Category Archives: Experimental

What She Wants Most

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Escape. This is what she wants most in the world. 

She has bumped into a cliché, that this is not the life she wanted. 

But also it is. The husband, the house, the backyard with towering trees and a play-set for her daughters.

She has decided she needs a week alone, preferably on an island far from here. Away from the husband who wants sex. Away from the house that is just a little too full of life and all that life implies. Away from the back yard where nothing bothers to ask before it grows another foot, and her young daughters still need supervision to be outdoors and help to go down the slide. Every fall the towering trees dump a million and one leaves, and in the prickly cold the family rakes and hauls and piles.

The worst thing of all is that when she reaches the ends of her fantasies—the deserted island, the silent retreat at a monastery, or even the house to herself for a week with no kids and no husband—yes, at the ends of the fantasies she is still weary, estranged from herself, married to her chosen life, nothing has changed. And that is the dagger to her heart. Past the hopeful fantasies lies the truth, that she doesn’t want another life, but neither does she want this one—the sleep-challenged nights, the rotting homemade play-doh, the almost-empty bin of cat food, dishes on repeat, never alone but often lonely, a dutiful, tired, empty well.

She is lying. About the escape. This is what she wants most in the world. 

She has explored her options and reached a conclusion. She wants to be at home with herself. She wants to feel relaxed in her own skin, perhaps even to like herself. She is aware of this possibility only dimly, and aware it will cost more than the option of escape. Escape is quick. Therapy is slow. But it becomes apparent that her own hostility toward herself is the culprit of her discontent. And this revelation is an invitation. To what, she’s not sure. Is this a battle? A puzzle? A zombie apocalypse?

Perhaps yes to all of the above. This is unsettling, though perhaps less unsettling than the lonely, empty well. This battle/puzzle/apocalypse promises change, momentum. She gets to keep the husband, the house, and the kids, and discard the shame and scarcity.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she will discover self-friendship. She will experience her own self as her most trustworthy ally, and she will learn to enjoy her own company. She will discover that friendship with herself is an expansive container, able to hold the pieces of her life, even those that seem incongruous. She is not a pantry, but a cathedral.

And when she has absorbed this truth, she might still take that week alone when she gets the chance, but rather than an escape, it will be a celebration.

Run-on Marriage

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Last week Michael and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. The run-on sentence below illustrates our run-on marriage. (And yes, we’re still crazy about each other, in addition to driving each other crazy.)

I cannot get in bed when the bedcovers are frumpy, drifting off the end of the bed, sideways, knowing that if I do lie down and tug on them I will get too much sheet, too little blanket, and the wrong corner of the comforter; but I do not make my bed in the morning—I make it right before I climb in bed at night, tugging with exaggerated exclamations as I dislodge cats, and my poor husband too, because there’s a tiny possibility that I idolize sleep and this bed is my altar and before I sacrifice my body the altar must be prepared as if for a temperamental god of linens, and I like to remind my husband that before I met him my sheets would stay tucked in and straight for months at a time, but since his feet hang over the end of the bed and he tosses and turns at night, I have to straighten the covers every single day, and I accomplish this with more violent energy and bitter comments than necessary, although one would think after 20 whole years I would have adjusted and calmed down about it—but he huffs and makes less-than-charitable remarks every time he drives, and he has been driving for twenty-five years, so I guess we are both going to have our snide remarks and adult tantrums and all shall be well. 

P.S. I usually use stock photos, but the photo for this post is of my husband and I earlier this month. I barely squeezed into my wedding dress, which I attempt every September as our anniversary rolls around.

Mothers Are Stalkers

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Every mother is a stalker—stealthy as a fox, or loud and proud as a heckler. 

She may try on other hats—friend, playmate, shopping buddy, or cook. But she will always return to the well-worn stalker cap. 

No one knows exactly why. Perhaps all those years of sleep deprivation affected her brain. Or maybe her partner has become boring and she needs to trail someone interesting. Or her dream of being a paparazzo never panned out and she’s done repressing her hunger for juicy stories.

Could it be revenge—on her own mother, or on her child—for needing her when she didn’t want to be needed? Is it fear, masquerading as care? Control masquerading as curiosity? Perhaps sheer boredom is the culprit. 

Or it could be force of habit—one that began while watching an infant’s chest rise and fall, then following a toddler through play structures, teaching a child how to use a toothbrush, then how to handle a kitchen knife. A long stint as chauffeur cements the habit, and by the time a kid has wheels of their own, stalking is like a nervous mother-twitch that can’t be medicated.

Whatever the case, mothers are stalkers, and children are their prey. They follow, but never shoot. They scribble notes and report to their partner in bed at night. They buy new camo when the old is detected, and they keep on stalking even when the tap-tap of their walkers is a dead giveaway.

And, depending on your religious beliefs, upon death they have the best of all—that birds-eye view they always wanted, the ability to hover without being detected, and maybe even a direct line to put in a few suggestions to God about how their child’s life should go.

Unsure

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You cannot have a drivers license anymore.
I want to get a five-acre parcel—
I can’t just sit down and get inspired.
They can change on the fly,
It’s just more condensed.
His heart was already going another direction,
Texting me at 5am.
I slept all day yesterday.
I’ll come find you in your office after lunch.
I’m gonna have to get used to him first,
Which is really sad.
I’m good on the prose.