Crying Myself to Sleep

On March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I am a reader. I can state that with certainty and my head held high. (When I say I am a writer I want to whisper it cowering under the table with my face hiding behind my hair.) I don’t ever remember not reading. I sit in line at the grocery store and read on my iPhone. I make dinner turning pages on my Kindle with gloopy fingers. I leave books on the towel rack, driving my husband insane. My bedside is piled with books and my decor can only be described as mid-century modern library eclectic. I am a reader.

When I was young I had a book I loved: Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. Did you read it? If not, stop now if you don’t want the ending ruined. Still with me? Remember it’s about two dogs and at the end the dogs die. Well, I loved that book. I would hide under the covers with my flashlight and I would read that book over and over, and each time I got to the end the same thing would happen. I would sob loud shuddering snot producing sobs. I’d blow my nose and the words would get blurry through my tears and on I would read. My mom would come into my room and look at me and shake her head when she saw I was “reading that book again.” I love a book that produces unabashed sobbing. That and apocalyptic fiction are my favorite genres.

So this week I found a new favorite sob-inducing book. Have you read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness? If not, spoiler alert again, although you could see the ending coming from the beginning. It’s about a little boy and his mom has cancer and his dad left them and his grandma is terrible and he’s being bullied at school and he gets visited by a monster. Yeah, sounds amazing right? The perfect beach read. Who wouldn’t want to read such an uplifting tale? Monday night I’m reading in bed and I saw the ending coming. The mom was going to die. The tears started flowing down my cheeks as I leaned forward to get closer to the book propped on my knees. The illustrations were magic and the story was a roller coaster that ended in broken track. I was all set to let forth a torrent of loud gasping sobs, but I held back. See, I share my bed now with this guy who tends to look at me like I’m contagious when I cry. I kept reading and breathing in hitches and the book kept getting better and sadder and then Mr. Afthead turned to look at me and said something. I have no idea what he uttered because as soon as I was caught the dam burst. Oh, and there were still glorious pages left. I cried and read and blew my nose and cried and finished the book while my husband looked at me with my mom’s “that book again” look. The minute I read the last word I wanted to turn to the beginning and start all over.

How do these author’s do it? How do they generate that kind of emotion through words? I don’t like dogs. I tolerate dogs. I have met dogs I like, but dogs as a whole? They are kind of smelly needy garden ruiners. Yet somehow I read Where the Red Fern Grows and I am a wreck. I don’t have a son. I am not a son. I did not have a mom die of cancer when I was young and my dad never left me. I have no frame of reference for A Monster Calls but the author can wring my heart out through my eyes with his story. It is amazing that a writer can have that kind of power over a reader. I love it.

In Stephen King’s On Writing he says that writing is telepathy and I believe it. How else do you take a situation for which a reader has no personal frame of reference and impact their emotions? In my secret dark under the table dreams I hope someday I can become a sender of such messages and not just a receiver.

Nightmare of a Working Mom

On March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized6 Comments

This Thursday it happened. I was walking from my office to my car reveling in my accomplishments of the day. I’d given a great presentation. I was creating a valuable partnership with our CIO. My curling offsite the day before had been a really great team bonding event. Kudos were flowing. Yep, I was pretty awesome. Then my phone rang. It was my husband asking if I had remembered to pick up our daughter. Our daughter who had finished play practice 15 minutes earlier at school, 40 minutes away from where I was. Our daughter who I hadn’t forgotten in 6 and a half years.

My stomach dropped as I realized what I had done. The other line rang. It was a friend of ours who’s daughter was in the same class. (We’ll call our friend E.) I clicked over. E was calling to tell me that another mom, S, had called her because S didn’t have my number. My daughter was with S, and S was willing to take her home, or E offered for my daughter to go to her husband’s classroom to wait for me. (His name is K.) I took her up on the offer of going to the classroom. I called S, thanked her for saving my daughter and asked her to take her up to K’s classroom. S agreed and said she was happy to help. I then called my husband who headed out to get our daughter from school. All this happened in less than 10 minutes, and by the time I was in my car, 30 minutes from school, I knew she was safe.

