Someday.

Below is the letter I wrote to my daughter, the one I'd so hoped would be truth. And despite the outcome, there remains some truth. There is so much to say, but I can't wrangle the words. Instead, this is what I wrote the other day:

My sweet Lucille, this was not the morning to which I'd hoped you'd wake up. Our country is very clearly still living within the confines of a patriarchy. But - make no mistake - our knuckles have grazed the glass, and while we were unable to completely shatter that ceiling, there are fractures. Someday, my love, someday. Maybe it will be you. 

I sincerely hope I can pull this letter out in four years, and it will mean something in a way it didn't this year.

Dear Lucille,

Last night, Hillary Rodham Clinton, won the election and has become the President elect. At the turn of the year, Barack Obama, our first black president will end his tenure, and Clinton will become President of the United States of America. This is not a letter about whether I like her or disliked the man who ran against her. This, Lucille, is entirely about the fact that a WOMAN will now hold the highest office in this land. And that, no matter where you stand on party lines, deserves respect.

It is monumental.

Clinton’s road to the White House began long before you ever existed, and women before her have been quietly, and some quite loudly, paving the way for this very moment. We read a book called Rad American Woman A-Z, and some of these warriors are named. If you turn back the clocks you will find a remarkable reel of women that illuminate a bold future for you.

When you were born a female, a gender you currently express, you were born with an inherent set of challenges. Our culture places a heavy emphasis on the material, especially looks. According to magazines, and TV shows, and movies, and the pervasive noise that is our world, you will be judged, at least initially, on how you look. In your lifetime you will fight misogyny, sexism, expectations to be married and have children, rape culture, imposed body image assumptions, and a menagerie of double-standards. Lucille, I am working to arm you. To save you from the language of the crawl that has formed in my own head, the one I lived with, to something braver, something much more confident; we watch Wonder Woman and talk about how she is strong and saves herself. We read books about girls like Molly Lou Mellon who walk proudly while dismissing the judgements of others. We talk about the different shapes and sizes and colors of our friends, and how some families have two Mamas, and some have to Daddies.

The work of women is not done, my love, and we’re nowhere near eradicating gender expectations, but we are moving in the right direction. You and I are part of a gender history fraught with blood and toil, misandry, rape and murder  – but we are also part of a history bedazzled with the likes of Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Blackwell, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Nellie Bly, Bessie Coleman, Jane Addams, Amelia Earhart, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, and now, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Today, another giant crack in that ceiling has formed, and if you tilt your face up to that fracture, my dear, you will feel the rain serpentine its way through and fall upon your cheeks like a kiss. As your mama, I can say that you, Lucille, can one day be president. That’s what this is about. Today is a day in history that will forever be marked by progress for the women in this country.

Whether you add your name to that very public list will be your prerogative. Regardless, I will love you for all your failures and triumphs, whether you are known or unknown to the masses. You won’t remember today, not by a long shot, and Clinton’s tenure as president, however far it reaches, will be a blip in your history. But we women will be watching, fully aware of the public misogyny and sexist rubbish Madam President will face. I, as a woman and your mama, will be watching closely, hoping that despite the politics and policy, she continues to forge a road for us.

Today, Lucille, I just need you to know that anything is possible. And I will reiterate that sentiment for the rest of my life, calling upon the names of these women who have come before you, as you encounter whatever challenges may be ahead.

Lucille, a woman is President.

A woman.

Dirty Dancing, Sort Of.

Two months into Motherhood, I wrote about trying to understand who I was now that I had this alien baby. I likened the journey to a choreographed dance, learning new steps while incorporating a few old ones. Fast-forward 13 months, and I still find myself occasionally tripping over my own feet. Picture the Dirty Dancing music montage where "Hungry Eyes" is playing and Patrick Swayze is trying to teach an uncoordinated Jennifer Grey how to dance. She steps on his toes, can't get the timing correctly, and giggles when she's supposed to be serious. I'm barely holding it together Jennifer Grey right now. But I have hope, because if you've seen the whole movie, and I know you have, she's a spectacular dancer by the time the credits role. I mean, who can forget the final scene? Please tell me you have stayed up long into the wee hours of the night, your freshman year of college, perfecting the moves from the final scene, with the girls who live on the same floor as you. Who's with me? Jenny, Sara, Pam - you'd better raise your hands.

I've made some serious advancements in putting the pieces of my revised self, post baby, back together again. The photography gig is going really well and despite Old Man Winter, I'm booking clients. My brother had been on me for a while to update my website, something about flash (not boobies) and html and optimal viewing, blah, blah, blah. I'd been dragging my heals on working on the site because I knew it was going to take me about a billion hours to update and revamp. These days, time is precious commodity. Finally, I just bit the bullet and sat my ass down one evening after Lucy had gone to bed, and got to working on it. I was right - it took nearly a billion hours, or closer to five, which in Mommy time is pretty much the same thing, especially when working evening hours that are best spent zombified on a couch, eyes trained on The Real Housewives, or Girls, or Broad City, or Togetherness. Yes, I watch them ALL and then some. Point is, with the sacrifice of a couple prized evenings, I got the website done. And dammit, it looks fabulous.

