Author: Picking My Battles

The New Normal

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Twenty years ago I was on the receiving end of an armed home invasion at the home of an acquaintance I never should have made.  It ended with a group of us lying on the floor, our noses in a smelly mustard and gold shag carpet as we wondered if our assailants were about to leave us or leave us dead.  When they were gone, we began cycling through all of the stages of grief until the police came and an emergency locksmith could make new keys for our cars, allowing us to escape back to our old lives.  What I didn’t realize in that first hour was that my old life was over forever.

It wasn’t a great life before the robbery, but it was not a life lived in fear (or caution, but that’s another story).  I had lived in ‘bad’ neighborhoods before the incident and no part of the city really frightened me.  After the incident I was afraid to go anywhere, and when I had to be in public places or unsecured locations, I made every effort to be invisible.  I watched doors.  I sized up people.  Fear embalmed me.

It took years and a lot of love from the Big Guy to crack that sarcophagus.  However, even now, when an incident like the one in Newtown, CT is reported, I realize, part of my soul will always be wrapped in those bandages (as I suspect the survivors of this and other senseless massacres will be).  I felt it yesterday as we sat at our son’s basketball practice and every opening of the door knotted my stomach a bit more.  I know this sensation – it’s part of the new old normal that began twenty years ago.

We had already planned a weekend of holiday activities with just the four of us, and, wanting to avoid the glare of the malls, we opted for a visit to the Vermont Country Store in Weston.  We did our weekly breakfast at Bob’s Diner in Manchester and headed up the Bromley mountain on the way to Weston.  For the two of us, the gloriously cold and sunny day seemed out of joint with what has been in our hearts since Friday morning.

In the back seat Thing1 and Thing2 were already beginning their road trip antics that I swear are designed to grow grey hair on my head.  The Big Guy reprimanded them as the volume reached earthquake level, but as we switched on the radio and all of us marveled at the passing mountainous landscape we’ve seen a hundred times before, I reminded myself that this, too, is part of my New Normal.  Right now, it is enough.

It Shouldn’t Be

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Is the second stage?

Our Saturday morning started with an early rise for basketball. We are sitting and chatting and cheering the occasional basket (they’re kindergartners and first graders). And I am watching every leap and twirl (Thing2 twirls for any reason) and thinking how lucky we are to have our family whole and unscathed. But it shouldn’t be this way .

It shouldn’t be this way for any family in any town in any country around the world. We should, like every family, be reveling in their jumps and screams of laughter simply because they are and not because they were lucky enough not to be the target of the increasingly frequent rampages of the madman among us.

December 14, 2012

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Twenty-six innocent people were shot today at an elementary school in Newtown, CT.

Thing2 is six, and, because we want his youthful bliss to bloom as long as possible, we will not tell him of the day’s horrific events.  Thing1, however, is twelve and is aware of the world outside our sleepy Vermont town.  We know we can’t shield him from everything, but tonight we will try.

Tomorrow I know that, like parents all over the country, we will worry about their safety and their innocence.  But tonight we will hold them close as we grieve for a small town that looks a lot like ours and as we remember how precious this life together is.

And, tomorrow, as we think about the parts of our world we can and can’t control and the parts we may have to accept, we’ll hold them closer still.

If I Didn’t Laugh

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I got up at 5:00 AM this morning, but my mind was not on my keyboard.

Instead, I was thinking of my lovable mutt, Katie, who had been locked in the mudroom overnight.  She had returned home just as the sun and the mercury were falling, reeking from a game of ‘I dare you to rub in that’.  It was too late to give her a bath, but at 5:00AM this morning, I knew something would have to be done and the knowledge that I would be the one to do it whatever it was.

So instead of doing something useful or soothing (like writing), I wasted time in the reading room playing iPod Scrabble.  The pup was quiet, the kids were quiet, and there I stayed almost until it was time to launch the morning school routine.  Sadly, avoidance therapy didn’t make the dog smell any better.

The boys and I managed to get out of the mudroom without inhaling too much of the stink. I actually found some comfort in the routine of hustling them into the car, scraping the windows, and attempting to break the sound barrier to get them to school on time.  The ride home was much slower, and the closer I got, the slower the car seemed to go.

