Tears

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

In therapy, in court, and in second grade

I was about seven the first time I was sent to talk to a therapist. My parents, having divorced not long before, were in the middle of one of those epic visitation court battles that make you wonder how it’s possible for so many people to be so irrational, and then you remember the lawyers are getting paid so they don’t have much incentive to calm things down. I gather my mother suspected my father of abusing me in some way and wanted proof so she wouldn’t have to let me go stay with him for six weeks in the summers in Alaska.

It’s never been clear to me exactly what she had against that–I do know she was stridently alarmed about the hitchhikers he would pick up with me in the car, and now I can hardly blame her. And it’s true that in many instances over the years it became clear to me that my father’s desire to lay down parental law was quite lacking, either through philosophical opposition, cluelessness, or apathy, which lead to some rather inappropriate situations, like taking me to “entheogen conferences” (aka drug parties for aging hippies) in the Marin Headlands and then letting me, at sixteen, date a 35-year-old civil engineer I met there (before this anecdote disturbs you too much, let me assure you that he didn’t take advantage of me, and I was absolutely complicit in any smoking up and making out that may have ensued). But she couldn’t have known all that then, though clearly she had her inklings, and wanted to do her due diligence.

The therapist asked me what kinds of games I played with my dad, and I listed the normal stuff: kite flying, reading books, taking walks, visiting friends, playing horsie. “Can you tell me more about ‘playing horsie’?” “Uh, yeah, my dad gets on all fours and I ride him, or climb under.” You know, duh, lady, horsie. I could tell from her reaction that she didn’t think playing horsie was nearly as fun–and innocuous–as I did. She was also obviously displeased to learn that my father didn’t take me to church–not surprising, since the therapist was less a mental health professional than the counselor at my mom’s church. But in the end she concluded, rightly, that nothing untoward happened with my dad. I wonder how that was for my mom: Yay, my child isn’t being abused! Crap, I have less ammunition against him!

As part of the court proceedings I was asked to speak privately with the judge. My mother had coached me on the reasons I was to give as to why I did not want to spend more time in the summers with my dad. Nobody ever asked me what I actually thought, so I’m not sure I ever really considered the question myself, but judging from my vivid memories of talking with the judge–sweating with nerves, sitting straight up at the front of the high-backed chair wearing the water blue moiré dress my mother’d made for me to wear in a wedding–I don’t think I was very convincing with my monologue: “Um, I want to swim at the Country Club, and…go to Vacation Bible School…uh…” and in the end my dad won the visitation battle.

My mom kept saying she thought he’d paid off the judge, or that her lawyer was too old to be competent, but I think the judge did right. And it couldn’t have hurt that these reasons I parroted were lame ones not to have a relationship with my father. I also believe, in retrospect, that lamenting to a black judge in the deep south that I wouldn’t get to spend enough time at the white-only Country Club pool couldn’t have been a smart way to bolster my the judge’s empathy for my mom.

Plus my dad was really fighting to be with me; sure, he’d moved nearly as far away as possible, to Alaska; sure, he (reportedly) was extremely tight-fisted with child support and didn’t pony up for any extras, like piano lessons; sure, he didn’t help pay for college. But to his credit my father has always tried to spend time with me; has always written me long letters every week, called me for long talks, been there for me emotionally in the same way I can always rely on my mother physically. As parents, my mom and dad are yin and yang. On the whole I treasure the time I had with my father, and value it as an antidote to my mother’s completely opposite style of upbringing. I’m grateful the therapist and the judge didn’t find a way to stand in the way of that.

My new niece

Recently Husband’s little brother’s teeny tiny wife gave birth, one week late, to a perfect baby girl, Saga, who weighed nearly ten pounds. Laughing gas and a vacuum extractor were involved which I think is pretty typical from Sweden (at least it’s been the story with both sisters-in-law so far). She looks just like her father except she’s got her mother’s distinctive nose. She likes to sleep and eat. You know, the normal stuff. Living in Sweden as they do, her parents have literally years of maternity and paternity leave to divvy up and take like they will from their typically Swedish jobs at a state-run daycare and Ericsson. They’ve just bought their first home and move in next month, and have scrapped their crazy plans to renovate the kitchen immediately, what with the tiny human they have now.

