the squibix family blog

The lasting impact of this production is that sometimes when I go downstairs in the morning to make coffee a line pops into my head. "If I can't take / my coffee break / something within me DIES."

Cutting libretto. Sondheim it wasn't.

I was thinking of this production today as I poured my coffee, pumped my breastmilk, and simultaneously planned my day as much as I can. What are we doing today? What's on the schedule? Will I get to exercise? Will I take the kids for an outing so they don't fight? What are they eating for lunch? For dinner? What am I eating to stay under 1800 calories? Did I say we would do ice cream today? Do I need to make allotments in my eating plan for ice cream?

The same part of me that says "coffee coffee coffee coffee AAAAAAAAH!" (to steal a line from the show) is the part of me that says, "No unplanned time, there must be NO UNPLANNED TIME." I have thought this is the way I cope with motherhood and the demands of housework, but I realize now it goes deeper than that. Scheduling myself so that I can't pause to reflect. This is the way I cope with life.

Life sometimes provokes emotions that are unpleasant. Loss, shame, fear of future loss or shame, and failure. It's easier not to deal with these things. It's easier to run to the next thing, to think "Quick, what am I going to eat?" instead of thinking, "Why do I feel this way? What is happening?"

What IS happening? That seems to be the perpetual question. My inner child is a stary-eyed Cupie doll, stupid, clueless, wondering what everyone else knows that I don't. What's going on guys? What are we supposed to be doing? Did I miss the orientation on EVERYTHING?

This little person feels helpless against the swirling black question mark future. Quick, schedule things on top of that. Things that scream: I KNOW what is going on! I have MADE the timetable!

But in a moment of caffeinated lucidity, I am giving myself a reality check. None of us know the future. None of us is prepared for the hurts that might come our way. Nor the surprising heart-stopping joys, neither. I can deal with that reality through failed attempts at control. Or I can approach it humbly, through fear and trembling, in some way that invites the devine, something akin to awe.

I'm not quite sure how to do it. Maybe... drink tea?

He woke up at 4am and drank a lot. Then I pumped the rest which was 16.5 oz. I don't know if it was milk or teething or tiredness which caused his episode. I don't know if I should eat a shake on Saturday mornings or if I should scrap the workouts all together. I feel like running makes me a better mother, but what if it makes me the worst mother in the world?

In a previous life I had wanted to be a professional athlete, but somewhere in my brain I knew I was never suited for it. I mean, i could do the big moments, the competitions. I could pull myself together under pressure. I am all about game day.

It was the rest of the life I didn't feel I could hack. Waking up every morning obsessed with the meals and the workouts. Carefully tailoring my time at the gym so it's just the right amount of push with the least possibility of injury. I have a terrible fear of injury - wrecking all I've worked for in one stupid moment. And then there are the times not training, the family birthdays where you can't eat cake because your body is an economic product.

No, I said, My body is ME! It will never be a product for someone else!

Ha ha ha.

In pregnancy and early motherhood my body is a different kind of product. Now I'm a nutritional product for the benefit of someone else. One step in the human calorie supply chain. Nursing is beautiful in its shining moments: he's hungry and then the milk lets down and he quiets, satisfied. If he gently drifts to sleep it's like sticking a difficult dismount.

But then there's the day to day training, calories in calories out. Am I eating too much? Too little? Am I preventing injury? (in this case Mastitis.) Is there any part of ME that exists outside of my body and its role and performance? Is it worth it, the careful curation of this body for an endurance event that will never be televised?

Yes. And since I am the only one running I am the only winner. I take home all the prizes. Gold, silver, and bronze.

This entered my brain as gospel and I pitied the poor fools, UNSKILLED in LIFE, who had thrown away their futures on illness or babies. So tragically ignorant! I, on the other hand, passed the LIFE SKILLS final exam. I think by promising to always use a condom.

Actual sex, I assumed, would be a test with easy answers.

