Rooted In Love

I’m sitting at the dining room table, thinking about the long crack in one of its legs, the result of time, temperature changes and family history. A junk shop find from the 1930’s, this cherry wood piece of furniture was once the prized possession of newlyweds, strangers to me. It might have been a stretch purchase for the Depression Era couple, but I got it for a steal at four hundred dollars, (side table included).

“Value is so relative,” remarks the real estate agent who is sitting across the table from my husband, as she flips through pages of local house sale data. At the moment, there are reasons to sell, and reasons to stay. We’re pulled back and forth emotionally.

Just like the table, the house we’re considering leaving is old and cracked in secret places, bought for a song eight years ago from an elderly couple. Back then it was just a charming building with a lot of potential, a bit musty, decorated with life-sized 30 year old silk plants, and over-packed with antiques. The walls told a story then, as they do now, except the chapter is new. Over the course of eight years, we have breathed new life into its hand-carved rafters through hard work, and new episodes of our life together have unfolded under its roof. We’ve filled the rooms with the fresh energy of little children and family traditions. In the second floor hallway I’ve hung a famous print called Photo Synthesis by Jerry Uelsmann. It’s a picture of a dilapidated building with giant tree roots. In a sense, that represents my house, but not visually, (thank goodness). I think my family has strengthened these old roots.

We fall in love with this small Queen Anne Victorian, despite the fact that it stands adjacent to a 200 year old cemetery and when we move in as newlyweds, the walls are padded. Every space, except for the bathrooms, is covered in fabric stapled over snow-white batting. Our friends joke that we can film a Brady Bunch reunion movie in the kitchen, because it is ugly, orange vintage. Either that or we can open a retro-style insane asylum, I think, pressing on the cushioned walls. Pulling down a nasty asbestos drop ceiling in the dining room, remnants of cloth electric wires, packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes, horse hair, plaster chunks, and a solitary silver spoon rain down on my head. I pick the spoon up off the heap of garbage. To my treasure-finding delight, it's engraved. On it is written, “Mental Diseases.” I cringe, as if the padded walls and dead neighbors weren’t creepy enough.

Lying in bed a few nights later, I’m staring at the ceiling, an ancient gathering of elaborate yellowed silk folds tucked under a medallion, and crystal chandelier. “The bedroom is my little jewel box,” the previous owner told me at the closing. I’m having involuntary visions of geriatric love under that dangling light fixture, and I can’t sleep. Finally drifting off, I dream that the ceiling, in its dusty decay, is actually the inside of a coffin. Disturbed by this nightmare, I start frantically peeling down the fabric everywhere; I need to find the bare bones of the original building. This 2 a.m. whim marks the beginning of the transformation of this building into my home. It starts a new chapter in the life of this house, which began with a simple farmer named Lyman in 1901, and continues with me and my family. Stairs are stripped of paint, walls repaired and repainted, floors redone. Scrubbed clean and refreshed by years of hard work, the stagnant old house is ready to grow again. Three children give it new wear and tear, and a reason to create more space.

My life has changed over the past eight years, and the transformation of this house into our beloved home reflects that growth. Now it’s my old friend. I’ve dug into its past and I’ve grown to love it at present. We’re sitting at the dining room table considering leaving my old friend at one of the worst economic times possible. “The reality is, in this market, you will not get what your house is worth,” says the real estate agent. I agree. We turned this space into a home filled with our love and memories. That’s priceless.

Writing: Dead or Alive

I wake up late this morning to the sound of squirrels scampering across the roof. My neighbors in the cemetery are weed whacking. Talk about keeping up with the Joneses, we have to compete with dead ones. Frankenstein's landscaping abilities started a chain reaction of lawn upkeep on my piece of Suburbia Lane. The dead people have such a perfectly manicured property they made our adjoining house look scary. So we felt the need to hire professional lawn help, and next one of my living neighbors is out in her pajamas edging the sidewalk. I guess curb appeal trumps personal hygiene. Why do any of us care, anyhow, we're competing with the dead?

I pull the shade up in my bedroom and peer out, inconspicuously. I can't even see who is weed whacking. It must be a ghost. Apparently, gardening is what makes dead people come alive at hours I would like to re-murder them. This idea gets me wondering, as the five dollar shade snaps off its hinges and crashes on my head, what makes me come alive?

I'm not sure it is parenting. Is that shocking? Before I had kids I thought being a mother would complete me. Three children later it's not as fun as I thought it would be, and I'm not as good at it as I thought I'd be. Actually, many times it feels like a really hard job. There's a lot of guilt that comes with this admission.

Don't misunderstand me, please. I love my kids and I'd give my life for them. In fact, I think that's what I'm doing right now, minus the "dead" part. In a sense, I give so much to them, that I think it was beginning to hurt me. I had to admit to myself that being a mother is not what makes me come alive, and find out what does, so I could stop feeling like a zombie.