As I drove home I felt horrified at myself, awfulized what could have been (my own specialty), and then realized that it was all okay: really honestly okay. The village had made sure my kiddo was safe.

This is the schizophrenic life of a working mom. There are a lot of balls in the air. In one half of your life you are a rock star and in the other half you cut corners. Then you flip it. This week I missed my daughter’s weather presentation and forgot to pick her up. The week before that I skipped out of work two days to help take care of my sick brother. Two weeks from now I’m missing spring break for a work trip, but that Friday I’m skipping another work meeting to spend the last day of spring break at home. It’s constant negotiation, and I am so lucky to have a job and a family situation that gives me this kind of flexibility. My mantra is “You can have it all, but you can’t have all of it all the time.” That’s easy to say and hard to live. I make mistakes. I cut corners. Sometimes I totally mess up. I am way too hard on myself, but I’m working on it. Perfection just isn’t a reasonable expectation anymore.

I wouldn’t trade it though. I wouldn’t give up my job to ensure that I never missed a pick up from school. (Because the truth is, I probably would forget her at some point. My mom forgot my brother once and she stayed home with us.) I love my daughter, but I know if I was home all the time I would get sucked into her life. I’d become a helicopter parent because I wouldn’t be able to separate my life from the most important person in my life. I also know that one of the things that helps me be the best mom I can is my mom network and lots of those ladies are in the office. I couldn’t give up my deep, meaningful conversations about our families in the 2 minutes it takes to pee.

Stall 1: “My daughter was diagnosed with a severe learning disability.”
Stall 2: “Oh no, how did you find out?”
Stall 1: “Testing at school” FLUSH
Stall 2: “Do you have someone you can talk to?” FLUSH
Sink 1: “No. This really sucks.”
Sink 2: “I am so sorry. I have a friend who is a child therapist. Do you want her number?”
Sink 1: “That would be great.”
Sink 2: “I’ll send it before my next meeting starts.”
Sink 1: Drying her eyes with the wet paper towel, “Do I look okay.”
Sink 2: “A little red-eyed, but no one will notice.”
Hugs

Being a mom is hard. I have harshly judged others for mistakes I then made. I strive to be patient with myself and all the other parents I know because all the choices are hard. All the decisions have upsides and downsides. We all do our best, and then help others when they aren’t doing their best. A working mom, a stay-at-home mom, another working mom, and two working dads all helped make sure my kid was safe this week. While I don’t EVER plan on doing that again I’ll sleep a little better knowing that my nightmare actually had an okay ending.

Being a Grown-Up

On March 15, 2015August 20, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Remember when all you wanted to be was a grown-up? People would stop telling you what to do, what to wear, and how to act and you would be in charge? Well, I hate being a grown-up. Some weeks I’m okay with the fact that when I’m lying in bed throwing my booger filled tissues on the floor that two days later, as the grown-up, I am going to have to pick up the remainders of my cold. Some weeks I can deal with the fact that I can’t blame anyone else when my sweater shrinks, we run out of diet Dr Pepper, or when the back door is left unlocked. My husband and I use grown-up as the code word to tell our kid she can’t do something she wants to, like sliding down the booth to the floor of the restaurant to enjoy a fine whine. “Be the grown-up,” the one sitting across from her will snark at the one sitting next to her. The grown-up will have to haul her up, lecture her, and be the bad guy for the rest of the day.

This week grown-up went a little too far. Do I go to my friend’s dad’s funeral or go visit my brother in the hospital? Do I keep my cat on dialysis, at the cost of $1000 per day, or do I let the 7 year old feline we adore die a slow painful death? Do I go see our family shrink so she can shed some light on familial turmoil or do I make that critical meeting at work that will build bridges and may set me up for my next promotion? Oh, and the damn dishwasher broke, so I have plenty of time to ponder these decisions while I scrub gross cat food bowls and egg crusted pans. This morning while I was scrubbing I really should have been working on that $700,000 proposal for work, but whatever. The manual labor grown-up task won.

