Category Archives: Life on life’s terms

Baby daddy: take two

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I was scared of comparisons

This second time around.

A second baby,

With a second father,

A second husband.

A man who’s done it all before.

I would ask him questions

About the pregnancies and

Births of his two first kids.

A lot of it he said he didn’t remember.

But some things he’d describe:

He was a long-haired 21-year-old

Making big decisions,

Trying to do the right thing.

He said after his daughter was born—

The only Packers game he’d missed

Since he started watching football—

He came out in the waiting room

Where his parents were,

Tried to tell them it was a girl,

Started sobbing.

This time around,

Three months pregnant,

Touring the L&D ward at Regions Hospital

Joe started telling me about

How nice

The hospital was where his

Kids were born:

Wood floors,

Homey furniture,

Decent food.

Comfortable pillows.

Tears gathered in my eyes and

I snapped at him:

“That hospital isn’t covered by our insurance.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“You keep comparing.

I’m scared of you comparing,”

I said.

“But I’m not comparing,”

He said, mystified.

“It just feels like you are,”

I said, crying a little,

I’m sure not the first

Expectant mom to

Cry during the tour of the

L&D ward.

“Okay, I’m sorry,”

He said,

Ginger with me.

I wasn’t an emotional wreck during pregnancy,

But there were a couple topics that got me flared up,

And “comparison” was one of them.

This was a man whose

First wife heroically gave birth

Twice

With no pain killers.

With my first son,

I had asked for every pain killer they had:

Gas,

Local topical anesthetic,

Epidural.

I wanted to try for

“Natural”

This time around,

But what if I couldn’t make it without

Pain killers,

And Joe would compare

This birth

To his older kids’ births,

And I would fall short?

As it turned out,

I did have Rocky with no pain killers

In a steadily progressing,

Eight-hour labor with

Twenty minutes of pushing.

(It’s funny to think of me

Worrying that I would be

Concerned with comparisons

During labor and delivery;

I had forgotten how completely

Consuming

The process of giving birth is.)

I didn’t dream

As a little girl

Of having

Two

Baby’s daddies

And a husband with

Private memories of the

Births of his first children

That I’m not a part of.

But now that Rocky’s born

The comparisons aren’t as scary.

The story’s been amended.

The tension of pregnancy

Released.

Life is good.

Life is peaceful.

Our family has taken its shape:

Yours,

Mine and

Ours.

Why I need you in the delivery room with me

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It started with a discussion

My husband and I were having–

You could call it an argument–

About the difference between

Animal and

Human

Birth.

“Have you ever watched a cow

Give birth?”

Asked my husband.

“They just moo and

Work the calf out of their body.

It’s all a

Natural process.

There’s not all these

Medical

Interventions.”

I was a little pissed off at

His audacity–

He was including pain interventions in his argument–

Plus I was skeptical that

He had ever

Watched a cow give birth.

However, it piqued my interest:

Is live birth as

Complicated for other animals

As it is for humans?

I took to the Internet

And learned a thing or two about

Human birth.

Turns out

Four-legged mammals have a relatively large

Pelvic opening to push their young through.

Because we walk upright

Humans have relatively

Narrow pelvic bones.

Not only does a human baby’s head

Barely fit through the pelvic opening,

It even has to make a

Quarter turn

Right at the end to make it out.

“That’s why,”

The doctor on the

YouTube video explained

As she

Barely

Slid

An infant skull through a set of

Pelvic bones,

“Humans are the

Only animal that

Need

Help

To give birth.”

Wow, I thought.

So true.

Other animals go off to be alone,

To hide,

When the labor pains come.

We animals

Call for help.

The social instinct,

I thought,

Would seem to have a

Darwinian purpose.

The truth is,

I’m only starting to grasp how much I

Really

Need

People.

When I was young,

I confused an

Independent streak and a

Love for solitude with

Not needing people.

I remember once during my

Freshman year of college:

I watched a group of girls go

Down to dinner together,

And I, who hadn’t made an effort

To make friends, got ready

Alone in my dorm room.

In a spasm of loneliness, I thought,

“I don’t need people.”