I knew Katie would need a bath, and I knew it would be a soaking wet dirty job that had to happen inside.  I knew the country store stocked all sorts of useful pet supplies (the owners are mushers and religious about quality dog products), so I stopped in on the way home.  I tried to drag out the shopping trip, but there was an online meeting at 9:00AM, and I knew the bath had to happen soon.

I got home feeling vaguely depressed and with the nagging feeling that I wanted a vacation.  As I wandered through the house, getting the bathroom ready for a canine client and finding an extra leash and an old towel, however, my grooming plan began to form, and my spirits lifted a bit.  I knew I would be soaked when the bath was over, and I doffed my clothes on the bed.  Wandering from room to room, I thought once again how grateful I am that the only things outside our sliding windows are trees, and I wondered if my sense of propriety was about to reach a new low.  It was.

I had everything ready and was about to open the mudroom door and leash the dog when I remembered we had garbage bags in the cabinet.  Figuring one of them would make a great poncho, I reached in and pulled out a 30 gallon bag.  It looked big enough to shield my girth from water, but there was still a problem.   It was clear.

By the time I had ripped a neck and arm holes in the ‘poncho’, I was chuckling.  Katie didn’t mind my fashion faux pas nearly as much as she minded being popped into the tub and scrubbed down.  I was now literally elbow deep in the job I had dreaded all morning, and for some reason, I was smiling as I washed and soothed.

I know some folks might say it was just getting the thing over with that made me smile.  There’s probably some truth to that, but, as I tore off my rated-R dog-washing poncho, a little part of me decided that truth doesn’t have to be stranger than fiction to be funny enough to get you through the day.  But sometimes it helps.

Waiting for Winter

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Saturday was the first day of basketball practice for Thing2.  Our basketball Saturdays are a lot like the rest of our Saturdays, except they start a lot earlier.  The odd thing is, that even with the addition to our Saturday to-do’s (a run to the dump, breakfast at Bob’s, and beyond), the early start to the day often leads to a fuller Saturday.  Yesterday, however, the extra hours let us do just enough to feel a little incomplete when we finally headed home.

No one thing on our schedule carved out that hollow feeling.  At the end of the day, however, we all felt it.  We’re still waiting for winter.

This is one of our only weekends without company or somewhere to go, so we decided to take care of a home improvement shopping enjoying some holiday activities.  So, once we got tired of the traveling circus act that is Thing1 and Thing2 (our 12 and 6 year-old boys) at a hardware store, we decided to head to a holiday craft fair hosted by a friend before cutting down our Christmas tree at the local tree and wool farm.

As we drove from Vermont to Saratoga, NY and back, we all noted the holiday decorations, but there was one glaring omission from the scenery.    We mind it too much on our drive, but as we shed our jackets between stores, it began to nag at all of us a bit more.  We passed a bank broadcasting the forty degree temperature, and the Big Guy broke the ice.

“It’s downright balmy,”  he commented as we passed a barren field.

“It’s the third mud season this year,” I replied.  He nodded and we both sighed.  We noted the mugginess again as we went to the craft fair, initially hunching in that traditional winter pose to protect our body heat and then standing upright as we remembered it just wasn’t that cold outside.

We’ve been having this conversation off and on for a few weeks – as I suspect, based on national forecasts, much of the country is.  But when you live in a state that depends on winter weather for its economy and even part of its identity, a December that isn’t that cold outside is an event – and not always a pleasant one.  This is the second un-Vermonty December in a row, and the kids who are old enough to participate in the statewide Junior Instructional Ski Program (JISP) have already been watching the skies and the weather forecasts for weeks.  There are even signs at some borders bidding visitors to Vermont to pray for snow.

My own life revolves around winter more than I care to admit.  I’m waiting for the snow pack that will slowly trickle down the mountain in the spring and summer, preventing me from needing to water my garden most of the year.  I’m waiting for the opportunity to bundle up the kids for the guaranteed energy burn that only a few hours in two feet of snow can bring.  I’m waiting to strap on my snow shoes and breathe in mountain air made more crisp by a coating of powder sugar.

But, hoping that getting our Christmas tree up would get all of us feeling more like winter, we decided to stop at the nearby tree farm on the way home.  Like most transactions around here, this one began with a lengthy (according to the kids) conversation with the farm owner about mutual acquaintances, the scuttlebutt from the country store, where the deer are, how much were the trees, and, of course, the weather.  This time it was the farmer who brought up the 800 pound snowplow in the room, and the mere mention of the missing snow made all of us a bit somber.

