Rainy day, after 5pm, which means I've popped a beer and am counting minutes until the boys are down and I have some space. Calm is at a premium in a household with a newborn and a two-year old. I've barely finished the housework--the daily run of dishes and laundry and picking up that happens everyday and seems to be complete only minutes before it has all piled up again. I remember a time when I was just me, or just me and Gordon and I couldn't seem to find time to clean my house. I lived in perpetual mess. And now, I clean everything every day and yet it still seems to slip entropically into havoc.
Some days I am the merriest of homemakers. I feel energized and proud of how clean the house is, what I've made for dinner, the number of loads I have washed, folded and put away. Other days I find it difficult to do more than catch up on old episodes of Lost. And most days I just lose myself in the shuffle of everydayness. I let it seep into me and take over. I am only the mechanics of going through motions: chipper voice to engage Henry, accented motherese to make Greyson smile, dishes half-heartedly completed and for dinner--rice, and easy chicken dish and maybe broccoli--the go-to of ease that satisfies hunger with absolutely no creativity. But behind these actions, I am numb, lost, asleep perhaps. Some days I'm annoyed that my mind is so full of these details that hold no import. I resent that I am stressed about not having met my quota of daily tasks. I am desperate for something to fill my mind--or rather to expand it, ignite it, challenge it.
Back in the 60s when she was beginning her path, my mom was asked by someone why she was getting a college degree if she was only going to be a mom and a homemaker. And she said that she'd be able to think about poetry while she changed diapers. What a beautiful thought. On my good days I am poetry in action, keeping a lovely house. Most days it's a trudge through the mundane.
Interestingly, I'm not unhappy. Perhaps I am not effusively spouting with joy, but I love my husband and my dear dear boys. I love my life and my position in it. I am currently, madly in love with the house we're just settling into, it's a much greater joy keeping house in an actual house. But there is a Lindsay within the Mrs. Saint Clair, that runs deeper than mommy or wife. And the Lindsay yearns for growth and for learning and for the opportunity to excel. I'm hoping that this blog can create a space for contemplation. I used to fancy myself a writer. (I've imagined myself many different things at different moments--a singer, a writer, a professor--but I always knew I was made to be a mom and a wife first and foremost). But when I was in the habit of writing--daily exercises and working on several pieces of fiction--I saw life like a writer. Everything I encountered was poetic--fringed with magic and clarity. This is part of the me that I've lost and that I long for. Maybe, at this stage in life, it's just about picking up the discarded pieces, creating the united state of Lindsay from the best bits of what I've put down or left unfinished.
And so, now that I'm writing again, here on this electric gleam of white, I look for the magic at the edges--for the extraordinary in the ordinary. I begin by looking at the space where I find myself. and what I'm struck by is the stuff. The things that have amassed around me and followed me from San Francisco to Atlanta--like satellites that, once in orbit, are forever caught in their runs--the miscellany of items and furniture that found its way into my home is still surrounding me here in this new space. It's interesting to me that these are now My Things. These are the decorations and furnishings that my boys will grow up with and remember as part of their childhood home. I didn't think this through when I found the marble Chinese dragon statue sitting by my car on Golden Gate Ave and brought it home to roost by my hearth. I didn't understand the permanence behind the scuffed regulation bowling pin that sat on top of a fence post on Fulton street outside my first San Francisco apartment. Or that the many stones, large and small, that have accumulated in our house are part of us--part of our adult existence. It's so interesting that this all happened by accident. I never sat down and thought "my main design scheme will center around piles of stones spread throughout my house." And yet, there is the candy dish full of small interesting stones on the sideboard in the dining room; the wire urn by the fireplace containing smooth, unnaturally (although natural) round light grey stones that Gordon had collected before my time; the two larger rocks I took from a trip to the Russian River because they seemed so much like small mountains, craggy and rough that sit atop my mantle. And even more--stones everywhere, scattered like forgotten thoughts about the house.
"I want to play stones mommy," Henry says. And we line them up, stack them, discuss which are our favorites and why. Make (very poor) guesses as to what type of stone they might be. It is completely normal to Henry that there are stones lying on every conceivable surface, cluttering empty spaces like dust. Collecting in the corners. Picking up inertia.
This all goes to say that I am now an adult. And this space that I find myself in, this house, filled with these things--this is my life. It's gone passed the point of conscious choosing and is simply where I am. Who I am. Here's where I am. I'm surrounded by rocks, rich in their rough natural beauty, and little boys (to whom rocks might as well be covered in fairy dust and magic). So maybe, when I can't seem to find it in me to see beauty in the mundane, I should just ask Henry to describe it to me, because he sees it everywhere.
I apologize to those of you following that this entry is so scattered. So rough-hewn and unpolished. It's the pressure of needing to write everyday. I wish I had the time to fix it up, salvage the parts that are rich and dispose of the empty phrases--the mundane. But I've promised myself that I will post each day. And that I will allow it to not be perfect. And most of all, this is a space for me to run free--unhindered by expectations (my own and even yours, reader). And like a run, it is not about where I'm going but the exercise of the run that I'm in it for. Please excuse these first attempts, so like the awkward stretching and jogging before exercise actually begins. This is my gathering of momentum. This is *I hope* muscle memory kicking in. Me remembering how to be the best of me that I've left behind and the moving towards the good parts I haven't yet discovered. Here's to the freedom of the run!
(What follows is some writing I'm remembering now, written 8 years ago, when I was the me that saw poetry in every moment. To be fair, it's hard to find poetry when life is so full of details, which is why I so desperately need this Space. And I laud my mom for being able to do while changing diapers--more proof of her beautiful, vibrant spirit--and that it isn't hereditary!)
I want to grab a dragon by its tail, get a good handhold. Whipped red and gold scales of oriental green-blue angles—wide surprised eyes of Chinese New Years and curling paper lanterns. Run down streets of uneven paving and hear the echo and I’d wish there was rain—to see the paper dragons, paper lanterns, melt in wet, goopy piles of brilliant colors and ink clouding puddles of swirling jeweled light.
Run—run down alleys and boulevards, in crowds—in loneliness, in brightest day and dreary clouded new-moon nights, when the air is clear and thin and cold and sound pierces and travels—hollow echo and sharp skinny cry—like a quartet of me and the run that is free and fine and clear—that is like one black straight line on white paper. A run with no implications—no fine writing or sticky noisy complaints. A run with no need for destination—no time and no beginning.
And the clip clop of heel on pavement , the rush of wind rings when I stop in crowded thoroughfare of empty street, and look up to see whatever is before me and to know that I can go on or change direction because limits are only these pullings in my legs and cramps in my sides and these, I know, I am capable of overcoming-of pushing through. And suddenly I am capable and totally limitless—as long as I push through, as long as I run: I am free.
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