Writing has definitely been on the back burner, but I did something today that forced me to dust off some old work, and put a new piece together. I auditioned for the Pittsburgh show of Listen to Your Mother. Gulp. At about high noon on this quiet snowy Sunday, I stood before a panel of three women, and performed my pieces. I think it went well! They laughed when they were supposed to, and they got teary-eyed, too. Both good signs that my writing, and how I told my stories, evoked a reaction. Now it's a waiting game. A fingers crossed, breath held, waiting game...

Slowly, I'm making progress at redefining who I am. There will never be a time, though, when I'm not Lucy's mama; Motherhood underscores everything. It's the nature of this blessed beast. But, I'm discovering that while being Lucy's mama is part of my everyday, it doesn't have to be my everything. I can be her mama, and be a photographer. I can be her mama, sweep some blush across my cheeks, dab on some lipstick, lint roll the dog hair off my pants, scrape the crust of god knows what off my shoulder, drive myself downtown, and rock an audition. 

The more I do for myself, the better of a mama Lucy gets. It's a win-win situation. Now someone lift up your arms, I'm going to jump into them cause - and you knew I was going to work it in somehow: 

nobody puts baby in the corner.  

Rattled.

I belong to a network of working mothers and we have a space on Facebook that’s closed to the outside world where we can post whatever rants, frustrations and successes that currently pepper our chaotic lives. Recently, a member posted a link to an article that revealed some statistics (as collected by a survey done through Care.com) about working mothers. First of all, I could have written several portions of that article, but what startled me the most were the following two revelations: 1 in 4 working moms cries at least once a week, and 11% are late or call in sick to work at least once a week. Before my daughter was born, I was the archetype of timeliness to work. Not anymore. Just this morning, my alarm went off, as it always does, at 5:30 am, but it wasn’t until 6 am that I pulled what sorry sack of a human I currently am, out of bed. In order for me to get to work on time, I need to be pulling out of the driveway by 6:20, and definitely no later than 6:30. Today it was 6:45, and that included skipping breakfast. 

Early on in the article, the author recounts a rough evening where after a long night at the office she comes home to discover that there isn’t enough milk left in the house and that come morning, her kids would wake wanting their milk and there would be none. Fatigued, and ready raise the white flag, she “[shuffles] into the living room, [crumples] into an exhausted heap on the floor next to a pile of toys no one had cleaned up” and cries. This morning as I was frenetically getting myself together (which involved grabbing the nearest work-reasonable top, one that I wouldn’t notice until it was too late, had dried Lucy snot on one shoulder), I passed by the living room and was also confronted with a scattering of toys that had not been picked up. That chore falls under my list of responsibilities, but last night I’d made a deliberate choice not to pick up her toys because I needed to get a lasagna into the oven. And the reason it had to happen last night was because attempting to put it together this evening, baking it, and having it be ready for a 5:30/6 pm dinnertime would be impossible. So it had to happen last night. By the time Lucy was in bed, and the lasagna was bubbling in its Corningware, it was nearly 8:30. I had just a paltry thirty minutes left to speak to and hang with the man I call my husband before my eyelids would become too heavy to keep up. These days I turn to dust around 9 pm. 

Motherhood itself is tough stuff, but more than motherhood itself, it's the rattling motherhood does to your life. The secondary expense. All that stuff I got done on time, had organized, remembered - well, I can't seem to get a handle on it. Any of it, and it's rattled me because I've always been the one who has their shit together. There just isn’t enough time anymore.

I’m late to work on a regular basis, I haven’t exercised in god knows how long, I eat crap (breakfast this morning was chocolate chip cookies and a Sunkist – leftovers from Lucy’s party this past weekend I shoved in my bag on the way out the door), I forget stuff, and the house is constantly verging on disastrous. Here’s the good news. My daughter is healthy, happy, thriving, and loved immensely. My marriage is solid, and we have an understanding that while most days we can only muster a quick conversation and check-in, for now it’s about survival.

I know that so much of this, motherhood, parenting, life, is all about perspective. If I take a moment to pause and examine the details, the conclusions are a lot less dramatic. Late to work for me means not getting there with time to exhale before running down to do bag duty. Am I technically late? No. But to me, it feels like late when I don’t have some leisurely time. While I occasionally replace some meals with total shit-bag food, not every meal I shovel into my pie-hole is without merit. In fact, tonight’s lasagna is made with grass-fed beef, and plenty of vegetables. And the disastrous house is not tragically disastrous, it’s just lived in and not always picked up with everything in its place. What can I say? My standards are my own prison.

Too many plates are spinning, there are far too many balls in the air. Something has to give. And not only does something have to take a backseat, but I need to pick a starting point. A place from which to reassess – find and hit the proverbial reset button. Instead I’m faced with what feels like my own personal Everest of a mission, and I have no idea where to begin. If I could just get 48 hours - 48 hours that included an acupuncture session, a full-body massage, and time to regroup, that would be perfect. Instead I’m Clarice Starling in Buffalo Bill’s basement, in the dark, pointing my gun at nothing in particular. 

