Friday, April 15, 2011

Queenpin is Buying a Spiked Suit

Would it be wrong for a Queenpin to buy a spiked suit? I mean I know a Queenpin can do as she pleases, however DSS may have some concerns. Department of Social Services, you ask, what does that have to do with sex? Get your minds out of the gutter. Queenpin needs space. During the day I teach 6, 7 and 8 year olds. Joyous, hilarious, fabulous kids, but they are touchy, squeezy, and huggy. Not to mention the rest of the little huggy, cuddly beasties on the campus of my school.

Then I have my own beasties who sprang from my womb, one of which would happily crawl back in. Those two think they own this bod. There is not an inch of my body that is off limits to my little ones, no matter the boundries I set. Last week I actually said to my 8 year old son, "I wish their was another way you could express your love for me other than smacking my butt." Sheesh.

My little girl, she is a snuggler, a cuddler, a hostage holder. I know I should not wish this away. My son weighs almost 75 lbs, which means my days of picking him up and carrying him around are over, for the most part. He still likes to try. Some days my body just craves independence from wanting hands, feet, mouths, tongues, and bodies wanting to be held. I wouldn't wear my fancy spiked suit all the time. Just in my kitchen when I'm cooking or when I'm hanging out with my neighbors. Maybe just an hour a day. Maybe until they're 18.

Not really until they're 18, because then there are those times when my body is wanting theirs. When I have to touch their hair or pick up my girl just to feel her little butt in my hands, her weight on my hip, little legs wrapped around my back. There are actually times that I can't wait to touch my lips to their sweet soft necks or feel the pointed angles of my boy digging into my flesh. There are also times that I need to be hugged at hip height, or have a small hand in mine. I need to touch those beasties too.

I guess me and the beasties have what Don Corleone would call an arrangement, which always involves compromise. Everyone gives a little bit and everyone loses a little. Just in case, though, I have seen a spiked suit and I'm putting it on hold for Mother's Day.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Standing at the Threshold

In therapy every week my therapist and I set an intention for the session. The first week the intention was new beginnings, something I need, as this Queenpin feels very stuck in the middle. I'm not moving forward, yet I don't feel stuck in the past, just mired in the now. The daily practice of survival.

As I got centered on the therapist's futon, eyes closed, breathing in and out, the music started and he said, "Imagine you are at a threshold..." at that prompt a curved stone threshold appeared in my minds eye. Rough grey stones carefully arranged, solid as if they had been there for hundreds of years waiting for me to step through. Beside me stood my children, one on either side. We held hands and looked forward into the future. Everything behind us was black and empty. Not charred black, just pure emptiness. There was nothing there to hold onto.

Through the threshold there were earth tone colors, but no picture. I was stuck. I kept trying to move forward, but I could not see what I was walking into, where this new beginning was taking me. After a moment I felt myself let something go. I stepped forward and the world before me began to unfold. The pop, the break, the separating, the freedom I felt was me walking away from my children. Walking away from my children and into my future.

As I left my children behind, my little girl began to cry, but then I thought no, that's not right and both of them watched unfazed as a moved along cobblestone streets toward my future.

When the wusband left a child psychologist said to me, "There will come a point when what is right for you will not be right for your children and what is right for them is not right for you." It sounded very once or twice in a lifetime when she said it. When I walked out of her office I had no idea how many times I would struggle with that paradox and suffer under the weight of its responsibility. As a mother, a single mother, a Queenpin, where does my life end and their life begin? Where does their life begin and my life end? Is it truly that black and white?

When the session was over the therapist asked me how I felt about leaving them behind, "Guilty!" I cried (there's a lot of crying in this friggin' therapy). The shiv of mother guilt was digging into my heart. "They have so many strikes against them already and they are all from choices I've made." Sob some more.

But this is life. This is mothering. It is the way that it is. My sister is married and has three children. She related to my story of an unclear future. She cannot see where she is going without tripping over a child, a diaper, a dog. We are so focused on raising these beasties we cannot make plans, yet I need a plan. I need to figure out how to support myself so I am in school, I need to support us now so I work fulltime. Eventually, I will start my own business and maybe find a partner to share my life. Only one of those things are in my children's best interest, and that is my amazing day job. I get to teach where they go to school. Though working all day with kids makes me less willing to be super mom at night. Acupuncture school takes me away from them, and stresses me out. Starting a business will also add stress to our life and take me away from them. A partner? I don't even know where to start with that, but I can tell you right now, they like me just fine as their one and only Queenpin.

So how do I move forward in this life? How do I figure out where I'm going? As I walked away and left my kids at the threshold something became so apparent to me. Down deep in my soul clear. My children are not me, they are individuals, he and she are their own people, with their own thresholds. They do not need to walk through mine. They do not want to walk through mine, (though I swear that if my daughter could crawl back into my uterus she would, but I'll save that for another post).

My kids may have some rough grey stones in their threshold, their streets may even have cobblestone, but they will be their own to make. They are already building thresholds with my help, but they are not taking mine. As I write this I am imagining three thresholds side by side. Each person standing infront of his or her own. My beasties stand with their futures only visible to them, I stand with my future becoming clearer to me.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

In The Middle of the Night

In the middle of the night with a sick child is the loneliest the Queenpin gets. Because she is powerless. She is helpless. She is scared and her sweet baby is suffering.

Curled up with my boy last night as his fever reached over 103 I ran through all the horrible senarios that can happen to a sick kid and I had no one to talk me down. So I prayed. Om Tara, Tu Tara, Ture Soha I chanted as I imagined Mother Tara's luscious green Buddha body cradling my child. Om Tara, Tu Tara, Ture Soha and I forgot that I had no one to run out and get him a Sprite. Om Tara, Tu Tara, Ture Soha and I stopped thinking about the horror stories burned into every mama's mind full of what if's. Om Tara, Tu Tara, Ture Soha and I woke up to another day where it's okay that I'm the lone adult in this house.

Om Tara, Tu Tara, Ture Soha. Thank you Mother Tara for the peace.