And I knew immediately:

It wasn’t true.

I do need people.

It’s an instinct as strong as the

Need to eat,

Or sleep.

It makes sense:

As a species, we literally

Wouldn’t survive birth

Without help from others.

And here’s how that

Played out for me in the delivery room on

April 28, 2012

As I labored and delivered my son.

Four people in the room with me:

Midwife, nurse, doula, husband.

The midwife and the nurse were

Guiding my little son’s

Bobble head into the world.

My husband and the doula were at my head,

Holding my hands.

As the contractions

Built into their gripping pitch, and

All I knew was the

Black, vacuous void of

The pushing,

I had to

Touch

My husband.

I had to grip his hand,

I had to hear his voice saying,

“You’re doing it, Jen.

Good job.

You’re almost there.”

The sound I remember most from

Rocky’s birth six weeks ago

Wasn’t his first cry.

It was the gasping sob

My husband let out when I had finally

Done

The impossible,

And he yelled,

“Babe, you did it!”

And everyone in the room was

Laughing and smiling.

Do it alone?

Good god, no.

Grip bed rails with my hands, or

Dig my fingernails into my palms?

That would’ve been hell.

I needed my husband’s hands to grasp

As much as I needed the midwife to

Guide my son’s relatively huge head

Through my relatively narrow hips

(Who knew?).

And that’s,

I guess,

Part of what makes me

Human.

My big childbirth fear

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Our doula perches on the edge of the

Chair in our living room.

She has short sandy hair,

No make-up.

I am cuter than she is,

Which I hadn’t realized was important

But is.

You don’t want a cute doula.

“I think I’m going to sit on the floor,”

She says, and slides off the chair into

Lotus position.

She pulls papers and notebooks out of her

Whole Foods bag and

Fans them in a semi-circle around her.

The rug she is sitting on

Needs a good vacuum,

And some spot remover.

She folds her freckled, braceleted hands in her lap and

Smiles up at us.

“So,” she says.

“Let’s talk about your

Fears.”

Ah yes.

My fears.

The whole point of this meeting.

I’m lucky. My fears don’t consist of

Fistula,

Rupture,

Hemorrhage,

Obstruction.

I’m not afraid of dying,

Or of days in agony,

Or crippling lifelong injury.

But I do have fears.

“Okay, so,

Remember I told you my

Mother died in January?

Of Alzheimer’s?

Well,

I haven’t really been that

Upset

About it.

I haven’t been crying.”

I look at Joe for confirmation of my stoicism,

And he nods.

“I don’t know why.

I feel weird about it.

Like, have I been too busy to grieve?

Or was it that she was sick for so long

I’ve done a lot of the grieving already?

I don’t know.

But here’s my fear:

That in the rush of emotion after the baby’s born,

In those first seconds,

The grief will

Suddenly

Surface,

Or be unleashed.”

Our doula is nodding,

Jotting in a notebook

Labeled with my name.

I fall silent,

Imagining it:

A surge of bitter,

Unacknowledged emotion,

Having its moment

Then and there

In the delivery room.

Ruining it.

Ruining the birth.

I hate this shit.

Grief.

“That makes so much sense,”

Our doula says, writing something,

Then looking up at me.

“And I’m so sorry about your mom.”

We talk for awhile,

And as she’s leaving,

Our doula hugs me and

Thanks me for telling her about my mother.

“I think your mom will come up during the birth,”

She says.

“I think it will happen.”

A few days later,

Something happens:

At my mom’s funeral in January,

I had asked my dad for her wedding ring.

I wanted to wear it for a while.

That was three months ago,

And he just remembered to give it to me

That week

After our meeting with the doula.

We were having lunch,

And he pulled the small cardboard box out of his pocket.

Presented it to me.

My mom’s ring.

“I have it now,”

I tell our doula on the phone.

“I’m going to wear it in the delivery room.

She’ll be

There,

Sort of.”

I am talking excitedly

Because the fear-dread is gone.

If there’s grief,

There’s grief.