Fast forward fifteen years, the better part of them married. If my children ask me about sex now the first thing I'll say is "Well....."

If you want to have sex and conceive a child then great! Your married and it's moral and God blesses your love with a spark of life!

If you want to have sex and NOT get pregnant, then I dunno. It's complicated.

Because the truth about birth control is it's made out of trade-offs. Hormones make you sick. Lesser hormones don't work. Or the hormones that work aren't kosher once you're breastfeeding, and breastfeeding maybe works on its own but maybe not. You have a friend, okay TWO friends who got really really blessed that way, and of course it worked out because their children are the best of friends, but still and all if you want to lean towards the control end of birth control and less towards the birth end it's maybe a good idea to do something stronger.

Turns out condoms are not as exciting in person as they were in theory when sex was mysterious and naturally shrouded in something opaque.

Plus spermicide might be a neurotoxin. Which means you definitely shouldn't put it in a dish and shove it up your whoo-ha.

There are other options that are painful for just one member of the couple. Whether pregnancy and childbirth are painful for just one member of a couple remains debatable.

My brain is so tired of running in circles I asked Dan in all seriousness, "Do married woman even have a right to enjoy sex? Do we have a right to control our own fertility? Or am I just expecting too much?"

He gave me a look like, "Who are you??? And what happened to the hussy I married?"

This morning I woke up and looked at sleeping Elijah, the perfect sleeping angel with the softest skin, and I thought: Every sex act should be copulative. Anything else is heresy.

Then I got into the shower and within ten seconds there was a knock at the door.
"Mama?" said Harvey, "Can I come in the shower with you?"

Good God, I thought. The sex is so short and the angels stick around for oh so very much longer.

I saw a mother of three at the doctor's office today. 2, 4, and 6 or something thereabouts. They were all very good, and not acting up, but herding them through reception was still a major undertaking. I thought: Oh God, my life is going to get HARDER. The little one is going to one day start WALKING.

The rational part of my brain says: Wise mothers shut it down for a season. You can always have it taken out. Don't be ruled by fictitious scruples or baseless emotions.

But the part of my brain that drank too much coffee before my appointment and interprets physical pain as a moral failing being punished, that part sat on the grass after I got the IUD implanted and cried, "I am killing all my future babies!"

I wish I had better life skills.

I wish I had the skills to make tough choices and own them. To really take agency over my own life. To defend my decisions without a hint of doubt. I wish I had skills to separate reason and emotion. The only thing I can say is "Well....."

I haven't got my period yet, but put a metal device all up in my uterus and I'll totally act like I have my period.

This week has been very emotional for me. It could just be the cramping bringing on odd associations; it could be that I'm adjusting to this new reality, coming to terms with the fact that being on birth control means that we won't get pregnant unless we really want to, and maybe that means that we won't get pregnant again ever. This would be totally rational. Three kids is enough and all that fits into this house at the moment. Plus I'm tired of being fat and tired. Tell that to my emotions who are not rational and groping for a constant influx of digital photographs as if they're some kind of security blanket.

Insert horribly adorable picture of Elijah here to break up the blog post. I would if I had my camera!

There are plenty of wrong reasons to get pregnant. I could get pregnant because I fear entering into a different life stage that I might fail. I could get pregnant because I don't want to go back into the workforce and I want to have a continuing excuse. I could get pregnant because I have some self identity tied up in raising young babies, and I don't know who I am without an ergo on, or I don't want people to look at my body and think anything other than "that is the result of children." I could get pregnant again because my relationships are failing and I want someone (briefly) to unfailingly love me. I could get pregnant again because PINK TUTUS, I want a shot at pink tutus and burdening a female child with our culture's boat-load of oppressive gender stereotypes.

What would my hair plus Dan's hair look like if it were long??? We'll never know...

