Dishes and Dishwashers

I know this sounds very Seinfeld-esq but I am going to write about my thoughts on the dishwasher and how I find it interesting how every person can load the same dishwasher differently. If you  are confronted with a new or unfamiliar dishwasher, it looks so strangely foreign at first. You are used to looking at the pegs and baskets of your own. And along with the familiarity of the layout of these pegs and baskets, you know all your dishes and how they fit best, or how it makes the most sense for you to load it. If someone else loads your dishwasher differently than you, which they will, it feels very wrong! Like a banana in the freezer or a milk carton in the oven. It's YOUR dishwasher and YOUR dishes and another person is sticking YOUR things inside of YOUR cavity and they are not doing the way you do (no pun intended :). I cant be the only one who feels this way.
So in Louisiana I was confronted with a new and strange dishwasher. Bigger baskets, different pegs, different cycle lengths - we had to become acquainted with each other. And after a few dates, we were familiar. And soon, it happened again - I became a possessive and jealous lover. Only I knew how to load this thing most efficiently to properly conserve space and maximize its energy expenditure. I can't say that I like to load my LA dishes better than my NY dishes, because my NY dishes and I have a long history together filled with mistakes and successes. They are perfect for me because they are mine and I know them well. You can't just pick up any old dish set and stick it in any old dishwasher - you learn to be the best at your own and you learn to love them, not because they are the best in the world, not because they match your dishwasher with perfect ergonomics, but because they are yours, through time.

Syliva Plath

So last nite I laid in bed to read the book I am currently in a relationship with and an hour and a half later, I ended up finishing the book. It is not like me to stay up that late, but I kept reading another chapter as if it was just one more pita chip, until before I knew it, the whole bag was gone. I read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and I knew it was somewhat autobiographical so I continued on in the end of the book to read the "About the Author" section. Culminating this informative bunch of pages was the inclusion that she had killed herself, at the age of 31, on February 11, 1963. I though how unfortunate that was and she must have been tortured, much like the main character in the book. Then I thought, wow, the day of her death is really close to today...is today the 11th? Lo and behold, I read an inordinately large chunk of her book to finish it coincidentally on the very day she died.
I have always been intrigued by books about lunatics and the varieties of mental disability, and I have read quite a few of them. I think that many see life and interact with life in a different way from perfectly sane people, and it is a very interesting perspective. At one point, as she was descending into her breakdown the character hears the phone ring and in an almost cursed, unenthusiastic manner she describes the phone as such:
 "The black instrument on the hall table trilled its hysterical note over and over, like a nervous bird."

I like the way damaged people see the world and maybe without the affliction of the mental disease, sane folks just don't notice the impact of each piece of life. The phone rings, I pick it up. And 95% of the time, I am not disappointed to hear it ring and unsuspectingly invade my life like that. Though, I must say, that if I have a quiet, reflective moment, I too can see the world like a mild lunatic. I am a poet after all - a convention of words, often unconventional to a spoken thought. A deeper disrobing of life to find the naked truth of feelings that lies beneath.
Or maybe its the talent of the authors who write about the mad and sad who may have a bit of lunatic in them to write it so well.
I like Sylvia Plath.

Our Adequacies

I know this has been brought up a million times but I wonder why us moms can be unkind to each other sometimes. Someone recently made a comment to me about my child that served only to remind me of one of their inadequacies which I was already well aware of. It bothered me because I already know it is an issue and I don't need a friend of mine to make me feel bad by being reminded of it. The problem was that I was feeling a bit sensitive at the time and the comment struck me the wrong way. It isn't as if the advice of this mother is coming from a mother whose children are perfectly adequate in all ways. Why must mother's compare their children with each others' and inadvertently, or purposefully put each other down? It seems to start when the children become toddlers and start gaining usable skills like drinking out of a cup, walking and talking, and then of course potty training. But yet, when the child is an infant, and sits like a lump, you'd think that my lump is equal to your lump and there is no comparison and discussion. But even so, we take our stands on breastfeeding, working or staying home and mess with eachother's heads with these factors in raising our lumps.
I realized when Gabriella was a colicky infant and I was catapulted into motherhood with no training and no clue, that it is hard. And no matter what each mother deals with - a difficult baby, a sick baby, a difficult family life, poor support system, unfavorable financial situation, working or isolated- whatever the situation is, when you have a child, it is hard. And since I learned this, and many others should have too, shouldn't we all support each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt? I guess because it is so hard that we need to constantly boost ourselves so we feel good about what we are doing. And we shouldn't do this at another's expense. We should give the mother the benefit of the doubt because we don't know what they are going through. And God bless the mother's whose children have special needs, deformities or disabilities. That just adds so much onto the already hard job we have.
My son developed a hemangioma on his forehead days after he was born. This was a small window into the thought process that could result from a deformity like this. A hemangioma can develop into something rather large and defacing as well as impairing. Fortunately, Marco's did not, it stayed long enough for me to realize how fortunate every inch of unscathed flesh is on my children. And it stayed long enough for me to field questions from strangers and friends about it, and maybe spread the awareness  and realization of all of their blessings. People tried to make this scar a positive by telling me it was a kiss from God, or they called it a raspberry. I don't go for that kind of stuff. It's a collection of blood vessels in the skin. God kissed mine and yours and all of theirs, and I don't think He wears lipstick or gives them a hickey. It is what it is and because it arose on the magical forehead on my remarkable child, I loved it. I read about it and I left it alone. And as it was described, it grew until it peaked in size, and before my eyes began to vanish. I guess no mom wants a child who is impaired. Life is easier when you function properly and life is easy when you are beautiful. But there is so much inside that means much more than that. And I am not trying to sound cheesy but after you get up there in age you see a lot of unfortunate things and sad people and if you are strong inside, and content with a life where suffering is inevitable, you are pretty darn adequate. If you can smile through strife, you may as well be the equivalent of a 18 month old walking with their open drinking cup, rockin' big girl panties and talking about your feelings with your big girl words.

