James and I are coffee drinkers but not really coffee drinkers. We have one of those tiny 4 cup coffee makers (4 measuring cups not 4 mugs) and we often don't even drink all of the coffee in the pot. When we don't finish the pot, we usually put the leftover in a cup in the fridge to have iced later. Our fridge is particularly cold so there is often a film of ice over the cup by the time you pull it out so you just add some cream and enjoy.
This weekend I opened the fridge, picked up the mug with the coffee dregs and did one of those close the fridge door with your hip moves and must have gained some momentum before hip hit door because the fridge closed with high velocity knocking the mug out of my hand onto the floor, shattering it into too many pieces to repair. I said,"that really sucks" after it hit the floor because it was a great mug, heavy and sturdy and nicely shaped. In fact, we have a number of mugs that match our dishes and hardly ever get used but this mug gets rinsed out nearly every day--it doesn't even make it to the dishwasher because it can't be spared that long.
It's also great because I stole it from the house of some close friends back in New Jersey, the Furlers and it commemorates the 10th anniversary of the church that my family helped plant when I was in junior high. So every morning my coffee or tea or oatmeal cools in this nicely shaped mug that reminds me of these friends and this church. It's like the t-shirt you have from summer camp that's faded and thinned to a lovely consistency that makes it infinitely better than any other t-shirt you own.
James was standing in the doorway of the kitchen as the mug broke and immediately started picking up pieces, pulling the trash can out and sopping up the spilled coffee with an old towel so that I wouldn't track through it with my bare feet. And he said, "I'm sorry honey" because he knew it was more than a mug.
I moped around the kitchen making Finny a plate of food to tide him over until dinner and James walked over to pick up my cell phone from the coffee table. Halfway through his first sentence, I realized he was talking to Al Furler, claiming that he broke my mug and wondering if they could send us another. Al, not being sentimental in the least, passed the phone off to Sue, also not very sentimental because she said half jokingly, "tell Katie, it's only a thing; get over it" but told James she would see what she could do about the mug.
I stood dumbstruck looking through the kitchen to the dining room where James paced, talking on the phone and when he hung up, I walked around the counter, put my arms around his neck and said, "I think that is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." And I think it was. Not that James isn't a thoughtful person normally or that people haven't done kind things for me but our life, James' and mine, made this act beautiful and loving because he knew the context of the mug both in nostalgic and daily meaning without me actually referring to either. And he knew that it sucked that the mug was broken. We have this ever growing pool of shared information that usually just goes unacknowledged but this Saturday, he saw something simple that made me sad and knew exactly why it made me sad and saw a way to make it better. And I love him for it. And I love the way his life and mine and now our boys' life all overlap and inform the others, like venn diagrams, making it a more delicate and a more poignant process to love each other-knowing what we know.
Today seems to be a retaliation day. Yesterday seemed so hopeful and lovely and today seems to have come out to smack yesterday in the face. For instance: Finn is screaming his head off in his crib because he is so tired that he actually is past the point of thinking it is a good idea to take a nap and henry has been continually fussy for inexplicable reasons all day and is just gearing up to join his brother in chorus from his crib in our room. I'm taking the let em' cry approach both because it seems to have the support of some child psychologists and because I am having a moment myself right now-the overcoming the urge to strangle one of them kind of moment. Not really strangle...nobody worry...it just seems a long way away-those beautiful intelligent and thoughtful children I had yesterday.
Here were the highlights (the vivid moments) of today:
Finn sat on the counter watching me make James' lunch munching on cereal but then insisting on having "a bahht" (bite) of whatever the current ingredient was that I was handling. I humored him with slices of onion and pepper, which he crumpled his face at in disgust after barely touching them to his lips and then proceeded to eat almost the entire package of provolone cheese I had saved for this particular meal. I salvaged two pieces from his grasp to melt on top of the sandwich but got howls and shrieks of protest in return.
Henry, sitting in his car seat and a fresh diaper nearly propelled himself under the table with the force of his pooping while James and I tried to take the smallest of naps on the couch nearby. He seemed to scare himself enough to start crying and hence end the nap before it started.
I finished the Hours, which made me sort of sad-both because it isn't the happiest of endings but also because I don't have it to read anymore. It should also be mentioned that I almost finished it this morning (three pages to go) while Finn cried in his crib wanting to get out of bed and with Henry lying next to me in bed, waiting to be changed out of his full diaper and milk soaked clothes...mother of the year, huh?
