tiny booties and bonnets
This weekend I drove to Philadelphia for my sister-in-law's baby shower. She received all sorts of tiny booties and bonnets.
On Saturday I had to help with the set up for 12 hours.
When I arrived home, My mother hadn't eaten or slept and was swinging a hedge trimmer. With impatient sweeps of the machine she whacked at weeds like wheat with a machete. I warned her, but still, with a zapping smack she cut the bright orange extension cord. The wire buzzed blue and wild and I heard only and a short stifled "oops."
Yet on she went, still running, fists up near her arm pits with this inhuman adrenaline. Bustling. Yelling. Talking non-stop about everything she needed to get done for 12 hours straight. At midnight I knew I’d go crazy if I didn't leave the house. Against my mother's wishes I left and met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. When I came home at 2 she was still awake and the neighbor was over and they were both chopping and dicing chicken into cubes. The neighbor was drunk. My mother was anxious.
"Jessie, now I need you to clean the bathroom" she said as a command without looking up from the chopping block and pointing with her knife with short stabs towards the powder room. It went on and on until about four that night, and she probably went on even later.
She knew how funny she was being and laughed at it herself sometimes, but couldn't stop her excited, rambling madness.
The next day she was in a daze. I've gotten pretty used to it. When the stress is over, her brain doesn't work as quickly anymore and she slowly starts to shut down. Her responses are slow. She laughs at jokes long after they are said. And tomorrow, she'll probably miss work because she was exhausted and needed to sleep all day.
This is the amazing cycle that I've always been pretty familiar with. This is Christmas, this is thanksgiving, this is every wedding, or birthday - every event. She needs it to be chaotic and crazy to keep going and to finish in time. She probably is pretty manic or whatever you want to call it - but the point is that she's needed to be. She raised four kids as a single mother. When I think about it, I can't even really fathom how she ever did it if she didn't stay up all night sometimes. She didn’t have a choice about being a mother at 21 or raising four kids by herself and you have to respect her for being crazy enough to manage it.
She promised me that this baby shower would be the last event we held at her house. It doesn't mean that this chaos and intensity will ever end. It's just the way things are with her. It's always going to be stressful and always delightful. Almost equally so. Sometimes it feels like I’ve never been more angry with her, and somehow, at the same moment, that I’ve never been so glad to have this memory with her - and we cackle and howl with laughter.
With my muddled and confused idea of what is comforting,I'm totally gonna fuck up my own poor little daughter, one day.
When Christie was opening up pink rattles and afghans, someone asked me if it made me want to have a baby. I feel like it's a trick grown, married women do to younger women to make you feel like you're supposed to be on a track to something or other. "OH, god no," I responded, "I don't even want puppies." Then they give you that double-chinned knowing nod of "Oh, of course you will, one day."
When all of the guests left, my brother and I both sat with our hands on my sister-in-law’s tummy and felt little Catie press her elbows and feet against our palms. I thought, “Oh, of course I will, one day.”
On Saturday I had to help with the set up for 12 hours.
When I arrived home, My mother hadn't eaten or slept and was swinging a hedge trimmer. With impatient sweeps of the machine she whacked at weeds like wheat with a machete. I warned her, but still, with a zapping smack she cut the bright orange extension cord. The wire buzzed blue and wild and I heard only and a short stifled "oops."
Yet on she went, still running, fists up near her arm pits with this inhuman adrenaline. Bustling. Yelling. Talking non-stop about everything she needed to get done for 12 hours straight. At midnight I knew I’d go crazy if I didn't leave the house. Against my mother's wishes I left and met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. When I came home at 2 she was still awake and the neighbor was over and they were both chopping and dicing chicken into cubes. The neighbor was drunk. My mother was anxious.
"Jessie, now I need you to clean the bathroom" she said as a command without looking up from the chopping block and pointing with her knife with short stabs towards the powder room. It went on and on until about four that night, and she probably went on even later.
She knew how funny she was being and laughed at it herself sometimes, but couldn't stop her excited, rambling madness.
The next day she was in a daze. I've gotten pretty used to it. When the stress is over, her brain doesn't work as quickly anymore and she slowly starts to shut down. Her responses are slow. She laughs at jokes long after they are said. And tomorrow, she'll probably miss work because she was exhausted and needed to sleep all day.
This is the amazing cycle that I've always been pretty familiar with. This is Christmas, this is thanksgiving, this is every wedding, or birthday - every event. She needs it to be chaotic and crazy to keep going and to finish in time. She probably is pretty manic or whatever you want to call it - but the point is that she's needed to be. She raised four kids as a single mother. When I think about it, I can't even really fathom how she ever did it if she didn't stay up all night sometimes. She didn’t have a choice about being a mother at 21 or raising four kids by herself and you have to respect her for being crazy enough to manage it.
She promised me that this baby shower would be the last event we held at her house. It doesn't mean that this chaos and intensity will ever end. It's just the way things are with her. It's always going to be stressful and always delightful. Almost equally so. Sometimes it feels like I’ve never been more angry with her, and somehow, at the same moment, that I’ve never been so glad to have this memory with her - and we cackle and howl with laughter.
With my muddled and confused idea of what is comforting,I'm totally gonna fuck up my own poor little daughter, one day.
When Christie was opening up pink rattles and afghans, someone asked me if it made me want to have a baby. I feel like it's a trick grown, married women do to younger women to make you feel like you're supposed to be on a track to something or other. "OH, god no," I responded, "I don't even want puppies." Then they give you that double-chinned knowing nod of "Oh, of course you will, one day."
When all of the guests left, my brother and I both sat with our hands on my sister-in-law’s tummy and felt little Catie press her elbows and feet against our palms. I thought, “Oh, of course I will, one day.”
posted by j-e-s-s-i-c-a at 10:14 AM
1 Comments:
I totally understand what you mean about the whole question about when you're going to have a kid...
However, I've been married five years in December. Since we've been married, there have been seven (!) babies born in my husband's family (extended, of course). We just about have to beat them off with a stick.
But we definately do want 'em...someday. : )
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