There's something freeing about going off by myself and writing. It's as if this part of me that's kept in solitary confinement gets time in the yard. I've always felt this way, for as long as I could write. For a while I was too busy, and I found myself jotting random things on scraps of paper, napkins, bills, and other places where the words fell into an unorganized abyss, never to be found again.

Then I started this blog, and eventually, my New Year's resolution to write everyday started actually happening. Now I have a place to put the scraps of ideas and moronic thoughts that bring me so much laughter, and I feel really good about that. I feel healthier.

What makes you come alive? Send me your comments...and try to be serious for a second.

---Good thing writing makes me come alive, because at 5 a.m., I think I look horror flick "undead."

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive"-Howard Thurman

Note: I saw two articles called "Finding Me in the Mothering Adventure" and "Don't Turn the Heat Off Your Passion" later today in a newsletter called Momsense that I get, and they seemed to really speak to me, in a profound way, about this post. You can read them too at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/momsense/2008/005/12.18.html

"Your Charms Have Not Gone Unoticed By All the Angels"

This is my YAHOO! fortune today, and I like it a lot. At least all the angels read my blog:) That might not be a good thing, for me, eternally speaking. However, if they looked down from Heaven today and saw me cutting back the overgrown Yucca plants in the cemetery, then I'm sure I scored brownie points. Mostly for kicks, but also as part-time work, I organize community service for local teens. This morning I had Paris Hilton and her friend Nicole Richie doing yard work among the dead. (Not the actual celebrities, but just as amusing.)

At one point they come across a century-old family plot with the name "Jonas Brothers" inscribed on the monument. "I want to be buried right here, between the Jonas Brothers...That would be hot," says Paris. Yeah, that would be like...heaven," Nicole agrees.

I just can't keep my mouth shut; I have to interrupt their fascinating conversation. "You know that these Jonas brothers were not rock stars, but probably just poor, maybe toothless, settlers who are now skeletons, right?" Paris pauses raking to check her hair in a small mirror from her Coach handbag, "Yeah, well, I bet they were hot farmers." Her sidekick agrees, while flipping her cell phone open. "Yeah, maybe like, hot skeletons too."

Survival of the Sweetest

Here is a picture of a disgustingly huge spider that built its web across the outside of my kitchen sliding glass doors last night. This morning, in a state of grogginess which typically causes me to pour orange juice in my cereal and return the milk to the cupboard, I forget about this horrific creature and attempt to put out the garbage by way of that entrance, walking right into the abandoned web. Hell Hound looks on, head tilted in a state of canine curiosity. Luckily, the spider has disappeared, probably having overheard my plans to destroy it with hair spray. Nevertheless, my screaming jig is inevitable, which I'm sure wakes all the neighbors, the live ones, anyway.

The dead ones are already up, I'm sure, since their landscapers were running weed wackers at 6 a.m. in the cemetery next door. "The dead neighbors are sooooo rude!" I complain to my husband at breakfast after having taken two showers. "Don't they care that I also like to rest in peace at 6 a.m. on Saturday?" Milk Man shrugs and crunches, sips his coffee, and rattles the newspaper. He's engulfed in the latest national crisis. Chris Russo is leaving the radio show, Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN. I pull the paper down and lean into his face, asking "Will radio ever be the same?" He does not think my sarcasm is funny. "No, it probably won't," he mumbles, putting his coffee mug down and abruptly exiting the kitchen. I'm emptying the dishwasher and laughing. "Are you seriously upset about this?" No answer. "Wow, SO sensitive," I think aloud. "This is a dog-eat-dog kind of world, Milk Man, I guess Mad Dog had to move on." No answer.

Milk Man can be very sensitive at times, and so can I. This quality is definitely evident in the gene pool of our children, which troubles me as we approach their first days of school. They are very nice little people, and some kids can be cruel and aggressive. This is a fear that every mother must let go of, I suppose, as it is beyond the realm of control.

The princess enters the kitchen in her plastic shoes. "AHHHHH! I see the icky spider in the glass. Maybe smash it, Mama." Her older brother protests. "NOOO! Its brothers will be sad if you kill it. Mommy, just move it with my bug box."

Did I mention big brother LOVES bugs? He turns to the princess. "Just because something is ugly doesn't mean you should smash it." She thinks for a moment, then reluctantly agrees. After all, big brother knows everything.

My husband is standing in the doorway, smirking at me as I face my fears and relocate the giant spider in big brother's bug box. I think I'm breaking out into a sweat as we parade to the back of the yard with the creature, so it can safely find its "brothers," and avoid the jaws of Hell Hound.

I bet spiders teach their children the meaning of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest," but this bugger just got lucky today. It tacked itself to the door of two wonderfully sensitive children. I'll save one million ugly bugs if it means my kids stay this sweet forever.

News FLASH! Animals Flock to Christie Yard Possibly Searching for an Ark

Did you really think I'd give up on bird watching that easily? After my little dinner joke, which prompts screams of horror from Big Brother, and the scolding: "Mommy, Don't be RI-DICK-OO-LUS!" from the princess, I decide not to teach Milk Man a lesson. I cook something other than birdseed for dinner, choosing a recipe from my treasured Campbell's Soup cookbook. Later that evening, I refill the feeders.
(A FEW DAYS LATER...)

