My Youth

As old friends, one of the things that JS and I talk about occasionally is the passage of time and our by-now-long-hence youths.  On the whole, I don't think I fear aging much--I feel more satisfied at this stage in my life than when I was younger.  A big part of my 20s was figuring out what I wanted to do and undergoing a fairly grueling, anxiety-producing struggle toward something that would require a great deal of luck to work out.  Because the job market for academics is so cutthroat, grad students are caught in a weird conundrum where you know that in a field of equally qualified candidates (literally hundreds for each job), one of the things that will set you apart is your "passion" and the degree to which you can give everything you have to the job, yet because the likelihood of success is so low, you also need to be prepared for it not to work out.  I don't miss that state of being, even when you figure in the consolations of youthful skin tone, my pre-childbirth body, or the carefree-ness of a life in which I once went to three movies in a single day.

No, overall, when I look back, I wouldn't say that I miss my youth.  But I remember it fondly, and with a nostalgia that sometimes sweeps over me for a few seconds in which, without wishing myself back, I love having the memories of certain . . . activities (for lack of a better word) that were available to me at that time in my life that I will never have again.  I remember that with many of my best friends from high school and college and post-college, a great deal of our time was spent in these long, intense conversations about various things that we believed to be truly significant.  I don't say we "believed" them to be significant because I look back with condescension toward my younger self, but rather to indicate that even at the time, we knew that we were forming and working toward expressing and committing to the values that we wanted to hold as grownup people in the world.  

These conversations were, I'm sure, goofy and probably pretentious and/or ridiculously impractical, but they were also open in a way to possibilities, ideological or spiritual or logistical ("Shall I move to St. Louis, a city in a time zone I've never visited, to go to a church with some people I met last month, with the stuff that's in my car and find a place when I get there?  Hmm, yes, I guess I'll give notice to my landlord and boss.").  Even when occasionally (and embarrassingly, in retrospect) dogmatic or intolerant due to a lack of the kind of broader experiences that shape most of us as we grow older, there was a tender but powerful hopefulness to those conversations, an aspirational optimism and purity, a sense that anything could happen, that was sublime in the Burkean sense--thrilling and terrifying and awe-inspiring.  

My choices at this point in my life are limited in completely different ways.  I'm married with children and with a career; all of these things mean that I have more security, which in many unsung ways gives me more freedom rather than less (something I want to emphasize because I often tire of the narrative that equates domesticity with limitation, settling down with, well, settling) and more resources for certain kinds of choices.  When my grad school friends who were married considered jobs, their searches were often complicated by the possibilities for their partners, but in most cases, their partners (knowing by then what they were in for) were able to find or create opportunities for themselves--and in a certain sense, I felt that they had more flexibility in where they could go because they had the security of taking a buddy along with them.  For me, having a family means having more psychic security to do certain things more courageously. 

And yet at the same time, it of course means that my big decisions need to be built around the needs of four other people.  Small decisions too: "Should I go to the grocery store today or tomorrow? Well, it's pouring outside but we're out of milk and certain small people can hardly live without it . . ."  Strangely, this bothers me very little--sometimes I think that part of me likes the logistical challenges, likes pulling things off in the mommy-competence realm.  I remember my trepidation about taking both girls out together for the first time when Gillian was a newborn and Allison Clare was two, and then the same feeling when I made my first solo outing with all three children, and my first solo road trip.  It was kind of scary (I know, my bourgeois notion of "scary" is a little pathetic) but also deeply satisfying to know that I could do it.  Somehow, maybe it made me feel like my pre-mommy self was intact and functional, that I could still go places and do things, even if most of the things I chose to do were going to be kid-oriented.  Every now and then, though, I do something sans bebe and it feels like I'm flying (imagine going through airport security with three children and a double stroller and an infant carseat and three tiny backpacks and a diaper bag, and then imagine doing it as a solo adult, and you'll know what I mean), and I think, did I used to feel this way all the time?  And the answer is yes, I did.  And while I didn't know enough then to love it at the time, I know enough now to love that I did.

The Nose that Knows

Allison Clare has a freakishly good sense of smell.  In addition to catching me having recently snacked, she often identifies people by scent; passing by someone at the mall, she might say, "That person smells like ____!" And indeed, it's the same perfume.  I recently discovered that she is even able to detect, somehow, the difference between organic and non-organic milk, even if it's a new brand (oddly, she doesn't like organic milk).  She explained that organic milk "has a bad taste at the end of the swallow and afterward."  It was perfectly fresh, but maybe the lack of antibiotics in the milk somehow makes it slightly more sour?  (All of our milk is hormone-free.)  I suspect she has inherited this ability from Sam, who has frequently surprised me by being able to discern when I've switched brands of grated parmesan cheese or something like that.  If she had only had the vocabulary, I'm sure she would have put it in terms of finish and lingering notes.  In another life, perhaps the Fees would have been a great family of vintners.

Perspective

Tonight I attended the visitation for a colleague of Sam's and mine.  He was a father of three young children, and he passed away on Thursday.  I had heard that he was ill a few years ago, and then one semester we taught in the same classroom.  His class began after mine, and I was sometimes still wrapping things up on the lectern computer when he came in.  I remember that rather than stand there while I packed up and we chatted informally, he needed to sit down.  His face bore the signs of his struggle; his eyes were sunken in the (I shudder to say) cadaverous way of those in the end stages of such a battle--yet his eyes were lively and kind and determined.

