Gratitude | wasting time

I was in the car the other day, driving home into the five o'clock sun (the most yolky, rich of suns), and "The Dock of the Bay," came on the radio. The kids were in the car with me, both quietly staring out their respective windows, a sure sign that sleep was over-taking them--a little early for that this afternoon, but they'd just spent an hour bouncing around, literally, at the trampoline park. I turned the radio up. I sang along. I told them, though I knew they weren't listening, "This is one of my favorite songs." I'd never thought about it before, but, yes: this is one of my favorite songs. This song that almost wasn't released, and then was only released because Otis Redding died young, and his label needed something to offer people who were sad. I did not know about this while I sang along in the car the other day, but I have since learned that Otis Redding had had a throat surgery that left him worried for his voice and future, and "Dock of the Bay" was quiet, poetic, soft--and easy for someone like me to sing along to, someone whose voice is only what it is because she sings to children, tucking them into bed at night, and because she sings to herself, in her car, though not a natural singer at all.

When I heard the song in the car, I thought about my life. How happy I am singing along to songs on the radio in cars--two minutes of bliss. How I told my co-workers the other day that drinking beer by a pool is one of the greatest pleasures to be had on this planet, in this life. How a day spent fixing good, simple meals with my menfolk, pruning plants, walking in the yard barefoot--this is perfection, this is my personal joy. I beat myself up sometimes. I am hard on myself for not being more or doing more, but the truth is that while, yes, at some point I think I'd like to travel, I'm more happy in my own backyard than anywhere else. And when I worry I'm not doing enough, not being enough, isn't most of that worry based on comparing myself to others and what I believe the expectations of others to be? That has nothing to do with me and my path and my heart. 

I live a modest life, and I like it. This is the life I've carved for myself; I have created this from nothing. I have lived with chaos and despair, yet here I am: in love with a good man, my life's companion, as we raise our son together, this beautiful, healthy, smart, charismatic kid. We don't have much, but we have each other, and we know how to be quiet, and we know how to laugh, and we work hard, and we know how to laze around like it's an art.

I Am Greatful:

• I am grateful for the way Ella does not fight bed time, but leans into it, like every part of our night time ritual is a luxury.
• I am grateful for my husband, who makes me sushi for lunch and draws little sriracha smiley faces on them.
• I am grateful for the photo on the front page of the Sunday News & Observer, of a lovely and lovey lady pit bull comforting a grieving mother.
• I am grateful when Mads says, "Look, Mom," and I respond, "Uh huh," and he tells me firmly but without anger, "You're not even looking, Mom," and I am snapped out of my head and into the present moment; I am grateful for these reminders of mindfulness from my guru son.
• I am grateful for the soft way my husband kisses my cheek and thanks me, everything else pausing, his hands on my arms.
• I am grateful for weather reports broadcast on the radio on stormy nights.
• I am grateful for the adult courage to peek under beds and into closets after dark.
• I am grateful for Grandma telling me, with admiration and approval, that I am so patient with my son.
• I am grateful for the last gritty sip of French Press coffee.
• I am grateful for a few minutes to zone out, looking at the Instagram accounts of yogis on tropical islands while eating chips and guac, without feeling bad about myself--just letting my mind rest, looking at something beautiful while eating something tasty.

Madmartigan, 4 Years Old | seaweed salad & smudge

There’s that Phyllis Diller joke, “Cleaning the house while your children are growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.” The first time I heard it, Mads was barely walking yet somehow getting his hands on board game pieces and Apples-to-Apples cards and scattering them all over the kitchen floor every time I had my back turned. Now, I feel like I need that joke inscribed on a plaque and hanging on my wall, a bit of household wisdom to ease my mind and a warning to visitors--this is where we’re at right now . That, or the Someecards update, “Cleaning with kids in your house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.” (That one is filed under “Cry For Help Memes” on the Someecards website.)

All this is to say, my house is a disaster, and I don’t want any shame over it. I’ve got a full-on kid at home. The living room is a chaos of cardboard. Blue electrical tape holds up scraps of construction paper all over my walls with my son’s interpretive “weather reports.” I’m trying my damndest to teach him to put his things away, because I think it will make not only my life easier but his as well (how many mornings screech to a halt when we must search for The Other Croc before leaving the house), yet there are still Legos on every surface, in every corner of the house--both Duplo-sized and “Big Boy” sized (as we confusingly call the impossibly tiny ones, to which Mads has graduated this Spring).