I don’t want to be 18, or 23 or 30 again, but I want one day as not a grown-up. I want to go lay in the hammock because it’s a nice day. I want to go meet my girlfriends for happy hour and not worry about when I need to get home. If I decide I want to get drunk I want to get drunk. I want someone else to pick up my snotty tissues for me if I do the not-grown-up thing and cry about all this crap going on.

Now, I have to stop playing on my blog and go do some dishes, or write a proposal, or call my brother. Ugh! Grown-up sucks.

Anticipation

On February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As I was heading to bed tonight I noticed a huge truck idling outside. As I watched, a man hurried from the little library in front of our house, jumped into the passenger side of the truck and they drove away. I can’t wait to go out tomorrow and see what this unlikely reader took or left. I hope he took a book or two: maybe the romances that were in there. I really hope he didn’t leave a dead rat or something equally disturbing.

I will report back tomorrow!

Update from Tuesday morning.
No dead rat in our little library, so our monster truck guy must be a pretty darn cool reader.

The Tooth Fairy Correspondence – Tooth Seven

On February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Our family has a running correspondence with The Tooth Fairy (TTF). Ever since the first tooth fell out on a family vacation my daughter has needed to write to Ms. Fairy. She’s made presents and asked questions. Every time, Ms. Fairy is kind enough to respond. The seventh tooth was lost this weekend and as I was reading the first solo-child-written note and the response from Fidget, our Tooth Fairy’s name, I thought it would be fun to share our correspondence. So without further ado…

Tooth Fairy Note — Letter to The Tooth Fairy for the seventh lost tooth.

In case you can’t read first-grader here is a translation:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I made this necklace for you and this picture for you because I love you.

P.S. Will you put 2 extra $1 and my friends pillow? Thank you.

In case you don’t understand the above translation, let me translate. My daughter made a tiny rubber band necklace for TTF, and drew a picture of a bloody tooth (so sweet) for her. We happened to have friends spending the night, so she also secretly asked for TTF to bring additional $1 coins for her two friends. She wanted to surprise her friends (so sweet). The note, tooth and bloody picture all went under her pillow and she and her two friends went to sleep hoping for a visitor overnight.

The next morning we found the following note from TTF:

The girls were delighted to all get gold coins from TTF and, as always, TTF was great at telling my daughter what she really needs to hear right now: she’s brave, she’s doing great at school, and she’s thoughtful. We are so lucky to have such a great Tooth Fairy at the Afthead house!

Bookshelves

On February 5, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized2 Comments

As I was perusing Longreads I clicked through to “The Books” by Alexander Chee. While reading, I was struck by a need to jump up and examine our household Harry Potter collection and all the doubles, triples and quintuples contained therein. My husband and I read all of the books, listened to all of the books and saw all of the movies numerous times. Away to the shelves I flew to start counting.

First to my collection. The top shelf? All the hardbound first editions of the collection. (Yes, I know EVERYONE has a first edition of all the books. Amazon brought them to your door at midnight in Harry Potter cardboard for goodness sake.) Note the books are neither in chronological, size or color order. That’s how I roll folks. The collection is guarded by my hippo bookend.

Shelf two contains the real collection. Book one and two from countries around the world. It started when I was in Italy with my husband’s aunt. The Chamber of Secrets was out and I wanted a memento from the trip, so I purchased the Italian version. Next my husband purchased the German version for me when he was on a work trip, and a collection was born. There are copies from Brazil, Japan, Korea, the UK (multiple copies of the same book) and Hungary. They are not all purchased by us, but by friends and family as they traveled. My favorite is the Chinese copy. It’s the one in the paper bag. Apparently there are black market copies of that book all over China and the only way to know it is authentic is if you buy it in the bag sealed with the special tape. At least that’s what my dear friend who bought it told me, so it authentically remains in the paper bag with the tape hanging on for dear life.