Sometimes, in order to to feel more calm and centered, I sit at the kitchen table and say a Rosary. Today, the princess joins me. She has her own colorful wooden beads that were a gift from grandmama M. During the prayer I get up to pull baby brother out from a tangle of curtains. There in the window perched on one of my new feeders is a beautiful male finch. He's looking directly at me, chirping loudly. Meanwhile, I hear thunder, and strangely, the sun is shining.

I inch closer to the window and peer out. Down on the grass below the feeder is a big frog. I grab my camera and try to get a picture. Then I go outside to safely relocate the frog before Hell Hound finds it. I hold him carefully and bring him to the back of the yard near the old cemetery. He jumps safely through the chain link fence. Walking back to the house, I spot a large Monarch butterfly. In the clouds ahead, I see breaks of sun light and lightening at the same time. Milk Man calls me from work with a weather report. "What's the weather like by you? It's raining buckets here. I bet you're going to get this storm soon."

Now, if I see a swarm of locusts and possibly, a giraffe, then I'll know for sure that God is trying to tell me something.

I Survived the "Death Conversation"

I'm sitting at the breakfast table eating my Cheerios, enjoying the sludge of gossip in the NY Post's Page Six magazine, totally unprepared for the incoming conversation with big brother, when he glides into the kitchen in his Heely sneakers. "Mama, Did you know that there are people who are dead behind our fence?" I was wondering when he was going to figure that out. We live next door to an old cemetery. I shake my head in a "Yes," but keep reading. The next question really grabs my attention. "And Mommy, do you know that you and me and everybody dies?" I look up at him with a mouth full of cereal, at a loss for words. Big brother senses that I look alarmed. It's not because he's telling me something I don't already know, but rather, I'm not ready to discuss death with him before 7 a.m. on a random Thursday morning.
He leans into my face. "Don't worry Mama. You don't need your body when you die; you're a spirit."
"Really?!" I play dumb. "Tell me more about that." His tone is joyful and matter-of-fact. "Well, at Bible Camp yesterday we learned that Jesus gives us the power to live forever and ever. So, Mama, don't be scared." Big brother looks over my shoulder at the T.V. "Gotta go, Mama, Yo, Gaba, Gaba is on." He slides out of the room on his Heelys. I pick up Page Six again. In between crunches I think,"Well, that was easy."

Zombie

"It is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us."

-Charles Dickens

It's 10 p.m.; do you know how long your children will stay asleep? This is the question I find myself frequently asking as I force my eyes shut, sleepy or not, knowing that the baby will be wailing at midnight. It's true to say that I've let myself go slightly in the months following the arrival of child number three, and if not for pure exhaustion, I'd be more self-conscious about my appearance. The heartbeat sound on the baby monitor that is supposed to soothe my little infant gives me nightmares of blue teddy bears who have located the kitchen knives. So I toss and turn, muttering explicit phrases I can claim to not remember saying tomorrow.


Then, just as I'm beginning to drift off peacefully, it starts. It's a whimper that keeps on growing into a full-blown cry. As I sit up, I've got Michael Jackson's song "Thriller" in my head; I feel stiff like a zombie. I pass the mirror on the way to the baby's room and my fears are confirmed. The dark rings under my eyes would secure my part as an extra in the music video. Jackson could come over my house right now to do a remake; my backyard connects to an old cemetery.

I look out the kitchen window. The cemetery is quiet and dark. There's a perfectly spooky fog rising over it beyond the fence. The shed door is open, and my overworked imagination pictures the zombies helpfully shutting it for me as they limp across the lawn. Frowning at the baby, who is now wide-eyed and smiling, I wish he were sleeping. In fact, I'm kind of angry that I'm not sleeping.


I turn on the television to keep myself awake. The baby wants to play "blow on your hair." That's a game we made up, for the daytime. He laughs when he gets some strands to move. Lauren Hutton is speaking to me in an infomercial. She knows about my dark circles, and says it's a sure sign of aging. Maybe she's right, I think. After all, if it weren't for the shampoo commercial she did in 1974, I'd be a Jennifer. Mom must have liked something about her. I change the channel just in time to hear another model advise me to improve myself cosmetically, "because you're worth it," she coos.


The little person I'm holding is cooing too, as he looks up at me like I'm the most fascinating and beautiful person he's ever seen. Then suddenly, he digs into my cheeks with his chubby, sharp-nailed little fingers and smashes his slimy open mouth on my face. My son gives me his first baby kiss, followed by a clinging, joyful hug. My eyes are welling up; only I know this precious moment. Suddenly I'm the Grinch on Christmas morning; this little boy melts my heart. I think I'm okay with living life as a zombie. This midnight cuddle session is a moment of joy, and even Lauren Hutton can't bottle that! I'll live with the dark circles, because HE'S worth it.