While it’s true that I prefer to stand in the wings and allow my children the limelight, there are a couple of hours each day that I reserve solely for myself. I’m completely selfish with this time. It’s my workout time, maintenance time, and I tend to either drop them off at a sitter or ignore them (…as I trot around the hood with them in the jogger–relax!) . Lately, I drop them off with the fitness club child care; I can no longer ignore them and jog around the neighborhood while they drift asleep. They’re too excited about the universe at this age, full of questions and their own ideas. Bridling this kind of vitality kind of quenches my own, and I hate myself for dragging them into my sphere (but occasionally I still try).

When one of the kids is sick, as they were a few weeks ago, the machinery jams and I have to get creative. Fortunately, I have friends (hi Polly!) who can watch the kids when I need to go to the gym. Sometimes, I may do pilates at midnight on the living room floor. When all else fails, I have to do yoga when the kids are home. And it usually ends with injury, no matter how hopefully it commences. Less than a minute after this photo was taken, I was in cobra pose when Chas climbed onto my back, sunk his fingers into my nose, pulled my head back and really pissed me off. I clutched my nose, seeing stars, and had to run into the kitchen so the blood percolating from my nose wouldn’t drip onto the Bella rug.

SPC

It’s not fair that Chas can nap like this without me. But Ford will have none of it. He meets my exhaustion sometimes with sandpaper to my nerves, and I could just cry. So I’ve started taking vitamins more regularly, and with exercise and a little more sleep I’ve built up a better defense against the afternoon slump. Damon has introduced me to blackberry sage iced tea in mason jars. And I’ve taken up painting the sleeping babe.

I signed up for an encaustic painting class. A while back, I mentioned Amy Ruppel and her wonderful buttery paintings. I love this texture. It’s what I’m craving, more fat. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn for years, it’s just been hard to find an instructor. Lo and behold, they have one in Austin at the Laguna Gloria. So I cancelled our Vegas plans and am now sitting primly on the edge of my seat, waiting for two weeks to pass so I can start playing with oils and beeswax.

There are no more caterpillars. I keep waiting for a second generation to spill out of the trees but they haven’t arrived. I jogged along the creek today. The white rocks are dry now and milk-green where water trickled down only weeks ago, runoff from uphill. The pools where the big fish swim are coated with pollen and dust and milkweed tufts. Every big patch of sunlight holds a surprise along the trail. I’ve learned to ignore the scattering spiny lizards and squirrels. At the last minute, before my foot falls on them, they dart into shadows, bark and leaves flying behind them. So I ford through the little forest community, knowing it will all unfold before me.

Unless it doesn’t. My foot descends on a fat snake. Like the recoil of a shotgun, I yank back with so much force that I pull a muscle in my chest. But the snake is safe, motionless, and only as I bend down to study it does it slink into a rotten tree stump. Who knows what else I’ve narrowly missed?

Chas wore this dress of mine yesterday. I had to roll it about six times until it was short enough for him to just barely clear the ground in, and he just barely cleared the ground all over the garden as he trampled the runner bean seedlings and bulldozed through the birdbath. Finally, he returned inside with a little wicker basket and a tiny Schleich lamb at the bottom of the basket, declaring his arrival with a wet pattering across the tile floor and up onto Damon’s chest, where he soon fell asleep.

We went out on date last night. This is not something we do often, but my parents were in town and they decided to relieve us. So, after a quick bite and a paint lesson from my dad:

We left. We drove as fast as we could to make the 7 o’clock reservation. It was still hot outside, and my dress stuck to my legs in the car while I waited to the air conditioning ot kick in. Summer is just getting comfortable; you could see it in the smile of a man in his convertible, sunglasses reflecting the red light: summer is wedging itself back in the seat of the rocker, next to a side table with sweet iced tea and a paperback memoir.

