Cosmic Joke

It’s all part of the cosmic joke, my therapist said via video conference. How is it I never knew this phrase until now? Cosmic joke. It’s the phrase I’ve been grasping for, a phrase I often reduce to a single unsatisfying word: Life. Which works. But not precisely. Cosmic joke, so much better. The right amount of irony.

Leaving newborn twin Desmond in the NICU should have been devastating. That is, I expected to be devastated bringing only one twin home. But three-year-old Zoe knocked over an I.V. stand which knocked shelves off the wall which took the blood pressure pump with it, and, our oldest was waiting to be picked up at choir practice. We basically left a wake of chaos and destruction as we fled the hospital that day. It was all part of the cosmic joke.

A few months ago, to offset our grief over our dearly beloved Mary, gone nearly a year, I booked a house at the Oregon Coast for the twins’ twelfth birthday. This would be the first birthday of theirs that Mary would miss. I determined that each kid could bring one friend, a real splurge for our family of six who lives on an income that pays the bills and not much more. My mother, back east, would fly out like she always does. We’d get through it together. We’d make the boys’ birthday extra special. I planned a perfectly reasonable grief distraction, and we got a pandemic. Good one, Life.

What can we do, but laugh it off? And by that, I mean, after a good long video cry with my friend who sent me her own good long video cry. We sobbed. We clicked a bunch of hearts. We felt better. This pandemic is forcing us to be creative about how we connect with one another. FaceTime. Zoom. Marco Polo. Googling Hangouts.

The pandemic style birthday plan I came up with for my sons wasn’t my idea. I got it from my friend Jill who got it from her cousin in Philly who organized a surprise car parade for her young twins’ birthday. Incredible, right? With the help of our Portland friends, we managed to make my boys’ twelfth birthday something very, very special. Thank you to our friend Gavin for this way cool video…

Surprise Car Parade, a Physically Distanced Birthday Party 

Happy car parades to all you spring babies out there.

Pandemically yours,

Shannon xo

 

The Unpaid Labor of Me

Let’s go back several weeks to when I began telling my family about my exciting New Year’s resolution/project: No More Cooking or Cleaning for Anyone But Me! The Take Care Of Myself Project! Reactions ranged from the teenaged half-lidded who-cares shrug, to the middle-aged deer-in-the-headlights-lest-I-blow-us-all-up, to the earnest cry of one of my ten-year-old twins.

T: Mom, no! How will we eat??

Me: Your father can cook.

T: He doesn’t do the dinners like you. He only makes certain things. Mom, you can’t! This isn’t fair! 

He was right, of course. 

But that’s what happens when you’re the youngest child. Shit falls away. Rules. Dinners. Curfews. Pretty soon, you’re raising yourself. That’s why youngest children are so chill. They’ve learned to let go of the small stuff and be content with the basics. Food, Shelter, Love? Good enough for me, thanks! Unlike those fussy oldest children, or singletons, whose every fart is celebrated with streamers, applause, and six posts to social media. It doesn’t set them up with the most realistic expectations in life. Who in the world will ever pay that much attention to us again?

Here’s an actual entry from Volume One, of seven, of The First Child series I kept when our oldest was born: Discovered left leg in the bathtub! Genius! (crying!!!)

We make a lot of mistakes on the first child which we try to correct on the second child, and maybe even a third, but, usually, by then we’ve given up. I mean, who has the time?  

It’s estimated that moms spend more than four hours a day toiling in what is referred to as The Second Shift, the work that comes after work, the endless, inescapable heap of domestic bullshit that goes with the business of running a family. (I see you, stay-at-home dads, but you’ll have to lead your own futile revolution just as we moms have been doing since the Stone Age, or at least the 1960s.) Apparently, moms do more Second Shift work than dads. I’m being funny when I use the word apparently – as if this is news, as if it’s not been thoroughly researched for years on end, as if to not bog you down with data (here, here, here, and here), so’s to bring it back to me, and my anecdotes.   

From the next room, I could feel the weight of my husband’s silence. Using my most reassuring voice, I called out to him.   

Me: I’ll still do everything else. School, doctors, food shopping, driving, playdates, birthdays, holidays, dentist appointments, travel, calendaring, medications, Costco. None of that will change.

Silence.

Me: I’m thinking of reviving my blog. Maybe even doing a vlog! Like the kids!   

More silence.

I went to the kitchen to see if he was wearing earbuds. He wasn’t. He stared at me, expressionless, from the sink.       

Me: Gosh. You don’t seem very enthusiastic or supportive about this project.

Anthony: Well… ah… yeah, no, I mean… (pause, snort), what can I say? 

Me: Congratulations?

Anthony: Pff! Right. 

He walked off laughing. A jittery laugh tinged with fear, with potential lunacy.  

Many women I admire, women with families and careers, women writers who value their private time, creativity, emotional well being, have said their lives were greatly improved once they gave up housekeeping. Everyone was happier, they said.      

Today is the first day of 2019, the day I’m supposed to refrain from cooking and cleaning for the hubs and the kids, also known as my five roommates. Some, or all, of my five roommates have been known to go without toothpaste for entire weekend, to use tissues or napkins in lieu of toilet paper, to step over dog vomit on the living room rug, to never sweep a floor, to place clean folded clothes in the dirty laundry rather than putting them away. I could go on.

