The Writing Mamas Daily Blog
Each day on the Writing Mamas Daily Blog, a different member will write about mothering.If you're a mom then you've said these words, you've made these observations and you've lived these situations - 24/7.
And for that, you are a goddess.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A Mama's Voice Says "Clean": Her Other Voice Says, "Ah, No."
My mental and emotional state is intimately linked to my environment. The amount of mess, number of items stacked in little piles, the general stickiness rating of most toddler-height surfaces, increases my agitation as they increase throughout the day or week.
A bottle of 409, a paring knife and a Magic Eraser duly applied after the family is asleep has often returned me to homeostasis and feelings of peace before I move onto writing, reading, consuming celebrity gossip, or e-mailing my friends.
I accepted somewhere in my third year of marriage that my lovable, dependable husband’s tragic flaw, being a premier level slob, was probably never going to change. The house would be as clean as I care to keep it. I was free to choose whether to work with that or make myself miserable. I chose shalom in the home for all our sakes.
And I was successful. . . as long as we only had one child.
Then came my second daughter. As the workload increased, my motivation has slowed. Increasingly, over the past months, I fall onto the couch with a novel, or e-mail my friends and discuss adult and big questions. Often, the dishwasher isn’t running, clothes and food is strewn about, and I go to bed without cleaning any of it.
Frankly, my house is sometimes pretty grubby when I wake up.
I am starting to hear from my own imperfect voice in this matter. I want that “room of one’s own” after the family circus of the day, where I can be alone with my yet unthought ideas and scrambled feelings.
I need more interior room and have started to buy it with the price of organization and cleanliness. My voice is lurching out, messy and unfocused, but worth it. My imaginary weaving together of a tidy, inviting home and a growing space in my own mind is slipping away. My resolve to beat back the forces of entropy is failing, but feels shameful rather than freeing.
Messy, this sorting out a mother’s priorities, hoping to be able to do more than is possible.
By Avvy Mar
Labels: Avvy Mar, bottle of 409, cleaning, Magic Eraser, messy house, one child, room of one's own, slob, two children
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Sunday, April 05, 2009
A New Yet Old Kind of Divorce
Though I didn’t have a choice -- my husband had an affair while on a three-week business trip to India and left me upon his return when our second son was three-months old -- I still wonder.
We had a good marriage, though people may question my judgment after hearing how it ended. We had a deep love and connection, we liked the same things, we understood each other, we had two children. I suppose there was always this fissure within him, unseen and beneath the surface, which unexpectedly shifted from increased pressure and caused an earthquake in our lives.
Who really knows?
We still see each other almost everyday to exchange the kids. We talk on the phone daily. We parent, plan and schedule together. He knows me better than most people. When I first saw the HBO series “Big Love,” about a polygamous family in Utah, I thought – 'this is not so unlike divorced families today,' as outrageous as that sounds.
Divorced couples with families no longer sleep together (usually), but they often continue to share an intimate life. Sometimes I wonder if we’re so close to this relatively new familial configuration that we don’t see how closely related to more primitive family systems it may be.
As far-out as that sounds, my divorce still makes me wonder. What if we were still married? What if we (he) had honored our commitment? Would our children be better off? Would we have found our way back to each other? Is there a better way?
The die is cast, and I am finally allowing myself to sink into acceptance.
We still see each other almost everyday to exchange the kids. We talk on the phone daily. We parent, plan and schedule together. He knows me better than most people. When I first saw the HBO series “Big Love,” about a polygamous family in Utah, I thought – 'this is not so unlike divorced families today,' as outrageous as that sounds.
Divorced couples with families no longer sleep together (usually), but they often continue to share an intimate life. Sometimes I wonder if we’re so close to this relatively new familial configuration that we don’t see how closely related to more primitive family systems it may be.
As far-out as that sounds, my divorce still makes me wonder. What if we were still married? What if we (he) had honored our commitment? Would our children be better off? Would we have found our way back to each other? Is there a better way?
The die is cast, and I am finally allowing myself to sink into acceptance.
Still, I wonder.
By Lisa Nave
By Lisa Nave
Labels: acceptance, affair, Big Love, divorce, doubts, Lisa Nave, new familial configuration, primitive family systems, two children
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