Here’s a poem I wrote today.  I wanted it to be a Haiku, but, you know.  Please feel free to Haiku it in the comments.

My despair is like a flushing toilet

The water spins up higher and higher until I think it’s going to overflow

Then it gets sucked down into the pipes and fills up again to a manageable level.

Tragedy strikes us all at some point in our lives. When it happens to other people, we think “ugh I can’t imagine, how do they get out of bed in the morning, how do they go on?”.  Then it happens to us, and we realize (at some point) that we go on because that’s what we do.  The human experience is hard, but it doesn’t kill us.  There’s only a very small portion of people who decide to stay in their pajamas, or to drink themselves into a permanent numbness, or to stop answering the phone when their mother checks to see if they’re ok.  We all think we’re going to be in that small group of people, then we go through what we go through, and we just aren’t those people.  We are the people who keep going (even if we take a few weeks or months to be numb, and ignore phone calls, and live in our PJ’s).  We are the people who can’t help but notice that there is beauty in the harsh world we’re stuck in. We are most of us.

A broken heart seems to shatter some timing device in our lives. Everything gets reset.  Time moves differently, and our memories are reorganized.

When it’s all over (it’s never over, but there is a time when your heart doesn’t actually hurt anymore, and you can breath without thinking “breath in, breath out”) we think that now we’re equipped with a special knowledge.  We didn’t act right when our friend/cousin/sister/co-worker went through their tragedy, but now we know exactly what to do.  We send food, we never say “well at least…”, we try to listen and not offer advice unless we’re asked, we call long after the funeral when we know everyone else has gone back to their regular lives.

But it’s not enough.  We’re so helpless to save each other.  We hate that part of our special knowledge is knowing that we can’t fix it for other people.  We can’t convince anyone else that they too will be part of the group that keeps going.  They won’t be destroyed by their grief either.  And it’s not because they are “so strong” (because no one feels so strong, and hearing that is confusing when you spend hours every day crying or plotting to run away or throwing things at the television when certain commercials come on, or pressing sharp things into the soft skin on your arm just to feel a more manageable kind of pain) it’s because that’s what we do.  We just decide we aren’t going to give up, even when we’d rather decide to be the people who give up.  We are most of us.

It feels like we are alone.  It feels like no one understands us.  It feels (eventually) that we have to hide our pain away so we don’t scare people.  As we heal we grow afraid that the people we lost are fading away, as if we have to exchange our selves for their presence.  It’s not true.  We grapple with guilt, and we monitor our thoughts with hyper-vigilence, trying to find prof that we didn’t deserve to be happy or that we weren’t good enough to keep them.  It’s not true.

Years later, we make new friends who don’t know what we went through.  Sometimes we tell them, sometimes we don’t.  We wonder if the guy who snapped at us in the coffee shop was going through his tragedy.  We try and give people a little more room.  Because now we know.  We are most of us.  And sometimes it feels like we are all together, and sometimes it feels like we are completely alone.

I’m tired all the time.  I thought it would get better when Hazel started sleeping more.  I thought it would get better when I lost weight.  I thought it wold get better when it wasn’t so hot out.

I try and remember if there was a time when I had a lot of energy.  I’m afraid that this is just my personality, like I’m just a low energy person.  If I was born 10,000 years ago and all my cave-mates were like “Run!  Here comes a saber tooth tiger!” I’d probably be like “I’m in the middle of a nap though”.  Then I’d be eaten. Or, maybe I’d start a gene pool that evolves into a sub-sect of humans who have a “play dead” response instead of  a “fight or flight” response when faced with stress.

I do enjoy exercising, but I prefer it be bookended by naps or couch-sitting.

Obviously this tiredness doesn’t contribute well to being a working mom.  It’s not the working or the momming that suffers as much as the chores.  Clean and dirty laundry piles up around the house.  Hazel chases dog-hair tumble weeds and every night I have to untangle the sheets and blankets to get into bed.

I don’t mean to imply that before I had a baby I was very neat and organized.  I just feel more embarrassed by it now, and concerned about the safety risks it can create (pennies on the floor, wires snaking everywhere, constantly worrying that I’m using the last clean bottle).  I wish I was one of those people who liked being upright.   Then at least i could run the vacuum.

