Frustration.

Feeling powerless against something -- anything -- is the most horrible sensation for me. Though I think I feel most emotions pretty deeply, this is the one that rattles every part of me, body, heart, and soul.

I just wanted to take a blog post here to publicly show gratitude for "the village" that is helping me raise my children, and grow myself as a mother and human.

I know there are parents out there who feel strongly that it is important to keep their little children close to them in the early years, not stray too far from their sides, and give them the assurance that their parents will be there no matter what. In fact, I am nearly done reading the infamous nursing mother's bible "Mothering Your Nursing Toddler," and have found this to be the primary message of the book: your young children need their parents all the time, and you'd best sit back and get comfortable, because you are not getting a break for several (or more) years. This is a committment that I admire -- parents willing to identify solely as parents for as long as it takes for their children to separate independently from them. The parents that are doing this are handing themselves to their children as a gift, saying metaphorically, "I am yours. I belong to you."

However, I haven't done this with my children, due to a combination of my inability to do it without building terrible resentment, and another belief that has grown over time -- the belief that my children are richer people for having connected with more than just me and True. The people who have been in our life -- whether in the past, or still there to this day -- have enriched our family, our relationships, and each of us as people.

The neighbors - I've talked about them before, specifically about our neighbors in our old neighborhood, but we have so many more now, and so many of them are young families. The president of the elementary school PTA lives down the street, and her youngest daughter (9) has so charmed Little Shmoo that Shmoo refers to her as "my Claire." The mom spent a morning last spring walking True and I through the elementary school so we could get a sense for whether or not we'd want to send Doodlebug there. Across the street from that is the home of another young family with two daughters, just a little ahead of ours, and that mom has offered to exchange cell phone numbers so that she and I can call on each other for last-minute "can you walk my kid to school today?" emergencies. We often wait for them at the end of the alley so we can all walk together. Next door to us is a lovely young Jewish couple, still without children but hoping for them eventually, who we've adopted for holidays. Their little dog Max is the subject of Shmoo's elated cries of "Max says AAAAOOOOOO!" Thank you, neighbors, for being people with whom we will borrow and lend cups of sugar, spare eggs, spare keys, walks of dogs and children, snow shoveling days, and extra batches of delicious baking.

The teachers - Doodlebug and Shmoo have been blessed with the most delightful and loving, creative and kind daycare and preschool teachers we could imagine, and we are just getting to know the extraordinary kindergarten teacher who is directing Doodlebug's first weeks in elementary school. These teachers have received our daughters into open arms -- quite literally, many days. They have delighted in their personalities, complimented and redirected and adjusted and taught and nurtured them, many days in better ways than I would have at home. Thank you to the teacher who taught Doodlebug to call children "friends" instead of "kids," to the teacher who patiently escorted her to the bathroom every fifteen minutes during difficult phases of potty-learning, to the teachers who told me that she is so appreciative of nice gestures that it makes them want to do more nice things for her. Thank you to Shmoo's first daycare teacher -- who has become our favorite babysitter -- who greeted her with a hug and a delighted squeal every day, who calls me on my cell phone when Shmoo seems out of sorts to her, who brings Shmoo little birthday presents, who tells me when Shmoo says something especially cute. Thank you to her new teacher, who listened carefully to my account of Shmoo's bad dream about a classmate and promised to watch the two of them closely, all while holding Shmoo and apologizing to her for such a sad dream. I could have stayed home full time with my kids -- but then, among other things, we all would have missed these opportunities to know and learn from good people.  Thank you, teachers, for being resources, friends, and loving caregivers to our daughters.

The friends - Just as an example, this past weekend, Doodlebug got the same stomach flu that Shmoo had last week, but True was out of town. A friend came by, picked up Shmoo, and took her to the park with her two kids. Then she took Shmoo home with her to play, gave her lunch, and even tried to get her down for a nap -- all while I stayed attached to Doodlebug on the couch, able to completely dedicate myself to her with no distractions. Shmoo went happily -- no tears, no fuss -- because she knows these friends well. Had she stayed home with me, it would have been a difficult day to say the least -- with her getting the bare minimum attention, and likely watching TV for hours. Thank you, friends, for taking her for some fun. We have other wonderful friends with whom we share childcare -- and time together with ALL of us, too -- and ideas, fun, stories, snacks, hugs, and countless other joys of life in a community.