I realized with a pang of acute frustration that the kitchen, which I just scrubbed down with bleach yesterday (was it yesterday? it must have been wednesday when finn was with grandma. he would never have let me get something like that done) is already covered in onion peels, cereal crumbs dried into fruit cup syrup, a sink full of already stinking dishes and a garbage can full of dirty diapers and coffee grounds (our garbage can an indicator of life). Then I realized with an even more tragic clarity that everything I do is a process of redoing. I feed Henry and he is hungry again, I wipe Finn's face to have it covered in chocolate frosting again, I vacuum to find the rug so crumb covered you can't make out the design, the dishes, the laundry, the diapers, the showers and baths are all a maintenance. This sounds awfully depressing and fatalistic and again I say don't worry about me too much. I'm not sinking into the hopelessness of it yet. It's just all so damn unfinished and my house is always a mess. And unlike yesterday when I was struck by all of the beauty, today I am struck by all of the grime, the diaper rash cream and bacon grease under my fingernails so to speak. I know it gets better or there are better times.I hope I am grateful when they come.
In fact, during the time it has taken me to type this post, finn is quiet in his room and henry seems to have slipped to sleep in his crib beside me, both clean and silent for the moment. And I think I will go downstairs and do the dishes before I start new ones for dinner, take the trash out, put finny's toys back in the toybox and maybe take a nap myself--all a redoing but a bringing back too, back to peace, to tidiness and to my own conviction that this is a good decision-this move, this having kids and staying home, this recipe for dinner.
So I'm reading the Hours by Michael Cunningham, a book that has sat on my nightstand in that stack that gets started and left for other easier reads or for books that have due dates at the library (this stack also includes a Japanese book in translation, Places left unfinished at the time of creation and a number of anthologies that are easy to read a chapter and put down for months at a time). I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to read the Hours as it is beuatiful and flowing and I've seen the movie so I can sort of picture what the whole thing looks like, which is nice in that picture plus a thousand words way. Unfortunately, the book itself has the movie poster as a cover and I am fundamentally opposed to books that have been made into movies sporting the stars who made it-especially in this case because the character Clarissa who is played by Meryl Streep in the movie really loves Meryl Streep the actress in the book, which is just too strange and unfair to deal with when you are trying to absorb a character's personality.
Regardless, there is this really beautiful line where the Meryl Streep character talks about wanting to pour out her life to this old acquaintance but not in some sit around for hours and catch up-sort of way. She wants to pour out in one motion all the vivid pointless moments that don't make good stories. I don't have the book in front of me right now, I am busy watching sesame street, pulling the whells off and then "fitching" (fixing) them again, typing this post and pulling the blanket away from henry's mouth and nose so I'm not sure the quote is quite exact, but you get the idea. I told James that these vivid, pointless moments are just what I am struck with daily and tell him about and try to connect them in some way by saying "the other thing is" or "oh and also" which he always laughs at because he can never figure out what the first thing was.
But this line is so true about life. The moments like when Bing and his brother went walking along the train tracks with a kid they weren't supposed to hang out with and the kid shot a woman in the shoulder with his shotgun thinking she was a scarecrow (she lived and was out in her garden the next week) make really good stories but it's the other moments that fill in your life. I was thinking of these sorts of moments and compiling a list. My life as a stay at home mom right now does not have that many good stories but it is certainly full of the vivid, sometimes pointless moments that don't make good stories. And just thinking of them got me excited to write them down. James said that Larry King's column is like this (I haven't read it) where he lists things like "I really like green beans" or something like that. I'm going to try to jot down some vivid moments on a semi-regular basis, here on this blog to make this or that live in time and be remembered.
Here are a couple I am thinking of today:
Henry breathes really loudly when he is sleeping, which is really great because I don't have to get up and lay my hand on his chest to make sure he is still alive. This seems a little morbid I know, but any of you who have or have had a newborn know the feeling-like the life you made is so fragile and could stop and go away so easily.
Finn has started pretending to talk on the phone, imitating me, by leaning the phone on his shoulder and jabbering into it with his hands free to do other things. Just now he is holding the phone in this way between his ear and raised shoulder and then holding his toy school bus up to eye level and blabbering like he is reading the VIN number off to his insurance agent.
He also saw a commercial for Jeeps this morning and said outloud, with total joy, Jeep! like he had discovered that word and what it meant for the first time. I told him that Aunt Bum has a Jeep and he has been muttering "Jeep! Aunt Bum!" and smiling at me in this knowing way all morning. if I don't respond right away, he repeats it until I confirm and then raises his eyebrows and nods like, yeah I'm a pretty smart kid, huh?