I’d like to write more on this topic, but I’m tuckered out.  I’d better go make a coffee and sweeten it with a Five Hour Energy drink.

Tom, Hazel and I sat in a diner one Saturday morning eating crepes and strawberries and trying desperately to ignore the people at the table next to us.  I think the woman was trying to win an award for the Most Annoying Human Ever and maybe she thought we were members of the secret board that bestows that honor.

First there were the loud questions, followed by strange, aggressively judgmental comments:

Example #1

Annoying Lady: “How old is your baby?”

Me: “Eight and a Half Months.”

AL: “Oh wow, she’s huge.”

Example #2

AL: “Does she eat solid foods now?”

Me: “Yes she eats anything we’re eating.”

AL: “Oh even crepes huh?  We don’t let Charlie eat that.” Followed by her shouting at Charlie’s face: “CHARLIE WANT SOME EGGIES?  CHARLIE? EGGIES?  CHARLIE?  EGGIES?  CHARLIE?”

Charlie was very cute, but a few times I think he was trying to signal me to rescue him, or at least provide him with ear plugs to muffle the sound of his mother talking to him like he would answer if she could just reach the right volume.  I imagined him saying to her calmly, “Yes, goddamnit, I want some EGGS, but can do without the side order of tinnitus.”

This scenario is not limited to annoying people and their human children.  I’ve encountered many many horrible douche bags at the dog park too. One guy gave me a long lecture about how his Portuguese Water dog could make “an actual wage” working as a search and rescue dog…you know…if the guy wanted to train him to be a search and rescue dog.  Another lady gave me a detailed account of how she was suing the owner of the dog who knocked her down two weeks ago and caused her to break her elbow.

The difference between the dog people and the baby people is that the dog people have a singular agenda: to brag about their dog.  They don’t even really notice or care that you happen to also have a dog.  The baby people want to brag about their baby and make sure you understand that their baby is more advanced/smarter/more organic/slept through the night at three days old/memorized Hamlet’s Third Soliloquy before s/he could talk than yours.  Also, they’re a better parent, as evidenced by these skills.

I appreciate how insecure being a parent makes you.  In fact, I think it’s the most insecure I’ve ever felt about anything in my life- including (but not limited to) finding a prom dress, being on the C-Squad softball team when we’re about to win our first game and everything depends on my at bat, and taking the SAT’s for a third time.  Those things only affected me (well me and a softball team about to get their hopes crushed).  Parenthood affects an ever-expanding pool of people: the baby, you and your partner,  grandparents, cousins, close friends, and eventually….society.  So there are a lot of legitimate reasons to be scared that you’re seriously f*cking the whole thing up.

Luckily, Hazel is already an expert at reassuring me.  She smiles hugely when she wakes up in the morning, when I bring her breakfast, when I show her a ceiling fan, ten seconds after falling over and bashing her face, and laughs hysterically at almost any joke you throw at her.  If a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child, and Tommy Jr (the psychic assures me) is having a good time in the spirit world, Tom and I are in pretty damn good shape.

Happy 9 month Birthday Ms. Beautiful!

Hazel and I are both experiencing dramatic events in the lives of our teeth.  Her first few teeth are arriving, shiny and sharp, but only after an agonizingly long and painful descent.  Despite the occasional crying jags (hers and mine) and the restless nights, it’s amazing to witness the process.  Each new little tooth cutting through the gum is like a tiny symbol of the struggle of the human condition.  It’s the pain and joy of our existence and growth.  And Hazel suffers her teething with a good-natured grace that makes my heart sing.

During the same weeks, I am experiencing the dental opposite.  My teeth are breaking apart.  It’s like that recurring dream everyone has where you’re perfectly fine one minute then the next minute all of your teeth are falling out of your head.  Except this isn’t a dream, it’s a painful and shockingly expensive reality.

The great thing about dental work is that a dentist will try the least invasive option, charge you $1300, and hope that it will fix the problem.  When the problem persists, they can step up the treatment options in painfulness and expense and convince you that it’s for your own good.  They’ll give you Vicoden for a while, but only for the pain, not for the mental agony.  Luckily I found a guy who would give me Nitrous for the mental agony, which turned an emergency root canal into a really fun afternoon.  The dentist seemed to think my drug-induced jokes were hilarious too, so it was also an ego-booster.