I could dedicate a dozen posts to our family, too -- True's mom and sister and brother-in-law, my brother and his fiance, my parents, and the various great-aunts and cousins who make up our extended family. Our girls go gleefully into the arms of the family they love.

As Doodlebug and Shmoo get older and form more relationships with other children, I think their ability to connect will have come in no small part from being able to trust in the care, love, and attention of people other than their parents. There is no question that we are best and favorite for them, but in our absence, a hug from a friend is acceptable and comfort enough. And that, I think, is a better gift than giving all of myself to them; I've given them trust in a wider world.

Empathy.

I recently had several good conversations with other people about what this value means. Some folks felt it could have some negative ramifictions, that empathy could get out of hand and become crippling for a person who feels too much from other people. I suppose I understand that, but I think that if that happens, it's crossed the line away from empathy and become something else, maybe closer to martyrdom.

For me, empathy is a constant awareness that actions have consequences, that interactions with other people seldom leave nothing behind. An offhand comment that might seem meaningless to me might be deeply meaningful to someone else -- postively or negatively. I try very hard to think about that when I speak. It takes nothing for me to say to a new mom, walking down the street with a newborn in a stroller, clearly exhausted and near tears, "Hey there -- you know, it does get better. I absolutely promise you." It's a small thing -- and it doesn't mean I'd stay and talk and become more than a person she passed on the street -- but maybe it would give her hope, for that day. That is empathy.

Empathy is also an ability to understand why people do things that hurt us. I've had the misfortune to be closely involved with several very difficult, very angry people in my life, and though they may have hurt me and others, I've always been able to remember that it is more difficult to be that person than to be me, being with that person. That's empathy, too -- that's being able to understand how someone else might feel. It's not justifying them or even sympathizing with them -- it's simply understanding them, and bringing a small bit of order to a situation that might otherwise feel random and chaotic.

This ability to recognize or even just imagine what might be happening in the hearts of the people around me is something I treasure, and something I want very much to pass on to my children. What one does with that cultivated intuition reaches beyond the value itself, but I think that true empaths will turn that eye inward as well, and be able to care for themselves, too.

I was chatting with a new friend the other day and mentioned something that someone else had done for fun that I wouldn't want to do. My friend said, "Ok, you don't like doing that. What do you like to do?" And immediately, the first words that came out of my mouth were "I like to make music!"

The joy of making music was handed to me as a gift mostly during the last two years. During the scariest, most overwhelming and all-encompassing experiences I've had during that time, I also had the most profound and deeply rewarding musical growth of my life. It's funny how that happened -- I think I needed that connection to something communal and collaborative while I felt so disconnected and survival-based in the rest of my life. The more I needed it, the more passion I threw into it, and the more good people gravitated toward me to join in that passion.

An especially wonderful friend emerged during this time, and our way of relating and communicating has made us particularly good musicians together. She plays the banjo with a gracefulness I wouldn't have imagined, a refined power just beneath the surface of the strings that makes her clawhammer style more elegant, somehow. We've been playing together in public for just over a year now, and I am more and more impressed with her gifts and drawn to playing with her. We seem to have a synergy together -- both with our instruments and with our singing.

 There's a beautiful song I heard, long ago at a jam in someone's backyard, called "Down the River I Go." The way it was sung by the folks who sang it was gentle and lovely, and I was determined to find a recording of it. Years passed, and finally one day a teacher of mine gave me a CD which included the song. I raced home to listen, and found the tune so different! The lyrics and melody were the same, but the style was more ragged around the edges, louder, less gentle.

Still, I was determined someday to play it the way I'd originally heard it. My old "band," Nobody's Darlings, performed the tune several times. With a rollicking, intense strummed guitar and a mandolin sending the melody out in copper tones, it had a nice combination of the two styles -- some of the grit, some of the lilt. However, it isn't until now that I feel I'm really playing the song the way it plays in my head. With my banjo-playing friend, we perform it very simply -- banjo and fiddle only, beautifully layered harmony on the choruses. Singing it with her, and adding a delicate fiddle break here and there, I feel peaceful. I feel less attached to the experience as a musician and more attached to it as a spectator -- I can appreciate the beauty of our arrangement as we are letting it unfold.