These are all wrong reasons to get pregnant. There is only one good reason: If everyone in the family feels like our family isn't complete. If there is a hole in our family, if there is a person-shaped hole in all our hearts, if we all decide that we want it all over again, the time-suck and the sickness and the sharing of parents in favor of sharing our lives with another person, then yes I will do it all over again. Otherwise this IUD is good for 10 years and my fertility probably isn't.

If I birthed my babies ten years in the future I'd have the frequency-emitting tracking tags on our things. In the future parents won't wonder "Where is the camera?" or "Where is the lovey?" The iPhone will send out a pulse and tell us. It will be magical. But unfortunately, I can't live in the future. As I am learning this week, for so many reasons, I CAN NOT LIVE IN THE FUTURE.

Neither of my first two children used a pacifier. There is some vague anti-dummy prejudice in hippy-land, maybe because pacies are associated with scheduled feedings, or perhaps just because they're plastic and they make kids look vacant. Perhaps I was even proud once to have kids who didn't NEED dummies. If so, it was a fake bitchy kind of pride. Because there have been moments in my parenting of all my babies when I've tried putting EVERYTHING in their mouthes to find ANYTHING stop the crying. It's just that last week when it was Elijah's teething turn, he was the only one who instead of saying "Pleh pleh" to the pacie took it in his mouth and said, "Yes, yes! A thousand times yes! Where have you BEEN all my life, sucking without food???"

And in retrospect, there's no reason to be proud of a child who nurses for comfort until he vomits (Harvey) or whose teeth are already bucking forward from the constant pressure of a thumb (Zion). Elijah has the unique distinction among my children of being way ahead in gross motor skills and behind in fine motor, which means he can't reliably get his fingers in his mouth and hates the sensation of his belly overfilled. A child who self-regulates calorie consumption? Now that's something to be proud of! Bring on the dummy!

When he first showed interest in such sucking it was with a pacifier we've had in the fridge for the past 5 years. Unfortunately Elijah's lack of coordination meant I had to hold it in his mouth for an hour while he calmed down. That same night I called Dan who was at Mrs. Katie's house for bible study. "Ask Katie if she has an extra one of those pacifiers attached to animals!" I said in a voicemail, and then in a text, and then on the phone when he called me back wondering what the emergency was. "For the Love of God, I need a pacifier that's easier to hold! Two days Amazon Prime is TOO LONG TO WAIT!!!"

Thankfully Mrs. Katie is a veteran of wubs, and Elijah was soon the proud owner of an adorable monkey. (Katie and Tim and Nathan, I cannot say thank you enough. You saved my week with a feverish, teething, car-riding baby.)

I post this photo that shows that even when he's being held all attachment parented or whatever, nursing on-demand and blah-dee-blah, still Elijah wants that wub. Shouldn't that be enough? Shouldn't we just give our children what they want?

I am ashamed that I feel the need to write this post to justify my choices, as if I want a public exemption from hippy policy in the case of the pacifier. Of course this is ridiculous. If my concept of a perfect baby-hood or childhood doesn't include things that are uniquely necessary to my children, then my concept is useless and destructive. I'm thinking about you, legos. And you too, iPad. I hope I'll be brave enough to parent my children based on what they need, rather than what I think looks good in a blog post or a facebook photograph. Elijah, get on with your pacie-sucking self. I love whatever makes you happy.

Harvey and Zion, this is me giving you more grace regarding the legos on the floor. And MAYBE the iPad, we'll see.

Then on Thursday morning the chicks' brooder light burned out. "Oh my God!" I screamed as I walked into the kitchen and noticed the absence of red light, "Help help help, the baby chicks are getting cold!!!" I tend to overreact a LITTLE BIT, but still we needed to get a replacement bulb.

We looked at Ace Hardware dot com and saw that they probably had one at the store down the street.

"Okay," I said to Dan, "how much cash can we scrounge in this house?"

From our wallets and the change jar we amassed $11. That was enough for the bulb we saw online. I zipped off with Lijah to Ace Hardware.

