Filed under: family, Life on Life's Terms, Monthly Record, Recovery, Take me home
Dear Disease,
A friend who is an ER doctor says that she prefers her specialty because she always knows exactly what her primary goal is: keep the patient alive. To ease pain, diagnose illness, or dress a wound, that’s important, but it all comes second to her prime directive. Keep the patient alive. The first months out of rehab felt like that to me: stay sober. Everything else was icing, had to be icing, because it took all I had to just address my primary goal: stay sober.
The past month has taken me beyond that one clear goal out into the world of shaping-up-my-act. I’ve gone back to work, had a birthday, navigated off-limits medication, started my spring project, had bad days and some very, very good ones. I’ve started some healthy habits. I’ve measured and recorded and kept track and made lists and other basic things that must have been taught the day I skipped class in People School. We go walking in our neighborhood on Saturday nights, and I have loved it, loved the quiet time with our two unruly hounds and our little girl zipping around on her scooter. I joined a Moms of Preschoolers group. I’ve gone to the movies with a grownup friend and we’ve met friends of Mimi’s at parks for playdates.
It is scary out here, working without a net for the first time. I am no longer in full-fledged crisis, no longer just a patient. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, an employee, a friend, a daughter. Now it is time to apply what I have learned, to claim these identities and to show myself and others what I can do with them. I am learning as I go. It is definitely on-the-job training.
In the last month I’ve had moments as a mom that I wish I could bottle up and keep, and moments I so wish I could live over. I have had moments when I felt like a good wife, and moments when I was keenly aware of my shortcomings as one. I have done some things well and others poorly and in half a year I’ve compiled enough experiences to sift through them and look for patterns. I can start to build on what works and retool what doesn’t. I can ask myself why I hurt someone and can have a reasonable expectation of learning from that and not doing it again. I can mend: I can mend me, and I can attempt to mend damage I have done.
Two strange things just happened. Yesterday, Jon and Mimi and the dogs and I were in a big pile on the living room floor and I suddenly exclaimed: “I love our house!” Jon looked at me as if I’d just announced that I love the Republican party. Since Mimi came home I have done nothing but complain about our too [small, old, hot, cold, etc. etc.] house. Then this morning we were racing around, communicating in short bursts when we passed each other in our various tasks, and I was starting to quiver with anxiety. Jon stopped and asked if I was all right. Stressed, I said. And I have yet another cold. And my shoulder hurts. But I’m happy, I said. I don’t know why, but I am happy. Right here, right this minute, standing here in my kitchen, I FEEL HAPPY.
And for now, that is all I need to know.
Love,
Robin
This morning started like many others, with Mimi sitting straight up in bed an spouting something completely random. Today it was, “Boys don’t wear shirts to swim!” I imagine it comes from careful observation during swim class. As soon as she notes that it is unfair that men have this freedom and American women don’t, we’ll talk.
Within a few minutes, though, the house fills with this: “Booty!” “Butt!” “Bottom!” She dances around her room shouting them like some perversely simple code. We blame it on school, of course, this first foray into the forbidden delights of “bad words.” I am sure that there are larger values at play, probably a healthy dose of debutante training tossed in (AGAIN with the debutante reference. I really do not know what that is about.), but the short answer here is that I just don’t like hearing “booty” or “butt” drop out of that pretty pink rosebud of a mouth.
At least not yet. I do not subscribe to the position that bad language is the hallmark of a limited vocabulary or a lack of imagination. Some of the best cussers I know also have the largest, most florid vocabularies. And I don’t think language belongs to one gender or the other, although I do think that masculinity and femininity are informed by the words we use. And I really really really am not the type to say “the ‘f’ word” or what-have-you. If I want to say “fuck” I’ll say “fuck” and if I’m not comfortable saying it in a given social setting then I won’t say it. I really do hope I’m never in a setting in which I feel compelled to say “fuck” to my daughter, although I’ve heard my own mother drop it once or twice and I admit it achieved an effect.
There’s absolutely no way butt/booty/bottom won’t have a role in the language of our house, as we are still wrestling somewhat with potty training — STILL — and she has a rash that likes to flare up if I forget to put cream on her bottom under her bathing suit. Plus she’s at that developmental place where all parts of the body are equal, which is a delight, yet she’s discovering that there’s something about certain parts of the body that just might make people blanch, which isn’t so delightful. I have been glad to learn that, like most 3-year-olds, she soon tires of that which doesn’t get attention so ignoring is still my best weapon, but somehow this butt/booty/bottom routine has become a Thing. Not a Big Thing, a very Small Thing, but a Thing.
My sister Dawn uses the word “buttocks,” and you cannot convince me that that word can be said consistently without it sounding silly. Especially if you say it like she does: butt-ocks. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that Mimi has not caught onto “ass” yet. That’s a word I don’t like at all, for reasons more related to how it sounds than anything else: like the word “puke” makes me turn green yet its cousin “barf” bounces right off of me. I also don’t like the word “vehicle,” but that’s probably because where I come from it’s always pronounced “ve-hic-le” and accompanied by a wad of chew. Some of my favorite words are “popcorn,” “church,” and ‘muffin,” because they’re just so much fun to say.
Right now my daughter’s favorite word is “booty.” Sigh. She’s made up a song with lyrics like, “Daddies say butt! Mommies say bottom! Boys say booty!” Which leads me to believe she’s already figured out the I-can-say-it-but-not-get-in-trouble-if-it’s-a-quote” defense. Double sigh. An here we go.
Oh, but I love ”third wave feminism.” Unlike the first wave (concerned with things like the right to vote) and the second (Roe v. Wade, Title IX), third-wavers argue for equality in appropriate places, like the workplace, but are not willing to subscribe to a particular view of femininity. What this means for me, and you, really, is that we can stay home to raise our children, work full time, not have children, work part time, not marry… I especially love these sorts of postmodern definitions of things when they create a specific little niche that I can slide right into. To catch you up, our sewer saga continues. The indicted doll, it turns out, was only the catalyst; the real problem is a huge tree root shredding the mainline. It began with a gurgle Thursday afternoon, by Friday night Mimi’s bathwater took two hours to drain, and on Sunday Jon and I had to take turns going to the gym to shower. Oh, hell, in for a penny, in for a pound: I’ve had me period, too. Just thought I’d make extra sure you got a really good sense of my desperation.
