Chicken And Cheese » writing life

Fiercely

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:40:11 +0000

I’m tired, so tired. But she looks at me, crazy quilt pulled up to her chin.

Just one song? Stay for one song, Mama.

I see myself in the kitchen, standing at the laptop, pounding out 300 words of drivel as she twirls around me.

Read to me, Mama?

No.

Sing with me, Mama?

No.

Can we make brownies, Mama?

No.

I’m busy.

I hate that word, Mama.

What word?

Busy.

I see her there in her bed, and I know when she wakes in the morning she will be different. That this moment will be lost. That it cannot be retrieved.

My ambitions are eating me up—my time, my attention, my focus is on the world outside my kitchen window. I peer into the computer screen and see my hopes and dreams there. I see a future made of words and phone calls and successes.

I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want them to remember me tethered to a keyboard. I don’t want them to gently mock me, when they are grown, for being too busy to play with them.

So I get into her bed.

I melt into her, my body relaxing around hers. When did she get so tall? I wasn’t looking. She asks me to rub her head, and so I do.

She sighs, turns her face to mine and fits it underneath my chin. I love you, Mama. Stay with me, Mama.

I miss her. I miss her so much when she is at school. She is the last thought in my head when I finally fall asleep. After all the noise of the day, all of the editors and the business meetings and the legal documents and the contracts.

They fall away, and she is what remains, and she is what I hold into, fiercely.

Career Killer?

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:00:34 +0000

When The Poo was born, our plan was for my mom to watch her when I went back to work.

My first day back in the office was snowy and cold. I sucked in my tummy and zipped up my trousers, pulled on knee socks. I bundled The Poo up in fleece pajamas and a blanket.

We set off on the treacherous roads to my mother’s house. She lived on the lake shore, and as we approached the flurries thickened. The windshield wipers beat a rhythmic chant: go home go home go home.

Still, I pushed on. Turning into the driveway, my tears started and they didn’t stop until the day in April when I filed for a disability leave to deal with my post-partum depression. Leaving my precious girl every day—even with her grandmother—on top of my fresh grief, drove me to the razor’s edge that spring.

I could not stand it. In July, I made peace with that fact and signed my resgination letter with a rueful smile on my face. It was official—I was a stay-at-home mother.

***

These memories came flooding back when I read a post on Becky and Hollee’s blog yesterday morning. They reference an essay by an associate professor at the University of California, who wrestles with the question of whether or not a third child is a “career killer.”

Hollee asked me to pop over and maybe comment, and I couldn’t resist doing so. I could have written a novel over there, so I decided to take the topic up here, instead.

First of all, I think calling a child a career killer says everything about how motherhood is viewed in our society, doesn’t it?

Killer. Think about that powerful word for a minute.

*taps foot*

Now think about your kid.

See? WRONG WORD.

Children do bring change. They bring chaos and filth and imbalance. They bring a frenetic pace. They also bring joy, warmth, love and endless fascination to your day.

I love my children, and I say with confidence that most women like me love theirs, as well. I know many women who have careers they love, but I sincerely doubt that they would ever choose their work over their child if put to the test.

I chose my child over what was then just a job. My career ended four years before her birth, when I left community journalism for markeing in the interest of my personal life and my finances. I could not have a family or a normal relationship—or a positive balance in my checking account—if I continued on that path at that time.

I made a choice before I made a child.

So when the child came and it was so heartwrenching to leave her every day for eight hours of paper-pushing, the decision to abandon my hefty paycheck and soul-sucking day job made sense—it made sense for me.

Having children gave me the courage and yes, the freedom, to pursue my heart’s desire. I revived my writing career right here on this blog, the blog that was inspired mostly by my new motherhood.

My child? She breathed new life into my career.

I know my story isn’t common. Or maybe it is. I do know that if my body would bear it, I would have a third child. My heart fills up at the mere thought of my daughter and my son. When I look up from my laptop and the words dancing on the screen in front of me, I see their faces and I know my life is just as it should be.

Corporate life was a noose around my neck. My girl slipped if off me. She gave me permission to be who I am, inside my heart.