But it does feel like each cracked tooth represents the decline of the human body, the futility of the human existence and the crushing, undeterred march of time.  And I am handling it with the whining and stubbornness that my loved ones have come to expect from me.

Hazel will smile up at me, drooling and laughing as her gums bulge, and I’ll stop pressing my hand against my jaw for a moment and smile back at her.  ”Ok,” I say about once a day “We’ll do it together.  And I hope you’re understanding when you turn 18 and your college fund has taken the form of Mommy’s shiny new crowns.”

I’ll make it up to her at Disney Land.

Hazel has recently entered (what I hope is) a stage where she likes her dad much better than me.  If she bumps her head she wants her dad, if the noise from the garbage disposal or blender scares her she wants her dad, and his jokes are by far the funniest jokes around.

I’m pretending not to be jealous – especially considering that I was the only person Hazel had eyes for the last six months.  Although, I’m pretty sure that being jealous is totally normal and probably healthy because evolutionarily isn’t in our best interest to care who the baby loves most?  Isn’t that why parents happily share our resources with our off spring and forgo sleep and late-night partying and trips to Greece and fitting into their old jeans? I’m sure even pioneer people who were having kids mainly because they didn’t have birth control needed the free labor wanted their kids to like them.  They probably cared about it a lot less, especially when it was time to chop down trees or churn butter or whatever, but at some point I know there was a pioneer mom who had to suppress her annoyance that the pioneer baby laughed so hard when the pioneer dad did the airplane game.  Or oxcart game (more accurately).

People don’t often talk about these dirty little secrets of parenting.  Everyone thinks they’re the only ones going through a petty personal struggle instead of vigilantly appreciating every single solitary moment of parenthood.  Occasionally you can corner some one at book club or the rare night out with friends and get some one else to talk about it in whispered, wine soaked breath.  These favorite-parent days are so important because as soon as you have a baby you realize that you are on Casey-Jones-style train ride to living with a teenager.  Eventually the moment arrives when you realize that from your body came the human being who will come to think that you are the biggest idiot on the planet.

You have created this person.  This person who will manipulate you and mock you and roll their eyes at you in a way that so reminds you of the way you roll your eyes at your own mother that you want to crawl into a hole.  This person will come home reeking like cigarettes (or whatever they’ll have when Hazel is 15) and say right to your face that she wasn’t smoking.  When you point out that she obviously was because she smells like she spent the afternoon in the visiting room at a V.A. home, she’ll roll her eyes at you.  Or she’ll lie so earnestly that you’ll look at her sweet little face, that beautiful combination of generations of people that you love, and you’ll let yourself believe her.  And she’ll think she got away with something.  Even the sweetest, most thoughtful, most loving teenager still doesn’t want to run errands with you, or laugh hysterically when you pretend to gnaw on their tummy.

I was a nice teenager, Tom was a nice teenager, so we’ve got high hopes.  Still, all the energy we currently expel on entertaining Hazel is well spent.  We’ll remember these days fondly when we’re fighting about body piercings and curfews. And if my own parents are any indication, our brains will kindly erase the memories of teenagerdom once Hazel is a nice normal 34 year old.

Everyday I walk past the Wrigley mansion and think “Goddamnit!  Why don’t I have a solarium with big flowering jungle trees and a few pairs of finches flying around who are specially trained to poop in a bird litter box?”  I would never read The Enquirer or People Magazine on the extra-wide tufted chairs or put a television against the thick rounded 19th century window glass.  I wouldn’t even say swear words so help preserve the balance of the room’s energy. Not the “F” word anyway.

Sometimes I see an advertisement for Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and I think “Goddamnit!  Why didn’t I write a best selling novel about working in a restaurant and become the host of my own show where I travel around the world eating exotic dishes and maintaining my rail thin figure?”  I don’t like exotic food but I could just have the cameramen cut away right before I was to take a bite.  Figuring out how to overcome this hurdle proves that I deserve it.

