if you could take a gander into the recesses of my brain these days, you would see something like this:

yes, this is my kitchen. yes, that is a floaty. yes, it’s january. that about sums it up.

the disarray that once marked only my physical world has elbowed its way into my head. i find myself in awe of mothers who are still able to form and share coherent, insightful ideas. when i rummage around underneath the bibs and soccer trophies from two years ago, all i can come up with is a long-winded, ever-growing, increasingly hostile, feminist rant.

i see friends in restaurants and get random emails from folks who are wondering what happened to my regular posts. i tell them about the not-so-nice rant that i am not-so-eager to share. they all tell me to share it. “your blog is all about honesty, they say.” “aren’t you the one who preaches that it’s our generation’s job to tell the truth?”

yes. dammit.

it’s just that i fear that my writing skills aren’t sophisticated enough to temper and organize the fire that could be unleashed on the internet of all places. for example, this is just a small portion of the mess that has exploded into my thoughts.

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observation: a husband arriving home from work with eleven grocery items in tow should not be mistaken for jesus christ.

if you are at my house when this happens, there is no need to make a fuss about this display of ordinary responsibility. it is true that grocery shopping has traditionally been “woman’s work,” and i am thrilled to have a progressive husband. but nobody falls all over themselves when i go to my part time job outside of the home, which greatly resembles what has traditionally been called “man’s work.”

furthermore, when i carry on with all of my work, both inside the home and outside the home, i do so with the constant feeling that i am falling short. there are always mountains of laundry on the couch in my bedroom. there are always dirty dishes in the sink. there are always deeper relationships to forge with the college students i encounter at work. my part-time ministry, though it is gaining momentum, looks meager next to the full-time ministries happening all around me.

my progressive husband (who really is a good one!) experiences the opposite phenomenon. he’s good at his job, and he is able to dedicate the proper time and energy to it. he’s involved in the kids’ lives, and he even folds laundry. in all of his work, inside and outside the home, he blows the expectations out of the water. in fact, he walks on water, some would say.

the problem is not that other wives elevate my spouse to divine status. rather, the issue is that in the south, where i live, the sight of a dad pushing a grocery cart is (apparently) still a shocking display. women working outside of the home? that’s ordinary. but men folding laundry? what a miracle!

and here is my profound conclusion, folks. are you ready for it? okay. here it comes: THIS IS NOT FAIR.

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end of rant #1. more to come. consider yourself warned.

p.s. you’re welcome, anna.

i used to wonder why middle school girls are so mean to each other. why the seismic shift of affections, the dramatic purchasing and demolishing of “best friend” necklaces, the endless note-passing and back-stabbing, and the constant labeling and striving for that which is popular?

yesterday, as my children were wailing (again) at the prospect of spending time with me while their daddy went out for a jog, it hit me: middle school misery is part of the preparation-for-motherhood process. only such a colossal test of self-esteem could come close to readying a gal for the sucker punch that comes when, apropos to nothing, she falls out of favor with her children.

when “the daddy phase” began a few months ago and my children began approximating time spent with me to sharing a cage with a hideous monster, i remained strong. i returned their unhappy scowls with hugs and kisses. when the monkey set aside an entire day to cry about the misfortune that his preferred parent has a full-time job, i remained calm. when i returned home from a two-day vacation last week to the monkey’s disappointment that “i didn’t stay away longer,” i made myself ignore these words. but yesterday’s pathetic chorus of daddy-wanting hysterics was just too much. if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. i starting crying myself.

so here i am, 34 going on 13, dissecting the anatomy of the popular parent. from my non-randomized qualitative study of one, i can conclude that popular parents are not preoccupied with cooking, cleaning, folding, and typing. popular parents are fun! they are like cruise directors, shuffling two kids to four fabulous locations all in the time that it would take me to locate and cram on the necessary shoes. never mind that popular parents just grab the first ill fitting shoes they see. everyone is having the time of their lives!

the next thing i know, i am also studying the anatomy of the unpopular parent by way of yet another non-randomized qualitative study of one. at its best, this “research” leads me to the conclusion that unpopular parents are simply not fun. at its worst, it is a bit like what anne lamott calls KFKD radio:

