On turning 34…

Here I am sitting in a coffee shop just a few days away from celebrating my 34^th birthday.  I came here planning on continuing a tradition started on my personal blog a few years ago – writing a post that reflects on the year just past and the year to come.  You can find those here (31st birthday), here (32nd birthday), and here (33rd birthday).  I’m finding, though, that the very experience of coming here is a perfect example of how this year has changed.

Pete and the Stinkerdoodle drove me here and we had lunch together.  It was, as all meals are these days, an exercise in multitasking.  I read the menu at the counter while Pete got the baby settled.  Then I fed the baby his lunch while Pete ordered for us.  The act of actually eating the meal was a combination of eating and having a conversation with Pete while dangling links in front of and then snuggling the baby. 

As the time neared that Pete and the baby were to leave, giving me a couple of hours of Mama time to write, think, and reflect, I had very mixed feelings.  I both desperately want the time and desperately want to call Pete to tell him to turn around, come back, and pick me up.  The baby has been particularly charming lately – talking more, lunging for me when others are holding him, giving LOTS of hugs and kisses.  I also REALLY enjoy my weekends with Pete.  It’s our time to reconnect, talk, and just have time together that isn’t under the pressure of getting things done.  Why did I want to do this again??  Why do I want time away from my family during the very time that I enjoy it most – weekends??  I came close to calling it off and proposing that we all go for a hike on this beautiful day.  It was hard to say to Pete, “Yep, it’s time for you both to go.”

In a lot of ways, this is what my life is now.  Reveling in being with my family.  Needing some alone time even if, at that moment, I don’t really want it.  Doing what I know is responsible even if what I really want to do is what is fun and what feels good.  During the Stinkerdoodle’s morning nap I want to blog, sew, go shopping, or visit with friends.  Instead I do laundry, clean the kitchen, wash diapers, or declutter our house.  During the afternoon nap I want to nap, surf the web, read, or go for a walk.  Instead I do the prep work for dinner (chopping, thawing meat, sautéing, and the like), fold laundry, empty the dishwasher, and hang diapers in the sun to dry.  The strange thing is that it kind of feels good to have the self-control to do what is needed rather than what I want.  It feels productive and useful.  At the same time, it also feels like I’m constantly denying myself. 

I’ve had multiple people tell me that raising a child is the very best thing they’ve ever done.  What they failed to tell me is that the highs are so much higher than everything else that they easily drown out the lows/challenges.  In the end the net gain is so much greater than pretty much everything else I do in my life that it can justify having the label “the very best thing I’ve ever done.” 

However, it is also quite possibly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  That’s the piece that people don’t talk about – how hard it is.  Sure, you can joke about sleep deprivation, spit up on everything, and losing your social life (a total fallacy, by the way!), but there’s no way to really explain how hard this can be at times.  It is HARD to function on night after night of substandard sleep.  It is HARD to figure out how to have time for the care and feeding of your marriage when there is a dependent little person in the mix.  And *ahem* adult time?  Well, the sleep deprivation and the accompanying exhaustion and increased responsibilities can pretty much do away with that if you’re not careful.  And if you’re the mama, especially if your life pre-baby was really focused on career, it is HARD to figure out who you are now.

So as my 34^th birthday approaches I’m thinking:

• About who I am in the world – Am I a mama?  Am I a professional?  Am I a wife?   Am I a housewife?  Am I the Heather of past years that preferred to sit back and let others make the decisions?  Am I the Heather of this year who makes decisions that affect another person’s well-being intimately (sleep training, parenting style, what to feed him, etc.)?  Am I all of those things and, if so, how do I balance them?
• About how blessed I am to have become a parent with this husband. 
• About how tired I am but, at the same time, how the smile of my kid can totally energize me.
• About how absolutely, totally unprepared I’ve felt in becoming a parent (and I teach parenting classes!) 
• About how I’ve found resources I never thought I had.  As it turns out, when I have repeated sleep interruptions, my body develops the ability to drop off into REM sleep pretty much as soon as I close my eyes!  It also turns out that I CAN control myself when my sleep-deprived self is feeling snippy and wants to pick a fight with my similarly sleep-deprived and grumpy husband.  Um, yeah, not the best idea ever but in the past I would do so in order to inflict my snippiness on others.
• About how I’m the center of someone’s world right now.  That I am someone’s Mother.  Yep, still sounds freaky to say that out loud!
• About how, when I really stop to think about, I wouldn’t imagine my life any other way.  Sure, I grieve for my life before baby and sometimes wish I could be back there again.  But I would never, never , never in a million years give up the chance to know Nathan in order to go back there.
• About how my capacity to love has expanded tenfold this year.
• About how grateful I am that my husband takes the baby on Sunday mornings and lets me sleep in.  Until 7.  Yep, that’s sleeping in.  That extra hour and a half of sleep, though, is sheer, sleepy bliss.
• About how I never knew that a smile from one little person could capture me so.  And the very special, “hey, that’s MY Mama!” smile?  Well, that one can stop me in my tracks!
• About how I totally need to come to this coffee shop for a few hours alone again.  This is pretty nice!
• About how I’m grateful to have had this year and how I’m looking forward with wonder and anticipation to the next.