I’ll let it in the room

And give it a symbol–

The ring–

And some

Words,

Tell my husband and our doula

I’m thinking about my mom.

Acknowledge the grief.

“What a fabulous idea,”

Our doula says.

“I love it.”

I don’t love it,

But I’m peaceful with it.

And that’s more important.

Lessons from an elementary school dance

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A few weeks ago

I was standing in a pack of parents

In the dark, hot gym of my son’s elementary school

Watching my son and his kindergarten friends

Get down to the latest Top 40 hits

At the annual dance and “fun-raiser.”

And as I leaned against the stage,

Grinning,

Something occurred to me:

I was having

So

Much

Fun

Just watching Victor and the other kids

Get crazy on the dance floor,

Their small bodies twisting,

Arms flailing,

Faces upturned to the D.J. on the stage,

Hoping he would toss a glo-necklace or

Mardi Gras beads their way.

At that moment,

There was nowhere else in the world

I wanted to be than in

That sweaty gym,

Watching my kid lose himself utterly to a

Katy Perry song.

I had

No

Idea

Parenting could be this fun.

I remember in my 20s

Making absolute proclamations:

“I’m never having kids!”

Realizing with existential wonder one day that

Kids are just

Small human beings,

Not another species.

Cautiously hypothesizing to my dad that,

If I did end up having kids

(Big “if”)

I wouldn’t change my life much.

“I’ll just take the kid with me

Wherever I go.

They can just hang out.”

(I think my dad just chuckled,

Didn’t even bother to respond.)

For me,

The desire to have kids came on like a

24 hour flu:

One summer day in 2004 I didn’t want kids,

The next morning I woke up

NEEDING

To be pregnant

That instant.

A year later,

The kindergarten dance phenom was born.

It took me a few years to

Learn to

Enjoy

Parenting.

I adored my son,

Cheered his accomplishments and

Squeezed his small body with a ferocious kind of love.

But get inside his experience?

Lose myself in his sheer joy of physical movement

And discovery?

I was kind of too busy.

I would take him somewhere,

The zoo, say,

And optimistically bring along a magazine

Hoping to relax in the old way

With him just

There, too.

Victor disagreed with my methods

And rarely allowed me to read.

“Oh, okay,” I would think as I eased myself down on the floor

To play a seemingly pointless game of

Car chasing or

Block-tower stacking and

Destruction.

15 minutes was about my limit

Before I would contrive a chore:

Gotta get dinner ready,

Or vacuum,

Or make a phone call.

“Two more minutes, Buddy.

Then Mom’s gotta go.”

Change happened through my campaign to just

“Be in the moment,”

That hippy-dippy phrase that’s the subject of

Books in the New Age section of the library

And shares in my 12-step meetings.

Go on someone else’s timeline.

Slow down.

Shut up.

Busy yet bored nearly all the time,

I thought, “What the hell,”

And gave it a shot.

Planned only through the rest of that day,

Then the next hour,

Then the next five minutes,

Until I got there:

The moment.

Instead of coming up with an excuse to

Sit on the pool deck in a chair

While Victor swims and asks me

Over and over again

To get in the water,

I just get in the damn pool and splash around and get my hair wet.

Now one evening a week after work,

I try to just

Hang out with Victor,

Whatever he’s doing–

No phone,

No laptop,

No book–

Instead of rushing him through his evening routine:

Dinner, bath,

Stories, bed,

So I could have “me time” before I went to bed,

Which usually consisted of aimlessly surfing the Internet.

We were leaving the school dance–

Victor wanted to leave before I did!–

And we walked down the hallway where

Chairs had been set up for parents.

A few were doing that bored-waiting-parent thing:

Leaning forward,

Elbows on their knees,

Tapping around their smartphone.

Every few minutes,

They would sit up straight and stretch a bit,

And heave a deep sigh.

Done it.

Still do it.

But for that one night,

I managed to relish this

Whole new experience I’ve discovered,

That I can have,

When I want it,

If I let it,

As long as Victor will have me.

Where did she go?

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After my mother died

In the bed in my parents’ bedroom,

She stayed there for a few hours

Before two respectful men in

Dark suits

(One in a red ski jacket over his suit)

Took her away.