“out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on” (bird by bird).

i made it through  middle school in one piece. surely i can keep myself intact in the face of a couple of preschool boys. step one: find a new radio station.

until six weeks ago, the monkey was a strict observer of naptime. to say that he was an “observer” of nap time is to say that he spent two hours per day holed up in his room. sometimes he slept, but most of the time he invented games for himself to play within his four walls.

for example, it was not uncommon for me to open his door after naptime to find a “puzzle piece room,” a carefully created state of affairs wherein the entire floor was covered in adjacent blankets, er, i mean “puzzle pieces.” other days were “sorting days,” and the monkey would spend the two hours organizing and cataloging his stuffed animals, game pieces, markers, and books. still other afternoons were spent “reading.” once, i walked in on this scene:

but times are different now. i gave in to the monkey’s complaints that he was bored in his room, and now, while his brother sleeps, he does things that require much less imagination (many of which involve the television and/or the wii). perhaps this is because i have not made the shift away from cooking dinner, folding laundry, and catching up on work between the hours of two o’clock and four o’clock. or perhaps it is because the monkey and i are both drawn to what is easier. for him, making a puzzle piece room takes more effort than wii bowling. and for me, extracting him from the tv takes more effort than cooking dinner in peace.

the problem with this scenario is that i don’t want to deprive the monkey of the gift of boredom. catherine newman, author of an essay entitled bored again, which appeared in the fall 2010 issue of brainchild magazine, defines boredom as “that agitated space between relaxation and action: dialed down, it can become a pleasant kind of inertia or a meditative stillness, where it feels good to sit quietly with your own thoughts; cranked up a notch, it can produce creative release.” newman goes on to write,

“i’m not trying to sound like one of those crafty-mama blogs that makes you want to kill yourself, the kind you bookmark one day because you think that putting out a wooden bowl of felt gnomes sounds like a good idea… and yet. you do have to learn boredom, learn to live with it, to manage it with the power of your own mind, without recourse to video games or bungee jumping or sniffing glue or starting a nuclear war or date raping your roommate’s girlfriend. the most dangerous people we know are the least able to sit still, to be inside an absence of motion.”

i definitely don’t want the monkey to become “a dangerous person,” but that’s not my main attraction to boredom. i simply think that boredom facilitates creativity and imagination, and these things are what ultimately make life beautiful.

our family spends significant periods of time away from our memphis routines and addictions to technology. our family camp weekends and julys in the north carolina mountains are hopefully deterrents from future glue-sniffing tendencies. but building boredom into our daily memphis routine, one that must also include my own significant accomplishments on the home and work fronts, is becoming increasingly difficult.

is there any way to give the monkey the gift of boredom (and creativity and imagination and beauty) without forcing him to play with a wooden bowl of felt gnomes?

first grade, for me, was when the curriculum ceased to be play-based. the active life of preschool and kindergarten, with all of its hiding and seeking and cooking and dancing, became fodder for my daydreams as i plugged away at my little wooden first grade desk at what was unabashedly called “seatwork.” i resisted this stationary kind of learning so much that i almost failed the first grade, but in the face of at least eleven more years of school, i learned to expand my knowledge within the confines of the system. unknowingly, i separated the parts of me that were once beautifully integrated in childhood: mental and physical exercise. there were spelling tests and there was recess. there was long division, and there was sports practice. there was contemporary theology and there was jogging. as i was being created into a contributing member of society, there was evening, and there was morning for approximately 4,140 days.

as i was riding my bicycle on the greenline yesterday with the bird in tow, i lapsed into the guilty reflection that is common to upper middle class mothers. i calculated how many days i have spent formally acquiring knowledge in educational settings, and i came up with the above number. then i commenced to worry that “my brain is turning to mush.” i thought of my diplomas that are not framed in an office but are still tucked away in their little black folders between photo albums of my kids’ first years and behind a colorful butcher paper masterpiece that the monkey created at school. i thought of the staggering amount of guilt that is experienced as women like me, who have spent the majority of our lives doing “seatwork,” are plunged into the unfamiliar world of mothering, where equations and essays are irrelevant. i started plotting my next vocational move once the kids are in school, work that would justify my masters degree and present a reason to frame those diplomas. and then i remembered another stark contrast between life in educational systems and life as a mostly stay-at-home-mom: the former is future-oriented by design. the latter can only be fully embraced by living in the present.

