In the Blink of an Eye

Yesterday, I took my oldest son to preschool for the first time. We tussled a bit over what to wear. I have always loved the red bib overalls, but Scott wanted the green shorts, because even though it is September and getting chilly outside, he still insists that it’s warm enough for shorts. I let him decide, stuffing his overalls in his backpack just in case he changed his mind. At this age, you have to pick your battles, and this seemed like a lesson learning opportunity. It was only for three hours. He would be fine.

Yesterday, Scott finished kindergarten. The wasn’t a ceremony or anything like that, just field day when the kids get to run around the playground and the parents laugh easily about how quickly the school year passed. I noticed that Scott was no longer playing with Connor Kinser, the boy who told him the first week of school that boys put their penis’ in girls’ vaginas. Scott asked me the question directly when he came home from school. I told him, yes, it was true, but not until they were twenty. Conner has two older brothers. One has to beware of boys with older brothers. They observe stuff way before they understand what they’ve learned.

Yesterday, I watched Scott hit his first home run. The baseball arced way up in the air, shocking all the other second graders and their parents. My heart leaped up in my throat. My boy. My son, hit that ball. The crowd started cheering, Scott raced around the bases and informed me afterwards that he wants to be a professional baseball player when he grows up.

Yesterday, Scott got in trouble with the asst. principle at the middle school because he threw rocks at the window while his dad and I met with his teachers. I know he is angry about the divorce. The staff at the school were very understanding. I guess these outbursts are normal for a kid in this situation.

Yesterday, I sat with Scott and the rest of the kids in his class, an all of their parents. We watched a video produced by one of the dad’s chronicling their time at school, their favorite teachers, their favorite classes, their pranks, their thoughts, their dreams. I sobbed. I have known these children since preschool. I hardly recognized some of them, all grown up and beautiful as they are.

In the blink of an eye. They grew up in the blink of an eye. They are poised now, wings flexing, perched on the edges of their parents’ nests. Soon, very soon, they will spread their wings and soar into the freedom of their future, which stands proudly intact before them. These children, the sons and daughters of lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants, will design the mold of the world to come, the world we will never see, for it belongs only to them.

Shhh! There goes one. Wings glinting in the sunlight, no looking back, confident and sure. I see Scott. He’s ready, too. I pulled Kevin and Greg closer to me. I could see the feathers peaking out from under Greg’s t-shirt. Only two more years for him. Seven more for Kevin.

Wait, Scott’s talking on the cell phone. Just one more minute, Mom. There he goes. I don’t dare close my eyes.

He’s gone.

In the blink of an eye.

The ABC's of Betty

Accent: slight Hoosier accent, just a little hillbilly, which I never try to hide.

Booze: Beer when I do yardwork, a cosmopolitan when I go out, Chardonnay or Merlot when I have dinner with a friend.

Chore I hate: I don’t iron…for anyone, for any reason.

Dogs/cats: I love animals. We are dogless for the moment, but I rethink that one everyday. I have two tabby cats…and a groundhog living under my shed. He ate the top off my sunflower yesterday, so today, I don’t like him.

Essential electronics: Cell phone, though not while driving, my computer, my stereo, my PDA.

Favourite perfume/cologne: I only wear “Eau de Betty”

Gold/silver: Gold….I have several silver pieces, but only because they were given to me. I never wear them.

Hometown: North Manchester, Indiana

Insomnia: Never. I might wake up once, but I go right back to sleep.

Job title: Managing Member….of an accounting firm, but I often wish I was managing a different sort of member….

Kids: Three sons, three glorious sons, three fabulous, loving, talented, handsome, strong, intelligent, beautifully gorgeous sons.

Living arrangements: I live with my sons…and my cats.

Most admired trait: My easy laugh.

Number of sexual partners: HA! Like I would ever tell. It makes me think, though, would I rather have had fewer, or do I hope to have more…..?