To say that with confidence, to feel myself creating beauty, is what I think allows me to define myself as a musician. So, if you're in the Chicago area, come down to the Brothers K Coffeehouse tonight at 5:30. Me, my fiddle, my friend, and her banjo will all be there.

Come along and go with me
Down the river I go
Carry me down to Tennessee
Down the river I go

Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go
Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go

Horse and buggy to carry you round
Down the river I go
Your little feet will never touch ground
Down the river I go

Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go
Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go

16 miles away from home
Chickens crow for day
Any man that's got a wife
He better had get her away

Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go
Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go

If I had a needle and thread
Fine as I could sew
I'd sew my love to my shirt tails
And down the river I'd go

Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go
Down the river I go Uncle Joe
Down the river I go

Pay it forward.

I spent some time this weekend talking with True about this question. We both feel overwhelmed by all the things worth believing in and fighting for -- the environment, an end to violence, health care, better schools, reproductive rights -- but also feel unable to commit our energy to a single cause because, at least for me, I am reticent to dedicate less than all my energy. I tried to think of something that I believe in and act on daily, and it finally came to me.

Pay It Forward started as the name of a book by someone who actually is a personal acquaintance of mine, but for me, has become a way I approach doing good in the world. The book's story is of a twelve-year-old boy who determines that if he does three good things for three people, with their promise that instead of paying him back, they'll "pay forward" three good things to other people, in short order the world would be a considerably better place. In the novel, this creates a social movement that does, indeed, begin to change the world.

In my life, I've taken this more generally. I recognize my position of privilege, and how sometimes, an amount of money or an object that I would not miss could make a big difference for someone else. I'm not talking about major gifts, mostly -- I'm talking about someone looking for that last quarter for the bus when I have one in my pocket, or the school teacher I know has to save to buy more supplies for her class when I could bring her more glue and paper.

In one case, I knew a social worker, whose house was walking distance from her office, who suddenly found herself unable to get to work when the office moved across town. This was a town with no public transportation, and she had no car. I was buying a new car. The trade-in on my working but too-small-for-True's-grandmas car would have made no difference in my ability to buy a new one, so the social worker got my car. I didn't ask for any money, but I made her promise to do something like this someday when she had the means. She promised she would.

It doesn't even have to be a monetary or goods-based good deed, either. In an airport, I saw a mother running with a toddler on her hip and a carseat swinging awkwardly from her arm, the father running ahead with an older child in his arms. I ran to the mother's side and said "let me carry the carseat. What gate are we heading to?" and, taking the seat from her, I ran along with her to her gate. She said, "Thank you so much!," to which I replied, "do it for someone else someday."

And then there's this blog. I started it because I imagined mothers like myself, when Shmoo was a little baby, sad and confused and angry and wondering how they would get out of it. I knew that I would -- though I didn't know how, yet -- and wanted to create a chronicle for someone else to read. I was paying it forward into a void, on borrowed credit, but it did work out. At least one mom found my story of laryngomalacia and found comfort in it -- and I know this because she wrote me -- but I bet there are others out there who read this in the night or in the bleary afternoons, and felt at least a little bit better. That's paying it forward, too. Pass it on, moms.

So, I guess the cause I believe in most deeply is being a good person, a thoughtful and caring person, and not asking for anything for myself in return. Or, rather, I suppose I am asking for myself that others be good people, too, which makes my world better, because, well, you know.

This is perhaps one of the most painful things for me to explore. I want very much to feel great love for my body, to marvel in it as I marvel in the miracles of the bodies of my children. I want my daughters to grow up feeling, if not that great love, at the very least a healthy admiration for the way their bodies work, and an ingrained, second-nature belief that the way their bodies look is generally not meaningful.

That said, like too many women, I have a fairly combative relationship with my body. Years of fighting a well-learned hatred of my looks given to me by parents who hoped to spur me into action left me feeling constantly betrayed by the shell I carried around. Too fat, too lumpy, not strong, not fast, too big on top, too soft on the bottom -- that was the rhythm of my song to my body all through adolescence and early adulthood.

