Minkgirl Muses

Labels: time

# posted by Christine Young @ 10:52 AM 0 comments

Labels: Community Muses, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 12:03 PM 2 comments

Wave
Originally uploaded by wentloog.

Labels: Career Anxiety, Community Muses, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 1:07 PM 0 comments

Labels: Family Life, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 6:38 AM 0 comments

1. Two women I know are dying – one fast, the other faster. I smoked cigarettes with one while debating art and culture during 5-minute breaks in grad school. I drink instant coffee with the other while perching on a rickety chair in her peeling yellow kitchen, a carbon copy of my own kitchen minus 50 years of improvements. One woman is around 40. The other is nearly 85. Both are alone in the world and have the kind of tough devil-may-care attitude that stems from this fact. There is very little I can give either of them now, except my prayers and good wishes. I would like to sit by the bedside of the younger one, hold her hand, stroke her head, and make sure she has a window to look out of with a tree outside it. I would like to paint and plaster and fit and fix for the older one, so that her world of two rooms breathes her life back into her. I will do none of these things. But I will continue to think of these women. Often. And imagine myself sitting next to them. Hearing them breathe in. And out. For awhile.

2. Some days you are screwed from the start. Like yesterday. When Gman came into our bedroom at 7:45am, I was nursing his sister. So he reflexively turned to his Dad for water/milk/banana/cornflakes/tv/buttwipe/blanket/story/hug/nosewipe/dream-telling. When I finally rose from my cozy baby-mama cocoon 30 minutes later, it was too late. His face was set, his eyes were steely. Later, after an unreasonable request that I reasonably diverted, he chucked his water cup at my knee – hard! And for the second time, I slapped him. It was just the faintest slap, a brief contact between my hand and his cheek. Didn’t hurt him a bit. But of course it sent him round the bend completely. And nothing – nothing – I did for the rest of the day could make it right again. Of course by the end of the day, I was tired of atoning and getting nowhere. Tired of being completely ignored. Thus, I was rough and impatient with him at bed-time. When we woke this morning, I could see that he is still mad at me. So, I am mooching around the house today feeling like the world’s crappiest parent. What is this anger in me that rises so quickly? What is this instinct for lashing out at my own child? How is it that Gman and I are so different that there are times when nothing I do can affect him except in the negative? In his estimable book The Secrets of Happy Children, Stephen Biddulph notes that when kids act out, it is because they aren’t getting something they need. Of course Gman is behaving rudely, aggressively, crazily, spacily because he needs something he’s not getting – my absolutely undivided attention. But he’s never going to have that again. What is the statute of limitations on adjusting to a new sibling? Probably a kid should get an extension if you throw another twister into the mix like moving to another country. God, what are we masochists? And yet, this is how everybody does it. Having Kid #1 starts you down a path toward Greater Adulthood with its sensible jobs and housing in good school districts. Then comes along Kid #2 (when your transformation into Responsible Parent Person is still only half-complete), and you wind up doing crazy shit like moving house when you are 8 months pregnant, or traveling around the world when your kid is 2-1/2 (not recommended), or adding a new member to the family and then relocating everyone 6 months later. All of a sudden, I really understand what they mean when they say kids like stability. I’m starting to be a fan of it too, because without it, my lovely, intelligent, lively son, is on a constant mission to kick my ass.

3. When I ask my friends what they most want/need/crave, they all say more time. I guess this is probably universal – part of the human condition – to feel like we can’t cram all the living we want to do into the day/week/month/lifetime. I am a chronic sufferer of the same predicament, which is why afternoons spent picnicing in the park in the summer sun are as precious to me as any fistful of coinage. We had such a picnic yesterday, with our closest London friends – another family of four. The picnic was by no means sylvan – there was relocation due to dogshit, kids pelting each other with balls, spills, thorns embedded in barefeet, toddlers running away every 5 seconds, babies crying from being squashed, a general refusal on the part of the smaller picnicers to eat any non-sugar based foods. But despite the sheer bedlam, there was still enough of the feeling of time stopping, enough sunlight filtering through the leafy tree above us, to make me feel that this time right here right now was, for once, enough.