Overnight hospital stays: Only to have my children, and when I faked a hearing problem when I was 10…they took out my tonsils which miraculously cured the hearing problem. Ah, the lengths the youngest of five will go, to get a little attention.

Phobia: I fear nothing. Nothing, I tell you. I am fearless…unless you count being afraid of ending up like my mother…

Quote:
In the end, this is what matters the most;
How fully did you live,
How well did you love,
How deeply did you learn to let go.

Religion: I pray to my own god every day in the sanctuary of my beautiful fishpond. I ask only for strength…and maybe patience.

Siblings: Five…three sisters, two brothers.

Time I usually wake up: 7:00…but on weekends, I go right back to sleep until 9:00.

Unusual talent: Too many to mention…and this is a family blog…but perhaps my talent for tying a knot in a marachino cherry stem in my mouth in thirty seconds is worth mentioning.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: I love all vegetables.

Worst habit: I wear my sexuality like a badge of honor, making innuendo jokes at inappropriate times. Sigh. Like now.

X-rays: The girls get their picture taken every year, as do my teeth. My hips were X-Rayed once when sex became painful….oh, now, there I go again….

Yummy foods I make: Chicken with artichoke hearts in a sherry cream sauce, apple pie, oatmeal cookies, pasta sauce….most things I cook are yummy.

Zodiac sign: Gemini, and quite the typical one.

What I Did for My Birthday

May 22, 2006

The day started out with sunshine and coffee by my fishpond, and then just got better as the day progressed. I had a meeting with a prospective new client, which was AWESOME, even if I don't get the work. I connected with the interviewee and had a great conversation discussing her three girls and my three boys and all the associated commonalities of work and parenting. I went to the office, got two projects done, (hooray!) then went to my appointment with my lawyer. Yes, on my birthday, I began the process of suing my ex husband for child support...only a year and a half late on that one.

After work, I gathered up my three sons and Scott's girlfriend and we all went to Red Lobster where I gorged myself on crab legs. We stopped by to see my Mother on our way home. At home, the boys gave me presents, sang Happy Birthday to me, and stared numbly at the cake, all of us being too full to take even one bite.

Around 10:00, Last First Date Guy came over, still dressed in his suit from work (I swear, he is a workaholic. Who'd a thunk I would end up with a workaholic!). We sat by the pond and admired the tall trees in my back yard. I gave him a night time tour of my gardens and by flashlight, we tried to pick a spot to plant the lilac bush he bought me for my birthday.

At one point, the flashlight caught the image of the tattered flag I have had hanging on my porch since September 11, 2001. Last First Date Guy gasped in horror, immediately offering to take it down for me, to buy me a new one. Very calmly, I explained that I had a brand new flag in my foyer, but that I had no intention of taking the tattered flag down.

I hung the flag that day because I was so proud to be an American, so proud to live in a country which could rise to the occasion, process our grief in a constructive way, help each other get through the cold night aftermath. Since then, I have been dismayed at the atrocities that have followed. I am appalled by the war, by the Patriot Act, by the dismantling of our civil rights, by the greed of the oil companies. I am confused by the hypocrisy of anger following the killing of American citizens by Iraqis, while the blood is still cooling in the bodies from the bombs we dropped on the homes of countless Iraqi women and children.

My flag reflects my dismay at the performance of our current president. I have not mutilated our country's flag, Mother Earth has. She is just as dismayed as I am. The wind and the rain has wreaked identical damage to my flag as George W. Bush has done to our country. My flag will fly until January 8, 2009, when his reign will finally be over.

I tried to explain this to Last First Date Guy. He listened patiently. When I was finished, he looked down at my very serious face, smiled at me, pointed to the flowers under Greg's window and said, "Tell me what you have planted over here, Betty..."

Signs of Life

I am at an interesting place in my life right now. My oldest son is struggling to graduate, to separate from me, be an adult, find his own rightful way in the world, yet still must ask me for a dollar to buy a can of soda. I struggle with wanting to help him, wanting to guide where he no longer wants guidance, and wanting to kick his ass out the door. That eighteenth year is a difficult one. I enjoy genuine camaraderie with the younger two sons, it’s hard not to shake my head in wonder at the difficulties I have with the oldest.