I think maybe I was pregnant with Gillian at that time?  In any case, that was a few years ago.  Then I saw him this past fall, and he looked so well--I would never have believed that someone could look so well after having looked so ill, and it was so moving to see what appeared to be his abundant health (it was at a faculty meeting, and I found myself crying when I saw him.  At the mercy.).  But apparently on the last day of classes, as I was shepherding my capstone students through their rehearsals for their presentations and wishing I had had time to bake but buying cupcakes and at the same time feeling like only one of my classes really deserved baked goods anyway and then being surprised that my seemingly less (let us say) scholastic class seemed to be warm and happy on the last day--just then, he'd gone back to the hospital and things had gotten very, very bad, and he was gone by Baccalaureate.

And I'm so, so sorry for his wife, and for his young children.  He had them at the same age that Sam was when we had our children, so it would be wrong not to recognize that my sympathy for the wife has a kind of horrified identification in it (widowhood being one of the things I most fear/dread in life.  I'm not at all a dependent wife, but my happiness and security in life is quite bound up with my identity as wife, I must admit.).

Even as this is going on, though, I have to say that I've also been touched by how our friends have gone out of their way to look out for me and the kids while Sam is gone.  To be honest, I hadn't really thought of it as that big of a deal--of course I would miss Sam, but in a given week, I handle each part of the kids' day on my own at various times, so in my mind, it would be just a matter of stringing those together.  But today our dear friend and benefactress (in so many ways!) A came over just to provide companionship, hang out with the kids, and help out in any way, and she stayed with them while I went to the visitation.  Another incredibly kind colleague is going to mow our lawn on Saturday, since that was the one task that I really didn't think I could manage myself and we hadn't been able to find a service.  I'm especially grateful for this favor because lawn mowing is all at once something I detest and something that would be logistically very hard to pull off with three small children including a non-walking baby (what would I do with them while I mowed?  I was seriously considering having to do it at night, but for the condensation . . .).  JS has offered (not really the right word--"learned of my need and insisted upon" is better) burning some precious vacation hours to watch my children so I can attend a conference--not to mention hosting my now-sizable brood for 5 days over the holiday weekend.

In all, it was a day to make even a pretty distracted person pause to be humble and grateful.

Samless

I've promised Sam some blog posts while he's leading a Conservation Photography travel class in the Southwest.  He left yesterday.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, Allison Clare started sobbing: I miss my daddy already! [He was still within view.]
With typical maternal fruitlessness, I said: But think about how much fun Daddy will have, and we'll get to hear all about it when he gets back.  And we'll do lots of fun things too.
AC: All I can think about is all of the times of Daddy and me together!

She's been telling everyone that Sam is gone.  Strangers in line behind us at Target, people walking their dogs past our house (fortunately, I knew them).  This is her typical m.o. but I do wonder whether it's wise to advertise that the man of the house is gone.  So far, she hasn't told anyone that knows where we live that we don't know, so I guess it's fine.  She tells them, "My daddy is on a trip and I really miss him.  He went with his classmates."  Somehow this conjures for me the image of Sam holding onto a rope with a bunch of five-year-olds, walking respectfully through a museum, led by their kindergarten teacher.

The baby, though he's been obsessed with Sam lately, seems to be doing fine.  I got out a toy shopping cart of the girls' today for him, and he loved pushing it around.  Like an old man who is unsteady on his feet and needs a walker, he can walk where he wants to go as long as he has something to push across the floor to aid his balance: kids' chairs, his walker (which he is not actually sitting in), a stepladder, whatever.  But then he got another idea.  He walked himself around to the side of the cart, looked into it, and made some urgent sounds.  He looked meaningfully at me.  I shook my head: You can't get into that one; it's just a toy.  He made more of the same sounds, pointing into the cart and tipping his head into it, then looking at me. I shook my head no again.  His face went sad and he pointed again and made sad sounds and frustrated sounds. I picked him up and hugged him: I love you, Little Guy.  I couldn't help laughing at how much he communicates without words and how clearly he expresses his desires.

When he wants a snack, he'll cross the floor on his tummy, wrap his hands around my ankles, and kiss my feet. I'll pick him up and he'll extend a regal arm toward the pantry. I open the door and he chuckles with pleasure.  But not when the goldfish pretzel bag is not in its correct place.  Then he points at the empty spot and makes urgent sounds: Oh no!  I hold out other snacks; he shakes his head no.  He might point at something else, or I might need to dig out a fresh bag of the pretzels.  Then he beams and bursts out with a guffaw of glee.

He's similarly enthusiastic and specific about fruit, sometimes pointing to what he wants, shaking his head no if I begin to cut it, and rewarding me with grins and little happy revving sounds when I hand him the whole thing (banana chunk, large strawberry, etc.) to eat out of hand (a hand that is inevitably about to be covered in fruit and then rubbed into his hair).

Little Bean is doing fine, although she's had trouble falling asleep for the last few nights (she goes through nights like this periodically)--lots of wailing.  Tonight I told her I'd check on her every few minutes and that assurance seemed to help, but it's hard to know what to do.

Amble-atory