an essay on writing and baby wrangling

(This is an essay written recently for a contest. The prompt was to finish the sentence “I never thought I…” in terms of a personal risk.)

I never thought I’d have occasion to utter the command “Stop putting that brachiosaurus in your nose—NO, NO, NO—not in your sister’s nose either!” I say things like this all day long. I am a mother.

This essay is about risk, but not sexy mountain climbing/traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language/forbidden romance risk. This is not an essay about my first night in the city pressing my nose against the window wondering where New Yorkers buy shampoo at 10:30pm on a Thursday night and engaging in a dizzying cycle of conjecture as to my ability to 1) find and procure said shampoo and 2) not be violently murdered in the process. It’s also not an essay about working at a clinic in Center City Philadelphia right out of college making practically no money and spending a good portion of my week being puked on, cursed at, and threatened by the very people I put my graduate degree on hold to serve. It’s not even about earning two degrees that have rendered me bereft of anything remotely resembling a marketable job skill (at this point, I’d like to thank my mother for never failing to bring this to my attention). This is about a different kind of risk—one that involves the people I love best in the whole universe—one that has the distinct potential to be a huge disaster.

After amassing enough student loan debt to rival the deficit of most developing nations and working for about two years in my chosen profession, I quit. During a recession (gasp). I spent three years studying for professional ministry. I spent a little less than two years working in the field. Then I was done. I left to raise babies and pursue my dream of being a writer. I left a promising career and a substantial part of our family income behind. That takes ovaries, my friend. It may also be the most horrendously stupid and patently selfish action in the history of humanity. It depends on when you ask me.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning in a cold sweat because I realize that for the first time in my adult life I am not contributing to the Gross Domestic Product. What can I say; I was born during the Reagan era. I worry about my husband who works two jobs while earning his PhD. I am amazed (read: stupefied) by his ability to love my dream even better than if it was his own. I stand in awe of his unwavering faith in my poor neglected little book-in-progress even on days when I secretly want to scrap the whole thing and start selling cosmetics door-to-door. If you meet someone who gets you (I mean really gets what’s deep down in your guts) then you should marry them. Immediately. Use force, if necessary.

Nevertheless, it turns out that writing and baby wrangling are messy business. Allow me to clarify: caring for two children under age three is messy business. Anything added to that mishegas only exacerbates the madness. I love my children. Theodore is two and a half and Lucy just turned one and I am over the moon for them. I spend a lot of time removing various species of plastic dinosaurs from bodily orifices. Scrubbing peanut butter or yogurt or other sorts of stickiness off of walls, hands, furniture, faces, and floors has become a daily ritual. I have acquired the ability to imitate every animal in the known zoological world. I provide shuttle service to story-time at the library and I sing loud and dance big when the librarian chirps “Song time, everyone!” I carry a winded little man with scraped knees and a fussy little princess with sweaty curls pasted to her forehead home from the park. I am not afraid of poop. Bruce Lee would be impressed by the speed and accuracy with which I can slide my hand under the chin of a puking baby. But when everyone has been fed and cleaned and kissed and changed, naptime (when the planets align and both little people decide to sleep at the same time and I do not collapse in a heap on the floor and the house does not look like an active missile testing site) is when I sit down at my laptop. I love to write. My book proposal currently looks like literary Swiss cheese. I fill it in five words at a time. I am always doing research and I am constantly taking notes. Most of the time I do these things with a sippy cup in one hand and a dirty diaper in the other. When I am tired and frustrated and aggravated and disheartened (as writers and mothers are wont to be), I look at Theo and Lucy. I want them to see that their mother loves them fiercely and that she loves herself enough to do what’s in her marrow—to take a chance at her dreams. Even if she fails. Even if nobody ever reads her silly little book. Even if the general consensus turns out to be that she should be made to stay at least one hundred yards away from the English language at all times for abusing it so heinously. I want them to know that she took a risk. I want them to have the courage to take risks too.

I will keep chasing babies and writing. I will do this for as long as I possibly can. My penchant for focusing on the negative often eclipses the fact that I feel extravagantly blessed. I know there may come a time when circumstances make it impossible for us to exist on one income. I will enjoy every second with these babies. I will keep typing—even if I have to type with one hand while changing a stinky diaper and singing the Dora the Explorer theme song. I will do it with urgency and with a grateful heart.

6.6.10 (Solemnity of Corpus Christi)

6 June 2010

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

(WARNING: The following includes content that may be offensive to some readers including (but cetainly not limited to) the inherent dignity of the human person, the ultimate significance of the Incarnation, and an entirely unsqueamish proclamation of the goodness of the human body. Reader discretion is advised.)