Although I was obviously aware a baby was on the way, when she was finally born, the sadness totally surprised me. I mean, I was supposed to be having a baby, too. Part of the reason I had wanted to get pregnant last winter was, semi-consciously, because V was. She’s always said she wanted to time her first baby with my second, a sort of shimmery, pretty idea that proved too perfect for real life. First she miscarried, then I did. But now we both have little girls. And after my initial reaction, I’m very happy for her, for the whole family, that this new little person we’ll get to watch grow (and whom I do not have to wake up with in the night!) is here. She and Little Girl have visited over the webam several times already, and as Saga snuffles in her sleep, couched in her father’s arms, my girl likes to sing her melodies that eventually all turn into “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Road trip

It’s a three-hour trip between to my mom’s along back roads in rural South Carolina and Georgia. Tumble-down shacks, house fires that leave only lonesome fireplaces, cars brown with age. But also high corn fields, so much sky you can see a rainstorm miles away but where you are it’s all yellow, tiny white churches, dense pine forests, long enticing driveways to abandoned plantation homes. I love it.

When I was eight, my dad and I drove from North Carolina to Alaska. It took weeks, and a lot of the time I was sprawled in the hatchback with My Little Ponies flying against the backdrop of the rear windshield. I remember North Dakota as a chant: “rocks and trees, rocks and trees.” For several days we were stuck in little Fort Nelson, British Columbia, due to an avalanche, where we scored the very last hotel room in town and discovered the humongous pool complex the place had rewarded itself. It was the first time I’d been in a sauna. We lingered in Chicago, we ate biscuits and gravy in Indiana, we posed with totem poles in Alberta. We mostly camped.

When I was 15, we enjoyed another epic road trip through the southwest. I remember sleeping in the desert on top of the car, freaked out about snakes, lightning on faraway mountaintops; prostitutes’ graphic fliers in Las Vegas; the haze of the Grand Canyon; the jet skis on Lake Tahoe.

Recently, I wondered if you could drive from Sweden to Africa. Just curious. For all practical purposes you can’t, and you definitely shouldn’t, but it’s only 1 day, 9 hours according to Google maps to Cadiz. That’s nothing! Our diagonal trip across North America was pegged at 3 days, 1 hour of straight driving. Shit, you guys, when we move, I can drive to Spain! And it’s only 16 hours, 41 minutes to London! Rome: 21 hours, 34 minutes. Oslo: 3 hours, 53 minutes (closer to us than Stockholm in fact). Paris: 15 hours, 24 minutes. Istanbul: 1 day, 21 hours. If I were crazy enough, I could drive to motherfucking China! Awesome! I mean, obviously we would fly or take the train generally, but my brother-in-law recently drove to Croatia (20 hours, 19 minutes). It can be done. Sometimes people go the slow way.

Just imagine the sights.

Read all about it!

Big week! Monday I sent in my application for residency to the Swedish embassy. Holy hell was that a lot of paperwork. And I made it extra stressful for myself by deciding to include a cover letter explaining why we wanted to move to Sweden plus some family photos as evidence that we’re, you know, actually a family. I had a line in the letter about being excited that Little Girl would enjoy “the benefits of growing up Swedish,” by which I meant the landscape, family, the culture, whatever. But then I freaked out, thinking they would take that to mean, “I can’t wait to get my grubby hands on all that money from the government!” so had to turn the car back and change it to being excited she’d have the opportunity to grow up there, which hopefully would sound less avaricious.

AND someone made an offer on our house! Yes! But bittersweet. Obviously selling it was the whole point of putting it on the market, but it makes me sad to think that, even though we never see them, our awesome backyard will never again be ours to frolick in, our gleaming hardwood floors that Husband put in will not be ours to enjoy, our gardenias, transplanted from my grandmother’s garden, might be neglected. It also makes me sad that we (should we come to an agreement on the price; they crazy lowballed us) will be paying around 30k for the privilege of no longer owning the property. Thirty thousand dollars. Talk about a shitty investment. Makes me sick, really, and it’s through no fault of our own, other than selling at the wrong time. The housing market in my area is particular deplorable now and houses are going for next-to-nothing.

While, of course, we are fortunate we even have 30k to pay not to own it, and I totally sympathize with all the people that have had to foreclose for just that kind of reason, as that is insane, we kind of had other plans for that particular chunk of money. Those super-exciting renovation plans for the house in Sweden are, well, not quite as exciting anymore. Which blows.

