Tracks to Clementine

28 Years Later

In which I decide my spectrum of crazy is consistent. To whit:

I was going on a little neighborhood walk with the babe-o-ling and was guided across one street by an adult crossing guard (for the school my daughter will one day attend should we still live in the same apartment five years from now). As we crossed, the guard said "there you go, hon!"

Okay, so, like, I don't think the crossing guard lady was in actuality all that much older than I, but I took her "hon" to mean that she thought that I was much younger, perhaps young enough that maybe I was the baby's nanny and not her mother.

I KNOW. Ridiculous. Because no matter how young I might look to anybody I certainly look plenty old enough to be the mother of a nine-week-old.

Set the way-back machine to spring of 1980 when I was eight-years-old and had recently read Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. I remember sitting in church holding my baby brother on my lap and wondering if anyone would think that he was my kid. Y'know because there were babies having babies! (Nevermind that I didn't get my period until I was almost sixteen or how pissed off my mother was that I learned about menstruation initially from reading said Judy Blume.)

There was no flippin' way that anyone would have ever thought that I was my brother's mother. I'm pretty sure the same flippin' way exists in regards to being thought of as the nanny of my daughter.

It's not that I really care one way or the other what other people think--you gotta have some story to tell at the dinner table--but here I am again trying to figure out what my place is in a world of gender roles and stereotypes. And you all know I gotta be me.

It's not about age either. I like how old I am, the life I'm living, and the grey hairs that come with it. It's just more of that Stay at Home Mom jive...or maybe a new version of the "when is a door not a door?" riddle.

It's occupying my brain so much more than I ever realized it would. I'm not raging against any kind of machine (although I imagine some dinner tables may speculate that as Small Girl has my last name), it's more of a devil in the details sort of thing. Overall, I like it. It makes for a good break from being all art, art, art all of the time.

And I suspect it'll bring me closer to those who are Not Me while still allowing me to be Me.

Fly Away Home!

I've discovered something that I never thought would creep me out but absolutely is giving me the steadily increasing creeps.

Nope, nothing baby related nor roofing related...it's LADYBUGS!

They mostly congregate in our bathroom--today I found five of them plus three dead ones--but also enjoy spending time in our kitchen and bedroom (one fell off of the ceiling into the kid's co-sleeper today; awesome).

When we first moved in we spotted them and I remembered hearing a story on NPR a few years ago about how ladybugs like high-up places (some people call these "tall buildings") and we're on the fourth floor so I was all "Hey, cool, look at the cute ladybugs! Science in action!" Five months later I am more, shall we say, skeeved out by the little dotted creatures and am delighted to have read that they should leave when it is warm out.

Because, eww. They might be pretty, but they're still bugs. Bugs dying in my house. Bugs dying in my house and falling onto places where my daughter sleeps.

Stay at Home What?

I've decided that Stay at Home Mom (or SAHM if you like acronyms) is not a very good description of me.

...and I also think that means that the term has been sullied by our oh-so-loaded culture.

Anyway, the other day I was all "wow, this is great, all this time...maybe I should learn to play the clarinet!"

And then I came to my senses. Not my senses as in it takes a bunch of time to take care of the sweethead kid (which it does, but not in an unreasonable way), nor that it currently takes me one million years to complete household tasks, but my senses as in I have enough half-finished projects going on already upon which I could, say, brush up. I haven't picked up any brushes on any of them, but I have learned to sing some new songs, including one with the lyric "every time the baby cries, stick my finger in the baby's eyes."

Yes, that is the kind of mother I am.

I'm also the kind of mother who finds it relaxing to be able to focus on one baby instead of nine million classes full of other people's children. This still isn't a true sabbatical, but it sure feels like it. The burn out of years past is finally gone. There's a little phoenix egg waiting to hatch in its ashes. I don't know exactly what will come of it, but I do know that I'm reveling in beginning to think about how my artistic and professional life can and will be retooled now that I've been granted the time to figure it out via my sweet daughter (and I suppose my working husband of a Yellow Dog).

Speaking of that sweet daughter, she's quite a wonder, just as she should be. She gazes with interest at the world around her, makes all sorts of chirping and cooing sounds, grins up a storm, and eats and eats and eats. (And sleeps...she's napping next to me right now.)

I've got more to say, but too many thoughts about what the saying is to put any more down right now. Let's consider this a beginning of things to come, of art continued, of plans percolating.

As proof, here's herself in France with the other herself being an eight-week-old bean-on-the-inside (not that my stomach is pictured for attempted glimpsing...but my face is, so that's got to be proof of some kind of derring-do):