I want to talk about bodies (the bodies sitting next you on a crowded bus, the bodies in front of you in line at the grocery store, the bodies of loved ones and the bodies of strangers). Some are round, some angular, some well, some sick, some new, some old. I want to talk about your body (the weight and warmth of it, the strength and dignity of it, the vulnerability and hunger of it).

I want to talk because I worry about bodies.

The truth of the matter is that we live in a world hostile toward bodies and this hostility seems to manifest itself with dreadful clarity in regards to the most vulnerable members of our society. It’s nearly impossible to turn on the television or pick up a newspaper or check your email without being inundated with crimes against bodies. Violence and objectification have become part of our daily diet. Broken bodies flash across our television screens, crowd our cities' overburdened emergency rooms, and plead for mercy on the subway, on the street, and in neighborhood shelters.

So what does all of this have to do with the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ? What does it have to do with us as believers in God Incarnate? Well, everything, of course.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the ethereal business of souls that we neglect the fact that our God is a God profoundly concerned with (and intentionally entangled in) the glory and messiness of the human body. The Holy One chooses the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the body of an unmarried teenage girl living below the poverty line in Roman occupied Galilee) to be the sanctuary and stronghold of the Christ. God takes flesh every bit as vulnerable and finite as our own to come among us… to be Emmanuel. It is this very body that is offered at the cross and it is this very Body that we receive at the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist.

By donning our fragile human frame and allowing himself to enter into the fullness of human suffering and by rising again triumphant, brilliant, and scarred, Christ shows God’s ultimate solidarity with us and with the whole of our being. On this Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, may he awaken in us (down in our bones, deep in the sinew of our hearts) a commitment to be in solidarity with all bodies. May Christ give us the courage to stand with those who have been neglected, abused, and forgotten. May Christ strengthen our arms to hold mourning, hurting, and exploited bodies. May Christ steady our hands as we reach out to bodies imprisoned by poverty. May Christ teach us gentleness, tenderness, and ferocity in our protection of children whose small, fragile bodies are especially precious in his sight. May Christ give us strong, unwavering voices to speak his name in the face of racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and all forms of violence that threaten the wholeness and wellness of bodies made in the divine image. May it be so every time we receive his Body at the Eucharist. May it be so. May it be so.

1.5.10

5 January 2010
Memorial of Saint John Neumann, bishop


Reading I 1 Jn 4:7-10
Responsorial Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8
Gospel Mk 6:34-44

I think a lot about rules. As the mother of a two year old, a large portion of my day revolves around the enforcement of rules (however inconsistent, capricious, or altogether unsuccessful my attempts at maintaining order may be). As a parish lay minister, I spend a great deal of my time helping other people understand and follow the rules set forth by the hierarchy of the Church in the small snatches of Canon Law I have come to know well. I can give a time-out like a pro and I can name all of the Holy Days of Obligation for American Catholics in a given liturgical year before you can say “credo in unum Deum.” I am The Enforcer. Seriously, someone should give me a badge already.

But, here’s the thing about rules… here’s what gets lost in the midst of my relentless finger wagging and “no, no, no”-ing and my propagation of the seemingly arbitrary guidelines set forth for the living of the Christian faith: LOVE.

L-O-V-E.

As the writer of John’s letter reminds us in today’s first reading, love (Love Incarnate) is the heart of the Christian life. Love is not bound up in the rules of what we deign proper and possible. Love is undaunted by our busybody attempts to domesticate it... make it respectable. Love is subversive. Mark’s Gospel has Jesus defying the rules of what is prudent (asking the disciples to feed several thousand people) and reasonable (feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish). Love is big. It messes up (in most beautiful and holiest of senses) our best ideas about who we are and (more importantly) who we are in relationship to God and one another.

So, what am I fumbling at here? Am I advocating some sort of willy-nilly, hippie-esque, "do what you feel" love anarchy? No (though the crayon and marker all over our apartment walls might suggest otherwise). What I'm getting at is this: Rules are fine. In fact, they're better than fine... they're good. But they're only good insofar as they serve as guide posts along the straight and narrow path... the path that is perfect love, for Love's sake. Rules for the sake of rules is anathema... at least Jesus seemed to think so in the context of his interaction with religious authorities of his day more concerned with obeying the letter of the Law than living lives replete with unabashed love for God and neighbor.

This is what I resolve do to... this is what I will think about next time I point in frustration to the rules scrawled on the dry erase board on our refrigerator (which, in truth, is hardly a compelling demonstration for a two year old anyway) or thumb through my Catechism or Archdiocesan guide for Sacramental Preparation: Love. Does this rule (or my enforcement of said rule) correspond to Love (in the big, dynamic, ultimate sense of the word)? If not, it isn't of much use... in fact, it becomes somewhat of a violent thing. So, in the holster where I keep my wagging finger and my "no-no-no's" and my ability to understand the intricacy of ecclesial policy and procedure I will also keep Love... more Love than any of those other things. Love first. Love mostly.