When I got pregnant with Doodlebug, I felt the first love for my body that I could ever remember. I was proud of my body for carrying a child, for not messing that up after messing up everything else it had tried. I felt her move inside me and daily thanked my womb, my blood, my cervix -- thanked them for keeping the baby alive, for keeping me alive to love the baby. Then, about 32 weeks into the pregnancy, I developed something called PUPPPs -- Pruritic Uricarital Plaques and Papules of Pregnancy. It is a rash that not well-understood by doctors, but seems to develop as an allergic reaction to the baby, and only resolves when the baby is born. To say that this is an itchy rash is beyond understatement - it was a nightmare of constant itching from a rash that went from my ribcage to the soles of my feet, all over my back and both arms. It was everywhere but my breasts and face, and turned me from a blissfully pregnant woman singing to her belly every night into a sobbing, writhing mess. At one point, at 3am after sleeping in 30 minute increments all night in between bouts of horrible itching, I screamed at True, "GET THIS THING OUT OF ME" as I clawed at my raw, red, blistered huge belly. After weeks of trying every anti-itch cream out there, I finally went on steroids, and gave birth a week later -- after 29 hours of labor.

Doodlebug was born with a bi-lobed placenta, which means that her placenta looked like lungs instead of a big liver-like mass. In between the lobes was a thin "umbilical artery" that provided all her oxygen and food supply. We didn't know it existed until after I delivered it, and my midwife said, at the time, that there would have been no chance she'd have let me deliver vaginally if she had known the placenta was malformed. Nurses and interns and residents visited our room in the hours after Doodlebug was born to see the "miracle baby" who had survived a vaginal birth with a bilobed placenta.

So, as it turned out, I had another betrayal from my body -- the rash, and the near-murder of my first child.

When I became pregnant with Shmoo, I got serious about trusting my body. I went to see a therapist and tried to work through my issues from my first pregnancy. I read many books on natural labor and delivery, on meditation and visualization and remaining calm through the pain. I tried to come up with contingencies for the possibility that I would get PUPPPs again, and spent hours talking with True about our hopes for the birth, our love for this new baby, and how wonderful I would feel after giving him or her a beautiful, loving entry into the world. I had a healthy pregnancy, everything seemed fine with my Shmuey inside, and I waited for labor to begin.

Well, it didn't go according to my plan. Not at all. You can read that link there to find out more, but suffice it to say that my body once again nearly killed the life inside it, and afterward, the midwife told me that I probably should not have any more children. It was horrible.

I think partly that is why I have nursed both children so long. It is something I can actually DO. It is something that they want, that they enjoy, and that I can give them, and it comes from a body that has failed me in so many other ways that I can't bear to let it fail my daughters.

I have wondered what else I could do to give myself trust in my body, let alone love. I am fairly loving of my soul and of my heart, but my body feels like something I have to drag through the world like a sack of dirt. I don't know how to become proud of it, or find a way to love it, without getting too sucked into old unhealthy habits. Instead I try to ignore it, which is avoiding the situation altogether.

So, those of you who love your bodies -- how do you do it?

My mother-in-law is both the kindest and toughest person I know - so after having known her, I can do away with any notion that being nice means that people can walk all over you. She has always been generous with her time, her compassion, her advice, her money, and her love, and there have surely been times when all but the last were probably in short supply.

She is a woman who has led a difficult life in some ways; a tempestuous relationship with her parents, a daughter born too early and quite ill after a frightening pregnancy, her husband dead before age 50 to medical malpractice. She's had all the usual trials of a mother of two, of course, but she's also had something that my parents did not: a huge family all around her to support her through it.

I think, because of this support in her life, it does not occur to her that her children should have to "go it alone" in anything. She's been there for us in ways we would not have thought to ask, and for me, she's been a mother from early on. There was never a question of distance between us -- she assumed, I think, that we would get to know each other well enough for genuine affection eventually, and so I believe she faked it until it was real. From the very beginning, I've felt supported by her: as a new bride, buying our  first home, having our children. She has always been another parent to me. This doesn't diminish the role of my parents or their importance to me (no matter what they think), but it does add a dimension of love to my life that I didn't imagine I could have.

The reason I consider the kindest person I know is that her kindness has never seemed to come with strings attached. I've never felt that she "calls in" her favors, or asks us to reciprocate, or uses our gratefulness as a tool to get anything out of us. There is no internal tally running in her head. She is just kind because that's what she thinks she should be. I don't even know if it's conscious, really. What people need, if she has it, is theirs.That's real kindness -- and she's one of the only people I know who has it.

