Mortal Mom

In 2002, I started a blog called Mortal Mom. The original title was Divine Mother, Mortal Me, but that was too long, so I abbreviated to Mortal Mom. The Divine Mother half was about the creation aspect, creation being an act of the divine as far as I am concerned. And Mortal Me referred to the humbling world motherhood. In our society, motherhood serves to show you just how human you are, because whatever track you take, you will have those out there who tell you that you are doing it wrong. Often those people are your own children. The raising of little people is at best a thankless task and at worst is a forum for all the world to criticize you.  The blog was about maintaining a creative life while also working full-time and raising kids, who were five and eight at the time. I wanted the blog to be a conversation with other mothers who were going through similar issues of finding time to make art--and I did. But the blog was also a way for me to keep running tabs on myself and my progress with my creative goals. What did it mean to be an artist in the face of motherhood? Were there times when my art came before my kids? Could I do it all? Could I still be considered an artist if I wasn't doing any artwork at the time? What were the hallmarks of an imaginative life?

I changed platforms for the blog, so I don't have records of any of it before 2008. Some of 275 posts that I do have are fun to reread. I cringe at others. But it was my path. And the blog tells an important part of my story. This blog entry should be on my Mortal Mom blog, but as I have laid that to rest, I am telling the story here. My daughter just came home today after being in New York City for eight weeks. She was doing a film-acting intensive for six college credits with New York Film Academy. She is a changed girl. Can you imagine being let loose to do as you please in the greatest city in the world at the age of seventeen? I would have killed for that opportunity. It has shaped her and probably will continue to shape her for years to come. If that experience wasn't enough, her six classmates were from all over the world, representing all the continents except Antarctica. I hope someday she does a world tour next and gets to visit all her new friends.

But I do not want to tell Maren's story. I want to share my experience of being a mother and an artist. For the last eight weeks, Mark and I have experienced the empty nest. It has been glorious, and in expressing just how glorious it was, I get a twinge of guilt. Mothers are not supposed to be in ecstasy when their kids leave home. If you believe the media archetype of an empty-nester mom, she is sad and bored--not knowing what to do with herself. Sending care packages to her child and sealing off her room with velvet ropes until the lost sheep returns home on a break. Not so with me. Maybe it was because Maren was only leaving for eight weeks; my separation from my youngest child was only temporary. We were getting on one another's nerves before she left. Knowing it was temporary, I took full advantage of our time apart. I even turned her bedroom into a sewing room, temporary though it was.

Here is the list of things I accomplished in that time:
1. Redecorated the Living Room, with painted wall, new furniture, changed artwork and mantle scape.
2. Painted a 48x36 painting for the living room, my first finished painting in years.
3. Designed and printed a prototype of a poster that I am going to use as a fundraiser for an upcoming civic project.
4. Sewed 2 skirts, 2 pair of pants, a dress and a half (only half-way done with the second dress), and a shirt. The shirt and the pairs of pants were of my own design.
5. Started a blog and wrote over 50 blog entries.
6. Designed and planted my garden
7. Finished my quilt
8. Redid my website

It felt like I was on fire--able to accomplish anything. I finished old projects and started new ones. I tried explaining the freedom I felt to to my other mom friends.  I didn't have a million things on my mind. More than just freeing up my time, my kids' absence gave me the psychic space that helped me accomplish it all. When my kids are around, it is my job to keep tabs on them, answer their questions, make sure they get places on time. Even if they have their schedule under control, I still fret and check the time on my phone until they are out the door. The fretting isn't productive, but I can't stop myself. It is part of the mother code. Is the child dressed appropriately for the occasion, for the weather? I have to juggle everyone's schedule in my head. Figure out a dinner plan for all of us when two out of three people have evening plans.

It was the absence of all of that that freed me creatively. Maren is home now. I want to be excited about that. It is good to have her in our midst again. We have a new appreciation of one another born of separation. And as much as I value that, I don't want to lose my momentum for my projects and my creative gain. Can I find a place in my mothering that allows Maren to be responsible for herself? She already is responsible in so many ways. This is a girl who navigated all of the New York subway system on her own. I am sure she would love it if I backed off on the fretting and overarching control I have over the family schedule. The lesson of the day is letting go, for her sake and mine. These next few weeks will be a test for all of us, learning to live with each other again, and trying not to unlearn the lessons that distance provided. I am a Mortal Mom. I am sure to make more mistakes before that day when Maren really does leave us for good. But these last weeks have proven that I am also the Divine Mother, and she too must be honored.

This Arden Marriage

Arden has a reputation as a hippie commune and a nudist colony. I have yet to see a naked person, but have caught a glimpse of the occasional domesticated hippie. (You know who you are, George Brocklesby.) Regardless of the reality, folks love a good urban legend. They get a gleam in their eyes when you mention the romantic life of Ardenites. While I am not saying that fun tales of spirited marital exploits don’t exist in this small village, this is not one of them. This is the story of a real relationship in the face of life transitions.