i went on like this for an hour — enough time for the bird and me to ride to shelby farms and back into town. i reflected on the way that my life now involves so much physical activity — schlepping kids, groceries, and laundry, pushing the steam mop, averting disasters, rushing to disentangle the climbing bird from all manor of hanging garage tools. the seatwork smarty pants in me unleashed more judgement. “what a waste,” she said.

and then, miraculously, i remembered who i was in the first place, before the confines of first grade hit, before i spent 4,140 days compartmentalizing mental and physical excercise. i am someone who loves a play-based curriculum and an integrated life. and that is precisely what i’ve got right now.

so as the bird and i finished up our bike ride and went on to schlepp the week’s groceries, i laid the guilt to rest. perhaps mothering young children is a chance to return to a more natural state of being, a time to collect all of the scattered parts of me and put them back together.

it finally happened. all of the deadlines that i set for myself to protect me from THE DEADLINE came and went. i left the house sunday morning with barely enough time to get to the church. a trail of index cards and commentaries followed. i would have to finish the sermon (sure to be my all time worst) in the car.

andy drove while i scribbled illegible notes and envisioned myself lost in translation as i cowered behind the pulpit. concentration was elusive as i began to remember, in great detail, the host of things i had forgotten: the scripture reading, shoes, my robe… PANTS! 

andy was on the cell phone attempting to borrow a robe from a colleague when he made the snap decision to take an off-road shortcut. a rocky embankment prohibited us from driving the rest of the way, so the two of us scaled the jagged surface (leaving yet another trail of index cards and commentaries). i had picked the wrong day to go barefoot but if we hurried, there would still time be to make it for my part.

a scary yard dawg and a nagging home owner with a “no tresspassing policy” sent the two of us and my dwindling preaching paraphanalia back to the car, where we peeled out, backtracked, drove slowly through traffic toward the church, and tuned in to the service broadcast on AM radio station 600.

who knew that unspoken anxiety and anger could be transmitted over radio waves? andy and i listened as the congregation organized an impromptu hymn sing while they waited for me. we were stopped at a broken red light. i realized i still had on my pajama top. i had forgotten to brush my teeth.

and then i did what i should have done in the very beginning. i forced myself to wake up. i told the whole dream that it could take its flying index cards and commentaries and board a plane to timbuktu. i packaged up my anxieties over the forgotten robe, shoes, and scripture reading, along with that nagging neighbor and her yard dawg, and i shoved them all off of the rocky embankment.

but as i lay awake in bed, i could not seem to tune out the sounds of AM radio station 600, which was taking a break from regularly scheduled nightmares for a little public service announcement:

the “transportation parade” at the monkey’s school would be taking place in less than five hours. “have you decorated your son’s big wheel?” the announcer chided.

no. clearly i hadn’t decorated the damn big wheel. many thanks to my subconscious for pointing out the error of my ways. and what does it say about me that i just had a full-blown anxiety nightmare over a four-year-old’s school transportation parade?   

now… does anybody know where i can get balloons and streamers at 6:12 in the morning?

my family has been vacationing in the same condominiums since before i was born, and among other amenities, the lost and found at this place has the BEST stuff!

my dad used to take us “shopping” in there for snorkeling equipment, various pool floats, and the occasional well-worn souvenir t-shirt from a crawfish boil in louisiana or a frat party at ole miss. we just never knew what we would find.

a few nights ago, while i was cooking dinner, i heard the bird trot off toward the door of the condo. i felt no need to chase him, since the door was closed, and i went about my business slicing a pear. after a couple of minutes, i asked the monkey if he had seen the bird, which, it turns out, he had not. so, the two of us stepped outside of our OPEN condo door (oops) and into the third story hallway just in time to greet the bird, happily situated in the arms of a teen-aged girl, with whom we were not yet acquainted.