There was only one red heat lamp in the store. It cost $13.50

For the sake of our baby chicks I threw myself on the cashier's mercy.

"I lost my bank card. This is all the cash I have. We have baby chicks in a brooder at home, and their heat lamp just burned out. Can you just... make this cost eleven dollars?"

She looked at me. She looked at her computer screen. She looked at the line of people forming behind me.

She opened the till and took my quarters. "Because I love chickens," she said.

Apparently grace (in the order of magnitude of $2.50) still exists at Ace Hardware Bedford.

—-

The next day I was out doing my grocery shopping at Whole Foods. I had my SNAP card, so I could buy up to my balance of actual food, but no non-food items or prepared food. Unbeknownst to me, Whole Foods was running a one-day-promotion on rotisserie chicken. Two whole cooked chickens for $10. The prepared-food section was stocked accordingly, with hot chickens piled to the sky.

Man, did I want a cooked chicken all of a sudden. It was almost lunch time too... But prepared food requires cash, so I would have to go home to a vegetarian lunch.

I ran into my friend Christie who is the goddess of one-day sales. "How many chickens are you buying?" she asked. "I'm on my way to an appointment but I had to stop and get the deal."

I agreed that it was a FANTASTIC sale but that I didn't have a bank card, and I explained about the ATM, and the limited scope of SNAP benefits, and I threw my yelling kids into the story to make me look like less of a white trash idiot. Or more, I don't know.

"Oh shut up, I'll buy you two chickens," Christie said. "Do you want teriyaki or barbecue?"

On my way to my car I reflected on the wellspring of human generosity I hadn't even noticed until I lost my bank card. Then I laughed that both these stories are about chickens, albeit in various stages of alive-ness. Maybe it's not me, maybe it's the chickens. Maybe our societal love for chickens, both alive and deliciously roasted, trumps currency.

Or maybe it is about me, about my ability to accept grace. Maybe I have to lose something to realize I'm deserving of human kindess regardless of my inability to pay.

A replacement bank card arrived in the mail late yesterday. Back to hard-headed self-reliance.

Every August I know it will arrive but I'm not exactly sure when. I have been saving up my paperwork in an easily-accessible yellow folder: pay stubs and tax bills and social security cards. I am as prepared as any person living at the poverty line can expected to be prepared. Yet the day the envelope arrives in the mail I immediately feel my stomach lurch as I launch into fight-or-flight.

"Your SNAP benefits are set to expire October 10th" the letter says.
"Your recertification paperwork must be completed by September 11th."
"In order to have enough time for our office to process your paperwork, you need to complete these forms and return the requested documents by August 27th."
It is August 22nd when I get this letter. It's a Friday. Mail processing within the DTA office takes at least two days. It is my responsibility to ensure my paperwork is in my caseworker's hands by the date she requests it.

All this means that if I get the paperwork to the post office by 8am on Saturday morning there MIGHT be a CHANCE it gets in on time.

More likely they'll send me a letter they're canceling my case. Last year they printed that letter before I even got the initial questionnaire in the mail.

I tell Dan he is in charge of the children and dinner. I tell him I'm not eating until I get this done. I haul up in the bedroom checking off boxes and making copies of documents. Good thing I have all the forms at the ready. Good thing we have a copy machine in house. Good thing we have a computer and an internet connection and a credit card so I can print a priority shipping label and give myself a fighting chance at meeting their criteria.

Of course, they could cancel my case anyway. I've been doing this for five years now, and that wouldn't surprise me. I've come to expect that after I do my secretarial best I still need to spend several hours on the phone advocating for me and my family.