Be well.

Labels: Family Life, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 3:49 AM 1 comments

Labels: Family Life, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 4:15 AM 0 comments

more BODY

1. I love watching people look at themselves in shop windows. The undeniable draw of a vast expanse of reflective glass. The secret hope that the image will be different this time. The shy ones sneak peeks as they pass by, trying to keep their head movements casual, as if they just accidentally happened to come face to face with themselves and aren’t too bothered by it. The sexy ones slow down, prolonging the lusciously narcissistic moment, perhaps inviting others to look as well. With their subtle posture shifts and minor clothing adjustments, these window-watchers reveal the intimate connections they share with their inner most-beautiful selves, and their constant desire for others to see those selves instead of the ones with the sloped shoulders and the droopy buttocks. Where our bodies are concerned, we remain creatures of hope. Perhaps time is not marching forward in one direction. Perhaps the toll taken is still reversible. Perhaps I will look in the mirror today and discover again the 20-year girl – the one I left standing on a pedestal in Trafalgar square, wearing skinny jeans and a billowing electric blue blouse, hair flying in the breeze.

2. I went to the tailor last week and left blushing. My post-partum body, which more closely resembles under-baked bread than supple sinewy flesh, requires clothes. I prefer that these clothes be comfortable, yet not completely matronly. I have two pairs of cute pants I wore in early pregnancy, and I thought with some alteration they might still work. I found the one tailor listed in my town and called to confirm the continued existence of the shop. A man with a lyrical Arabic accent answered and assured me he could take on the work. From the voice, I was picturing the tailor as a kindly Afghani man in his 60’s with twinkling eyes and grizzled hands, who would smile at the baby and treat me like a daughter. But when I stepped out of the blazing sunshine into the tiny shop, the man who greeted me was 25, slender and handsome, with piercing brown eyes. I immediately started to balk at the thought of showing off my mushy midriff to this fellow. I tried to talk my way out of actually trying on the pants, but in the end there was no help for it. He ushered me to an alcove with a curtain and waited for me to emerge. I stood facing the mirror, sucking in my stomach (kind of like trying to hide a watermelon in a change-purse), and standing stock still so that I would not make any more contact with him than was necessary. He stood behind me and carefully placed his hands on my hips, just above the drooping waistband. A whisper of warm skin. Gently he tugged the material this way and that, inserting pins. More touching, down the sides of my legs, the small of my back, my bum. Yikes. He worked slowly, clearly focused on getting it right, but maybe also (am I imagining this?) taking just a little more time than he needed. Either he enjoys the sensual nature of his job, or perhaps he perceived my discomfort and was teasing me a bit. Either way, it was sweet agony. And when at last I burst out of the shop back into the anonymous daylight, I was struck by how easily we are unhinged by the unexpected. The body’s appetites are unconcerned with gender, age, ethnicity or appropriateness. The body does not know that it is considered attractive or not by the culture in which it lives. The body doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

3. Several times a day, I lie belly to belly with my daughter while she feeds. She curls into me and embeds her arms and legs into my flesh. I fold my arms around her and rest my face on top of her fuzzy head. Sometimes we fall asleep together in this embrace. Sometimes my bottom arm goes numb and I get a crick in my neck. Sometimes she wakes me with surprisingly forceful rabbit kicks to the gut. I know from experience that this sweet coupling will be exceptionally brief. In 4 months, 8 months, 12 months, she will be too big and too squirmy to cuddle with like this. In 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, she will be too much her own woman to let her Mama hold her. Time cannot be bargained with.

Labels: body, Mamahood, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 2:06 AM 0 comments

UNTIL NOW...

I was sitting on the couch this morning, holding the warm, cuddly bundle that is Miss V, and thinking about time. Well, actually, I was spacing out, but occasionally a thought would drift through my head like the tail smoke of a jet blazing across a cloudless sky. It sounded something like this…”Breathe in. Breathe out. Warm. Steam on windows. Heater blowing. What was I doing last year at this time? Breathe in. Breathe out. Rustle. Gurgle. Burp. My foot hurts. I wonder why? Breathe in. Breathe out. A year ago, Miss V didn’t exist.”