The Big Guy and Thing1 ditched their coats as we trudged out to the foggy, soggy field, sizing up the trees.  The farmer followed us offering his opinion here and there, and we all took turns sawing the chosen tree.  Upright, it had looked like the perfect size for our living room, but after we felled it and the Big Guy and the farmer hoisted it on the car, we realized it was huge.

Dwarfed by its cargo, our family wagon looked like something out of ‘Christmas Vacation’, and we all started to laugh.  It took twenty minutes to get the tree secured and say our goodbyes, and by the time we pulled away from the tree farm we were all laughing.

The paved road quickly disappeared, letting us know we had arrived in our hometown.  The Big Guy drove slowly, mindful of the pointy projectile on our roof.  The muddy mess that is our town road sobered us a bit, but as we passed a friend’s house, Thing1 brightened.

“That’s the best sledding hill in the world!”  he proclaimed pointing to the mountain behind our friend’s house.  “It’s a huge climb, but it’s totally worth it.  I can only do it five or six times before I have to come in for a drink. (I want to be 12 again someday.)”

“That’s a great party,” the Big Guy responded, and we smiled in anticipation of the annual sledding party in early that usually marked our last big winter social event.  Then both of us quieted, remembering that there had been no party last year.

“I hope there’s one this year,”  said Thing1, resting his chin on his hand as he gazed out the window.  We said little else the rest of the way home.

The Story of a Half an Hour

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A few days ago we reached a new low in our parenting lives.  Or not.

Thing2, my first grader, is my social butterfly and my superhero.  He is a flitter and a flyer, particularly during homework time.  So on Thursday, after ordering him back to his chair for the thirtieth time, the Big Guy got a seat belt, plopped our wriggling six-year-old into his booster seat (which he doesn’t really need anymore), and looped the belt through the strap holes on the plastic seat.

The homework got finished in fifteen minutes.

I never thought I’d be belting my kid into a chair over a non-safety related issue.  But as I finally sat down to write at 5:26 AM (26 minutes late) this morning, I had to admit at least a little of Thing2’s fear of sitting was inherited.

I did get up at the appointed hour this morning, and, in my mental rule book, I had placed writing above everything except getting dressed (we’ll see what happens in the summer if the next diet resolution holds into spring).  Today I was even more efficient and decided my nightgown was fashionable enough for the back room.  But as I walked out toward the study and into the kitchen for a shot of caffeine, I had no idea what I was going to write.

So I stirred the coals in the wood stove.   They were nearly gone, and I decided a quick trip to the wood pile for a handful of kindling wouldn’t really cut into to my time too much, and I got my shawl and shoes and went out for a minute.  The cats greeted me, demanding a minute of head-scratching, and I obliged until the draft in my nightgown reminded me that my desk area was much warmer.  I got back to the kitchen at 5:08 and loaded up the stove, still wondering what I was going to write.

Thankfully, at 5:11 Nature called, and by 5:15 I was headed back to the kitchen for my caffeine.  The fire wasn’t catching, but as I bent down in front of the stove to play with it, I suddenly heard the Big Guy moving around down the hall in the bedroom.  I knew I had to appear productive so, instead of trying to start a fire that would heat the study by 7AM (when chef and chauffeuring duties call), I decided to pull on some warmer clothes.

At 5:24, I headed to the fridge again for my first infusion of caffeine.  I went back down the hall to my desk, shut the door to the study, still wondering what to write – let alone draw.  The light of my swing arm lamp illuminated the thermostat (70 degrees) just enough to let me know my fruitless quest for fire had been completely unnecessary.  But at 5:26 AM, as I was sitting down, I started to wonder if Thing2’s seatbelt would fit me.  And, suddenly, before the laptop screen had even lit up, I knew what to write.

Mindful

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No one stays off the grid for very long without embracing mindfulness in a big way.

Motherhood comes with its own mindfulness.  Are lunches made? Is homework done? Are there enough pop tarts for the morning? Was that scream serious or silly?

But the questions and the questioning don’t end when the kids go to bed.

It’s 9:20 PM. Thing 2 is finally snoring, and I’m trying to retune in my schedule so there is more time to work tonight after work, homework, dishes, laundry, dinners, and that. Winter is coming, albeit  hesitantly, and I am trying to find a better time of day to wash my hair so I can find more wick at one end of my candle.