Wrapped her in a red cloth litter and

Carried her

Out the front door into the

Bright winter sunshine.

Later,

My six-year-old son ran into her room and,

Surprised by the flat, smooth bedspread,

Asked,

“Where did Grandma go?”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and

Repeated what we were saying, about

Dying–

Not sleeping.

Gone.

And the body gone now, too.

To get ready to be

Buried in the ground.

“Grandma’s dead,”

He said solemnly to visitors throughout the day,

And though I winced at his blunt delivery,

I was glad of no

Vagueness or

Euphemisms.

The days after she died were about

Her body

Being gone.

Making the necessary decisions while eating

Pastries and drinking coffee at the dining room table,

Driving with my father to the necessary offices

So he could sign the necessary papers to

Retire the body

Lawfully,

Tactfully,

Appropriately.

Mom’s body, that is.

Mom’s mind?

Leeched away over the years by Alzheimer’s,

So for me,

It was not difficult to spend a week

Being pragmatic about the body.

But then yesterday,

At work,

More than a week after the funeral,

The question popped into my mind:

“Where did she go?”

Her, I mean.

Her essence.

Her, I guess, spirit.

The question felt innocent,

Like when my son asked it on the morning she died.

I didn’t feel uneasy,

Like I did at the funeral,

When earnest loved ones told me with feeling

That she is in a

Better

Place.

With God.

In heaven.

I wasn’t completely sure I believed it,

But I wasn’t averse to the idea, either.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“I hope so.

That would be lovely.”

It surprised me to

Be surprised by my

Uncertainty.

I had never truly

Experienced

My agnosticism before.

I had only contemplated it.

Intellectually.

The body,

Even the mind,

Those departures were comprehensible.

The body

Shrunken and withered under the quilts

Over the last months.

The jaundiced waxy skin

Stretched, shining,

Over the narrow bones.

So that the white cardboard box of

Cremains,

The size and heft of a shoebox filled with sand,

Seemed like just another step in the progressive

Shrinking of the body.

She grew from a tiny baby

To a woman,

Then shrank back down again to a

Box of ashes

A tiny baby could fit into.

Her mind’s development and

Decline also flowed back and forth

Along the continuum:

Babyhood into

Adulthood and

Back again.

Until the last reflex to go,

The swallow reflex,

Developed by a fetus in the womb,

Finally failed her.

The continuum of her

Mental and physical

Development and decline

Was so neat and tidy:

A parabola,

Like an arc of water,

Or a rainbow.

I can sit quietly with those images.

They comfort me.

But it’s that tricky

Soul,

God.

Where did it go?

I can only relate this experience that I had

About five days after she died,

After the services were over and the

Flowers were packed into the back of our truck along with

Leftover cheese and buns and fruit salad from the funeral.

I was doing yoga alone in a

Dimmed, empty exercise studio at the Y.

My iPhone wasn’t getting enough bars to play Pandora,

So it was silent.

No music.

Just me watching my pregnant body

Move

In the mirrors.

And it occurred to me:

There was a way that I could have some

More

Peace

In my life.

And that was by

Being as compassionate to myself

As my mother would be to me.

It would take moving a little more

Slowly,

Perhaps,

Through my days.

Breathing a little more deeply.

No big changes,

Just some slowing down,

Some small adjustments.

And then I thought,

“It’s not that her

Soul

Has entered me.

It’s that

Her love for me

Has helped clarify

My own soul.

She gives me myself,

Purer, and

Clearer.”

I didn’t feel like I

Necessarily needed one,

But an image of

Where her soul went,

Or what it looks like now,

Came to me.

It’s a point of light.

Combined with

Countless other points of light,

But infinitesimally small.

“Maybe that’s heaven.

I wouldn’t know,

And that’s okay,”

I thought as I lay down

At the end of my yoga practice

In my own

Corpse pose:

Savasana.

Step parenting is hard

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I broke my own rule the other night:

When Joe is disciplining my son,

And I don’t agree with what he’s saying

Or how he’s saying it,

I support him at the moment in order to provide a

Unified front,

And bring it up with him later,

In private,

In our bedroom,

After the kids are tucked into bed.