He *always* gets the top bunk! :-(

On turning 33

The last two years I’ve posted some thoughts on or around the time of my birthday; you can find them here and here.  I turned 33 this week and thought I’d keep up the (inadvertently created) tradition.

Although 32 was a pretty good year all around, I find myself thinking more about the coming year than the past one.  After a brief reflection about how much things have changed since this time last year – most notably by being married, I find myself drawn into ruminations about what my next birthday will be like.  Next year we’ll have a 9-month old at the time of my birthday.  I’m reminded of a quote that I heard while working in daycare – “Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body” (Elizabeth Stone).  Next year will not be just me on my birthday.  I can make the day about me, I can indulge but there will be a little boy needing something from me on that day, as there will be every day.  This year was my last birthday as “just Heather.”  I didn’t really make the day all about me although we did indulge a little.  We found a really, really good vegetarian restaurant near us, Blue Sage,and had dinner there.  It was a little pricier than our usual spots but, ooooooh, it was well worth it!

I kept wondering this week… who will I be next year at this time?  What kind of mom will I be?  Will I be able to find a balance between nurturing a child and nurturing myself?  What kind of wife will I be to my husband?  How will my sense of who I am in the world change?

This last two are probably the biggest questions I have but, well, one I’m not going to discuss on a public blog.    I know that a lot of women struggle when a child is born with adapting their sense of who they are to include “mother” too.  So many of my women-friends are strong, well-educated women who are successful in their careers.  It’s been comforting to see some of them go through the process of adapting/ rebuilding their sense of self after the baby is born.  It makes me feel like I can do it too, which is tremendously reassuring.  I know that it’s not going to be easy, especially the first few weeks and months, but I know that it can and will happen.  And I’m curious to see what that’ll look like…

The epitome of “three-day weekend”

This I Believe

For several years now I’ve been listening to “This I Believe” on the radio and via podcast.  I’ve found it fascinating to hear what others believe, the foundations on which they build their lives.  The series as resurrected on NPR is a revival of a series from the 1950s hosted by Edward R. Murrow.  Although it’s no longer being broadcast over NPR, the podcast continues, as do spinoffs created by local NPR affiliates like this one at WHYY.  For several years I’ve wondered what I would write if I undertook the task of writing an essay like this.  Sure, I had lots of ideas – I believe in love, the primacy of family, commitment, flowers, butterflies, and other happy stuff – but none of them seemed to really capture what I was looking for – an overarching, guiding belief.  Until one day it hit me…  so here is my essay:

This I Believe

I believe that people do the best they can with what they have at the time.  This is something my husband said to me a few months ago and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it really encapsulates my belief.  I believe that people are innately good and want to do what is right.  I believe that people are complex; they are the interplay between innate resources and their experiences.  They may have all the resources to do the right thing – the understanding, the spirit, the drive – but if that is hampered by their experiences and emotions we may not see it. 

It’s easy for us to judge the behavior of others – what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s laudable, what’s abhorrent – and in doing so it’s too easy us for us to pigeonhole people into the good, the bad, the saintly, and the evil.  The reality is the saintly person may do a bad thing and the evil person may show moments of goodness.  When you truly look at people as innately good with subsequent experiences that either inhibit or enhance the expression of that goodness, it’s hard to judge and to pigeonhole them.