What about you? Did your kids kill your career? What conflicts do you have about motherhood in all it’s forms, WOHM, WAHM, SAHM?

Tell me. I want to know.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:09:03 +0000

Sometimes I forget about my blog.

Sometimes, like when I’m in the lobby of my daughter’s new preschool for open house, I totally forget that I spill my guts (or my bag) to the Interwebz, like the Crazy McCrazerston that I am. How I tell the Interwebz that I have a giant ingrown pubic hair or that I need to take pills for Teh Crazy.

I forget all of that, until a lovely woman (Hi, Jennifer!) shakes my hand and says:

“Hi! I read your blog! I love it! I feel like I know your whole family! This is like meeting a local celebrity!”

And my husband looks at the back of my head like he can make it explode with just the one piercing gaze, and The Poo looks up at me like, “What is this BLOG of which she speaks? BLOOOOOGGGG?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve been outed. Nor, in fact, is it even the first time I’ve been outed at preschool. I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting it at the new preschool. I was kind of hoping to keep it on the down-low, considering all the weird shit I’ve written over the last year.

This isn’t the first time I’ve grappled with post-partum depression, but it is the first time I’ve grappled with post-partum depression while blogging.

After these encounters—and there have been a few—I always feel a little like I left the house in my underpants. First I am embarrassed by the fact that I’ve basically laid my life naked for the world to see.

Then, I realize that what I’ve shared has touched people in some odd way. And that’s why I started writing. Not just writing this blog, but writing anything. Why I wanted to be a journalist.

To touch people, to reach people.

When the night is long and dark, and when I feel the lowest about who I am and how I’ve lived my life, I have this to hold on to: somewhere out there is a person who is feeling just like me, and that person may find the bare, honest posts I’ve written here.

The truth I share might be her truth, too, and she might not feel quite so alone in her pain and her sorrow, or her joy and happiness.

And that’s good enough for me.

Summer Hours

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:33:18 +0000

When I left the workforce to stay home and raise The Poo, I imagined hundreds of days like today, like macaroni strung together on a piece of yarn.

Today I was showered and dressed before The Babyman woke up, and in fact both kids slept late. I, myself did not rise until nearly 7:50 a.m., sunlight falling on my sleepy face just as The Poo wandered into the room, clad in her shorty pajamas.

We cuddled for a few minutes, before heading downstairs. I made her breakfast and hopped in the shower, throwing on a light skirt and a T. The Babyman woke, and I fetched him, watching a slow smile spread over his face as he caught sight of the towel turban covering my wet hair.

He loves the towel turban.

I fed him yogurt and peaches, cleaned him up and set him down to play. We puttered and had a catch while The Poo read her books and used the computer. I left for an appointment, leaving the kids in the care of their dad. On my return, we had lunch, naps, playtime and lots and lots of hugs and kisses.

I also placed an ad for a new sitter, and hired one before the day was out.

As she left, I was struck by sudden remorse. It wasn’t the young lady, she’s perfectly lovely, the kind of caregiver who immediately agreed to a game of Candy Land, even though she only had enough time to take four turns.

No, it wasn’t the sitter.

After the last girl quit a week ago, I tore my hair out trying to arrange time to work. Of course, writing at home with both children—The Poo is out of school—is impossible, and so I didn’t pitch anything for this week.

Instead, I did chores, hosted an impromptu Memorial Day potluck and played with my children.

Let me rephrase that—I enjoyed my children.

I am often distracted by the ping of my email, by the need/desire to comb the Internet looking for story ideas. I keep tabs open for Twitter and Google Reader. I find myself wandering over to the laptop and saying, “just a minute” or “Mommy’s working” when The Poo asks me to read or play.

This week, I set all of that aside. I still managed to find time to write a little and check my feed reader, but it didn’t consume me. And I liked that. A lot.

So we have a new sitter, because I have a new project to work on , as well as the gig that helps keep our ledgers in the black. However, I decided to cut back: she’ll come only six hours a week, instead of 12.

The Poo goes to school five days a week in the fall, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Babyman is growing up before my startled eyes. In a few weeks, we’ll head East for a long-anticipated trip home, and then to Cape Cod for salt air, ice cream and sand in our shoes.