It should be a simple thing. Sadly, however, the hairdryer is the homemade energy grid’s natural enemy, and cold mornings make wet hair not just bad style such a bad idea.  So I make a plan to move a morning ritual to the evening.

I head toward the bathroom and turn on the faucet, looking forward to a wood-fired scalding. I shiver for a few minutes as I wait for the hot water to come in, but it doesn’t.  As goosebumps form, I am suddenly mindful of the dishwasher I ran earlier, but the wood stove I let sit cold on this cloudy day because the temperature outside failed to penetrate our sheltered walls. I think of the solar hot water heater that probably sat quiet under the cloud cover, and I think of the gallons hot water I wasted during an unusually long hot shower the night before.  And I am suddenly mindful of the reality that not thinking about the impact of my actions (and inaction) ahead of time is going to make for a very cold shower tonight.

Resolutions and Rituals

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It’s 5:08 AM Thursday morning, which means it’s four days after I adopted yet another weekly resolution to lose weight and exactly twelve hours since I dropped it.  And it it is exactly 8 minutes into the beginning of a resolution that I hope will actually make a difference in my life. Today, I have decided to become a morning person.

I have always been a creature of the night.  When I was in my twenties it was when life began.  In my thirties, it was when everyone else went to sleep, and I could work on projects or have the remote to myself.  But as I have begun to seek out a creative life, I have found the need to create a new ritual.

Earlier in my endeavor, I was able to fit writing and sketching into my normal routine at the end of the day, but as holiday rituals begin to crowd my ever-expanding to-do list with cooking and cleaning and concerts, the ritual of writing has become harder to observe.  Now, I know that if you can fit fifteen minutes of TV into your life, you can do something useful with that fifteen minutes.  Lately, however, my  midnight moxie has been been AWOL, and I’ve been nodding off – and not writing – in front of the tube more often than I’d care to admit.

It is true that the more you write, the more you write.  It is even more true that when you start letting life get between you and your writing, the divide gets wider very quickly.  And, as tired as life makes me, for some reason, not writing made me more tired.  So last night after the kids were down, instead of falling asleep on the couch next to the Big Guy, I announced I was going to bed.

And now, at five AM, I’m starting a new resolution to make morning writing a ritual, and with each word and visit to the altar of creativity, it becomes not only more enjoyable, but more sacred in my life.

Company

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Colder weather only drives them indoors a little earlier in the day.  There’s nothing, however, like the first snow to bring our furrier family members completely back into the fold.

It was the damp and not the cold that ushered all of them in at once this morning.  The dog’s demeanor was that of one who is happy to be at theme after a morning constitutional.  The cats, on the other hand, are company; every action calculated to communicate their hegemony over the rest of the household.  And, for some reason I still can’t discern, this bestial ballet always inspires questions about the existences we might have known before.

Watching the cats saunter lazily to the kitchen, staring down the dog at her own food dish, I often think how glad I am that I’m bigger than they.  I know there are many homeless cats with piteously short and hungry lives.  But as I kneel down to clean up the magazines unceremoniously shoved off the console by one of our now-lounging felines, I wonder what act of heroism a human would have had to perform to achieve the rank of “house cat” in their next existence.

Fear

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I let Katie out for her last potty break before bed.  I don’t walk her at night – one too many close calls with Yogi, the bear who visits my composter regularly, scared me off of late night strolls.  Katie’s a country dog.  She knows these woods better than the boys do.  But tonight her bravado outpaced her brains, and we both learned a powerful lesson about life in the woods.

Katie’s nightly runs are shorter now that the weather is colder, but they usually include a last minute visit to bark goodnight to the neighbor’s dogs.  She normally comes right back and barks at the window to come in.  Tonight, however, the bark at the window was short and sharp.

I turned to the Big Guy, happily snoring on the recliner we lovingly call our Venus Flytrap, to see if he had heard Katie’s agitated yelp.  He snored his reply, and I went to the door, hoping to get her in before anything more interesting pulled her attention back outside.  But I was too late.

I opened the front door and looked left toward our wood shed.  I knew instantly that something was wrong – both cats were crouched nervously on the top of the highest row of firewood.  As soon as the door opened, they glanced in Katie’s direction before darting into the mudroom and then the living room.  Katie was nowhere to be seen, but her barks had devolved into low growls.