There is a statue of Our Lady of Grace in front of a house on Central Avenue that your brother and I pass on our walk to work. She rests on a tree stump between two cypress trees that sprout unruly and cover two of the first floor windows. It is my guess that she has been there for generations; the almost Aquafresh blue of her mantle spilling onto her simple white robe after years and years of weather. She watches us from the spotty shade of her dark green niche as we jostle by on the uneven sidewalk and I cannot help but purse my lips. How could she have been allowed to drift into this state of disrepair?

And then I look at her. Really look at her. Her hands like two perfect seashells (slightly cupped and worn by the water rolling off the roof) stretching out beyond her mottled veil toward the boughs of the trees. Open. Ready. Her face stained and streaked and washed of any painted detail. Steady. Kind. Her blue stippled feet peaking out from under her robe rest firmly on the blanched serpent coiled across the statue's curved base. I look at her almost lost in the tangle of branches and I love her better than I have ever loved her in the cavernous belly of the Basilica where I mostly go to visit with her. I love her best here because there is something true and penetratingly urgent about her. She stands in the relative chaos of this forgotten little garden in front of the house with graying wood siding on the street with the haphazard sidewalk and looks at me patiently, but with resolve. She is saying "Stand still. Stand in the midst of your meetings, your laundry, your emails, your bills, your clutter, your appointments. Stand with your hands open. Do not be ashamed to be messied. Let grace pour over you and in you and through you. Let it dishevel you. Take it from anyone who will offer it to you. Be greedy for it. Give it to everyone. Give more than you think is prudent. Know that you are God's own. Crush under your feet anything that says otherwise."

I think about this the whole way home as we pass her for the second time today. Your brother pulls on the string of a rainbow swirled helium balloon that he charmed out of the hands of the priest whose fiftieth birthday we had gathered at the Parish Center to celebrate. My eyes scan the lawns, sidewalk, and gutter for the shoe he lost on our earlier journey. He falls asleep about half way home to the quiet rumble of traffic. The string still mixed up in his fingers is almost too perfect and I narrowly resist the urge to sweep my lips across his limp hand as I listen to the quick snatches of sound that escape each car as it whizzes past. I am standing still. I am standing still at the corner of Crain and B & A Boulevard and picturing the image of Our Lady of Grace on Central Avenue tucked into a pocket inside my heart and I watch it dissolve in the deep red of me into swirls of white, blue, and green and course through my veins to that place where our blood meets. I want you to have her.

Today the rain has lulled everything into a heavy green haze. It rained all morning and part of the afternoon and now the trees look fat and sated. Baka, the kitty (lovable schmendrick, destroyer of carpets), is sleeping with her paws folded neatly under her chin on a patchwork tapestry I bought in Philadelphia about five years ago. I ducked out of a sudden downpour into a narrow, cluttered shop on Chesnut Street (I think, or was it Walnut?) and haggled with the shop owner over the price. This is something I'll teach you. Haggling.

Wet tires whisper "shhhhh" on the street outside. I wonder why this sound is so comforting. I wonder if this is the sound you hear all day, the "shhhhh" of my body and distant, waterlogged voices.

o, god (for lucy)

Oh, God.

My friend Diana says that this is the best prayer she knows and, despite all of the resplendent, time-honored, formulaic prayers that I collect and tuck away in secret places like a child squirrels away feathers and seashells, this is the one I pray the most. It is adoration, petition, thanksgiving, and praise. Mainly petition.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

This is my prayer as I brush my lips over your brother’s feverish forehead, little beads of perspiration smeared into long, wet streaks. This is the prayer I mutter (under my breath and almost as a threat) as I travel along Route 29 hoping to find a gas station. This is the prayer I make whenever the doctor is taking my blood pressure and every time my fingers are lost and groping at the wilderness in the bottom of my bag for my keys. It is also the prayer that escapes my lips (pushes through before I have even begun to trace the syllables in my mind) as I listen to the squinchsquinch sound of my feet on the linoleum and peer at two lines—one dark and one impossibly faint—that bring good tidings of great joy… a small, plastic, pharmaceutical Gabriel in a bathroom strewn with bits of laundry and humming with the sound of fluorescent light. A little Annunciation.

The first time I saw your brother he looked like a seahorse with a spine of smooth, perfect pearls. The first time I see you you look like a lima bean or a greasy thumb print. You are perfect. Each time more angular and fleshy and strange and real. I want to write some things down for you because it’s hard to find the time to love you properly (to delight in you, to savor the idea of you, to listen to the ripples you make in that thick, salty water of my belly). Everything moves so quickly. I need to write to mark the time… for both of us. I need to write to tell you things that are too precious and slippery to be entrusted to memory. How am I going to teach you to be a woman (in the noblest sense of the word) in this world?

Oh, God.