That’s the ideal.

But it didn’t work quite that way on Friday.

Me, Joe and my six-year-old Victor

Went to a circus-like burger and malt shop for dinner,

Magenta and azure murals of dancing cartoon figures on the walls,

Us glaze-eyed from a long week of school and work.

My boy wasn’t listening:

“Don’t run,”

And he’d run.

“Don’t put your burger on the table,”

And he’d put his burger on the table.

The more he didn’t listen,

The more Joe fixated on him not listening:

“If I have to talk to you

One more time,

You won’t get a root beer.”

Victor tried to climb into my lap.

“Mom, I get a root beer, right?”

“Not if Joe says you don’t,”

I said wearily.

It went on like this for a few minutes:

My boy lapped at his water like a dog,

And Joe told him not to.

My boy blew bubbles in his milk,

And Joe said, “Stop.”

I tried to restrain myself,

But I finally couldn’t.

My mouth just opened and

Brightly, I said to Joe,

“Let’s talk about what Victor’s done right today.”

Joe’s gaze swung across the formica table top

To me,

And then he and I started going at it:

“You need to lay off.”

“But he needs to listen.

It’s a safety issue.”

“But this isn’t working.”

“He’s doing it on purpose.”

“No he’s not. He’s six.”

“Well, something needs to change.”

“Does it? Is something wrong?”

And on and on.

So here’s the underpinning of this

Conflict:

Joe doesn’t love Victor like he’s his own son.

Victor has a dad,

And Joe has children.

Those roles are filled.

Same with me.

Joe’s kids have a mom;

They don’t need another one.

We both love our step kids;

But not in that

Blindly unconditional way we do our own.

When Victor doesn’t listen,

I assume he’s just a distracted six-year-old

Developmentally incapable of following

Every

Single

Direction

He’s given.

Joe sees some insolence,

Some intention in the behavior,

That would

Never

Occur to me.

The thing is,

We’re both right.

And sometimes,

We can both admit that.

Step parents can offer a lot:

They aren’t befogged by unqualified love–

Their objectivity can clarify the most

Confounding parental delusion.

Joe and I can do that for each other–

Not every time,

But enough to be hopeful.

Somehow,

On Friday,

It happened:

We had a productive conversation about

Step parenting

At the moment of disagreement,

In front of one of the kids.

I truly witnessed Joe’s face

Soften

With hurt feelings as he described how

Victor ignores his attempts to

Ask what happened at school

Or at wrestling practice.

And he listened

Non-defensively

To my points about

Developmentally normal behaviors

That don’t always need to be

Disciplined.

Afterwards,

It was Joe who was the lightest of all

Walking out of the restaurant,

Jokey with Victor, and flashing

Grateful looks in my direction.

So it worked

This time,

And for today.

Maybe it was the malts.

That’s not my name: Mrs. Joe Brzycki

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It’s started

Just as I knew it would:

With Christmas cards the first holiday season

After the wedding

Addressed to

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Brzycki.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful,

Because I truly enjoy Christmas cards,

Even the drugstore ones with the dashed-off signature and nothing else.

But it makes me chuckle:

Mrs. Joe Brzycki?

There’s no such person.

I get it:

People assume that I changed my name,

Because that’s what most women do.

Or they don’t know my last name,

Or they know it but are unsure of the spelling.

Actually,

Of the three last names in our house,

Mine is probably the easiest to spell:

Brzycki (Joe and his kids),

Hietalahti (my son),

Niemela, (me).

I’ve thought about those smooth gray stones

You can order at the State Fair:

“Welcome to the Smiths!”

The neat and tidy family surname:

Everyone in the house with the same last name!

We’d need a boulder for all the names in our family.

But I love all our last names.

There’s a lot of history,

In the grand sense:

Polish and Scandinavian immigration to America–

And the modern dramatics of a blended family–

Marriage, kids, divorce, remarriage.

(And now another kid on the way who,

Incidentally,

Will have my last name

Because,

Why not?)