I’ll be keeping summer hours, more mindful than ever that the longest days of the year last for such a very short time, indeed.

A Brief Encounter

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:28:09 +0000

No one read this when I wrote it, back in November 2006. I need some time to think, and I am looking for inspiration. Scary Mommy hosts Flashback Friday, and looking back through my old work might light that spark that seems to be sputtering right now.

***

They had nothing to say to each other.

The conference was over, and they stood in the cold, snowy afternoon not knowing how to say goodbye. He wore a huge, hand-knitted muffler around his neck, ridiculous in northern Virginia.

“Where in God’s name did he get that scarf?” she wondered to herself, longing to kiss him. He had the roguish good looks of a boy who had spent a year backpacking in Nepal.

His father was a diplomat; he’d grown up abroad. They had that in common. One evening he told her a story about how, as a boy, he scaled the walls of his family’s compound in South Africa to explore the countryside on his own. They both liked big dogs, sharing an irrational hatred of the smaller breeds.

Was it possible to fall in love in a week?

She was smitten.

During the wild farewell bash on the last evening of the seminar, she fished a glass bottle of beer out of the ice-filled bathroom sink of a mid-priced hotel room. She looked up and caught him watching her in the mirror as she laughed at someone else’s joke.

Dawn arrived, as dawn does, on cat’s paws. Sleepy revelers made their way one by one to their rooms. They were the last two to go.

He lived nearby, and she rode the elevator with him to the lobby. The doors opened and they hesitated. She stepped out and turned to face him, waiting for an embrace.

“I forgot my coat!” he exclaimed, the doors sliding shut. She waited for him, but he did not reappear.

In the bright, hard light of a winter afternoon, she watched as he silently got into his car and drove away. They never shared a single caress.

Still, the memory lingers.

******

Inspired by a writing prompt: Write 250 words, beginning with the phrase, “They had nothing to say to each other..”

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On the Hunt

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:11:29 +0000

Preschool is almost over for the year, meaning that my work hours are about to be sharply curtailed unless I find a new babysitter.

Our current sitter is about to graduate, so yesterday I placed my twice-yearly add on the job board at the Huge Midwestern University. I asked for Mary Poppins, tongue only halfway in my cheek. The children are so … enthusiastic that they really need a steady hand.

I can’t even prevent them from injuring themselves. Case in point: yesterday, Shaggy bruised his cheek bone and The Poo tried to break her tail bone. I was within inches of both of them when the accidents occurred.

I hate looking for a new sitter. I hate breaking them in to the routines, and I especially hate having to hire a girl for the summer. Last summer was a breeze—well, not this stuff, but in terms of childcare it was—with our former (and very capable) girl taking over after I had to fire someone.

We were home-bound all summer, and so I was able to offer steady income to our sitter. This year is totally up in the air. Are we selling our house? Are we traveling to visit family? Are we taking a few short trips or one long one? Will I need someone to water the garden? Should I even plant a garden?

In a word, blerg.

There are much worse problems to have, I know. But here’s the rub. I need to keep working through all of this, if we want to eat next year. Writing takes at least some concentration, and with the amount of reporting I do, the composing part is the least of my concerns. I need time to find and interview sources and experts.

Time that is in big chunks, not a few minutes stolen here and there while the baby naps. And in between doctor appointments. This week I had the orthopedist. Next week: the GI guy. Week after that: bloodwork and probably a colonoscopy. Hurrah!

One of my editors told me this week that she admires how I handle my time so well. HA! I’m glad it looks like that from the outside. Because on the inside, it’s a big fucking mess, complete with hot, aching joints (not that kind, you perverts) and crushed Cheerios of unknown vintage.

So I’m on the hunt, for a babysitter with the patience of Job, the creativity of Martha Stewart and the capabilities of Super Nanny.

Know anyone like that? No?

Me, either.

Beat The Clock

Mrs. Chicken — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:42:54 +0000

I am up against a wall this week. I have about 100 deadlines to meet by Friday, to the tune of more than 5,000 words, y’all.