Ramblings

Maybe it’s the autumnal air, the trees beginning to turn their brilliant colors, the sky deepening it’s hue before a long winter’s sleep. Something has affixed itself to me; something that has no name but boards alongside restlessness and boredom. Let me interject and state that this has nothing to do with Lucille. On the Motherhood front, I feel a sense of gratifying fulfillment. Motherhood has simultaneously shattered and healed me. By day’s end I am exhausted, but even in a collapsed state on the big brown couch, every evening, my heart swells when I turn the monitor on and see my daughter’s rumpled body in the corner of her crib, her doughy hand clutching her lovey.

This thing, this some other, has more to do with the rest of my life. I’m 36. Am I too young to be facing a mid-life crisis? Is that what this is? I have been teaching for nearly eleven years, a decade split between two schools I love. For the majority of my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to teach exactly what I want and how I want, and I have been relatively successful at it. But lately the claws of a greener pasture seem to have fastened themselves to the hours of my days. Daydreaming has turned into thoughts of a full-fledged photography business, or transforming into a married with a kid version of Carrie Bradshaw. My usual state of acceptance and general happiness has been stained with a narrative of I want more.

Can we really have it all?

Pause.

My god, can we have it all and more?

My immediate response to this nebulous fog is to organize. The need for a clean slate, for shirts hanging in the closet to be filed side-by-side according to color and sleeve length, makes me happy. Begin a cleanse and whole body makeover.  And I know why. It’s because I can control these. I can make changes, I can reorganize my desk drawers, I can clean out the pantry – I can be in complete control of the outcome. I’m not grasping at gossamer trails of smoke in the air that don’t exist. Shirts on a hanger are concrete items that can be manipulated. The daydreaming, the fettered state of metacognition – it’s all so elusive.

The reality, though, of this more, is not really real. At least it appears to be temporary; it comes in waves. While I was feeling as previously described for several days, I then sank my teeth into planning one of my new courses, and guess what? I felt revived. The color came back into my cheeks, and the wan sense of boredom retreated. Clearly this just bolsters the case for not making a rash decision. Good thing I didn’t resign and go spend umpteen-thousand dollars on lenses and a new camera body. Good thing my family still has health insurance.

Good thing.

The Athlete: Nature or Nurture?

A few nights ago coverage of the Ironman came up as a listing on the cable guide. I immediately clicked on it and settled down to watch. Big Red was out of the room and when he came back in he basically took one look at the TV, did something like roll his eyes and then smile a knowing smile at me. And then busted out his laptop.

I have had a longstanding fascination with triathlons, especially the Ironman World Championship held each year in Kailua-Kona, Hawai'i. It is a freakishly mutant event in which one swims for 2.4 miles in the open sea, bikes for 112 miles and then runs a full length marathon. It is a 140.6 mile endurance test unlike any other, and anyone who finishes rightly deserves the title of "Ironman."  Some years ago I competed in sprint triathlons. The sprint is the neo-natal version of the Ironman. A paltry half mile swim, 12 miles on a bike and a 5k run. I did it twice, writing about my 2008 experience here and here.

But the seduction of the Ironman still lingers tacitly tucked away, only to surface every now and again.

And I don't know why.  I've tried to explain it, mostly to Big Red who finds the whole concept of competing against yourself ludicrous, let alone paying an entrance fee to be allowed to swim, or bike, or run, or all three. I try to illuminate the notion of a self-imposed challenge, the deep-seated quest to see how far you can push yourself - the chance to be your own personal hero. He still thinks I'm crazy. Then I have to remind myself that not everyone thinks like an athlete. That is my history, so it is the perspective from which I sit. Big Red does not share the same experience. Which begs the question: is the mindset of an athlete innate or learned? Would I still be the same me with the same physical drive had I not participated in sports?

An article in Psychology Today suggests that motivation is the key factor in the success of an athlete. Motivation is "the only contributor to sports performance of which you have control." It is that fire that carries an athlete through the "grind" when things get tough. But how do you get motivation? It's not clear at all. The only thing I can say for sure is - I've got it. Whatever that thing is a person requires to push themselves - it's in my skin. Granted, the capacity of drive I had in high school to be the best of the best has since waned and I've moved into a more comfortable post-competitive athletic space. Being that kind of driven, that's a shit-ton of pressure to put on yourself, and it is exhausting. Exhilarating, but definitely exhausting.

Yet the athlete in me remains. She hasn't gone anywhere, she's just a more balanced adult version. I have mollified and appeased her with occasional races, a marathon in 1999, the two sprint triathlons, a few 5ks and a 10k, and a couple of stints as part of a marathon relay team. But every now and again she surfaces, whispering ever so faintly I want to do an Ironman someday, to which I reply:

That's the dream. The goal. The ultimate personal challenge. I don't know when, or how, but I'll get there.
Someday. Definitely.