Harry Potter from around the world — Afthead’s Harry Potter Collection

Oh, that thing on the left? It’s a slide rule. Never know when you’ll need one.

Next, to my husband’s collection. It’s on his most special bookcase surrounded by sports memorabilia and his favorite series: The Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings, and Calvin and Hobbes. His books are paperback, of course, because he hates reading hardcover books. I honestly don’t know if he waited to read each book until the paperback came out. How could anyone have that kind of patience?

Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings, Calvin and Hobbes and Harry Potter — Mr. Afthead’s favorite series.

Finally to the archives, where dusty cassette tapes of the early audio books are stored. Yes, you read that right, cassette tapes. I listened to the first five books using the tape deck in my 1999 red Subaru. It does appear that for book six I moved over to CDs. Someday I hope that the digital audiobooks will show up somewhere on a device I support. Jim Dale’s rendition of the series is even better than reading it in my own head.

The movies? We have most of them too. I loved the books more, but the movies have strong memories associated with them. I was struggling with losing pregnancies and I remember sitting in the theater sobbing during the fourth Harry Potter movie because I was never going to have a child who would enjoy these movies with me. Our first date after our daughter was born was to see the first half of “Deathly Hallows.” My husband and I are patiently, patiently waiting for our her to be ready for Harry Potter. She shuns them now as “too scary” but the day will come when she sits down on my lap and we go to Hogwarts together, or we road trip and Jim Dale tells her about Quiddich, or she sits next to me and we enjoy watching the “Goblet of Fire.” I’ll bet you anything that when she does finally read the books herself, she’ll need her own copy, because mommy and daddy will be reading right alongside her.

Final Tally:

Sorcerers/Philosophers Stone :: 6 copies
Chamber of Secrets :: 15 copies
Prisoner of Azkaban :: 4 copies
Goblet of Fire :: 4 copies
Order of the Phoenix :: 4 copies
Half-Blood Price :: 3 copies
Deathly Hallows :: 4 copies (if you count each movie half as one)

A mom is born

On February 5, 2015February 5, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I remember being a new mom. Not in a sharp focused kind of way but in a hazy overwhelmed kind of way. It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. This tiny, tiny, tiny person I had been growing in my belly was now one hundred percent dependent on me to live. I mean, it had been that way from the get go, but all I had to do was eat and sleep and, let’s face it, take care of myself and she grew and did all the development things she was supposed to do. Then she came out and the tide shifted. Her entire existence was dependent on me being able to figure things out: how to get her to take nourishment from my body; how to wake her up to take nourishment, and how to keep stuffed animals out of her crib (because they would surely suffocate her). I had no idea what I was doing, but I felt the importance of figuring it out every moment.

Not only did I have no idea what I was doing, but upon the birth of my baby, no one cared about me anymore. The metaphor for this was the doctor appointments. At the end of my pregnancy I went to the doctor every week. They’d weigh me and make me pee in a cup and listen to the baby’s heart and tell me how dilated I was and how well baby was growing. Then she was born and it was “we’ll see you in 8 weeks,” but the baby, oh the baby had to go to the doctor all the time. She wasn’t growing. She was failing to thrive. We went to lactation clinics at the hospital. She got a birthmark at four weeks: a horrible raised blood red blotch that I thought I caused and knew would make “them” take her away from me. (I still don’t know who “they” are, these baby-taker-awayers.) At my 8 week appointment I was told I could have sex again, how to check my IUD, and “See you in a year!” I did not want sex. I wanted a shower and a hug and a daily recognition of the amazing work I was doing because my daughter was still alive.

I remember walking into my in-laws house and having my mother-in-law swoop up my baby girl to adore her and not even say hello to me. I remember my dad, my dad who loves me more than anything, turning to my daughter first when he visited. Thank goodness for my mom who loved my baby girl, but I know loved me more in those early days. Without her adoration and attention my loss of self and my daughter’s birthmark would have driven me over the edge. I was so inexperienced and so ignored.