Them’s alotta words.

My house is filthy. Case in point: yesterday, I got home from writing at 2:30 p.m. At 5:30, in the midst of dinner prep, I discovered the toilet was most wretchedly clogged.

With feces.

I had to hand-bail the water out so I could plunge, and still it didn’t work. Mr. C finally got it cleared, but in the meantime my powder room was covered in feces-water.

Yum. Hope yer not eating or anything.

So, yeah. I just cleaned the bathroom. You know it’s bad when you need a shower after cleaning the toilet. The kids are sick, my knees are killing me, Mr. C is swamped at work and we’re a big fat fucking mess ’round here.

And lather, rinse, repeat.

It’s time to play beat the clock. I know you know what I mean. So while I’m away (it is AMAZING how much actual work I get done when I close Ye Olde Laptoppe), can you do me a solid?

I need writing prompts. This blog is starting to feel like the demented ramblings of a McLean Hospital resident. Can you oblige by leaving me something sweet in the comments? Like a question, or something you think I should write about?

I’m outtie, my peeps. Back soon.

Best. Spam. Ever.

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:19:51 +0000

Before the events of last week, I wasn’t sure about the future of this blog. After all, even my spammers are bored to tears with all my moaning and groaning:

I can tell that this is not the first time you mention the topic. Why have you decided to write about it again?

It’s a first—a spam commenter who actually read my blog!

Snort.

So, yeah. I was on the verge of taking this monster private, all 475 posts. I’m writing every day for money and my kids probably think this laptop grows out of my thighs. What I witnessed this week reminded me that every day—every minute—with my family is unbearably precious.

I see my babies in new way. I actually see them. Every detail of their sturdy/fragile little bodies. I listen to their hearts beating. I breathe in their scent and listen to the timbre of their small voices. I hear magic in my daughter’s stories and songs.

And the boy … oh! The boy. I do not take his babyhood for granted. Easter Sunday he clambored up the stairs, an adoring audience at his feet, turning to look at us with every step conqured. His face, so joyous, made my heart ache with the knowledge that life is all so fleeting.

Monday I recalled my wedding day, seven years ago. It rained so hard, all day long, that I was denied my right to preen in front of the neighbors in my beautiful silk gown. Instead, I held my dress up around my thighs and turned to my father, the scent of exhaust in my nose.

“Daddy,” I said, with a naughty grin. “I just love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

He laughed, a big belly laugh, getting my joke, as he always did.

Later, after an emergency call to the club to secure a valet for our guests, my father and I stood in the vestible of the church, waiting.

He patted my gloved arm. “I love you,” he said, simply.

Then he gave me away.

I have been angry at my husband for a long time. I resented him for uprooting me, for forcing me to leave behind what I knew. I was angry, very angry, last week, when he told me that what we’ve done here in Chambana might all be for naught.

I hated the idea of living on borrowed money, and not enough of it.

Now, I know we are living on borrowed time.

All the anger left me last week as I watched thousands of strangers loving people they’ve never laid eyes on. Me, the entrenched cynic, cried openly at the words flying arcoss a computer screen. Then I closed my laptop and opened my own heart to my own life.

I wasted a lot of time.

I fretted about stats and comments and popularity, and now I know the true meaning behind all these stories I tap out on my keyboard.

I am writing my own history.

Someday, when the children are gone and the sunset is closer, I will have a time machine. I will be able to look at my family as they were, through the prism of the past.

That spam comment, it gets to the heart of it all: Why have you decided to write about it again?

Because I am writing my heart.

Fear of the Ball

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:00:18 +0000

I can’t overcome the feeling that I’m talking to the camera these days.

Like I’m winking at you, making a caustic aside about my life, hyper-aware of how I look on the monitor.

When I started writing—and I use that verb deliberately—it was like talking to myself. It was like the diary I kept for 14 years. It felt private, an echo chamber where I could listen to my thoughts and sort them out. I wrote, seeking clarity.

I also wrote seeking work. I left professional journalism behind many, many years ago, and those muscles were atrophied. Three years of almost daily writing brought those muscles back to life. I am a well-oiled machine now, like I was back then, in the newsroom.