Mark and I are coming up on our silver wedding anniversary later this summer. I would love to tell you the ways that moving to Arden has affected our marriage, but it is a little difficult. Scientists will tell you that you should really only introduce one variable into your experiment. We have had several variables at this time, not just a relocation. Right before we moved from Reinholds, both of our kids were still in school. We had family dinners, movie nights. We were going to our son's track meets, our daughter's plays. Jonah had his license, so we were just starting to be freed from the shackles of carting kids to and from activities. We had a house with three bathrooms including a double sink in the master bath. We had a family room as well as a living room, and we had a room dedicated to our home computer and my art supplies. 

Fast-forward to Arden. Our kids are both out of the house, at the moment. We are empty-nesters.  Even when Maren was here, she was in-and-out, driving on her own, skipping out on dinner. We are down a bathroom and two sinks. Not only do Mark and I share a bathroom sink, now, but so did our daughter, until recently. We have a catch-all room that serves as Jonah's room when he is here, which perhaps accounts for one-eighth of the time since we moved. We have a living room, but no family room, which means we have fewer avenues for escape. As I am typing out this blog entry, Mark is sitting across from me, working on his laptop. It looks like we are playing Battleship. That would never have happened before the move. 

Taking all those variables into consideration, I will tell you a little of the ways our marriage has changed since we moved to Arden. We are a lot more social. Even though we lost a lot of kids' activities, it seems we are always running to be with friends or do the various activities we do together and separately in the Ardens. We are together more, but that together time is spent with other people. Quality alone time is less than it has ever been--even with kids. We are less dependent on each other for emotional support. We have other people in our lives who support us. We don't always communicate the way we should simply because we don't have to. Most of our communication comes by way of the almighty iCalendar. Oh, you are going out with the guys tonight? We are in synch but out of touch. 

Last week I repaid the wife of couple who bought us tickets to a show. Mark repaid the husband. We didn't tell each other. The other couple didn't tell each other. It was only a fluke that we discovered the duplicate  payment. Those are the situations we can laugh off. Sometimes, it isn't so easy. When we fight, it is because we have lost our connection. We have been so busy bonding with the outer world that we forget to ground ourselves in what is the primary relationship of our lives. Time to add date night to the iCalendar. And walks. When the weather warms and it is light into the evening, we have a better chance of walking and talking, just the two of us. But even that doesn’t guarantee communication.

Now that both kids are out of the house, our dinners together feel eerily quiet. Being the more talkative one, I try to draw Mark out. How is it that he can be in deep and animated conversation with our friends the entire seven miles of a Sunday hike, but I have to force feed him subjects to discuss? Maybe we need one of those box of cards you pull out that have questions on them to start conversations. Or maybe we should try asking each other those 36 questions designed to make people fall in love. Ooh, la la. 

Those are for the times we want to be together. At other times, we feel as though we are on top of each other in this house. We purposely downsized. I hated cleaning all the house we had before. This house is manageable. We do have different sitting areas where we could sit separately doing our own thing, which is fine if our thing is silent. Having the television at the center of our open floor plan is a strange new distraction. In our old house, we only had one TV, and it was located in the basement level family room, away from it all. If Jonah had the boys over to play video games, we barely knew they were there (once we got them to turn down the volume and the bass). We could ignore them. It is hard to ignore the TV now. We have a sitting area in the bedroom that we go to if one of us or Maren is occupying the TV, but it does seem as though we are being banished. I'm not sure why. Our bedroom is the lightest, cheeriest room in the house.

It is a new rhythm for us, that is certain. We have had to adjust at other points in our marriage. When we had kids. When Mark changed jobs. When friends moved away. When I quit work to write full-time. When we got iPhones and joined Facebook. Oy! We will figure this out and get our equilibrium back. In spite of this glitch, we are the happiest we have ever been, and that is a big boon to our union. When we finally get the communication and togetherness piece in place, we will have a more balanced life than ever before. I think we are getting there. Our closest friends here are also folks who have been married for twenty-plus years. It has been a joy to witness other marriages covering the same leg of their journey and know we are not alone. We have been able to compare notes and laugh (cry?) about the potholes in the road. Shakespeare said it best "I have thrust myself into this maze,
Haply to wive and thrive as best I may." (The Taming of the Shrew 1.2.56-7)

Next question: How to celebrate our 25th Anniversary here in Arden. Perhaps matching tie-dye T-shirts are in order. 