As of today, I’ve already failed.

By eleven this morning, without even thinking about it, I made avocado toast for two, emptied and filled the dishwasher, organized the recycling, and replaced a roll of toilet paper.

The effort it would take for me to not do the things my five roommates hardly notice, or care about, say, picking a slimy black banana peel off of the floor and placing it four inches to the right, directly into the little compost bin, might not be worth the energy. It would require so much brain power, or Xanax that I don’t have, it’d be less stressful, and less drug dependent, for me to just keep doing the housework like I always do.

See the dilemma?  

Got any Xanax?

(Text) I followed the banana slime river from the center of the kitchen to its source.

 

  

      

 

  

when it snows in portland

People say, “C’mon, this is nothing! You grew up in Boston!” and I tell them, duh, I left Boston for a reason, the weather being one of them.

I hated the layers and layers it took for me to leave my home. I hated the icy “walk” to the T. I hated being crushed-in with commuter sardines. Freeze/Sweat, Freeze/Sweat on my way to work. On my way anywhere, really.

Our furnace broke for five consecutive winters in Portland. Plumes of breath in our living room. Hatted and gloved, shivering bitter. My body remembers. Then my in-laws gifted us with a brand new furnace and for the last two winters the glorious thing has run steady and true. Every time it kicks on, it’s a loud one too, a tiny burst of thanks warms my veins. Because without the right furnace, coat, shoes, whatever, cold is no fun. That’s why I buy fleece blankets for the homeless. That’s why sometimes I still shiver when it’s warm.

But, holy zamboni, do my children loooove snow. They love it so much they roll around in it. They red their cheeks and freeze their fingers off. They tumble into the house, scatter their wet clothes over heat vents, half-thaw themselves, and race back out to do it all over again. It’s flat out cray cray ba nay nay if you ask me. Me, sitting in the front window with my Uggs, a blanket, and three hoodies.

Our city has decorated itself not only with snowmen, women, and children, but with non binary snow persons, with snow bears, mermaids, and centaurs. There’s even a snow robot family out there somewhere. So in spite of the occasional winter storm and my all-the-time struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder, I do love it here. I love that my kids are growing up here.

A couple of days ago my three youngest children ventured out with a metal garden shovel and our one cheap plastic snow shovel (an under-rated yet highly useful purchase). They shoveled the stairs and walkways of neighbors. I said they shouldn’t charge any senior citizens and found out later they’d considered asking, “Are you a senior citizen?” but chose instead to just take the cash.

My youngest said, “There might have been one senior citizen, Mom.”

“How old ?”

“Um… like… 52.”

“Shawn is 54,” I said.

“Oh. Then the guy was maybe 57. Or 62.”

Due to weather and holidays, in the last two months the public school children of Portland have been in school thirteen days. Portland has no infrastructure for dealing with snow even though for the nearly sixteen years I’ve lived here weather has shut the city down every single winter.

Lately, I’ll have my kids write stories just so they can practice holding pencils and forming sentences. I have them practice math too, but my math skills are so poor the exercise always ends with my saying, “Are you sure? Please check your work again.” I’m bluffing. I have no idea what the answers might be. My twelve year old wrote a piece about shoveling with her brothers. I have her permission to post it. I wanted the essay to stand pure, but I had to correct a bit of grammar and reformat it slightly for clarity sake (and also because I’m me). But mostly, it’s as written…

Wednesday the 11th 2017
I woke up knowing there was no school because of the snow. It almost snowed a foot! Me and Teo and Desmond stepped outside. A cold breeze blew by. It felt good on my face. Teo decided that we should have a snowball fight. He threw a snowball at my face and the cold burned as I tried to get him back, but I missed. We wanted to earn some money. We decided to shovel people’s driveways for five dollars. We got the shovels and knocked on Michael and Eric’s door first. As we waited I could hear Desmond breathing really heavily. Michael opened the door, we asked if we could shovel a path. He said how much. We said five dollars. Michael said,”It’s a deal.” We got to work. I felt a hot burning in my body. It did not stop my from shoveling the heavy snow. After about ten minutes of working Michael came out and gave us five dollars. I took it from him and said thank you then gave the money to Teo because he had zip up pockets. We finished and knocked on the house next to Zachary’s old house. An older gentleman answered the door.
He said, “What do you want?”
Teo said, “Can we shovel your stairs?”
“How much?” he said immediately.
I said, “five dollars.”
He said really fast after that, “Do it.”
We got to it. He walked out like three minutes later and said, “Here.” He handed us five dollars then he said, “And here’s some snow” then he took some snow off the railing and threw it into Teo’s face. It felt really weird. Teo had to take off his gloves to get the snow that was falling into his shirt. We were just about done and the same man came out and said, “I will give you another five dollars if you shovel my neighbor over there, OK?” He gave me the money. It was in quarters. I put it in Desmond’s pocket because Teo had headed home for his break. One girl said, “Oh good, I don’t even have a shovel.” Teo came back fifteen minutes later and then we all took turns for a break and for shoveling. Business was over for that day.