I’m a social worker.  I’m supposed to believe in the inherent strength and goodness of others.  Like so many other people, though, I find that it’s not easy to do at times.  I work with a population that is middle to upper class with many more resources – tangible and intangible – at their disposal than many other clients of social work.  But what of my colleagues that work with addicts, sex offenders, domestic violence perpetrators, or people with narcissistic personality disorder?  Can you really believe that a sex offender was doing the best that she could with what she had at the time when she is violating a child?  Can you really believe that a violent husband is doing the best with what he has at the time when he is beating his wife?  Yes, and I would argue that we have to do just that.  I have to remember that the sex offender may have been a victim herself of sexual abuse and, as a result, hasn’t internalized the boundaries of appropriate sexual behavior.  I have to remember that the violent husband may once have been a little boy with a violent father who taught him that the only way to express anger or to relate to women is through violence and domination. 

How can I hold out hope that there is a different future for a person if I don’t believe that, given more resources, he or she could do better?  If I don’t believe that someone can help the sex offender or violent husband find within him or herself the capacity to love and respect others appropriately, how can I possibly expect that the person will believe that of themself?  If I believe that people are full of capacities and strengths that, through life experiences, brain wiring, or whatever, they may have been limited from using, I therefore believe that they CAN access them at some point in the future.

Now, don’t get me wrong – believing that people do the best they can with what they have at the time doesn’t absolve people from responsibility from their actions.   There are still consequences – negative or positive – to be had as a result of human behavior.  If you violate a child or beat someone, you should receive the consequences.  However, you should not therefore be labeled a person of lesser value because you are a criminal.  If you had a spark of “redemption” growing within and you faced this experience, it could very well crush that spark removing one of your tools for becoming a better person. 

It’s not always easy to believe that people are doing the best they can with what they have.  We are a judgmental society and I am a judgmental person.  In my head, I notice and judge the person wearing the clothes too tight for their body, the parent that spanks their child, the poor person who spends any financial windfall received with abandon, the person who takes a while to understand a concept that, to me, is painfully simple.  By judging I’m dehumanizing them, putting them into a neat little hole with a label.  When I stop and think that maybe those people are people who just have a different fashion sense than I, have never been taught a discipline tool other than spanking, feel the deprivation of chronic or consistent poverty and just once don’t want to feel that way, or whose brain is wired differently than mine, it makes them more multidimensional, less a label and more a complex human being.  I don’t do this successfully everyday but it’s what I aspire to – to believe and to see that people are doing the best they can with what they have at the time.

Things that I’ve Learned in Vietnam

1. It is possible to put almost anything on a motorbike – veggies, flowers for sale, huge plastic containers, computers, monitors, power saws, construction materials, boxes piled 2 – 3 times higher than the driver, babies, big kids, 1 – 4 adults (comfortably)… you get the idea.
2. In August it does get cooler after the rain – thank goodness!
3. Vietnam gives a whole new definition to humidity.
4. The day usually starts at 5:00 a.m. Getting up at 6 or later is the equivalent of sleeping in!
5. Because the day starts at 5 and the heat is worst in the middle of the day, there is often a siesta-like rest taken in the early afternoon.
6. Many people speak at least a little bit of English – even the 4 year old in one of the shops today knew how to say "hello." Other foreigners who travel here are expected to communicate in Vietnamese or English – sometimes a little French. Not sure what, say, a German tourist not terribly fluent in English would do!
7. This is an amazing country and I wish I had more time to stay and explore. Wish I had some company for the exploring too!
8. If you get turned around in the Old Quarter and are still walking on streets called "Hang ____" you can know with reasonable certainty that you’re still in the Old Quarter.
9. Morning exercise – badminton, stretches, running, walking, fan dancing, calesthenics, low impact aerobics, etc – is a standard part of daily life.
10. There is somewhat-organized chaos in the traffic on the streets. I’ve managed to cross several busy streets but am not quite ready to tackle the big, busy streets.
11. It is safe to walk around as a single woman in most areas, with normal safety awareness/precautions, of course.
12. The streets are filled with a mix of old and new – women in conical hats carrying items for sale on their shoulders alongside the SUVs and young adults in their trendy,
    Western-influenced clothes.
13. The food is every bit as fabulous as I hoped it would be.
14. You can get decent Italian food in Hanoi.
15. It’s almost spiritual to wake to the chanting of the monks next door.
16. It is decidedly not fun to wake up from an afternoon nap to the sound of "The Nanny." Note to self – don’t leave TV on when falling asleep!
17. Korean soap operas are as addictive in Vietnam as they are in the U.S.
18. Sidewalks are for walking, parking motorbikes, driving motorbikes, cooking, eating, playing with children, cooling off, sitting and watching the world go by, selling, shopping.
19. Navigating the internet can be adventure. Turns out that many (but not all) blogs and many (but not all) foreign news sites are blocked by the government.
20. If you don’t have a radio and the cable goes out, you can stream WHYY for some news/background noise but you can’t watch Netflix’ "watch instantly" feature because of licensing issues.
21. The tiny little ants in the hotel room don’t bite and love the fruit bowl that the hotel staff put out for me each day.
22. Pacing myself is the best way to manage the heat and humidity and leads to (slightly luxurious) afternoon naps.
23. Paying the cost for foreigners (vs. the cost for locals) for 4 bottles of water at 6 a.m. is not really a big deal. Besides, who wants to bargain at that time in the morning?!
24. Our staff here are incredibly competent, organized, kind, caring people.
25. I’d better stop here or I’m going to miss dinner. Hang and her husband are taking me out for Vietnamese food – yay!