Now I was nervous.  I stepped out and called out to her and heard only more growling and now scurrying sounds from the brush behind the woodshed.  Suddenly I saw something furry and low moving toward me.  Now I yelped.

Hoping my shriek had roused the Big Guy, I skedaddled back to the door, calling for Katie as I retreated.  Katie, however, was braver (or dumber) than I and came around the other side of the shed, zeroing in on her quarry.  At first I thought it was a raccoon and considered rousing the Big Guy to get his gun, but, worried that it would be too late and risk hitting Katie, I instead grabbed my umbrella and charged outside.

I knew tangling with a raccoon was stupid.  They’re not necessarily rabid here in the woods, but they can be ornery, and I was a little relieved when I got close enough to see that Katie’s prey was a porcupine.  As far as the dog was concerned, however, the porcupine wasn’t much better.

Our last dog had a couple (very expensive) run-ins with a porcupine or two, and I knew I had to get between Katie and the terrified critter.  Doing my best lion-tamer imitation, I kept the open umbrella between me and the fanned-out quills and tried to get Katie to leave off the chase.

There were a few shrieks (me) and lots of barking, and I kept hoping the Big Guy would come to my rescue.  But the pull of the Venus Fly-Trap was way too strong (and our house way too sound proof), and for those few tense minutes while I soothed and disciplined Katie, I was on my own.

Katie came into the house with a few quills in her mouth and, what I’m sure will be a short-lived but painful lesson about picking her prey.  My lesson will stay with me, however.  It is part of a long education that has already seen a few scary tests.

Largely due to our spotty and often abysmal health insurance situation a few years ago, the Big Guy went through a series of health care issues that became crises, two of them life-threatening.  One event led to a week in Intensive Care, and the second sent him to the ER with an infection that nearly cost him his leg and even his life.  While he fought so did I.  Once he was in recovery, however, and my adrenalin receded, I remained in crisis management mode.

I spent the next few years trying to anticipate and plan for any disaster that would leave me as the sole caretaker of two kids, and that planning often had me wondering how I would get on without my partner in crime.  I now know that the constant attention to that safety net took away a lot of the joy of being with my husband, but when it became less panicked, being prepared was – and is – a source of confidence.

Now, I may be temporarily terrified when wielding my umbrella against the creatures of the forest, but I know that somewhere in there I have the mettle to overcome the fear.  The fight is over, and I’m not obsessing about the next porcupine – or the next crisis.  I know whatever comes – crisis or critter – I can handle it.   And the foremost part of handling any of it is not to live in fear of what may come.

Traffic Jam

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Tuesday day before Thanksgiving, and the house is almost ready.  The kids’ room is at Defcon 2 (down from a catastrophic level four), most of the laundry’s done (that was going to get done before Sunday), beds are made and ready for guests, and I only have the shopping left to do.  I dropped the kids at school and turned south on Route 7A going out of Arlington.  I got to the turn off for the highway but, not seeing anyone in front of me, decided to stay on the slower road to Bennington.

A meandering two lane country road dotted with  a few farms and the occasional white-steepled church, Historic 7A (as it’s known in the tour guides) is even more scenic as the November morning brushed the trees and meadows with a muted pink and green frost.  Usually I’m too preoccupied with to-do’s to absorb the view, but this is my last bit of quiet before a long weekend of entertaining, and I am determined to enjoy the drive – as long as it doesn’t take too long.

But I’m coming around a curve, about to set the cruise control when the back end of a decelerating dump truck magically appears in front of me, interrupting my view and my plan.  He continues to slow down, and I roll my eyes.  What now?  We are now crawling forward, but my curiosity is short-lived.

A few seconds later we get to the cause of the slowdown. It is a single flagger directing traffic around another orange-vested road worker. On the side of the road, parked in someone’s yard is an orange VTrans pickup.  And then I see the flagger has a couple helpers.

As the flagger steps out into the road, a couple of Rhode-Island Reds appear, inspecting the scuffed dirt around the parked pickup.

The dump truck and I slowly down a bit more, but we don’t even stop. I watch the dump truck weave carefully around the flag man, and the flag man waves.  The dump truck driver probably doesn’t know the guy.  I don’t either, but a second later I pass and wave too.

I accelerate out of the last curve.  The car speeds up, but I’ve completely slowed down.