Empty Nest

As of last week, Mark and I are empty nesters. Kind of. Last Sunday, we dropped off our seventeen-year-old daughter in New York City to begin a two-month intensive at the New York Film Academy. Can you imagine being seventeen and on your own in arguably the greatest city in the world? I am excited for her.
I am also excited for us. We were young parents. We had Jonah when I was twenty-five and Mark was twenty-six. I don't regret giving up the last half of my twenties to parenting. We were happily beyond the diaper stage when all of our friends were getting started. And now, we are enjoying a kidless respite at an age at which we can still have fun. Let the wild rumpus begin.
When we moved to Arden, we downsized, anticipating this point in our evolution, but the downsizing was a bit premature. At one point, while Mark was tiling the downstairs bathroom, we were down to one shower for four people. That phase lasted four months. Just as Jonah was moving out, Mark finished his project.
Jonah. The one who doesn't like change and didn't want to move out of our old house. We moved to Arden the same month he graduated so that he could finish high school in Pennsylvania. And he was going on to West Chester University in the fall. It seemed like a opportune time for all of us. But Jonah didn't take to Computer Science at West Chester or it didn't take to him. The jury is still out on that one. Regardless, he didn't go back for a second year. Which meant he was coming to live with us in an unfamiliar place with lots of trees. For some reason, Jonah professes a dislike for trees. We think he lived on the heaths of England in a former life. For a few months, he moped in his room which is not a proper bedroom, but a back space that becomes an extra TV/computer/beer storage room when he is gone. Then he got a part-time job as an outdoors activities coordinator at Arden's summer program. It was a temporary gig. He got to meet a lot of of new neighbors. Kids followed him around like the Pied Piper when we went to the pool or music events. Eventually though the gig ended, and he needed something more. His friend Zero called him with a job opportunity back "home" in Pennsylvania. The two of them planned to get an apartment together.
"Wait to see if the job is a good fit before you commit to an apartment," we said.
Jonah moved in temporarily with Mark's parents. Within months, the job fell through, and Zero moved down south. Mark's mom networked and quickly found Jonah a better job at a machine shop. There Jonah puts together elevator parts with a loquacious, older man whose life work it is to prove that all events in the Bible are factual. While his coworker babbles, Jonah invents imaginary worlds (the basis of a science fiction novel?) in his head. He recently moved a sofa and a desk into the upstairs suite of rooms he has taken over in his grandparents' house.
"He will never move out," his grandmother says, and I can't tell if she is happy or horrified.
I worry that Jonah is isolating himself from people his own age. In Arden there are so many more opportunities for social interaction. I want to bring him back here, but I also want him to find his own path. So for now, I have to be content with giving him unsolicited advice on the little bits of writing he shares with me. I need to keep the dialog open, so I tread carefully.
Maren is a different story. She has wanted to be a film actress all her life. She was working towards those goals, even graduating early so she could eventually get an agent and start auditioning for parts. That was the plan anyway. She is the polar opposite of her brother, and we worry that too much socializing is stunting her ability to follow through on her plans. She has a serious boyfriend. This relationship is at the heart of her stalled momentum. We encouraged her to go back to acting class, but didn't push. She was the one who came up with the idea to go to the New York Film Academy. It was a good plan, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it will force her to expand her world view beyond an embrace. That's the good news. The bad news is that she will come back to us in two months after having had the sweet taste of freedom and ownership of her own life. She will still be seventeen for another three months when she returns. Do we dispense with rules? How will we let go of all the freedoms we gained while our kids are gone?
And we have gained freedoms. We don't have to worry about being awakened when she comes in at a minute past her curfew which is two hours past our bedtime. I don't have to fear the constant interruptions when I am writing. When she is around, she is a flurry to the brain--always asking the most bothersome questions, the most frequent of which is "What are we having for dinner?" followed closely in frequency by "What can I eat for lunch?" Most of the times, our dinner menus are written on our chalkboard, so the first question is really laziness on her part.
Don't get me wrong. We love our kids. We want them to succeed. We want to help in that. But we also realize that becoming a full-fledged adult is uncomfortable work. They push boundaries. We push back--or give in depending on our level of fatigue. We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Might this be our chance at a new life, too? It isn't like we are trying to recapture the missing half of our twenties. We wouldn't go back there for all the magic beans in fairyland.  The wisdom of our years is a far greater prize. What can we do with our hard-earned savvy and new liberation? The possibilities seem endless. We can sleep with the bedroom door open. We can have the TV all to ourselves. Where to vacation or go on a moment's notice? And the suggestion that even casual acquaintances bring up to us that we can now have sex in any room of the house we want. (Seriously, this advantage has been offered up to us as the Holy Grail of Empty Nesting more times than you would imagine.)
This phase is just a snapshot of what is to come. Maren will return in May, and life with kids will begin again. She is talking about getting an apartment with the boyfriend sooner rather than later which makes us want to bang our foreheads on the kitchen table. Maybe Jonah has room in his suite. HA! Wouldn't Mark's parents love that? They became empty-nesters the first time at ages 42 and 45. I'm sure they didn't see this particular boomerang coming until it hit them in the faces.
The point is that life is not a straight line. It is a labyrinthine path that forces you to circle back and examine your choices from different perspectives. For the moment we are empty nesters with all that the label implies. You might want to call before you stop by.

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