What Am I Anyway

The problem with Facebook is that it keeps me from writing. My former teacher, the wonderful Amy Friedman, several years ago forbade us to "tell anybody your stories. For two months." That forced us to write them. We supposedly-blocked writers with nothing to say suddenly became prolific. Many of of us poignant, many of us brilliantly funny and poignant. Not me, incidentally. So far I can sometimes manage poignant (with a lot of personal bloodletting), and often funny in an ironic way that suits some but not all tastes, but not both at the same time. Until I really and truly quit whining, I think really and truly funny will continue to elude me, and maybe even then. Besides, write now, whining is my MO. (That's neither poignant nor funny, but apparently it's what I need to do right now. So I guess the best I can hope for in a literary sense is that someone hears their own suppressed whine in mine.) Facebook is great for short, snippy vents, and so I never have to write anything real. Or at least not anything real and personal.

The good thing about Facebook is that it does occasionally prompts me to say what I mean about something universal. It usually sneaks up as what I intend to be a quick response to something I find annoying, which gets too long, which I then have to turn into a note. I'll repost one of those in a couple of days, when I have created a little distance between it and the original posts on this blog. (And when I have looked it over to determine whether I was actually thinking, and not just judging, when I wrote it.) As I type, this still isn't live, and some of the emotions from a year ago are still things to which, to be honest, I'd prefer not to subject my husband and my family-in-law. All of them undoubtedly are and have been the strongest supporters of my writing aspirations and attempts. I'd like them to read some good stuff without necessarily back-tracking into a mire of my personal discontent. But that won't be today.

Ironically, it is when I feel most alienated and alone and unacceptable that I resort to this blog. The times when my feelings are too raw, or fundamental, to vent even on Facebook. Right now, what I need to do is to scream out my fury and existential pain at where I find myself--which is damned close to non-existent. Married to a wonderful man, mother to a miraculous soul of a son, and absolutely dying--physically, mentally and spiritually--more and more, not by the day but the hour, because neither of those miracles can change the fact that for five years or more I have been trapped in this life of trying--over, and over, and over again-- to ensure simple things like that we have a place to live, that that place is clean and liveable, and that our son has a school environment that is non-terrifying (goal one) and ultimately supports his growth and security as an intelligent, creative human being (we were there, briefly, now we're not again). These seem like basic things to me; preconditions to even babysteps toward a regained life of my own. And yet for as long as I can remember now, as soon as I get one piece in place, somebody knocks out literally all the others. And it's my job to make it work, because let's face it, I'm "it."

Somehow I missed the obvious facts that by (1) having a child, and (2) three years later giving up my careerand independence to stay home with him when he was having trouble, I forfeited my place in the world of people whose needs and schedules must be accommodated, and became instead someone whose entire work/purpose consists in accommodating others. I have no one to blame but myself. The logic is that once you quit your job outside the house, every job that is not part of your partners' paying job is your job. Since you no longer contribute to the family income that would otherwise pay for help with household administration, if you want to be home with your kid it sort of seems obvious that you need to pick up the tasks that the family can no longer afford to pay someone else to do. Or maybe it could, but since you are home anyway, it seems sort of a waste to pay someone else to do them. You then get to be grateful for any "help" that your spouse gives you with "your" job. And make no mistake: I am grateful, very. My truly wonderful spouse DOES help, much, much more than the spouses of just about any stay-at-home-mom I know. The problem is that I never in a million years wanted to be a SAHM, never dreamed that household administration would ever be MY work. It's not my skill set, let alone my calling. Other things, like research, and analysis, and policy, are. The fact that I spent the first three weeks of this last month repeatedly having to describe myself in writing on school applications as a "homemaker" made me want to wipe myself off the face of the earth.

There are many amazing women for whom home and early childhood development and community are a calling; they manage their homes and their children with a grace, calm, organization and mindfulness that is awe-inspiring. I have come to appreciate in the last eight years with my son that our society simply could not run without these women and their capable, intelligent, strategic, dedicated work for their kids, their schools and their communities. But as much as I have tried, and as much as I have treasured opportunities to dig in and help the schools and families in our communities over the years, at heart, that is not MY work. I just wanted to be a good mother, and to do MY job. Ultimately, it turned out that for a while, I could not do both of those things because my son needed a full time mom at home. That seemed like maybe the best thing for both of us then, as I was weary of the hypocrisy of trying to be a lawyer who was advised not to "talk too much about my son" for fear that people wouldn't give me the best work if I was perceived as being human. Being available to take my son to playdates and to help him bridge to other kids--and to their parents and not their nannies- was what was needed, and it was only for a couple of years, anyway, until he got comfortable socially, and into a school that we knew would work for him. What I didn't realize was that I would necessarily become, the minute I lost my economic power to delegate, the nanny, teacher, social secretary, personal secretary, handyman, building superintendent, project manager, laundress, cook, janitor, community liaison, educational consultant and occupational therapist for our family and child, quickly followed by relocation agent, travel agent, real estate agent, consultant, tutor, physical therapist, child psychologist, homesick child's whipping boy and ultimately resident house-bound resentful fat bitch. I could even live with the task of single-handedly digging myself out of this hole and getting my family to the point where things are in place "enough" to allow me to do some work that actually involves both hemispheres of my brain in the same day, if from one six month period to the next the house, "the job" that brought us here, the school, the goal for any of them, or even the damned car, could stay essentially in the same mode that I spent the previous six months (any previous six months you want to name) trying to make work.

Oy. Maybe I should stick to Facebook. At least it requires something more interesting than self-pity. I need a diary, or this blog will never, ever go live. Apparently it's not just the emotions of last spring, but those of today this winter that I'd prefer to put somewhere else. Maybe that's why I keep having vivid dreams about running away to croft in Scotland--what better place to tuck all of this far out of sight. And maybe slowly scatter it to the ducks and bogs til it dissipates and I become recognizable to myself again.