Now when a new baby comes into my world I head straight to the hospital. I bring a gift bag filled with “People” magazine, chocolate, Skittles, the new mom’s favorite beverage (yes, I have brought wine and beer) and maybe a little something for the baby. I walk in and go right to the dazed woman in the bed, who is desperately checking to make sure her pained and engorged breasts aren’t showing, and I ask her, “How are you?” I don’t even bother to look at the baby. Besides, the infant is surrounded by a phalanx of grandparents, friends and relatives, because everyone wants to see the baby that’s been born. Me? I want to see the mom that’s been born, because that is a miracle too and she should be celebrated.

Gay curious, but not in the urban dictionary way

On January 23, 2015January 23, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’m finding the blogosphere to be an interesting place for book research. As my character’s lives are moving forward they are developing their own personalities. The son of my protagonist is only five, but already I know something about him that even his dad doesn’t. He’s gay. This leads me to writing about something I know little to nothing about. I’m not gay. I have friends who are gay, colleagues that are gay, a massage therapist that is gay, but no one I really feel comfortable asking awkward questions about gay love and gay courtship and gay feelings. I’m pretty sure human resources would get involved if I scheduled a meeting to ask my two gay teammates about the first time they fell in love.

Bloggers choose what they are open about though, and through the words of my cohorts I can learn. I’ve been fretting about the coming adulthood of my character and worried about how to handle his early relationships and his dad’s reaction. Then I came across this post on The Gay Soap Box and I was elated. Here it was. The story of a girl realizing that she liked other girls, and it was a great bit of writing. I felt her awareness, her awkwardness, her bargaining, and her curiosity. It was like I was in that bus with her sitting in her skin.

In some ways her emotions were foreign, but in many ways they reflected my own feelings in early love: the uncertainty and the awakening. (I’ll never forget my first lust. That dumb Jason guy talking about how he only liked girls who gave blow jobs, and at 13 I had no idea what that was. I did know that I would do anything for him if he would just pay attention to me. Thank goodness he never did.) In some ways I was even jealous of her story. At least she knew what undergarments Jen likely had on. If you have relationships with the opposite sex everything below the top layer is a mystery early on.

Energized by this blog post I started searching WordPress for other enlightening stories using tags like “Gay Love”. Uh mistake. Apparently WordPress is not just about words, but about images too. Thankfully I was on my home computer by myself. I already knew that I wasn’t a heterosexual voyeur, and now I know I’m not a homosexual voyeur either. Give me your racy novels, but keep your videos and images to yourself, thanks. I am a visual prude.

Undaunted I started looking again, but more cautiously. Nothing yet has spoken to me the way The Gay Soap Box did, but as I’ve been searching I have also been thinking. Maybe there isn’t a formula for awakening sexual love: gay or straight. My worries and fears and biases are different from yours regardless of your orientation. (For example, you might like pictures.) Maybe love is a thing without rules and without trends. Am I arrogant to think that I can now write about gay male love because I read a post about gay female love and I have some experience in straight love? Can I use my own experiences as proxy for homosexual, or even other heterosexual, relationships? Was being shunned by a boyfriend’s Jewish parents because I didn’t share their son’s faith similar to a man being shunned by his parents or his lover’s parents because he is gay? I had a crush on a black guy in college and I never acted on it because I didn’t know if he liked girls “like me.” Can I now empathize with a gay woman approaching another woman of unknown orientation? I don’t know, but what I do know is that I am thankful for The Gay Soap Box author for her post, because she was brave, and her risky post made me wiling to write mine. My apologies if I sound naïve, callous or unenlightened in this space. My missteps weren’t made out of malice or intolerance but out of simple curiosity; I’d like to begin this conversation.