Sunset raked over white table linens at the restaurant. Wine and hands, a sublime filet and the finest long grain rice from Texas; I felt ten years younger immersed in the quiet of our childless space. I mentioned that the restaurant reminded me of the bistro in Mill Valley, the one with the gorgeous hostess, but I realized that the similarity lay not in the setting but the absence of stress. Children have been the bane of our dining experiences. No matter how charming it is when they politely request macaroni and cheese, each good deed is met with an equally annoying faux pas: say, a fork thrown across the table and barely skewering the woman at the table behind me.

We kill 45 minutes atop a parking garage.
And then eat molten chocolate cake a la mode with pints of ale at the drafthouse theater.
My head is heavy and tipping off my shoulders on the winding road home, smiling and satiated but sleepy.

I’m happiest when my children occupy the stage. Right now I’m enjoying myself in the wings, and this photograph captures my sentiments perfectly.

Self Portrait Challenge

I’m sitting in a freezing lab next to a wall. A lab tech dressed in bright blue scrubs preps my arm for a blood draw, and I look the other way, to face the wall beside me. On it, eight inches from my nose, someone has thumbtacked a cardboard cutout of a meat processing plant. A monochrome logo in fat red ink of a curly-haired bull and the company name blazened around it.
Me: (chuckling) That’s pretty random.
Tech: Random? (smirks) It’s not random at all.
Me: How so? It’s a meat processing plant logo on a piece of cardboard! It’s hilarious. You kill me.
Tech: You know, the owner of the plant was here just the other week.
Me: No kidding?
Tech: She was very pleased with the sign, of course.
Me: (nodding along with the surreal conversation) Then it was worth it, having this sign on the wall.
Tech: Yeah. And then, when she was leaving, she gave me a dozen chicken wings!
Me: (laughing out of my mind) Then it was definitely worth it!
Tech: (laughing) I like you. You come back here anytime!

I watched the monitor as the nurse practitioner glided the sonogram on reconnaissance around my organs. It’s hard not to get technical and revealing with the findings; I keep erasing lines. But I enjoy this kind of detective work, even at my own expense. There was no visible embryo, not yet, only the stage for one. She gently reminded me that it may be too soon to tell, but I’m trusting my gut instinct that there won’t be, this go round.

I disclosed the blood sample more out of courtesy than closure. What gave me those symptoms was most likely a ruptured uterine cyst, which, apparently, is a common ailment in horses. Yes, try googling “uterine cysts.” I got graphic rat dissections and a litany of equine medlines on the subject, but nary a word on uterine cysts documented in the human species. But I swear, the nurse told me they were a common ailment in women!

This I know now: our hearts and home have room for another child, even if our cars don’t accomodate a third carseat.

+++

It’s gorgeous right now. Everything has a crisp surface, the horizon unfolds in blue and purple hills; you can see the outlines of trees several miles away. I forget my camera when a peach-colored sheet of cloud covers the skybowl, reflecting the setting sun. As if the earth has turned off all the lights, the sky beckons the eye upwards. All I notice on the ride home is the linear network of telephone poles and electrical wires, the limestone cliffs as they rove by. I love the sunsets in Texas.

The highs and lows this weekend knotted me and left me wondering how I should feel. I took the remaining two pregnancy tests, the ones left in the package. Compulsively, I had to confirm the positive test; I couldn’t wait until the doctor’s appointment, which is tomorrow morning. And I never suspected they would silently disappoint me! But after seeing two negative results, I steeped in doubt for a while before resurfacing to tell Damon what I found.

The mind has a powerful way. It can wrap itself snug around the possibility of a new baby, no matter how impossible it originally seemed. As the hours pass, a vision becomes clearer and problems begin to resolve, and fear transforms to hope. Then, to release the notion is like asking to grieve. Could this all have been a fantastic head trip? I feel I can relate on some level to IVF patients, who never really know what to expect.

