Monday, April 30, 2007

Normal

I just posted a new blog on xanga. You can now comment there and it will link back to a blog anywhere so come visit. :) http://www.xanga.com/neuroticfitchmom

Monday, April 09, 2007

The Road

For all its bleakness and paranoia inducing pages, The Road has a deeper message to convey to the reader. Set in an unknown time, somewhere in America, a father and his son journey to survive in a post apocalypse world.

Their mission is to make it to The Coast, starving in a bleak landscape of people eating marauders, burned out buildings, dead bodies and falling trees.

A harsh tale of survival, of a father's love for his child, and small kindness.

McCarthy managed to chew me up and spit me out in a span of two hours. Several times I thought I wouldn't finish as Bill played Monopoly with the children. One of my greatest fears, something happening to the world and trying to survive with my children. Dear Lord, please let them be grown. Feeling their desperation, each bite of Easter dinner, guilt filled. But finish I did and thought about it all evening. And considered what he was trying to say.

Yes, I think it was some sort of warning on where we could end up. If we don't straigten up, and start being nice. But I also think, it was to remind us, in a way we could relate to that people are starving now. That people are just trying to survive with their children now. In landscapes, that are extreme in their own ways. Where people kill you because you aren't their race, their tribe, their religion. In stupid wars. Just because they can.

It really was good. And I'm really glad I read it. I'd love to know what meaning it gave you.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Sliding Away Like a Popsicle on a Hot, Summer Day

Crossposted from my main blog

I counted down the months today. April, May, June, July. Only four... my stomach twisting into a tight knot of regret. I wish I hadn't counted.

"How long now Mama," she's asked for the last year. I replied with a made up number, not wanting to think of it.

Until she caught on and I was forced to face the reality.

11 years prior, I'd started wistfully counting, tacking on more years with each child I birthed. The years until school, until my house was quiet and I could actually think. The children running wild through the house; screaming, playing, painting my walls KoolAid red, I longed for even one moment of silence.

But somewhere along the way I stepped back, as each one went off in turn, the years sliding away like a Popsicle on a hot, summer day. And wished for them back. The late nights staring into wide eyes, the bumps and bruises of one, the tantrums of independence at two, the endless hugs and kisses. Me their entire world.

The guilt overpowering some days, that maybe I'd parented better with my last two. The first two, only three days shy of a year apart, a time of survival. Feeling my way around like a newborn kitten until the third was born and I felt more secure. By number four I'd relaxed into parenting and was blessed with two years alone with her as the others tromped off to school.
And here I am now, four months away, wishing I could roll back time.

"Aren't you excited?" Well meaning people ask me, more and more frequently.

And I find that I'm not. She's supposed to be my little one, my baby. And somehow she's grown tall and her features are that of a girl.

She thinks thoughts I don't know. Soon enough she'll look at me with exasperation like my older daughter and I'll be left waiting for those fleeting moments of being let in on her world.

She's ready to fly away, all of five, as her brothers and sister have done before her. I see her watching the other children at the school, reaching out to them. I assess the teachers who will care for my baby and pray they aren't mean. I'm clinging to these last days.

I'll adjust,I'm sure, as I've done before. Writing and thinking, in a silence, that on some days will remind me more of them, than the loudest noise ever will. I probably will enjoy it and find a new place, a new definition of me without a shadow in my image, following along behind. But I'll stop and listen and grab each moment, remembering this counting and how the years pass...so quickly.