I had hoped to have a trinity of neat news in this post, but my sister-in-law’s baby is stubbornly a week overdue, and they’ll let you go at least three weeks in Sweden, so who knows when I’ll find out what flavor Little Girl’s new cousin is. My grandmother had advice for me when I was tired of being pregnant (though I didn’t go past 37 weeks as it turned out): They’re easier to take care of inside than out. So true. I hope she has an easy time of it. I certainly don’t envy her the prospect of newborn care. Blech. A lot of people love little tiny babies but they’re just itty bitty balls of audial and sleep torture to me, and I’m not even mentioning my particular baby-related bête noire, obvious from the sidebar.

In-law talk

My parents-in-law have, sadly, returned to Sweden. They’re wonderful people and Little Girl adores them and they have only a few annoying habits, especially now that my father-in-law has stopped smoking. Really my only beefs with them are the incessant crap TV (e.g. “World’s Stupidest Criminals” and their enduring special favorite, that station that tells you what’s on all the other stations), their strong distaste for anything from the legume or vegetable families, and their peculiar speech impediment which prevents them from speaking Swedish to Little Girl. It’s only English for her, though they talk to Husband in Swedish, naturally.

It’s a truly baffling situation not remedied by requests from Husband or me. Sure, Little Girl doesn’t speak much Swedish, unless you press her, but she understands it well enough, and would, of course–and this is what we’d like–communicate in it even more readily if people actually expected her to do so. Their visit would have been a great opportunity to prepare her Swedish for moving there, as were the two times we’ve seen them before, but each time, English English English. Do they not realize Husband speaks to her primarily in Swedish? Do they think she’ll like them better in her preferred language? Do they not think her learning Swedish now is important?

Maybe they just think it’s fun to break out their English? My mother-in-law is a native Finn who’s trilingual. Before she retired, she took orders for a Scandinavian clothing catalog company. My father-in-law, at age 15, ran off to become a merchant seaman, traveling around the States and Canada, and though he never went back to school, speaks great English. They do love their American TV. It’s not that big a deal, of course, that the loving, fun interactions they enjoyed with Little Girl were in one language rather than another. She’ll get plenty of Swedish immersion once we move. What’s important is that she got to enjoy them.

A family of drop-outs

When Husband was three, his mother found a little day school for him for a few hours a week, hoping to work a little in the days and for him to have some socialization. But he didn’t like it–he wanted to be home with his mother–and the plans unraveled. When I was four, in a state where I could start kindergarten then, my mom tried to send me. But somehow a dog managed to jump on me the first day, and I refused to go back. When Little Girl was nearly three, I put her in preschool a few hours a week. She went for two weeks, and each drop-off was more dramatically sad, with screaming, clinging, pleas. Then her grandparents visited for two weeks, and she didn’t go, and then tuition for the next month was done, and when asked, Little Girl continued to insist, “I don’t wanna go to school, I wanna stay home with mommy, I don’t wanna see my buddies, Mommy wanna call the teacher on the phone, say I don’t go.” So okay, she don’t go anymore. Just like her parents.

My new active lifestyle

Location, location, location. Just being here I’ve magically become athletic. It’s wild. Every day I do at least one, usually two, often more, of the following: swim/bike/walk/run. (Run! I know! And I’m not even being chased!) Nowadays, just walking around, I am pleasantly aware of my muscles which are happy being used. And I am just exhausted by nightfall. It doesn’t even feel like exercise, though. It feels like fun. I suddenly get, suddenly remember from my own childhood, why Little Girl runs and runs: for the joy of it.

In the morning, for example, we may bike to a park twenty minutes away, and on the way back detour to a nearby equestrian stable with a free petting zoo (free petting zoo! I know!). Maybe in the afternoon we’ll swim (Little Girl, if she has her vest on, is like a little fish, and darts around). Every evening we take the dogs for a walk/run around the lagoons and then back on the beach. When Husband’s not working, we’ll hike or bike through a nearby nature preserve. My in-laws, who, despite US Airways’s best efforts, did in fact arrive*, are up for reduced-speed versions of most of these activities. Something about this place just invites activity. Glorious really.

* I ran the numbers, and they could have driven here faster than it took them to fly: their trip averaged 71 miles per hour.

