from December 13

In the last month I wrote one blog post, and never quite posted it. Here it is, and thank Goddess that the holidays and their time consuming nonsense are over! My celebration starts when we get back to the regular and the mundane. Just two more days!

Hello. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy.

Here is a short list of what I’ve been doing:

trying to keep up with the constant flow of mucous from baby’s nose.
Feeling validated and vindicated by the book “Unplugging the Christmas Machine”.
Buying holiday presents and then taking some back, after reading “UtCM”.
Watching reruns of “Sex and the City” and “that 70s Show”, at 10 p.m. and 10:30.
Sleeping on the couch so I can turn on the Nasa channel when I wake up at 2 a.m. and 4:30 a.m.
Avoiding the crazed toddler who climbs into the master bed every night, determined to have our attention at least 20 hours of the day.
Wondering how our heat bill got so high while we’ve kept the thermostat hovering around 60 degrees.
Trying to decide whether I can pull off recycling some old and (apparently?) forgotten toys beneath the Christmas tree this year.
Smuggling loads of old, forgotten toys out of the house, to give to kids and parents at the free store.
Enjoying one-on-one reading practice with kids at Maggie’s school.
Drinking a lot of water, to counter the dry mouth I get from Effexor.
Feeling dizzy when I turn my head quickly, apparently a side effect of Effexor.
Thinking about getting a job.

My trip to Iowa was not terribly painful. I picked up my brother in D.M. in the a.m. of Nov. 30., after Tim discovered that we had a flat tire to attend to on Tuesday night. Since I knew I would be awake early (thanks to Effexor), I got up at 4 and headed south in my trusty little Honda. It was a quick trip there and back, as I dropped my brother at the D.M. airport at 5 p.m. in the evening. I then spent the next 5.5 hours driving non-stop back home. The weather got nasty north of D.M., and continued to be slushy and messy all the rest of the way. A wiser person would have pulled over or stopped, but I just wanted to just get home.

It was good for me to visit my grandma’s house, which I have not done since my mom’s funeral. I got teary only twice:

When mom’s cousin Louise took me upstairs to show me a coat of my mom’s that she thought I might want.

When I first looked into my grandma’s brown eyes, which can look so much like my mother’s.

It was hard and yet good, to see the people who most closely share my mom’s blood. My brother and I were there, my grandma, and even my mom’s brother Bud came from Illinois. Sad as it was, holding my grandma’s hand felt like the closest thing I had to touching my mom.

But what was really missing, of course, was Carol’s energetic presence. No one comes close to replicating that spirit, and no one was silly enough to try. No one else could walk in and smile hello, pulling everyone’s attention toward her. No one else would tell entertaining stories about my great Aunt Mary, like no one had ever heard them before. The lack of fiery Carol was palpable in every moment we spent at our grandma’s house, and neither Mike or I had a hard time leaving.

Since that trip I’ve decided that I will continue my blog for as long as I need to keep it going. Creating an artificial end date is not going to serve me well, as I have so much more to think about and say about my mother. The surface is barely scratched.

Next big topic: mothers and daughters and internalized misogyny. My mom and my grandma had a lot of hate and love and jealousy going on in their relationship, and my mom and I were not immune to mother-daughter conflict. Since I’m now the mother of two girls, it would not be a bad idea for me to try to make sense of the intensely powerful dynamics between the females of my family.