In the mornings I listen to the This American Life and I think “Goddamnit!  Why didn’t I create an award winning radio program for NPR where I got to interview all kinds of personalities and authors and become sort of a quasi-celebrity and have all these cool author/artist friends”  I would channel my jealousy of the really interesting people into passionate interviews.  I would not use words like “meta” or “banal” unless I was being sarcastic.

At night, in the few minutes of quiet after Hazel has gone to bed but before she’s woken up wondering where the hell everybody is, I read a book.  I think “Godamnit. I could write a book.  Well maybe not a whole book but surely I could write a few short stories.  I could easily write an essay.”

But last night, I finally had an Idea.  At long last, this Idea is not a quasi-autobiographical trip through the follies of my young adulthood, or a thinly veiled memoir about my time at boarding school.  This is an actual IDEA.

So now what?  Now do I really have to just start writing?  Here’s a Hazel picture to look at while you think about what I should do….

One day last week, on one of those glorious, breezy summer days, I was getting ready to parallel park and spotted three urban outdoorsmen drinking tall boys and watching me.  I slowed down and watched them.  They watched me more.  I narrowed my eyes and put the car in reverse.

I admit that the suburbs have made me a little soft.  My inconsistently aggressive driving has given way to a casual-wave-at-stragers-oh-no-after-you-please attitude behind the wheel.  I’ve grown too used to long stretches of quaint brick paved streets and flaming hot cheeto bag-free lawns.  But I didn’t battle beach rats and slum lords throughout my twenties to be intimidated by a few home-challenged revelers watching me park my car.  I gently pressed the gas pedal.

Although, it was weird that they were there.  My office is in a very fancy neighborhood.  It’s full of DePaul students and yuppies, and it seems like the serious vagrants and misfits head downtown to mingle with tourists.  But these fellows were hanging out in front of a well kept Lincoln Park secret: a grayed out spot on the map, a glitch.  It’s this strange empty double lot on a quaint little street filled with romantic brownstones.  There’s also a House of Wings on the corner, which is a little out of place but according to the reviews Scotch-taped to the windows serves wings with “just-right crispness, heat”.  The lot is surrounded by a wrough iron fence and inside it’s like a enchanted little forest.  The ground is three feet think with pine needles.  Birds tweet cheerfully and flitter from one bough to the next.  If you stand and watch for a few minutes you feel like the birds might fly over and help you get dressed for a ball while a fairy godmother singes encouragingly.

I don’t know who owns this lot, or what it’s purpose is.  The heavy padlock around the gate entrance indicates it’s not for public use, but the set of migrating sprinkles reveals that a human being does meddle in some way.  Once I saw a human walking in and out of the opened gate with a bucket and a broom and I stopped and asked “What is this place?”

The human conveniently did not speak English.  The mystery remains.

I tried to ignore the crackheads and concentrate on precision parking.  But as I inched closer to the car behind me I heard a whistle.  ”Ay!  Ay!  You!”.  I slammed on the brakes.  Realizing that one of the carousers was going to try and help me parellel park and then guilt me into giving him a few bucks, I slammed on the gas in diafiance.  Then I mashed into the car behind me.  Embaressed, I put my car in drive and mashed into the car in front of me.

“It’s ok! I got it under control!” I shouted as I continued to molest the cars in front and behind me with my bumper.  I refuse to be the woman who has to have a trio of sots help her parallel park, even though it’s becoming increasingly clear that I need some help.  I also will not abandon a spot because I’m embarrassed that it’s taking me 67 tries to get in there.  I didn’t care that four cars are behind me now, and it felt like I have a stadium of people watching me compete in a one-person demolition derby.

I’m sweating now.  Tallboys abandoned on the sidewalk, the sidewalk residents walk towards my car.  I squish my lips out of the one-inch opening in the window.  ”I’m all good, no help needed!!”  Then I rammed my car twice more until it’s stuffed in a parking spot that’s 8 centimeters bigger than my car. I get out of the car and gather my purse, phone, and dog.  I pressed the lock button on the key FOB and for once decide not to wince at the obnoxious MEEP MEEP that signals to the ill-intentioned that my car is in fact locked. I can’t tell if I can hear them laughing or if that’s just the wind whistling in my ears as I drag my dog down the sidewalk in a half run.