Here’s the deal,

Ladies:

I don’t care what you do.

Change it,

Keep it,

Hyphenate it,

Tack it on at the end,

Slip it into the middle,

Make up a whole new name so

Everyone has to get a new drivers license!

For me,

Ever since the age of eight or nine,

When I realized that

Most women take their husband’s names,

I knew I would keep mine.

I haven’t wavered in that.

Ever.

There are so many reasons I’ve kept my last name

Through one marriage and into another.

(Never had to change my passport

Once.)

Yes, it’s about

Gender politics,

Symbols, and–

Dare I say the F-word–

I’m gonna say it–

Feminism.

To me,

The idea of being Mrs. Joe Brzycki

Subsumes me into Joe

In a way that anyone who knows us

Would find absurd.

But I also kept my last name

Because I just like it.

I know what it means:

Peninsula, in Finnish.

I imagine a point wooded with pine and birch

Jutting into a clear,

Boulder-bottomed lake.

Like a Boundary Waters campsite.

I’m a writer.

Words–

Names are words–

Are important to me.

Not just the aesthetics of how a word looks

Or sounds.

But what words mean.

Why choose one word over another?

Loneliness,

Or solitude?

Brzycki,

Or Niemela?

Does it matter?

It does,

To me.

Professionally,

Personally,

Even as part of a family unit,

It’s my policy to keep a part of myself

Just for me.

And my own name,

From beginning to end,

Is a manifestation of that part of myself.

It’s like the

Silent,

Black

Space

Just before I fall asleep at night,

When no children,

No husband,

No job,

Need me.

The divine chemicals of sleep

Bathe my tired brain.

It’s just me: Jennifer Niemela

At rest.

Dying and being born

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My mother is dying.

We’re all dying,

But she is actively dying

Lying completely still in the

Hospital bed in my parents’ room

At home.

We stopped transferring her to the

Wheelchair the day after

Thanksgiving.

Perhaps her last act of sitting up

Was dozing through the Thanksgiving meal,

The waist strap on her wheelchair keeping her from

Keeling sideways onto the floor.

In bed now,

She lies with her face turned slightly toward the window,

For the light?

Or because she had a mild stroke on the right side,

And she now lists that way?

We don’t know.

Anyway, her face tilts toward the gray winter light.

They–

The hospice workers and nurses–

Don’t give a prognosis,

But days or weeks

Are more likely than months now.

They will say that.

Be ready,

Is the implication.

And I think I am.

It’s been nearly seven years

Since the first symptoms.

But no matter how prepared you think you are,

It’s still a shock,

The hospice chaplain says.

And I believe her.

I’ve never done this before.

What do I know?

It’s not like in the movies

Where you sit gazing into the

Dying person’s face.

You can’t do that for hours on end.

I sit in the recliner next to her bed and

Read my book,

Or work on the laptop,

And look up between chapters or emails

To see if her eyes are open.

If they are,

I might lean across the bed to get my face into her line of vision.

I might smile, and say,

“Hi Mom. Are you awake? Hi.”

It’s rare now for her eyes to focus on mine,

Or for a smile to flicker.

That’s another thing that’s not like the movies:

The dying person staring off into the distance,

Past your shoulder,

At the sky,

Or God.

She’s just not looking at anything.

There’s no focus point that

I can gather.

They say at the end,

The dying person withdraws,

That their focus is inward.

Maybe that’s it.

It’s impossible to speculate,

Or even accurately describe.

I guess I’ll know myself someday.

And by then, I won’t be able to tell you about it.

It’s peaceful, her room.

Their bedroom for 25 years.

Nurses and home health aides pass in and out.

They speak quietly and gently.

Some are more efficient than others;

Some work hard;

Some sit on the couch and text.

But they are all gentle, quiet women.

The room has the same beige carpet and

Floral-striped wallpaper it’s always had.

It’s warm and quiet,

And I rock in the recliner.

I’m 18 weeks pregnant,

And rocking quietly,

I can feel the first flutters and pops of the baby’s movement.

It’s all very circle-of-life.

