Dinner Alone Again...

I cooked a old person's dinner last night - salmon, wild rice and an artichoke. I'm not exactly sure why it felt like an old person's dinner, but as I stared at my plate I couldn't help but think that it looked like an early bird special from Coco's.

It tasted okay, lots of fresh lemon on the salmon, and artichokes are one of my favorites, but I think the fact that I was eating alone ruined it for me. My husband was working on his all consuming thesis at the library. My kids were with me, of course. LB was even talking to me. But neither child took an afternoon nap, so after all day with them my attention was drifting inward.

I ate fast. I thought about my grandma. We had met for lunch. She will be seventy-nine on her next birthday, but suddenly she seems so much older. I couldn't walk slow enough to keep up with her, even pushing my heavy double stroller. She speaks slowly now and often about the same things - what time she ate her orange in the morning, and what she heard on conservative talk radio.

She is going on a trip to Israel this summer and I worry about her. But then I think of her eating dinner alone most nights (she has been divorsed for over thiry years), and I think: Good for you grandma! Go to the holy land - and walk as slowly as you need to.

I took our plates to the kitchen and scraped the leftovers into the trash. That night, as I was reading bedtime stories to the kids, watching their emotions flicker over their clear bright faces (rapt-attention suspense surprise laughter), I thought of something else my grandma told me repeatedly - the early years of her children's lives, when she was home with them, were by far the best years of her life.

Steward of My Babies Bodies

I suspected that my seven-month-old son had breast cancer - yes, breast cancer. I cancelled yet another play date and brought him to the pediatrician. It turns out a bright red nipple with a distinct lump beneath it is a normal reaction to mild irritation. Nothing a little Vaseline and a soft cotton onsie won't cure.

I've begun sneaking flax seed meal into my daughters food in a last ditch effort to quell her eczema. I asked the pediatrician about the constant flare-ups and he said eczema is a chronic condition that just has to be managed. I have been trying to manage it with colloidal oatmeal baths, creamy Vaseline rub-downs, and even hydracortisone cream - all without much success. Flax seed is suppose to help with skin allergies - we shall see....

The bath water isn't dirty... it's the colloidal oatmeal!

Space and Perspective

I was out on the ocean today... what a luxurious experience of space and perspective. It was an antidote to the feelings of suffocation I've been experiencing lately. My soul is craving the wild and uncharted. I am tired of toting my kids around in my car. The gridlock of the streets is invading my life. I want to walk, to run, to get tired in a good way. Something has got to give.

I was listening to the radio this morning while doing the dishes. LB was playing in her room and LH was taking his morning nap. I had my coffee and was enjoying myself (I like doing dishes in the morning for some reason, like I'm giving myself a fresh start- you couldn't pay me to wash a dish at night). Then the announcer on the radio broke in with a news flash that there had been a workplace shooting in my part of town, only a few blocks from my house. He gave the address of the incident (in which four people were shot, including the shooter who turned the gun on himself), and knowing exactly where that was I realized the kitchen window above my sink where I was standing doing dishes faced directly toward the shooting.

Out on the ocean today I stared at the water. I needed to stare at the water. I sat on the side of the boat, toward the back, and watched the two white lines of our wake pull away from each other. I watched the water run up the side of the boat as the hull cut it. I watched it arc, splashing back down into itself. My eyes drifted along the surface of the water, away from the boat, as far as I cared to gaze. The green depths of the water drew me in, and although I didn't see anything, it seemed that any second I would. I wasn't going to miss it. I needed to stare at the water.

Why Try?

Maintaining friendships is such a drag when mixed with motherhood.

Here is how my latest attempt went:

I call a friend of mine on Monday afternoon and invite her and her nearly one-year-old daughter to meet me and my kids at the Japanese Gardens on Wednesday at whatever time works for her. I leave this invitation on her machine.

I run some errands, and come home to a message from her on my machine. She'd love to get together on Wednesday. She asks me to call her back to set up a time.

It is early evening. I put Little Beauty in the tub with some toys, and put Little Handsome in his highchair and begin feeding him his dinner. With my free hand (haha) I grab the phone and call my friend back. I'm busy with my kids, she is busy with hers, but we manage to have a brief conversation about Nanny 911 of all things, and then, after discussing the kids nap schedules, we decide to meet at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. I write it on my calender.

Great!

Wednesday, 11:00 a.m. - I call to confirm. We are still on, and we decide to meet a bit earlier, 12:45 p.m. All is well. She even says that she will try to be on time (quite the challange with kids).

The Japanese Gardens 12:45 p.m. I pull into the parking lot and don't see her car. I'm not worried though, we've been so diligent in our planning.

1:00 p.m. LB has the koi swarming beneath the little bridge as she drops dried pellets of fish food which she has purchased with a quarter. I'm wondering if my friend knows where the Japanese Gardens are because we didn't talk about that. But they are on the campus of the college she attended, so . . .

1:30 p.m. We've walked the loop of the garden twice and spent another quarter on fish food. LH is asleep in the stroller and LB keeps asking where her "baby friend" (my friend's daughter) is. I tell her I don't know if they are going to make it. LB says it wil be sad if they don't make it. I agree. I curse myself for not having a cell phone. Who do I think I am, living without a cell phone!

1:45 p.m. We walk the loop one more time - around the lake, over the little arched bridge, past the garden of immaculately raked stones, beneath the blossoming tree and darting hummingbirds. I realize another attempt at friendship maintance has gone awry and we decide to leave. LB is sure we will she my friends car when we go to the parking lot. I tell her that we won't, but we will probably have a message on our answering maching when we get home. She asks me what an answering machine is.

The message: my friend says she forgot to ask which Gap we were meeting at, so she is going to go to the one on 2nd street and hope to find me there. I think, The Gap??????

We talk later that afternoon. She thought I invited her, on that original message I left, to meet at the Gap at some gardens. She says my voice was muffled. In subsequent conversations we never discussed where we were meeting, just at what time. The location was a given, for me it was the Japanese Gardens, for her it was the Gap at some gardens.

The moral of the story: We both laugh (more like a fatigued, dissapointed chuckle), knowing that it is par for the course. Then we bravely make plans for next Wednesday, tenative plans anyway. So why even try? Because I wasn't the only one feeling stood up and bummed out, my friend was too. And the idea of giving up on her, not to mention my other friends, just because we have kids and it is hard to get together - I can't think of anything more depressing.