So, I pulled out my 2006 journal and settled back on the couch for my annual ritual of re-reading last year’s inner thoughts. As is often the case, a lot has changed in a year. And also, things are exactly the same. Apparently on November 22^nd of 2006 – the page to which the journal cracked open and also the last pre-London entry – I was thinking about how to lighten up and appreciate the good stuff. Work I am actively pursuing this week as well. The backstory on this entry (which I have excerpted below), is that my good friend Aphrodite - who is not only the most passionate woman I know, but also a genuine goddess in her quest for truth and wisdom, who I have known for (gasp!) nearly 20 years, and who has also given me the great gift of being my personal coach for the past few years – once shared with me a core concept from her coaching model: the phrase until now…I see this phrase as a literal get-out-jail-free card, as in “Until now…I have allowed other people’s expectations to shape my choices, but I will now trust my own desires.” Or, “Until now…I have devoured potato chips mindlessly, but I will now fill my body with better fuel.” You should try it – it’s better than dark chocolate and twice as addictive. C’mon, think of something you catch yourself doing over and over again that pains you in some way and let this magic phrase peal from your lips…

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I’ve been thinking about A’s phrase until now…and the freedom it offers of just being able to walk away from old behaviors that you don’t want to engage in anymore. I’d like to walk away from the self I’ve been for the last 4 months, maybe even for the last 2 years. The fearful, cramped, anxious-about-her-career, exhausted, beleaguered, whining, complaining Minkgirl. I’d like to give her a vacation – maybe Tahiti or the South of France. I’d like to see her come back with long hair and a tan, wearing a sari and barefoot. I’d like to see her cock her head to the side while chewing on a blade of grass and say “Man…I like that.”

While she’s gone, a new Minkgirl could move into her house and spruce up the place – roll up the window shades and open all the doors – air the place out. Put fresh bunches of wildflowers all around and silly figurines in unexpected places. Erect permanent (or rather impermanent) monuments to pleasure throughout the house – a pile of laundry to jump in like new fallen leaves, a treasure hunt of books leading from one room to the next, beautiful pictures and words cut from magazines pasted all over the walls. There will always be music playing and something sweet baking in the oven. When you ring the bell, this Minkgirl will answer the door laughing about something Gman has said, and she will invite you to come and sit on the kitchen floor with her and watch the light fade from the sky while you sing songs about love.

A nice vision – this alternative self who knows how to appreciate simple pleasures. I picked up Mommy Mantras again this weekend, a sweet and sensible little book that I was also reading around this time last year, when the nights were oh-so-long and Gman was punishing us in every conceivable way for rocking his world by moving to London. Here’s the phrase that caught my attention both then and now:

It's not about what we do wrong, but rather about what we do next.

Another way of saying until now…It’s not about falling off the horse – there is absolutely no way to avoid that, no matter how long or how skillfully we ride – it’s about how quickly you can recover and get back in the saddle. That idea does a lot to chase away negative self-esteem when I make mistakes.

The human brain is so complicated – we have to build such elaborate mental castles to trick ourselves into seeing what’s already there – how good and beautiful life is. I seem to live perpetually in need of an attitude adjustment. Maybe everyone does. A positive attitude, like any other good thing in one’s life – an intimate relationship, a vocation – requires daily recommitment. What I’m looking for is a few more tools to help me and the others in my family remember to make that commitment. We have our Friday night Shabbat ritual, and that really helps, and sometimes (if I can remember) I do yoga or a little meditation, but we need even more tools to help us remember to look on the bright side. Like a warm and totally trusting body lying in one’s arms reminding us to stop, breathe, and just be.

Be well.

Labels: Family Life, Mamahood, mantras, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 6:24 AM 2 comments

Labels: Family Life, Mamahood, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 6:25 AM 1 comments

STAR SYSTEMS

Do you ever have a 5-star day? You know the kind I’m talking about – a fresh croissant with raspberry jam for breakfast, your favorite pair of jeans warm from the dryer, sun-kissed air that whispers past your skin implying every kind of possibility for your future. Perhaps you meet with someone and engage in an enlivening conversation, the kind that makes you feel like you’re finally figuring things out. Maybe you have a piece of satisfying work to do. Maybe you do nothing more than putter around your house all day, turning over this and that, replete with the comfort of familiar objects.