Proof of running:

Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Early Friday morning, the 26th, my parents-in-law in Sweden got on a plane to Frankfurt, fully expecting to connect to a flight to North Carolina, and from there to Savannah, the closest airport to us. They were going to be here for nearly two weeks and carefully-timed arrangements of vacation time (for us) and dog-sitting (for them) had been calculated, and they were to return to Sweden in time for their son’s wife’s first child’s due date.

Except they’ve been in Frankfurt now for two days and the insulting excuse for an airline, US Airways, has no plans to get them to the United States before Tuesday and doesn’t even seem all that interested in getting them here then. FIVE DAYS AT AN AIRPORT! Come on, this trip should take 20 hours door-to-door, max.

First they waited four hours to get on their cross-Atlantic flight, and then boarded, only to be told the plane had mechanical problems and they had to stay the night and leave 24 hours later. That next day, the flight left three hours late, flew for two hours, and then turned back. And all flights until sometime next week are already overbooked, and the airline is telling them to get their luggage and get a hotel and just, what, wait and hope the third time’s the charm? And it’s affecting some 200 people, elderly, people with little kids, just waiting…

Meanwhile, when Husband or his brother call US Airways, we’re told they’re on a flight right now. And when we inform them that indeed they are not, they “customer service” people are like…”Uh…well…let me give you this number to call.” Or they want my bewildered in-laws to call an American 1-800 number from Germany on their Swedish cell phone. WTF?

Honestly, I think at this point, since we are seemingly unable to get them on another airline and this “air carrier” is clearly unable and unwilling to carry people in the air, we might just have them sent back to Sweden and give right on up. The kicker is today is my father-in-law’s birthday, too. What do they say in Frankfurt? Scheisse?

Housing

My brother-in-law and his now 37-weeks-pregnant wife just bought a house. To our great disappointment it’s not in the little village in Sweden where we’ll be moving and where they’d wanted to live, too; unfortunately, no little old ladies died so nothing has been available (one got sick, so we got our hopes up, but alas). They found a place in the city. We’d had this whole fantasy worked up about our children running through the fields between our homes, exploring the forest together, attending the little village schools as a cousin-group…and it may still happen, but I think they think it’s easier to move house with kids than it is. I suspect they’ll be in that townhouse in a while. But I’m glad they found a place they like.

We still plan, of course, on living in that little village, population 700. But I’m starting to wonder about what we’ll do with all the space in the big country home. We are only bringing furniture for three rooms (dining room, living room, Little Girl’s room) but that leaves another living room, the kitchen, and the four other bedrooms empty, not to mention the full basement. (My mom keeps telling me not to get furniture, to wait until my grandparents die and she’ll send us their stuff. Uh…) I think I’m going to feel like an idiot knocking about in that huge place if I don’t have a bunch more kids. And I took this quiz online that said I would do best with just one child, and you know how authoritative internet quizzes are. You don’t want to question their findings.

Not only that, but I’m not even sure what rooms should be what. I’m starting to get why, in Sweden, they don’t say, “This is a three-bedroom house.” They say something like, “This is a seven-room house.” It’s up to you to figure out what goes where! So on the bottom floor you have four big rooms, all interconnected. Right now the kitchen is on the left when you come in, which is fine, I’m not crazy enough to move a kitchen, and then down a hall on the right is the dining room. The stairs to the upstairs go up from the dining room (???). The back right room is the formal living room (rarely used) and the back left is the library/guest room (even less-used). We had planned to knock out the wall between the kitchen and the library to make a bigger kitchen/family room thing, but now I’m thinking we should put the dining room there and have the other front room be the family room. Basically I don’t know that I want everybody stomping by my antique china cabinet filled with Limoges porcelain fifty times a day.

Upstairs are three rooms that are definitely bedrooms (uh, except right now one is the office, and one is the TV room), one little room off the main hall (currently a walk-in closet), and two other little rooms (with windows) off two of the bedrooms. What are these rooms? Are they closets? Kids’ bedrooms? Home offices? Gah. I just don’t know. In the past they’ve been all these things (my in-laws had three kids and a foster child to fill the house). I am having trouble imagining living there without nailing these details down. Which we do need to do since the renovation will be progressing apace.

Oh, I know, omigod, poor me, my delightful Swedish country home is too spacious. But just think of how long it will take to clean those floors!

