Life Size

The cats are edgy from being trapped inside for two days. Can't let them out in the rain with all this white furniture. Just can't. I know how they feel, though I'm too happy about the rain to let a little cabin fever get me down. Plus, I'm starting to relax into my new schedule; been a full-time nanny for three weeks now and it's starting to grow on me. My life has grown quite small. Just me and the babies and their relentless "schedule." We stay close to headquarters - the living room - most of the time, venturing out on walks through the neighborhood when we start getting titchy. We take "field trips" to the grocery store, Costco, or Target when the planets align just right. This tiny life of mine may sound boring, but as the boundaries of my outward life contract, my inner life expands. Being Sam's mother is the most soul satisfying job I've ever had. An innate wisdom, once so deep as to have been invisible, has made itself known and changed me for good. Despite appearances, my daily existence reminds me of a line from Whitman's Song of Myself, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." That's me. Large and strangely multitudinous.

A Perfect Sunday

The shadows are growing long, signaling the end of a perfect Sunday. It went something like this: gorgeous winter weather, breakfast out, a quick trip to the annual kite festival at Zilker, a meeting with my new "clients" at the park near Big Stacy Pool, and a nice chat with Eden before Sam's bath. Sam fell asleep easily about half an hour ago and I have decided to sit with my thoughts before moving on to more mundane tasks, the sorts of things that need doing before the start of a new week.

Sitting and writing as the sun sets draws out the perfection of this day. I've been trying to cram in a thoughtful, well-written blog at night, right before bed, which has so far proven to be not only difficult, but downright idiotic. I seem to grow less intelligent in direct proportion to Sam's increasing age. This latest attempt to express myself clearly and engagingly at the end of every long day of mothering one, now two, soon to be three, babies is, I now realize, pretty stupid. I read the crap I churn out in the exhausted dark as proof I have no talent, which opens up a whole big box of fear and anxiety about my future professional self that is hard to ignore. It's a mean cycle I'm anxious to break. So. I'm luxuriating in this fading sunlight hoping a new, less frustrating, more productive habit will emerge.