My African Elephant ear plant poked the first toe out of the ground this morning. I planted it about six weeks ago and was very concerned that I had done something terribly wrong and had somehow killed it. All I had needed was patience. No signs of life yet of the other three, but I’m pretty sure they will show themselves shortly.

Everything in my garden is doing well. The constant rain over the past week has caused me some consternation but apparently it is raining just enough to keep everything happy and not enough to cause root rot. I have eight poppy buds waiting to bloom and I planted more poppy seeds close by. Worms ate the columbine leaves, but they all bloomed heartily anyway, and I see new growth beginning at the base of the plant. There’s food for all in nature’s bounty. No need for any of us to worry, at least not in the fertile ground of the Waite household.

I have been digging in the ground, still. Such rich, black dirt, the result of living in the same place for 20 years and adding truckloads of leaf mulch each year before I plant. I am, indeed, the granddaughter of a farmer.

I read an article in Sun Magazine this week which is disturbing me. The article described the farm factories that now manufacture our pork and our chickens and our eggs. Farming has become big business, and seems to have lost it’s humanity. I can’t bring myself to kill spiders. I carefully removed a nest of ants that had settled in my mail box, being unwilling to spray them and did my best not to hurt them as I moved them to a new home. Wasps live above my bench by the fish pond. A ground hog has made himself at home under my shed and has been feasting on my pansies.

I don’t mind sharing with other creatures. They certainly share with me. After reading the article about the farm factories, though, I don’t know if I can continue to eat pork, chicken and eggs in good conscience. I gave up lamb and veal years ago because the conditions of their lives were so inhumane, and I refuse to eat babies. I became a vegetarian in 1997 and remained one for 13 months until one day, I just had to have a cheeseburger.


I’m reconsidering, now. Our culture is such that we don’t see beyond the packaging to what happens before that pork ends up on plate. I drive around my hometown of North Manchester, Indiana, and I no longer see herds of sows snuffling in the pastures, they are cooped up in pens so small they can’t even turn around, standing on slatted steel over a sewer to catch their droppings. They can raise them faster and fatter if they don’t let them exercise.

My uncle was a pig farmer. Granted, they were never the most energetic of creatures. They didn’t frolic and amble about like horses and dogs, but they did spend a lot of time seeming to enjoy the sunshine and grubbing about the grass for whatever nature thought to leave there for them. Certain animals allowed themselves to be domesticated in change for a relative measure of safety. I guess they figured it was better to live three years without fear than twice that time constantly afraid. Those times have changed. I have trouble seeing what’s in it for the pigs, or “pork units” as the industry now calls them.

Speaking of fear, my friend, Robert, got me a set of balls for my birthday next Monday. He thinks I need more testosterone producing gonads in my dealings with men. I know he’s right. I don’t ask questions I should be asking because I fear the answers. He says that I am ballsy in every other aspect of my life, and he wants to help me find the balls to be more proactive in my love life.

“What love life?” I ask.

I have spent the last two weekends without having a date. It feels pretty good, actually. It occurred to me, as I was spending six hours mulching my trees on Sunday, that perhaps gardening is a solitary activity. What a drag it would be if I had to listen to some man give his opinion on how I mulched, or what I planted or where I planted and whether or not I was over fertilizing. Maybe this alone thing, once I’ve given myself a chance to experience it, isn’t so bad.

I have to say, I have been enjoying myself. I’ve been doing massive amounts of gardening, getting lots of dirt underneath my nails, getting muddy and sweaty and smelly and sore and reveling in the thoughts that run through my brain. I was only lonely once over the weekend, and that was right after watching my favorite all time movie, Notting Hill on HBO. The line where she says, “Remember, I’m really just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” always gets me. I cried for three minutes on my couch. Then I wiped my tears, as I always do, went off to bed in my beautiful Betty bedroom, and had one of the best night’s sleep of my life.