I am a lucky daughter-in-law, for sure.

I've labeled this picture as "the view from my heart," but what you don't see is what was in the periphery of this photo...

I was sitting in the grass in the courtyard of our old townhouse community. Playing around me were my kids and the kids of my neighbors, whose doors were probably open so they could hear their children and maybe even my fiddle. True took the photo, catching me in a moment of joy, wearing my favorite soft soft overalls.

In short: it's a real picture of me.

My Little Shmoo is getting to be a bigger Shmoo these days. Something happened to her when her hair got long enough for pigtails -- even though they can barely be classified as pigtails when they only contain sixteen strands of hair -- that made her light years older in an instant. She's figured out some majorly important words, and though they don't always mean what she thinks they mean, I can come up with some new ways to be patient with her if I take her literally. For instance, here's a common conversation in our house:

Shmoo: Mommy, I have lollipop?
Me: No, Shmoo, it's 8:30 in the morning. It's not a good idea to eat a lollipop this early.
Shmoo: I have lollipop, yes.
Me: Sorry, sweetie. No lollipop right now. Would you like some more cereal?
Shmoo: I. Have. Lollipop.

Notice the progression there. She started with a question. Then she went to the answer she hoped to get ("yes"), and then she moved to insisting on the facts as she wanted them to be. From here, it goes like this if I am not in a good mood:

Me: No, Shmoo, I said no lollipop. If you ask again, I'll tell you the same thing. You can have cheese, or yogurt, or more cereal, or some cantaloupe.
Shmoo: I REALLY have lollipop! I REALLY have lollipop! (crying)

Now, if I am able just accept that, in Shmoo's mind, the lollipop is here, and she has it, and I am creating for her a dissonance between the reality in her head and the reality in my kitchen, things would go better. When I can do this, the conversation is more likely to go another way:

Me: Yes, the lollipops are yours. You'll have one this afternoon. Let's put it on the top of the fridge so we don't forget to eat it later. You also have new stickers. Where are they? Let's go look for them!
Shmoo: I really have stickers!

Shmoo is a different kid than Doodlebug. Doodlebug was exceptionally easy-going about that stuff, and she had no big sister taking up any of my attention. The conversation would have ended at "would you like some cereal?" for Doodlebug, so I am still getting my footing here. Sometimes I feel like a new parent. Shmoo is so stubborn, so strong-willed, so just-plain-strong! She will get everything she wants in the world as long as she goes after it.

I am still getting to know her; being a person of words, it's easier for me to know a child who can talk, and she's only now talking in ways I can really understand. I am awed by the things she says sometimes, and the concepts she can grasp. Here are some gems. I am not changing any of the order of the words as she says them, just writing them in English instead of the baby pronunciation that turns "let's" into "less" and "school" into "cool", etc.:

Let's go get my sister Doodlebug at her school!

My Daddy so silly!

What's that say in the book?

Mommy, here I come! I give you hug attack!

Recall that just over a year ago, I wasn't so sure that my Shmoo would live to make sentences. As I sit on the floor and feel her toes dig into the waistline of my jeans so she can climb up my back, as I brush her soft soft blond hair into tiny pigtails, as I watch her run full force across the house to greet True at the door each night, I still find myself sighing with relief and joy. I came so close to losing her...and now, I'm really and truly finding her.

There are a couple that go together, and I try to remember them when I'm feeling like I can't get past a particular problem. They are:

"Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours." (Hugh Prather)

"If you're looking for worries, you got 'em." (Paul Simon)

In other words (as though I need other words!), I need to stop giving so much power to what's wrong!

Two years ago, Doodlebug went as Mary Poppins. Shmoo was a newborn, and I had just gone back to work, and I remember being up until 11pm the night before Halloween sewing flowers on the hat. I was feeling very anxious to make this costume perfect for Doodlebug, who was three years old and dealing with the first few months of sharing me with her sister. She had been obsessed with Mary Poppins for a long time, and I had enlisted lots of help in getting all the pieces of her costume. My mother-in-law had found the hat and carpet bag, my postpartum doula had found the dress and coat, and I had given her my own scarf and pointy-handled umbrella.

She was adorable, no two ways about it. Just looking at the picture of her in this costume brings back every bit of that experience -- the assembly of it and the night she spent wearing it. I will never forget it!