I have wrote about it before and I don't want to waste my energy writing about it again. Here's me quoting me circa 2013:

To effectively deal with the DTA, or any government agency for that matter, you need skills only possessed by a few members of the human race who are advanced in both intelligence and maturity. You need a patient non-attachment; the realization that your government doesn't care about you personally and the self-confidence to accept that. You need the organizational skills of an executive secretary to save every piece of paper you receive all year and file it in a place that's easily retrievable. You need envelopes and stamps at the ready. It helps if you have a copy machine, printer, scanner, and internet access too. Is this what we expect of people who make under $20,000 a year?

We can look at this problem in two ways. One, we can say it's a gift horse and don't look in it's mouth. People like me should take the kind charity our society extends and not complain about the process we go through to get it. Whether that process be invasive or discriminating or stigmatizing or all of the above... don't utter a word that might smack of ingratitude.

Or two, we could say that an adequate food supply is the basic right of all members of our society. We could say that this is the least we can do to make up for the massive economic, social and environmental catastrophes foisted on our citizenry by business and government. In this light, we should do our best to ensure that this safety net, promised within the law, is actually accessible to those it's designed to help.

I have a friend living below the poverty line who didn't get SNAP benefits renewed because she had to go to her job instead of filing the paperwork in time. Another friend I know couldn't figure out how to prove he DIDN'T have a bank account. These are people with college degrees. I can't begin to imagine the countless others who don't feel confident even approaching the bureaucratic machine for reasons of language or education. It takes a certain mix of confidence and desperation to enter the machine and throw oneself on its grindstone. And another skill set altogether to actually come out the other end with flour.

I am not angry, I just want to face the facts together.

The fact is we live in a country where food benefits are provided and protected under law, and yet the procedures for providing those benefits subtly try to kick the poor off the roles every 6 months. These are the people with the least capacity to stand up for their rights. Mentally handicapped. Working poor. Mothers of small children. They deserve better. I deserve better. We as a society deserves better.

Unfortunately, I now learn that the item in question is no longer sold at Target. I am waiting to see if I win an ebay auction for a used one before I fork over thirty five bucks for it new on Amazon. He's pooped in the potty three times so far, but still that's a rather steep cost per turd.

This great leap forward comes at a time when all my children seem to ge growing in bravery. Harvey tried a bike without training wheels for the second time today. He also let me cut his hair with the electric clippers for the first time. (The key was to pretend he was TinTin and I was a foreign barber, and say "Mr. TinTin" in a funny accent) Now his haircuts take half as long and he looks like a real big boy.

Elijah grows bigger every day. At nearly 6 months he's fitting into 12-month onesies. Until August he was way ahead in gross motor skills, even starting to inch forward on his stomach, but a month of near-constant illness set him back. Still, he did have one major change in the past month - he's able to prop himself up in the exercauser for a few minutes at a time. Since he can't hold himself up sitting yet, it's super fun to watch him lean forward in the saucer and play with some toys.

He reminds me of Zion who loooooved that thing.

And here's Harvey who never had an exercauser, but had to make do with a bjorn baby sitter and ikea play gym in front of it. With a constant input of personal attention, somehow he managed.

Dragging up these old images makes me reflect on my babies and how they just keep getting bigger. I don't want to say "They grow up so fast," I don't even believe that. Between those baby pictures and the current ones I remember A LOT of days I wished could have passed by quicker. No, it's that I look at Harvey and Zion in those pictures and I think, "I hardly knew you then!" I see the wry smile in Zion, the wild eyes in Harvey, and I think, "That was you, but not all the way you. I had no idea." Then I look at Elijah and I think: "Who are you, little man?"

But maybe that's unfair. Right now Elijah is a baby and I love baby him 100%. I love Zion 100% as a 3-year-old and Harvey 100% as a 5-year old even though I'm sure they'll change many times before they leave my care. Each of them holds a future that's full of surprises. Some surprises will amaze me and make me exclaim "I hardly knew!" Some may be plastic and even, gulp, Disney themed. I can only pray that I'll keep pace with the changes, to trust the process, and to trust my kids enough next time that I buy the stupid toy when it's actually on sale.