There are signs of life in my world, even it there aren’t any signs of love.

Aches and Pains

“Kevin, bring me the footstool, would you please?”

I stand in the hallway, gazing up at the handle to the magic staircase that will take me to the upper bowel of the Waite house, the attic. Clutched in my hands are five Easter baskets, two I didn’t use, and three that a week ago, held colored eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps and sacrificial chocolate bunnies. Climbing the second step of the stool, I grasp the handle to the attic ladder and pull. With a creaky groan, the stairs descend and collapse into place. With one hand on the flimsy rail, the other gripped around the baskets, I ascend the steps, watching for wildlife, which sometimes takes up residence in the upper domain. We don’t have a basement, so the scary space in our house, is the attic.

Two steps from the top, I pause, surveying the surrounding boxes of Christmas decorations and discarded computer boxes that someone convinced me to save. Giving a push to the left, I clear a space on the attic floor for my feet and climb the next step. With a loud CRACK, my right foot finds freedom instead of wooden step. I flail wildly for the rail, grasping it just in time to keep from falling backwards, Easter baskets flying everywhere, and clumsily thump my way down the ladder, my right elbow smacking each step, my left knee keeping time.

I yelp in pain.

“You ok, Mom?” Kevin asks from the family room, his eyes never leaving the television screen, Saturday morning cartoons too strong a pull to divert his attention.

I groan loudly. God damn, this hurts. It hurts bad. I limp into the kitchen where the light is better and survey the damage. A hunk of skin is hanging from my right hand, my right elbow is swelling and purple with anger, my left knee is scraped. To my disappointment, not a drop of blood appears to wave in front of my son as a badge of my courage.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I call to Kevin, whose full attention is again focused on the television screen.

Tears well in my eyes, which I angrily overcome. I don’t cry over physical pain. Ever. But oh my god, this hurts. My elbow is screaming in agony, my knee is sobbing righteously; my hand throbs as the pain pulsates through me. I hobble to my computer and play a game of Spider Solitaire to console myself. I feel the pain. I feel every nerve in my body protesting the assault. My body is the blindfolded convict and I feel the neurons firing and firing and firing. I feel sadness that I have no one to console me.

Just when I feel like the pain will never, ever stop, it subsides. It dissipates like a spring thunder storm moving subtly into a soft shower. I flex my elbow and gingerly touch the angry bruise.

I finish my game and head back into the hallway. Picking up the Easter baskets, I grip the attic stairs and haul myself up again, keeping close contact with the rail. I toss the Easter baskets into a pile and swiftly descend. Order will come another day to the attic domain, but not today. I pull back the pivot and swing the stairs back into alignment, the attic trap door sounding a decisive thud as it closed.

My mission accomplished, I ponder the pain, the searing wonder of it, the rapid fire waves so overwhelming, and then…and then…the evaporation as the neurons quieted and all goes back to normal. I wondered at the corollary between physical pain and emotional pain and the way my heart feels when it takes the proverbial romantic bullet. I remembered the raw rush, the pulsating throbbing, the seemingly endless tides of tears, and then the miraculous letting up, easing up, drying up until it’s gone.

I worked in my garden this past weekend. Worked and worked and worked. I planted, I weeded, I dug and I hoed and smoothed and I dug some more. And then I mulched. I filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of earthy, black rotted leaf mulch and I spread it around my flowers and across the pathways and over my flower beds. I worked from dawn to dusk on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Now I ache. I ache all over. Even my buttocks hurt. I’m worried I’ll become an ibuprofen junkie. I woke up in the middle of the night because the ache was so bad. My carpel tunneled wrists throbbed, my back protested every move I made, my muscles cried in defiance.