Phone cradled in between shoulder and ear, I’d bark questions at my source, typing in a made-up shorthand no one else could have understood. While my editor sat nearby, foot tapping impatiently, I’d write up 15 inches of copy—snap!—slug it, and send it over for review.

Twenty minutes later, I’d stand by the wax machine, run the slender column of my words through the presser, and trot over to production where the paste-up crew ran their roller over it, adhering it to the blue-outs.

Two hours later, hot newsprint in my hands.

Years passed between that moment and my first, tentative posts here. It was hard-going, those first weak essays and photos of an 18-month-old Poo. But soon I was writing every day, more and more agile at the keyboard.

Eventually, I created a body of work that helped land me professional work, work that helps put shoes on my kids’ feet.

The thing is, I’m starting to feel self-conscious again.

It feels harder to reach inside and find the honesty that has become my trademark. The lyricism I found in motherhood eludes me now, as I struggle to find footing as woman and a wife. I don’t need this space to get work anymore. I built a portfolio on the foundation of this blog, and rarely now do I point clients here.

I’m back where I was all those years ago, in the newsroom. I should be pitching magazines and abandoning this place for The Big Show.

But I don’t.

I linger here, where it is safe.

I fear the ball, you see.

Successful athletes are willing to do anything to win, to sacrifice their bodies, to let the ball hit them. They know they can get back up again. They do not flinch when that hurtling orb comes at them in the heat of the game.

The pitch, they catch. They do not fear the ball.

Me? Terrible athlete. I cringe every time the ball spins in the air.

So here I sit, lobbing softballs at you, while the tough guys go out and get knocked down. But for every fall they take, for every thud of the ball against their flesh, there is a point scored, a game won in overtime.

Sometimes I’m led back to words drafted months, even years, ago. I read them, marveling that they came from my fingertips. Sometimes they are terrible, but sometimes … sometimes? They are very good.

I wonder then, why I’m still hiding here.

I wonder if I will ever feel the sting of ball hitting flesh, or if I will continue to sit on the bench while the rest of the world takes the field.

Odds N’ Ends

Mrs. Chicken — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:14:27 +0000

Yesterday The Poo and I stole away for some time alone.

We gleefully cruised the aisles of Toys R’ Us, gift cards in our hot little hands, looking for a pool for her Barbies. We found it, and she’s spent at least three hours outside with her ragtag band of dolls—Ariel, the veterinarian (she wore her stethoscope in the water), Beach Barbie—making up stories and playing all by herself.

Shaggy is about as grumpy as a 7-month-old can be. He’s locomoting all over the house, eating lint and bitching because he can’t walk. Crawling just isn’t cutting it for him, you see, and he’s praticing pulling up on everything he can find.

Like my legs.

We made it through Mass last night by the skin of our collective teeth, and got the kids to bed in at a decent hour. I’m not sleeping well, thanks to my knee and my never-ending Long List of Worries and so when The Poo climbed into our bed at 7 a.m. demanding to go downstairs, I groaned and covered my face with a pillow.

So everything is completely normal this weekend. Thank God.

No bad news, nothing interesting to report.

I don’t mind being uninteresting. Because I have a feeling that the coming weeks could bring all manner of Interesting to this household.

Spring break is this week, and I am without a babysitter. I planned for a light work week, in order to actually be what I always intended to be—a mother.

A mother who actually, like, plays with her kids. Not a mother who stands at the computer keyboard and does her best to keep the animals fed, watered and clean.

The weatherman says it’s going to rain all week, but I don’t care one whit. I’m going to be on vacation, gray skies or sunny.

So how was your weekend?

***

I’m writing two stories this week, and I need your help. If anyone has cut their maternity leave short, or is planning to cut it short, please email me.

I am also looking for parents who are cutting back or changing their summer camp plans because of the recession. Or anyone who has tips for containing the cost of summer camps. Will you email me, please, if this sounds like you?

C’mon, don’t make me beg.

OK. I’m begging. Pretty please?

Chicken And Cheese » writing life

Fiercely

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