The state of my home is partly my fault. I’m an enabler. I bring cardboard boxes home from work and store cracker boxes, egg cartons, and the paper grocery bags my grandmother sends home with me in a corner of our dining room designated, loosely, for “art supplies”. And, I encourage my little boy to bring home odd scraps of plastic and paper he finds when we’re out and about, more things to reuse; since reading Lois Elhert’s Rain Fish (an instant favorite, which Mads and I refer to as Garbage Fish), we’re constantly on the look-out for, well, garbage.

I suppose a mechanic’s workshop or an artists studio is also constantly in a state of muddlement and flux--it’s part of the process. With a nearly five-year-old boy, our home is both workshop and studio, as well as discotheque, test kitchen, laboratory, and about a hundred other things, depending on the day.

As far as the cleaning goes, Wolfman and I are doing the best we can.

About Mads, 4 Years & 10 Months Old:

• Mads is finally beginning to share my love of Labyrinth. He recognizes David Bowie as "The Goblin King," and his favorite part of the movie is the Fireys. However, Mads has also begun wailing, "That's not fair!" whenever he doesn't immediately get his way.
• One evening, while we sit in the back yard eating grilled pineapple and the juices run down Martigan's naked chest, I light a stick of citronella incense, and Mads uses it to invoke Odin and cast spells for health and longevity. He announces he is a wizard, and he runs around the yard naked in a cloud of perfumed smoke. (He repeated the same indoors only once--we had to put a kibosh on the baby shamanism after he pressed the red tip of the incense into the covers of his bed and burnt a little hole in his duvet.)
• Wolfman and Mads often utilize our community center's open gym hours, especially on hot days or rainy days; Wolfman reports that though he's tried to teach the basics of basketball and volleyball as he remembers them, Mads prefers to invent his own games (and he is rather bossy about it).
• Wolfman and Mads also spend many an evening in the community center game room playing air hockey, and Mads is legitimately, without any parental stacking of the odds, pretty good at it (and getting better).
• Mads uses my tablet to scroll The Dogist Instagram feed.
• Mads loves seaweed salad and Bubbies sauerkraut.
• When I'm feeling cranky one morning, Mads makes the effort to soothe me by requesting I read him a book, which he knows I love, and choosing a particularly dreamy one (Kim Krans' 1,2,3 Dream).
• When Wolfman has The Classical Station on in the car, Mads informs him, "Daddy, I don't like this music. I only like Rock n' Roll."
• Preparing to read Curious George to Mads and Ella one night, the one where George gets on the wrong subway train, (one of Mads' favorites), Mads informs his cousin in preamble, "The subway is a train that goes underground in New York City. That's far away from North Carolina."
• Mads went through an entire box of Paw Patrol bandages, wrapping them around his fingers when he should have been brushing his teeth. Now all bandages in our house are plain and kept in the parents' bathroom.
• As I tuck him into bed each night, Mads gets squirrely and wild, fighting sleep, and tells me, "I want to hug you with my legs!"
• Mads writes his name--M.A.D.S. (in all caps, and the 's' is almost always backwards). He asks us how to spell words (words like "octopus," "zebra," "berry," or "bear") so that he can write them or construct them on the refrigerator with magnet letters. He spells "Mama" completely on his own, without help, much like the first word he spoke was "Mama."
• Mads calls fudge and brownies "smudge," though he knows that's incorrect. He always shakes his head and asks, "Wait. What's that stuff called?" Maybe it's because I giggle when he says it, though I try hard not to. His baby words are dwindling--"cunchtable" for comfortable, "titar" for guitar, and smudge.
• Mads says, "Mom, you know, every once in a while I get a spit storm in my mouth."
• As I tease Atalanta one morning, nuzzling my face into her neck and asking, "When are you going to learn you're not the boss; I'm the boss." Mads pipes up and says, "You're not the boss, Mommy. Daddy's the boss." I ask, "Oh? Why do you say that?" He answers without pause, "Because Daddy's the grumpiest."
• Martigan attended a pre-k class in the Spring. He was smart and social and a natural leader, and Wolfman and I often arrived early to pick him up so we could watch him from the door window of his classroom, in awe of his ease.
• In May, after watching several of his cousin's ballet classes, Mads requested to join her. He took to the class immediately, as if he'd always been there. He wears all black, like a ninja. After his first performance this month, he informed us that he wants to do that again, and soon.
• Martigan's favorite books lately: Shark Detective by Jessica Olien; Chicks and Salsa by Aaron Reynolds and Paulette Bogan; Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown; Here Comes Destructosaurus by Aaron Reynolds and Jeremy Tankard
• Martigan's favorite shows and movies lately: PJ Masks, Transformers: Rescue Bots, Super Wings, all things Power Rangers, all things Scooby Doo