And yes,

It’s a comfort to everyone

That I’m actively pregnant

As my mother is actively dying.

My two pregnancies will likely have

Book-ended mom’s

Alzheimer’s.

It was when I was pregnant with my son,

Six years ago,

And living overseas,

That my parents came for a visit,

And I first noticed it:

She kept leaving books behind at restaurants,

And once she nearly stepped into traffic,

Not noticing the light.

“Does Mom seem more forgetful to you?”

I asked my dad,

And he said,

Yes,

They were starting to notice things.

Now, more than six years later,

That grandbaby watches cartoons in the next room

While I sit in the dying room.

She is unlikely to see this baby,

Due in May.

Dad told her I’m pregnant

A few weeks ago,

And he thinks she understood.

She grew animated,

And smiled, he said.

That seems so impossible now,

Just weeks later.

She is calm.

She doesn’t seem afraid.

Maybe that’s a final blessing of a disease that

Destroys the brain–

Maybe she’s not conscious anymore of

What’s happening.

I imagine that,

Like her new grandchild,

She feels tactile sensations

Like warmth,

And hears muffled sounds;

She grows closer everyday to the

Next stage,

And has no awareness of

What’s coming

Or what’s gone before.

Getting the wanderlust back?

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You wouldn’t know it from listening to me know,

But I used to love to travel.

I grew up in a road-trip family:

My parents were both public school teachers,

So we spent summers hoboing around the country,

A beige plastic luggage container

Clipped to the roof of the Oldsmobile.

We went to California via Seattle and back home through the

Southwest,

French Canada via Niagara Falls,

Florida via New Orleans,

Washington, D.C.,

The Black Hills.

(We flew to Mexico ’cause I guess you don’t drive there.)

I’d watch out the car’s side windows for hours,

Lulled by the rhythms of the power lines and the

Pavement breaks.

Frugal,

We camped.

My mother in a red bandana making breakfast on a

Wood picnic table in a

Grove of pine trees.

My dad standing on the inside of the

Car door frame,

Loading the tent and sleeping bags and tarps into the

Bug-encrusted luggage container.

In high school,

My brother and I chose to use our fresh independence to

Road trip together to the Black Hills

In the Chevy Lumina my parents loaned us.

And summers in college

I was always driving off somewhere–

One summer to work on a guest ranch in Montana,

The next to rent a little apartment and wait tables in

Spearfish, S.D.

A little time,

A little money,

And my friends and I were off on another

Camping road trip.

In my early 20s,

I would take off alone on a Saturday or Sunday:

No map,

No time constraints,

And I would just

Drive.

My mind got

Clear and calm with the

Pavement rushing by beneath me.

I did a couple trips to Europe, too.

First England,

Then the continent.

Some of the best naps I’ve ever taken were

Seated upright on a train,

My stuffed backpack in my lap,

My head resting on it.

Back then I loved traveling.

It was the pure joy of movement,

The wonder of the different.

I just went,

And then came back.

I think it all changed when,

Instead of being a tourist,

I tried to go live there.

Seattle,

A few places in Europe.

Living somewhere is a

Completely different proposition than

Visiting.

You’re not just there to observe from the outside;

You should be a part of it now.

Instead of consuming,

You should produce.

But I would move there with a

Tourist mindset:

No reason or goal

Or plan.

Just,

Here I am.

I’m ready.

Instead of the new city

Opening itself up to me,

Its opportunities were a puzzle I couldn’t solve.

I would get menial jobs

And watch the natives

Negotiate their homelands easily.

It was hard.

And not very fun.

But I kept at it.

Seven years I wandered around,

Five of them in Europe,

Squelching the nagging question,

“What the hell am I doing here?”

With another drink, and another.

Until my thinly stretched life

Unraveled with an

International divorce and

Excruciating child custody decisions.

Now, flights across the ocean are exercises in

Emotional restraint as I

Count the last hours of a months-long

Separation from my son.

Those backpacking college students in

Reykyavik airport?

Naive,

And irritating.