T minus 4 days and counting

So, yeah, at the moment our apartment is a disaster area.  Some stuff is in boxes, some stuff is making its way to boxes, and some stuff is just sitting there mocking the very idea of being put in a box.  “You can’t make me. I won’t go,” it says.  “Like hell!” I say and cram it into a box, whether or not there’s room. 

We’ve been doing a countdown, Pete and I.  Not to moving day, though.  The countdown is to dishwasher day, which happens to coincide with moving day.  That’s right, we’re celebrating the day we have a dishwasher.  It’s been 5 1/2 years since I’ve lived in a place that has one – and probably about the same time for Pete – so we’re very, very excited about this.  We both dislike doing dishes but prefer to have a clean kitchen.  Leads to a bit of a quandary most days… just exactly how much of a mess can we stand before it makes us crazy and we have to do dishes?  In 4 days, though, we’ll wonder no more.  Instead of stacking dirty dishes in the sink with the promise that we’ll wash them in the morning – a promise we even kept sometimes! – we’ll be putting them straight into the dishwasher.  Clear counters, clean dishes, minimal effort - sounds like heaven to me!

Of course, thinking about all this as “dishwasher day” rather than “moving day” is an intentional choice.  It’s done to obscure the fact that we’re leaving an apartment we like with a deck we LOVE in a town we enjoy to move to a slightly smaller place with no basement and very little character.  If we could have made Pete’s commute to work feasible while staying in Quakertown, we would have but there was just no way to do it.  We found the best place we could and, to be honest, it’s not all that bad.  It’s just that neither Pete nor I are big fans of big transitions.  Oh well, we’re sucking it up and getting ready to celebrate the first annual Dishwasher Day! 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

On an unrelated note, I have a post for this blog that’s been rattling around my head for a few months.  For a couple of years now I’ve been enjoying listening to “This I Believe” on NPR broadcasts and on their podcast.  They’re no longer broadcasting on air but the podcasts have been continuing.  I’ve been wondering over the past few years what I would say if I wrote an essay for This I Believe.  How do I put my finger on what I believe?  It’s been a harder exercise than I expected.  Sure, I’ve tried to live a good life and I know that there are things I think are right but to try to put a finger on a belief that guides me in many areas of my life?  That’s tough.  I think I may finally have come to it though.  I’m looking forward to posting it here but I need a little bit of quiet space in my life to write it, maybe a quiet, rainy Saturday afternoon.  Things have been a little nuts around here with the yard sale, the packing, some celebrations recently, etc. but I look forward to  having a little quiet time to put my thoughts on (electronic) paper.  So, with that, I’ll leave you hanging… (got to keep you coming back somehow! It’s certainly not with my frequent posts and pearls of wisdom.)