I’m not having a day like that today. In fact, this has been a 3-star week so far. Nothing really wrong, but nothing awe-inspiring either. A bit more house-work than I consider ideal (but isn’t there always), fewer activities than last week, and a rather extended patch of PMS, which has the tendency to gradually sour my mood like a puddle of milk left lingering in the sun. But still, I wake each morning and am tempted to meet the day by my persistent hope that with luck and the proper attitude, today could be a 5-star kind of day.

As you can tell, even 15 years post-college and 8 years post-grad school, I’m still obsessed with rating systems. I think we all are. It’s one of the chief diagnostic tools we use to determine whether we are doing it right, whatever it happens to be. We all still long to “make the grade”, “make the cut”, and prove our self worth by doing things better, faster, and with greater ease than those around us. Even those of us who claim not to be competitive still compare our present self to past selves, continually looking for signs of improvement. I don’t know if it’s a first-born thing or a raised-to-go-an-Ivy-League-college thing or a I’m-as-good-as-a-boy thing, but I have been a praise junky my whole life. My self-worth meter lights up like a Christmas tree whenever someone compliments me or tells me what a good job I’m doing. It’s like oxygen. I don’t know if I could live without it.

The depth of my addiction to external validation was driven home recently in humiliating fashion. I called up my favorite professor from grad school – someone who I’d always considered a mentor – allegedly to ask advice about my ongoing career shift from quasi-artist/non-profit slave to university professor. We chatted for awhile, and I was really getting the warm fuzzies from having this grown-up conversation about being artists who are making strong life choices, when he said rather abruptly “Well, is there anything else? I’ve got to run.” And there wasn’t anything else – he’d given me the contacts he had to share – he’d listened to me blather on about who I am and what I want in my life – and now he needed to get back to his own life – one through which many many students have passed and will continue to pass. And I suddenly realized that I’d really called him to get an “A” on my life, and I felt like a total dipshit.

This is all on my mind today, because I am just about to prepare a “star chart” to use as a behavior motivator with my 2 – ½ year old. This is a tried and true method for encouraging toddlers to excel in life’s less enticing activities like tooth-brushing, pea-eating and staying in bed at night. The deal is the little tyke gets to put one sticker on the chart for each loathsome life-task he accomplishes, and when he gets 10 stickers, he gets a toy or treat of some kind. Essentially a complicated form of bribery outlined in colored marker, this approach is endorsed by Super Nanny and nearly every mother I know who has survived the toddler years. I think Gman will love it, and I expect it to help us gain some traction on the daily tasks that are causing headaches right now. And yet, there is a way in which I feel like I’m about to introduce my son to crack. Don’t get me wrong – he’s already sampled the sugary delight of pleasing others. At music class he sticks to the teacher like glue, following her every move and demanding more than his fair share of her attention. At home, he knows exactly when a “look at me Ma!” will distract me away from my personal pursuits and cause me to extol his virtues. He is an alpha male through and through – built to elbow his genetic competitors out of the way for any biological or social advantage he can glean.

But in the back of my mind, I know that we are standing at a cross-roads. Will we as his parents make choices to further hard-wire his brain and ego to achieve, compete and succeed, or can we find subtle ways to subvert biology and culture to show him that “being” has as much value in life as “doing.” Oy. You’re thinking too hard is probably what my mother would say to me right now. But I wonder. Will Gman grow up to be like me? Do I want him to be? Or do I want to fashion him a boat of reeds and leaves and push him away from the shores of prosperity into the river of self-love – a river I have eventually learned to drink from, but after many long and painful years in the desert. Maybe he can lie on his back in the boat and look up at the real stars – the ones that continue to live and die with no thought of us and our frantic scratchings on the earth. Maybe he can tell himself stories about before he was born – beautiful, complicated tales with no real beginning or end, full of language the rest of us have forgotten how to speak.

Labels: Family Life, Mamahood, time

# posted by Christine Young @ 3:15 AM 0 comments