Holiday Shrubs and Pampered Duodenums

I've been really frustrated of "late," if you couldn't tell from my pilot post.  Particularly when I'm tired and required to put out more than I have, I stop and all of my failings and shortcomings wash over me with the blunt trauma force of an avalanche of boulders.

It's been a difficult 10 years.  My marriage and the birth of my children notwithstanding, I sit and wonder sometimes paralyzed by that dull ache of regret and futility rooted in the pit of my stomach.

It could be the ulcer in my duodenum.

Duodenum.  Duodenum.  That word just doesn't get enough mileage.  Seriously overlooked body part.

But yesterday, while dealing with a bunch of final deadlines, I resolved to go with my family and get a Christmas Tree.  My girls bundled like two little pink and grey Michelin babies waddled around the small, wet, cold makeshift tree lot.  Although I have my own intuition about the trees, I automatically acquiesce to my husband because he's from Maine.  Enough said.

Finally, however, my impulse gets the best of me and I spot The Tree.  It's tall and although it's not completely opened up, I can tell it will be pretty damn plush.  My husband worries it will be too tall- I inhale- maybe I'm wrong and The Tree is not The Tree at all, but merely A Tree.  A very tall tree but certainly missing the definitiveness of a definite article that makes The Tree.

No, This Is The Tree.  Some background:  growing up, we always had this little five freaking foot artificial tree, which seemed big and fine until I approached, oh I don't know, the age of eight.  Suddenly I realized the tree was more shrub than arbor, which added to the growing holiday disenfranchisement of a little girl approaching her tween years.  From this point, I always wanted that mythological tree, the big ceiling-scraper with a ton of twinkling lights, garland, covered in ornaments, and at the base, a huge nativity metropolis, complete with holy scene, church, post office, carolers, angels, school house, animals, cars, fences, and the whole lot encircled by an automated train running on a track.

Back to The Tree.  We get it and lug it home.  My husband hauls out the ornaments.  I unwrap every ornament, each one with its own history from my husband's past, my past, or our collective (but relatively short) past.  The old ones are...old, and we place these in a position of earned security and respect at the top of the tree; safe from curious little fingers, we position the remnants of our childhoods just out of our children's reach.  For now.  And anyway, that damn metal dragon my husband has from I think 1983 is an incisive weapon rivaling any Chinese star.

The room smells of pine.  It is an amazingly simple pleasure.  And I realize there is something that I really need to say:  I am so thankful.  These past months for my husband and I have been a struggle; this will continue for another year or so.  But I look at this tree that stretches up to the ceiling and I remember that I am lucky enough to have this tree in my house, that we have a house to put the tree in, that we can pay for the house (some days, it's tight), that we have food to eat, that we are relatively healthy.  I have the luxury of having First World Problems, which are mostly just a big pain in the ass.

I shall now go pamper my duodenum.

(M)Otherhood Part the First

I can’t stop thinking about the alter egos of Butters and his little friend.  Hell, I can’t even think of Butters’ alter ego, I can only think of his friend’s:  General Disarray.  Appropriate somehow that I can’t think of this wee little minor character’s ACTUAL name, only the pretend name of a pretend person. 

Which leads me to how I’ve been feeling over the past couple of years.  Or maybe longer. General Disarray.  I can’t tell.   But right now, I’m sitting at my makeshift desk in our disaster of a makeshift office, with piles of paper and stuff that I try try TRY to keep organized, and I just can’t seem to organize it faster than it comes in and demands a fucking space in my life.  I’m in a funk (ha- almost typed “fuck”) because I just got a “Dear John” letter from a theatre company with which I am/ was/ will have been affiliated.  Deep down, I don’t feel that it’s unjustified, but it feels like a break up nonetheless.  It is a place where I generally feel wanted and appreciated, but I haven’t had the opportunity to frequent of late because I have two small children.  Still, I can’t help but feel that maybe- maybe- my talent wandered off somewhere, lost, looking for a more worthy vessel. Or, maybe I’m just not talented enough; surely someone who was talented enough could FIGURE OUT HOW TO JUGGLE IT ALL.  At least that’s the perception, although I can’t tell whose- mine or everyone else’s.  At any rate, I’m sure you know that old saying, “Perception is reality.”  So someone around here is perceiving that I’m disposable.

I started thinking about attempting a blog earlier in the year.  I was in a graduate English class studying Shakespeare trying oh so desperately to figure out some pattern or similarity between The Merchant of Venice and Othello – and what the HELL was I going to write about – blah, blah, blah, “Othello is the ‘other’” blah, blah, blah “Shylock is the ‘other’" blah, blah, blah – and then I realized something:  there are no mothers in these plays.  Alive ones, that is.  It’s as if in Shakespeare’s world, these women squeezed out their offspring and dropped dead.  Admittedly, that was a very likely scenario at that time, so maybe.  

But that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.  As if the Mommy Track runs right off a cliff into some God-forsaken clusterfuck no-man’s-land called Youdontbelongmuchofanywhereland (geographically located anywhere west of Harlem Avenue- Chitown peeps, you know of what I speak.)

So you’re dead.  Or at least perceived to be.

And it came to me, courtesy of the Moor and the Jew:  Motherhood is simply another “otherhood.”