“is this your child?” she asked.

“yes…” i answered, sheepishly.

she handed him over, and that was that.

the lost and found at this place has always had the BEST stuff!

it happened again yesterday.

i left the children in my husband’s care in the middle of the afternoon, feeling grateful for the flexible nature of his job, as i made my way to my cousin’s high school graduation. if i’m totally honest, i must admit that i was also celebrating that he would get to experience what i affectionately call, “monday night madness.” this is the term i have given to the weekly fight i have with my children as i wake them from their afternoon naps, clothe them, load them into the car for music class (which they love), try to keep them from mistaking the instruments for  cuisine (the bird) and bludgeons (the monkey), extract them from post-class playground time, and arrive home to cook dinner during the “witching hour,” while we wait for daddy to return. 

though i was excited to pass these responsibilities to my husband this week, i was more thrilled with the notion that he might get to see how difficult my job is at times. i dreamed up a scenario in which i would come home to my children, who would be swarming around the couch containing their exhausted daddy. my husband would pull a rag from his shirt pocket, wipe his sweaty brow, shake his head, and say, “mary allison, i simply don’t know how you do this every week!” i would respond humbly, of course, like those citizens on television who have just saved another person’s life. “i guess i’m just in the right place at the right time,” i would say.

this, of course, was not the scene i found when i arrived at home. the laundry was finished, dinner was in the oven, the kitchen was spotless, the kids were clothed and happy, and the transition from naptime to music class had reportedly gone smoothly. my husband made me a cocktail, and i drank it, along with a sea of jealous self-doubt. how does he make my job seem so easy? clearly, he is a superhero, and i am a whiner.

don’t get me wrong. i realize that any problem where the system breakdown includes a spotless kitchen, clean clothes, and a warm supper, is a good problem to have. i also realize that my poor husband, who does such things in order to make me happy, cannot win! 

lesson learned: i cannot depend on someone else’s failures to make me feel like a success. this rule applies especially to my beloved husband, who really does make most struggles seem like a piece of cake.

[side note: music for aardvarks is a favorite activity for my children, so much so that it is worth interrupting the children’s sleep! without it, “monday night madness” would turn to “monday night pandemonium,” a level orange alert that must be avoided whenever possible.]

guess where i’ve been six out of the last twelve days?

• a) to an urban spa
• b) to yoga class
• c) to our city’s new anthropologie (did i mention that i like that store?)
• d) to the pediatrician’s office

sadly, the answer is d.

reasons inc lude:

• the monkey has sinus problems
• the monkey has a double ear infection
• the bird has a double ear infection
• the bird needs an ear re-check

and now on to my personal failure as a mother…

during a well-earned time-out for the monkey, i opened the bathroom door (yes, the bathroom door. the monkey’s upstairs room is just too long of a haul with a kicking, screaming child) because he was pounding it with his fists. i simply asked him to stop all of this pounding and closed the door. on his pinky finger.

the finger looked broken, and the monkey was hysterical for an hour. my car practically drove itself to the familiar destination, where our doctor looked upon us with pity and said, “wow. i feel like we’re really getting to know each other!”

the finger isn’t broken, so after the doc “buddy taped” the pinky to the forth finger, we were free to go and live our lives in (hopefully) less dramatic, better behaved, and more careful fashion.

i’ve not yet completely processed the whole episode but i did notice two things during my own personal motherhood hell. first, as soon as the injury happened, my head was flooded with this message: “don’t fall into the black hole of guilt. that will not help anyone.” i also observed that even the slightest little joke about my role in this injury would have sent me over the edge. but the doctor was very compassionate toward both the monkey and me. this is just one reason why i love her.

before i had kids, i loved to travel. i delighted in frequent flyer miles. now i’m a frequent flyer at laurelwood pediatrics. shouldn’t i get some sort of a prize? free clarithromycin?