Back at the office, safe from helpful crackheads, I decide to call 311- Chicago’s non-emergency police line.  I am indignant.  I should be able to badly park my car anywhere I want without being heckled by people- homeless or homed!  I dial 311.

I tell the woman who answers what happened.  There’s such a long pause that I think I’ve lost the connection, then I get transferred to someone else.  I repeat the story to another person, and I can hear their eyes rolling through the phone. “Hmmm mmmm, hold please.”  I’m transferred to a 911 operator.  ”Oh really?”  she said with obvious boredom “let me transfer you to our non-emergency line” she pressed the button before I could stop her.  Fifteen minutes later an operator said “Oh gosh, I will send a squad car right away.  Those people shouldn’t be trying to help people park!”  Her sarcastically helpful attitude and snickering should have embarrassed me more than it did.

I decided to be a good sport about being teased and a few minutes later the police operator and I were fast friends.  Eventually I admitted that I was a suburban transplant and we laughed and laughed about my new found delicate nature.  When I went out to my car at the end of the day and there were no signs of hobos or hobo debris, I wondered if it had all been a dream.  Then I saw a pile of old chicken bones, yelped, jumped into my car and sped off.

**Unimportant details have been changed for the sake of storytelling

I think it would be really sad if I had a family member or a friend who joined a cult.  But if a family member or a friend did join a cult, I would be able to empathize.

I’d prefer that they join one of the nicer cults, not a scary murderous one or a child-bride one or a suicide one.  But don’t they have cults where you just hang out and make homemade cheese and sing songs?  I bet that no one would be allowed to say “When it’s time to sing, why don’t you just pretend to mouth the words instead of actually singing” like my 8th grade music teacher said to me.  It’d probably be like a group of people who react like my daughter does when I sing: by gazing and smiling at me as if my voice was both soothing and movingly beautiful.

It’d be kind of comforting to not always have to come up with meal ideas.  Cult gruel might get old after a while but at least its predictable.  Besides, I’m sure it wouldn’t be my job to cook it up. There’d be very few opportunities to get stuck in traffic if my cult was in the woods somewhere.  I don’t like camping or being cold or going to the bathroom outside but if I was a well respected memeber maybe I could get everyone to build a latrine.  I mean if the Leader said it was ok.  I wonder if woods-cults have iPhones and iPads now, or if the members are too busy cultivating land and chanting to bother with new technology.  I really love my iPhone so I wouldn’t want to give it up.  But I would if it meant I never had to shop for clothes again or dye my hair or stop biting my cuticles.

Besides, I’d rather a relative or a friend be in a cult then become a really pushy gluten-free person.  I just couldn’t live with that bullshit.

I lost 300 pictures and videos on Friday when my iPhone crapped out.  I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Apple tech support restraining myself from telling the nice woman that I thought she was a complete idiot and that my dog would have a better shot at fixing my iPhone if I put liver sausage on the screen and let her lick it off.

Here’s something you should know.  When it comes to apartment fires, serious pet medical care and iPhone disasters- if a person has insurance or has backed up their phone recently, they’ll tell you that fairly early on in the conversation.  Like this:

“Hey how are you?”

“Oh I’m ok.  There was a fire in my apartment and we had to move.  It sucks but at least we had renter’s insurance”

or

“Hi, what’s new”

“Ugh I’ve been on the phone with Apple tech support all morning because my phone crapped out.  I thought I lost 300 pictures but thank god I had just backed everything up.”

or

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Taking my dog to Wisconsin for her second ACL surgery.  She busted one knee last year and then just tore the other one chasing bunnies in the back yard.  Thank god we got that dog health insurance!”

If the person doesn’t tell you within a sentence or two that they’ve got a back up plan, you don’t have to ask.  They don’t have one.  People who are smart enough to be covered usually want to be praised for it.  People who aren’t smart enough to be covered usually don’t want to be reminded that their disaster is a double disaster because they were too much of an asshole to insure themselves against it.

Remember: friends don’t ask friends if they have insurance. Or if they’ve recently synced their phone. Or how their diet is going.