our aptly named Facebook page, “Sheila and Jeremy Want to Adopt.”  She was pregnant, already mothering, and in no position (her words, not ours) to raise another child.  We talked.  We communicated.  We connected.  A few days later we learned that we were the ones — the family she wanted to raise her child.

I still, when I stop to think about it, have trouble wrapping my brain around this.

Caring for a baby comes easily to me.  The fact that this child and I do not share DNA or deep genetic codes appears to have had no ill effect whatsoever on my maternal bonding.  There is something about this stage in life that is supremely primitive.  A baby’s needs are simple and consuming:  food, warmth, shelter, protection, love.  I stare into my baby’s deep blue eyes and the uterus he grew in, the sperm that fertilized the egg, seem not so important.

Except they are.  They are very important and always will be.

Our son will always have two mothers and two fathers.  We can slice and dice it ten ways to Sunday, but this basic truth will never change.  Somehow, someway, circumstances led to one man and one woman conceiving and birthing this baby and one man and one woman parenting and providing for this baby, our baby.

I remember so clearly standing in front of a crowd of hundreds at our daughter’s memorial service eulogizing the life of my oldest child.  My parting words to these hundreds of folks was the assurance that we, my husband and I, would “figure it out,” somehow and someway.  We were charged, for better or worse, with the task of figuring out how to live a life moving forward that would no longer involve the day-to-day care of our child.

The parallels between our loss and the loss of our son’s Birth Mother do not escape me.  She, too, is charged with the call to “figure it out,” and move forward in her life that will not include the day-to-day care of her child.  There is tremendous loss attached to adoption, as well as tremendous joy and hope.

Our grief and comfort with our grief was something that our son’s Birth Mother was attracted to as she carefully vetted couples to raise the child growing inside her.  She clearly told us that she believed our own experience with great loss would help us understand and empathize with her own impending loss.  We agreed.  It’s true, you see.  Experiencing deep loss, like that of a child, is a life altering experience.  It hardens you, it softens you.  You evolve by accommodating the loss, or you don’t.  If you don’t evolve, if you don’t accept the loss, you stagnate.  That is no kind of life to have, most especially if you are parenting.

So here we are, eleven weeks in to our child’s life.  He smiles at us, he eats like a farmer after harvest, he relies on us for everything.  We change him, soothe him, bathe him, love him.  We are blessed.  To know this particular joy again, of infancy and firsts, well, I have no words.  I am a lucky freaking lady.

But our son’s story started before those first bottles and first diapers and first smiles.  His story started in a state we had never even visited.  He’s been places, our boy, literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.  When we adopted him, we entered a sacred pact with his Birth Mom — one, I believe, that is even more sacred than marriage.  There is no divorce with adoption, no do overs, no “starter” childhoods.

We have committed our lives to this child, just as we have to our two others before.  And the trust that our son’s Birth Mom has placed in us?  Well, I have no words.  That level of trust is beyond words for me.  At least right now.  Maybe someday they will come to me.  In the meantime, I will change a diaper and wipe a nose and fold a onesie and warm a bottle and tickle a foot and buckle a car seat and love and love and love and love.

adoption