I want to sit down at their cafe tables,

Elbow aside their egg sandwiches and jet-lag beer,

And tell them like it is:

“Everything you think you’re looking for?

It’s

Right

In front of you.

Cut up your credit cards

And go home.”

Bitter?

I guess so.

My travel life

(And vacation time

And extra money)

Is now is confined to these

Shuttles across the ocean

And of course,

Business trips.

Which I

Dread because,

Says this former flower petal

Who once drifted on the wind,

They take me away from

Home.

But wait.

This bitter rant has a hopeful ending.

I was in NYC a couple weeks ago

On a business trip,

And I was ready to do my thing

Which is to attend the requisite events,

And then hide in my hotel room

And wait for it to be over.

When one night at dinner,

Tickets to a Broadway musical

Popped out of the breast pocket of someone’s blazer,

And we were off:

Tromping through Times Square,

Getting lost and then

Turned back in the right direction,

So that we arrived at the theater

Just as the lights were going down.

And suddenly,

An old familiar wonderment

Came over me.

Suddenly,

I was energized in that weirdly calm

NYC way,

Where you know you haven’t slept enough,

But somehow, it doesn’t matter.

You’ll be fine,

You’ll have more than enough energy for what’s about to happen.

This naif had never been to a

Broadway musical before,

And the musical,

“Memphis,”

Was

A-Ma-Zing.

Like a child,

I never wanted the

Singing and dancing to end.

It was

Simple

Wonder.

I had thought

That I had maybe

Changed

Intrinsically

Into a homebody–

That the wanderlust had been

Stunned out of me by my

Naive decisions and mistakes

In trying to go

Live

Where I maybe should have just

Visited.

But in the plane back from NYC,

As I settled into my window seat for a delicious nap,

I thought,

Maybe not.

Maybe not.

But I don’t WANNA ask for help

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Image from telegraph.co.uk

Got back Thursday night

After four nights on a business trip.

Took a taxi home from the airport through the

Dark streets of my city.

I came in the front door

And stood for a moment in the dimmed, quiet living room.

Then I went into my son’s room and let myself

Wake him up a little–

I couldn’t resist–

By rubbing the warm back under the shirt.

My son speaks in complete sentences

When you wake him up,

As if picking up in the middle of a conversation:

“Will you sleep down here tonight?”

“No, but I’ll check on you before I go to sleep.”

“Do I have school tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow’s Friday. Go back to sleep now.”

And he does!

I hate being away from home overnight because

Yes, I miss my family,

But also because

When I’m gone on a school night,

I have to ask three or four people for help.

And I hate asking for help.

I have to ask Joe to change his schedule,

I have to ask my brother or dad to

Come over in the morning to

Get my son to the bus stop,

I have to ask a neighbor to take my son after school once or twice.

And of course I have to ask my son

To be good, don’t be sad

While I’m gone.

So many people inconvenienced,

I always think.

So I call Joe the second night and ask about my son,

“How is he?”

Expecting reports of tantrums and tears.

“He’s fine,” Joe says.

“I think it’s good for him to get some time with me.”

I get a voice mail from my brother:

“Hey it was nice to spend some time with him.

I don’t want to wake up at 6 everyday to do it,

But every once in a while,

It’s really cool.”

And the neighbor:

“Yeah, the boys played cars and it was great.”

And my boy after I got home:

Perfectly normal,

In fact, particularly well-behaved.

Unaffected, it would seem

By my absence.

(I forget:

I’m not as important as I think.)

The fact is,

I don’t want to ask for help.

I don’t want to owe you,

Or have you balk at my nervous request.

“No, no, we’re fine. I got it,”

Has been my mantra.

But,

If I don’t ask for help,

You don’t get the chance to help me.

It’s selfish to

Not

Ask for help.

I need to give you the opportunity to be of service,

And give my son the opportunity to have a

Different experience–

Without me.

It’s scary though.

What if you say no?

Well I guess I’ll find out on my next overnight trip:

The day after Halloween.

All Saints Day.

Give my brother the chance to grope for sainthood by

Waking up an hour early to come over and help get

My son to the bus stop.

You’re welcome, Doug.