Both of our children were planned. It took an agreement, a basal thermometer, a chart, and a month to conceive each boy, and each time I felt in complete control of my body: I knew the day I was ovulating like I knew the day I was pregnant, and two tests for each child confirmed the latter, in each case. But now, I feel so vulnerable and human, clumsy and blind. And I’m sorry to burden you with this self-pity, but years later I might find this all amusing. I mean, relatively speaking, these are small beans. But they are feelings, nonetheless, and because I’m human I have them.

So tomorrow morning, I go to the OBGYN. I’m anxious. Knotted. And I’ll be a little sad if we don’t find an embryo, but I’ll be okay.

Tonight I have a fun project to occupy the rest of my time: a painting, commissioned for a very special occasion. And I’m absolutely thrilled. Still, I can’t give away any details (well, not yet!).

To all you mothers reading this, I hope you had a relaxing but joyful Mother’s Day…and maybe a glass of wine or a mimosa, for me?

I don’t like to make excuses. I’ve scarcely written a word in more than a week, posting photos instead. Words have sunken deeper, swirling in my subconscience and slowing me down. For seven days I’ve failed to run three miles without stopping short, panting behind a frown for more oxygen. Every time I’ve stood up, the world’s disappeared for three seconds behind a white vacuum. I couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint. I was incubating. Last night, I drove to the store for milk and returned with brownies and dark bars of chocolate, a magazine and a pregnancy test.

The test. Last night, I sat on the toilet and stared at the results laying on the bathub ledge. For fifteen minutes, the little white wand stared back at me with those mute, faint lines. I sobbed in denial. The moonlight poured in; it’s a full moon. The seasons, the changes, the moon: I’ve been more aware of every cycle but my own. I hadn’t had an obvious cycle in nearly three years. And we were taking precautions!

But I hadn’t read the instructions correctly. A crossed line in the oval window, not a single line, indicates pregnancy. I hysterically threw the wand into the trash and went to bed.

When I awoke, I took the test out of the trash. I remembered doing this with Chas’ pregnancy test: there was the negative result, yet all of the symptoms indicating pregnancy. Sure enough, when I lifted it to my eyes, I saw a faintly crossed line. And sighed, wincing, before piling the boys into the car and heading to the gym.

I stopped on the trail to do some knee lifts. Within a couple of seconds, I caught eyes with a whiptail lizard. It watched me from a hole in a tree stump for three whole sets, occasionally turning an eye to a passing jogger. Shortcutting across the meadow, I lunged through high clover, lush and fragrant. My legs felt like lead. When I greeted Ford at the childcare facility, he asked me if he could have a baby sister, point blank. I nearly fainted as I stood up from my bags to ask him if he wouldn’t mind repeating himself.

I wanted to sleep all day, even though I had promised Ford that we’d go hiking. Instead, the television numbed us and I fell in and out of sleep, and my watch would ocasionally chime at the hour. When I had worried long enough, and Damon flattered me plenty on my glow, I bought another test kit and snuck into my bathroom.

Pregnant!

+++

Damon walked into the room, where I was nursing Chas, and I shared my shy, pink grin. After a few tries, he understood, folding red, wet eyes between cupped hands, a happy jaw escaping words. We paced the house in wonderment together, doe eyed and dumbfounded.

Strangely, the only person the news has fallen hard on is Ford. He is heavy with grief. The levity of annoucing the news to family has been lost on Ford, who keeps telling me, “Promise me you’re kidding, you’re not pregnant, Mommy. I don’t want you to be pregnant!” Guilt cuts me with these words, but Damon tells me it will pass. Not to worry.

Meanwhile, Chas is dreaming in his sleep, sprawled on the bed. His frog legs are twitching and he appears to be mouthing words almost imperceptibly. Exhausted, I lay down between him and Ford (who is now asleep, himself). Sandwiched between the kids in the bed, I lay grounded by the mass of a growing family, while my joy flies high from a quiet smile. And Chas begins to laugh in his sleep.

Just like that, we are now FIVE!

Chas inserts this gesture at the end of each question. He’s finally figured out how to intentionally manipulate us.