The view from the kitchen window:

My staff

You may recall my mother insisted, as part of letting us live here, that we employ a housekeeper. I did and do find this insulting, irritating, not to mention unnecessary, given that I am perfectly capable of keeping house and this one isn’t even that big and is relatively easy to maintain, especially as we aren’t allowed to let the dogs in it beyond the kitchen. But I didn’t have a choice and said I would find one.

First I put up a Craigslist ad and got several responses. I had one nice lady come to the house and, though she talked me into paying her nearly twice what I’d posted and didn’t have her own supplies and had scheduling difficulties, I felt so guilty and uncomfortable about the housekeeper thing (too much women’s studies at college?) I hired her anyway. And then thought better of it and told her I had to find someone else. I made interview appointments with two more applicants; one didn’t show, and the next canceled the hour before. Finally I took the recommendation of a neighbor to try her housekeeper, who, like the first lady, asked for 20 dollars an hour. Look, I don’t quite make 20 an hour! (At my research job it’s 19.77 now. I do, or did, make more teaching. Just, you know, FYI). 20 dollars an hour! Christ.

But by this point, it’d been two months here and I still only had a fictional maid when talking to my mother, so I asked her to come today. I was going to have her do things I technically can do but likely will not, like cleaning the window exteriors. And now it looks like she’s not showing up, either. Sheesh. Why is this so difficult? I guess I’d be more pissed if I actually wanted some household help, but I’d at least like people to keep their appointments. *

There’s also a yardman, one my grandparents originally hired. He speaks Gullah, which I am slowly learning to understand, and requires Cokes whenever he comes by. My mother, and now I, pay him really just excessive amounts of money to do very little, as my mother insists I clean up the yard, instructing that “no palm frond should be on the ground more than 24 hours.” And there’s also a handyman, and thank goodness I don’t have to pay him, as he is jovial and talented but OH SO SLOW. I haven’t asked him to come as Husband is up for all that kind of handyman stuff, anyway. (For that matter, he also mowed the lawn.)

In conclusion, good help is hard to find, even when you don’t actually want any help.

* Okay, now she showed up, and I feel compelled the clean the crap out of the rooms she is not in.

I and the Destination

I ran across this poem in all the sorting when we were moving out. It was written and published in the school calendar when I was in the seventh grade and was about visiting my dad in Alaska in the summers. After a very dramatic court battle at age eight which I unfortunately remember quite well my dad won six-week visitation rights. I thought this was fantastic, as my dad let me watch TV, play video games, eat straight butter, and sleep until noon. Now, though, I get why my mom was not so on board with certain elements of the arrangement, like putting me on a plane–indeed, a series of planes–to fly across the country, all by myself. Ack, you know? But she had no choice. As it happened, I only have fond memories of those long trips and all in all I appreciate the traveling temperament and skills fostered by the experience. Anyway, here’s the poem:

I have now arrived.
I get impatient.
I want to get off this plane.
I strain to see the stewardess who will come and get me.
I think, for a dumb reason, those unfortunates like me who fly unaccompanied by an adult often have to wait for a long time to get off the plane because of a rule which says those under 14 must always be accompanied by a flight attendant until they reach their final destination, which, in my case is Anchorage.
I hate this, because I know the Atlanta, Salt Lake, and Seattle airports almost by heart. Finally
I see her. She smiled tiredly and shouts at me to get in front of her, to get my ticket, and to get off the plan if I’m the Frequent Flier Unaccompanied Child.
I shout back, Yes!
I comply with her request to get in front of her, and she hands me back my ticket over my shoulder.
I say thanks, and move off the great steel machine onto the walkway, and the static electricity in my stomach jumps 30 volts.
I strain again, this time to see Dad.
I spot him and walk faster.
I soon run, maybe hug, say hello, how are you? Great, I’m fine, the flight was okay, I sat by this weird lady who…etc., brief him on the tactics of annoying busy businessmen, saying anything except how good it is to see him. He signs the ticket quickly, and we get the luggage, can we leave?
I want to tell him how nice it is to see him, to stop pretending that it’s cool I haven’t seen him for so long. Only as soon as we leave the airport in his “Pregnant Rollerskate” do
I let my guard down. Now
I have arrived. Now
I’m the center of attention.