Movin’

I’m happy to report that we have found an apartment – hooray!  It took longer than we like because, well, we’re stubborn and spoiled and we wanted something like our current apartment.  Alas, it was not to be found in the area in which we were looking.    Oh well.  Our next best choice is a complex in Southampton that is reasonably priced and that is quiet – or at least we think it’s quiet.  It’s a longer drive for me but shorter for Pete, which is what we expected and were looking for.  As long as he’s not driving 1.5 hours to get to work anymore life will be much, much better!  I’ve done a “test run” of the drive for me and it doesn’t look too bad – sweet!   We’ll be picking up the keys on the 19th, moving some small things during that week, and then doing the big move on Sunday, the 26th of July.  Somewhere in between there we need to:

• Go on vacation for the 4th of July
• Get ready for a yard sale
• Have the yard sale
• Attend a baby shower
• Attend a bridal shower
• Attend a 1st birthday party
• And I’ll be working 2 of the weekend days between here and there – 1 Saturday and 1 Sunday

So, yeah, trying not to feel overwhelmed by that…  On the up side, Pete and I have taken off July 1st and 2nd and we’re not heading out on vacation until the 3rd.  That’ll give us 2 days of uninterrupted time in the house to tackle the packing and organizing.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?!?!  At least we’ll be in the nice cool basement while we work!

May’s been a hell of a month – Part 2

So there was one little thing that I failed to mention in my previous post.  There’s one little thing that we weren’t quite ready to discuss publicly but, now that we’ve been to the doctor, we are talking about.  We’re pregnant.  Yep, 2 days after buying the car and 6 days before leaving for vacation I took the test and – voila – there it was.  2 little pink lines.  Positive. 

We’re converting the wedding blog into a pregnancy/family blog.  Click here to visit it.  While there may be some overlap between that blog and this one, I’m going to try to keep most of the pregnancy stuff there and the rest of life things here.  Well, that’s the goal anyway… 

May’s been a hell of a month

So, yeah, I’ve totally been slacking on this blogging thing lately.  I put a draft together in April but never published it so, alas, I have broken my streak of posting at least once a month.  Dang.  Well, here we are rapidly approaching on the end of May and I can’t let another month pass without posting!

May has been a hell of a month.  It’s all good stuff but it’s just a lot to pack into a month.  At the very end of April we saw a 2008 Subaru Forester with 3,000 miles on Craigslist.  After talking the decision to death, we decided to replace the 9-year old Jetta with 136,000 miles and buy the Subaru.  We’ve been working so hard on getting rid of debt over the past year that it really hurt to take on more debt to buy the car but it really seemed to make sense.  Basically we got a new car without the depreciation! 

The next excitement was that Pete discovered that his job has tuition reimbursement – $10,000 a year!  This is a relatively new development; in the past they didn’t offer this.  He’s been wanting to get more education for a while but the biggest stumbling block has always been paying for it.  We didn’t want to go into debt for it and we were working so hard to pay down the debt we do have.  Granted, he now has to determine what he wants to study and where, as well as get approval for the funding.  However, it helps that his director really values education and he’s been there a while.  Looks like he may be studying again sometime in the next year or so!

Next up… vacation.  This year was the first year I went on vacation with friends, not just family.  All I have to say is, CAN I GO BACK?!?!  It was wonderful – the right combination of active and relaxing, great company, great food.  It was good to have a break from work, too.  Don’t get me wrong – I still love my job but I was getting a little crispy around the edges.  My empathy was getting dangerously close to being broken again.  I came back happier, more relaxed, and nicely rejuvenated.

While we were on vacation Pete got an email from his director saying that he wanted to talk with Pete about an opportunity.  Monday, his first day back, he talked to his director and heard that another group had asked for him by name.  It’s a nice opportunity for him to get back into some of the work with hardware and to build more connections in the firm.  The folks asking for him are pretty swamped so he started working with them that Wednesday.  The only downside of this new project is that he can no longer telecommute.  Kind of hard to work on hardware remotely…  So, we’ve been scrambling to find an apartment that’s closer to his work.  For now, he’s spending a couple of nights a week at his parents’ house, which is only 45 minutes from work (about 1/2 the distance all the way home).  We’re hoping to move at the end of June or mid-July at the latest because I don’t really want to keep up this whole being separated thing.  Last weekend my parents came for a visit and on Saturday we dragged them around to look at a couple of apartment complexes.  We found one place we liked and two duds.  We’re going tomorrow to look at 1/2 a duplex in Hatboro.  I hope it’s nice because it’s within our price range, which is kind of hard to find in this area.

So to sum up… new car, more debt, tuition reimbursement, vacation, new project at work, and now moving.  This is all good stuff but, man, I hope we can take a little bit of a breather in June!  Hmm, not likely since June will be filled with packing and possibly moving… maybe July…