The Zenfull Side of the Door

I brought a few books down to Louisiana with me and I have read Room by Emma Donoghue,  Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Buddhism for Mothers by Sarah Napthali, Incendiary by Chris Cleave and now on to The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. They are all good books. However, the zenfull Mothering book I feel like I rushed through. It seems my only 'zenfull' moments are when I am in bed going off to sleepyland and I may have read parts of it partially sleeping. I have no time to be calm. What a ridiculous contradiction. Actually, without reading this book, the cover itself makes me calm. It is a beautiful baby sleeping on what appears to be a mom's pregnant belly. Though it doesn't make much sense if this is in fact what the shot is because the baby is pretty young. So either this mom is destined for a huge challenge in remaining zenfull with her children less than 18 months apart, or she has some very smooth, stretch-mark-free baby weight and protrusion to lose in her abdomen. The other possibility is this perfect baby fell asleep on another bump of the mom's body... but I can't place which bump that is.
Either way, I am trying to be compassionately, mindfully full of loving kindness :) (Buddhist buzz words for those of you who have not graced your agitated eyes over the soothing text of a Buddhist inspired book).
So this book tells me to feel my anger and give it its time to acknowledge it, then watch it dissipate. Anger is a feeling just like any other which I can experience. The author quoted anohter's thoughts on this anger as such,
If you get angry and upset you can pay attention to what you are feeling in your body, in your stomach, the tightness in your throat, whether your chest feels constricted - you can even acknowledge that there is a lot of anger coming up. It's one thing to describe and acknowledge it and another to act it out. I soon realised that whatever emotion was coming up would dissipate extremely quickly.
by Yvonne Rand  when interviewed in Why Buddhism?

So I have found myself saying this to myself as my children dump their milk over the table, almost pilfer a toy from the Walmart and tell me they have to pee 5 min into a long car ride prefaced by me offering our nice clean homey potty before leaving:.. I feel the anger. As if I could actually feel my blood pressure rising, this is what I imagine it would be like. This is anger, this is anger... and I'll let it pass.
Even as I type this, I feel this frustration. As my daughter comes over to me with her loud, repetitiously musical Leapster asking me to help her get the crown. I say, "wait a minute, I'm in the middle of a sentence". So she puts it down inches from me, so the voice of Aurora and the annoyingly digital music swipes zen from my ears. Then, of course, my son follows suit with his loud Toy Story game that gets placed by the other ear waiting for me appease the cowboy and space ranger....

Five minutes later...
Ok, loud games are off and on the too-high-for-a-kid-to-reach mantle.  Zen did not prevail this time. I guess I should have read the book slower. Irritation rose in me like boiling pasta water and I opened my lid and let it bubble over. The kids are now doing a quite game with magnets and stickers. I guess the problem is that I feel entitled to an uninterrupted moment of my own. I expect it, because why would I sit down to this computer and this blog if I expected to by interrupted sixteen times and have a very incoherent train of thought? Why would I choose to put myself in a position of these expectations when I have two little kids here with me who need me to facilitate their activity, reconcile their verbal and physical assaults on eachother and give snacks and wipe butts intermittently -  why did I have the crazy idea that I could do something on my own in the midst of this?? Well, I did. Shame me for having great expectations, but I selfishly believe that I should have some minutes for me. It's the same with a phone call- do you think I could have a peaceful phone call? I had to close myself in the garage the other day on the phone with the insurance company because these smart children somehow didn't understand the sign language of my mouth and hands gesturing to the phone, mouthing "I'M ON THE PHONE". Then I had to keep a stronghold onto the door because they took turns trying to pull it open. Where was my zen then? It takes alot of control to not answer that anger and frustration.
Another thing I took from the book is to try to understand where the kids are coming from. So I try to put myself in the mind of a kid with mommy on the phone locking herself in the garage when I want her to come play with me and get me more water to drink- Is she ignoring me? Doesn't she love me? Maybe I should smack my brother on the head, that usually works to get her to come over to me quick. yes, I will do that. And if that doesn't work, maybe I'll whine. I know mommy gives me attention with that. Even if she yells at  me, I just want her to be here, on my side of the door.
So, if I can stay on their 'side of the door' more often, I may not get so irritated when life doesn't meet my expectations because I don't understand what it is like on their side of the door and they are not capable of understanding what it is like on my side of the door. In being the mom, the adult who knows best, I need to zenfully get down to their side of the door.
...
As I hear the escalation of voices, and the claim that someone wrote on Marco's face, I realize that this 7 minute increment of satisfaction in activity is over and I must re-solicit and close my door.