Mornings are Not My Thing

On January 22, 2015January 22, 2015 By aftheadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I am not a morning person. I have friends who are morning people and I have coworkers who proudly show up at the office every day at 6:00, or so they tell me. I have never witnessed them at this horrible time of day, because I am still sleeping, almost always. Occasionally a friend can coerce me to meet her for a run at that time of day, and I am usually surprised about 6:15 that I am dressed and moving outside at a quicker than walking pace. Once I enjoyed such a run wearing two different running shoes. Mornings are dark and shoes look similar before dawn breaks. Lesson learned.

I harshly judge myself for my morning choices. A litany of self reproach runs through my head each morning when I wake up realizing I have turned off my alarm in my sleep and once again it’s 7:30. “You’d be skinny if you got up earlier and worked out.” “Your book would be done if you’d just get up and write.” “Good people, smart people, worthwhile people are morning people and they probably delivered papers when they were kids and what did you do? Oh sleep, just like you do now. Loser.” Being mean to yourself is not a great way to start your day, but five days out of seven it’s my first item of business. Well second item, after turning off my alarm set for 6:00. “Loser.”

This evening on the way home I finished listening too 10% Happier by Dan Harris. I really liked that book. I liked his message. I have been enchanted by Buddhism for much of my life and the real world, scientific perspective he gave to meditation, mindfulness and that asshole in my head spoke to me. He made me want to get up in the morning and meditate, but I’m trying to be realistic here. Am I going to do that when running (which I love), writing (also love), and work (pays for my house) don’t provide enough motivation? Will meditation just become one more thing I beat myself up about, or will meditation replace the loser-talk? One way or another, the mean person in my head must be replaced by a better morning habit. She’s annoying.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Two Right Feet.”

The Death of a Matriarch

On January 15, 2015January 15, 2015 By aftheadIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I was looking through my closet tonight trying to decide what I’m going to wear to the funeral this weekend. l have a hard and fast rule that I only wear things to a funeral that I am willing to never wear again on the off-chance that it becomes “the dress/pants/sweater I wore to Emily’s funeral”.

Funerals make me sad, and that’s hard as part of my husband’s family. They are quiet-solemn sad people. I am a blubbering red-swollen-face sad person who blows her nose, a lot, and they tend to avoid me at funerals. I do acknowledge that in this situation, my awkward fear of sobbing in front of them is nothing compared to their pain. Emily was their matriarch: mother of four, grandmother to seven, great-grandmother to my daughter and three others with three more great-grandchildren on the way. Her 95 years on this planet were full of learning, creativity and love.

Emily was an inspirational, story-telling, life-loving matriarch. I am jealous of my husband, and my in-laws as I see the Facebooked and e-mailed pictures of Emily. In one, she is pulling her grandkids on a sled dressed like Jackie O. In another, she has two kids on her back playing horse. My husband is unusually sentimental when he talks about his summers with Emily: eating fudge swirl ice cream and sugared cereals. She loved her family ferociously and they loved her.

I didn’t know her like they knew her. Our relationship was focused in short intense visits with my husband where we would sit and talk with her for hours. She awed me with her experiences every time I saw her. I remember clearly the day I said to her, with the hubris of a 21st century mother, “I just don’t know how you did it, having four kids.” She replied, “We didn’t have any way to stop them from coming.” Her stories of boiling diapers and feeding two babies with one bottle – because when you can’t stop pregnancy the babies come close – they weren’t just nostalgic stories: they were her life. Her stories about boarding with a family and cleaning their house so she could go to college to be a math teacher put in perspective how much she valued education and what she had to sacrifice to do what I took for granted.

On Saturday I will go and mourn with Emily’s friends and family, and celebrate her life and how she enriched our lives. I will shamelessly cry for her family and what they have lost. I will cry for the end of her stories. I will bring extra tissues in case this time the loss is great enough to open other’s flood-gates. Today though, I write to remember her and to bring her essence to a few more people, because not long ago she said to me that I should be a writer. While I never told her about my novel or my new writing avocation, her words inspire. Today I write a little of her story to thank her for the extra confidence she gave me, because I never thanked her in person.

Now I’ll go pack my favorite grey sweater and black boots for the funeral, because remembering Emily often might be an okay thing.