Ache is different from pain. Granted, it dissipates as well, but it takes days, sometimes weeks, for the ache to go away, rather than minutes. Of course, the things one does to cause an ache usually takes more time than those things that cause us immediate pain, too, so perhaps it is just another example of the Goddess’ talent for balance.

I sat by my fishpond, admiring my mulch, and considered physical ache and emotional ache, and the differences between the stark pain I had experienced just days before. I still have my elbow bruise, and occasionally, I still feel tender spots around my heart when I think of certain people. I try not to press those spots, but life happens and love happens and those spots awaken and raise their hands for attention.

I discovered something, over the past two weeks of gardening and putting my house in order. The quickest way to move past the pain is to acknowledge it, feel it, shake it’s hand, and move on.

I no longer have a mountain of mulch in my driveway, but I still have a small hill. My aches and pains aren’t over yet. I tend to overdo whatever I do, in my gardens, in my writing, in my work, in my relationships. It’s part of my charm. I look forward to more aches and pains.

It’s good to feel.

It’s proof positive that I am still alive…and growing.

Spring Fever

I held the dirty brown seeds in my hand, shaken from their paper prison, and closely inspected them. Allegedly, within these specks looking suspiciously like dirt, were lovely purple flowers. I opened the bag of potting soil, pulled the plastic from the peat moss trays of planting cups, filled them to the brim, and gently placed a few slivers of “dirt” in each tiny pot. With the kitchen nozzle emitting a gentle shower, I soaked the seeds and their soft cushioned bed, secured the plastic terrarium cover, and set them in the sunny picture window of my living room.

Like a five year old on Christmas morning, I peeked at them the next morning. The packet had said they would germinate in five days, but I wanted to check anyway. Tiny green shoots greeted me when I removed the cover. My hand flew to my mouth. In just 24 hours, those brown and lifeless dust pods had sprouted green and growth and life.

Proof positive that there is, indeed a god.

I woke my children, called them into the living room. They crowded around, expecting something spectacular, like a dead mouse or a huge spider, but all they found was a beaming mother, grinning like a fool, flapping her excited arms and bidding them to “look, look!”

They yawned, scratched their balls, as boys are wont to do, and padded back to their rooms to begin school day preparations.

I was atitter.

My seeds had sprouted. It was early April. They would grow in the warmth of my house for a month or so, then I would plant them outside in my garden and I would point to them proudly and say, “I planted these from seeds!” In the fall, I would collect the seeds from the fallen flower heads, and save them, and plant them next year, and pass them down to my grandchildren some day. My seeds could be my legacy.

I took my coffee out by the pond, after the boys were at school, and pondered my lot in life.

For the next month, I dug in the dirt every day, readying the beds, adding rotting leaf mulch, turning soil, raking the clods, turning the soil again, smoothing the beds. I made three trips to the flower store, buying impatiens, begonias, geraniums, vines and filler for the pots lining my garden walk. I planted dozens of Freezia and Liatris bulbs, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, basil and rosemary and parsley seeds. I went through two pairs of gardening gloves and three pairs of clippers as I trimmed the bushes and trees to make room for my flower children. Color crossed the canvas of my garden and I took the long way home everyday after work, so I could drive by my front yard and admire my progress.

I walked the garden every morning and every night, watching for the dahlias to tip toe out of the ground, saying blessings over the freesia bulbs and hooting with delight as their pale green spikes emerged from the loamy soil. I pulled weeds and transplanted volunteer coreopsis. I was goddess of the garden. I decided what lived and died in my tiny patch of the world and the power made me giddy.

I’m not done yet.

I still have the back yard to do.

I still have a mountain of rotting leaf mulch to put the finishing touch on my flower beds and to hold the weeds at bay.

If you’ve missed my posts, I apologize. I’ve been plying the favors of a new lover, reveling in her familiar embrace, but still marveling at the new discoveries I make each morning. My passion flows strong and true and is never more evident than at this time of year, when everything turns to green and color blooms in my garden and I am reminded, once again, that I am a goddess of the earth.