the long bonds

A boy’s mama.

It’s a special sort of painful joy, raising a boy. A boy who will grow and one day be, in a lot of almost inevitable ways, forced to see and exist in this world through the eyes of a man.  

Having just finished Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, not for the first time, but this time, after experiencing something different and huge, I now have strong new thoughts on boy-rearing.

Around the middle of the book, I took note of this: “because here we are dealing with the pit and prune-juice of poor beat life itself in the god-awful streets of man…”

Moriarty and Paradise both fight restless souls in one of the same ways; they move. There is something of the two, something tender and festering, that won’t let them settle in any one place with any one person.  

Whereas Dean almost comically but utterly tragically refuses to commit by way of committing his desperate and sour heart all over the place, Sal genuinely and mistakenly thinks he yearns to. Still, they are but two sides of the same coin – American boys saddled with itchy souls too heavy to do things conventionally. They are beautiful, compassionate, feeling thinkers who cannot help but wade thickly in the ways of hard-fought enlightenment and forever impending self-destruction. They are ruthless in living. They are savagely beat.

I want nothing more than for Bastian Wilde to grow into a man who is comfortable and dedicated to loving. A man who is comfortable caring for himself and his loved ones, a man who plants roots. I believe that there is nothing more important in this life than investing ourselves in what and whom we love, and that this is the only path to fulfillment.

But I also aim to raise a man who fights for life and drinks it all in, in this one and only ferocious gulp we are given, because when it’s gone, all is gone. It is a forever goneness that feeds and maintains the roots of our children and their children and theirs. It is an inevitable coming for all, and indeed, all that will be left is the consequence of our lives’ choices.

I intend to raise my boy into a man who chooses to live fully and robustly, and who, like his father, eventually chooses wisely.

A Recap…?

The thing about having a blog that you don’t want to give up but that you can’t seem to get yourself to prioritize updating regularly, is that when you do sit down to post, you want to write about EVERYTHING, and you can’t very well write about EVERYTHING without rambling and eventually losing steam, so you get kinda stuck.

Hence, this. What’s on my (our) mind(s):

• Finding an apartment in Madison that we can see ourselves enjoying for at least a few years because we MOVE there in, oh, three months!

• Choosing a method of transportation for all of our shit; shooting for something that doesn’t cost a fortune or require Adam to drive alone and in a hurry (AKA, U haul)

• Taking care of my damn self, ie: I’ve been in this weird funk where I’m craving crap and alcohol, which is strange because I had been eating so well and thinking that I’d come to the realization that alcohol is really wasteful and, quite literally, exhausting

• Giving the iPhone the real and true boot because I genuinely can’t figure out if it enriches my life or if it’s a total mind-zapping waste of time and energy, and the very idea that I’m torn between these two incredible extremes is mildly terrifying

• Biding time, man

Tensions have been a tad high around here the last couple of days. Adam is working so very hard to coordinate all the wants and needs for our move and subsequent lives in Madison, and I am seeing how difficult a task it is written all over his beautiful, tired face.

We’re all so excited – even Bastian asks us daily if we can go to “Medicine” – but this is one helluva limbo, and has been for a couple years now, so I think we’re all just ready to get where we’re going and be there a good, long while.

I think what I’m most looking forward to is meeting new friends. Friends from all over the place, different kinds of people, who I can cook for and just be comfortable with. It’s time for those good things.

I would also like to hit another stride with this piece I’m working on so that I can do something with it. I’m ready to publish again. I’ve only published once, and if it doesn’t happen again soon, I’m calling fluke.

So, that’s where I’m (we’re) at as of late. Oh, and we’re also at the park, swinging and stuff. A lot.   

A commitment.

Work is hard for me. I get that work isn’t easy for anybody, that’s what makes it work, but man, even the idea of it makes me cringe. For me to perform it, like most other adult humans on the planet, work has to be disguised as something I really love, something that fulfills me from top to bottom. I do realize that I work every single day at being a good, solid mama, and that’s some 24/7 hard work that I do happily and willingly. But I believe – somewhere deep down – that it’s my duty to find fulfilling work outside of motherhood; for me, for Bastian, for my marriage, and for the other relationships in my life on which I hope to once again focus.

This is why, the other night, I was so surprised to read an article that opened my eyes to the possibility of pursuing and enjoying another kind of work.

At this time in my life, I feel like I have to be really careful differentiating between my heart and my impulses. I’ve always had a great deal of passion and very little resolve. Like, zero follow-through. For a long time, I had that syndrome of the young and the restless, where I truly believed that I could do anything, that it was just a matter of me deciding what that was. Now that I’m a mother and a wife, a single unit of three whose decisions affect the lot of us, those serious, time consuming, money costing decisions have to be just that: decisions. Not whims, not experiments, not phases – decisions – which also require a firm commitment. Eek.

Enter adulthood; upon which, my hopes and dreams have gradually yet designedly unraveled and almost entirely shifted, and I’ve finally come to realize that I’m just lacking intention. That it’s difficult for me to solve problems, such as the processes required to become solid at anything, and that I don’t really value work. That I’ve grown astoundingly fearful of commitment. That I’ve become startlingly settled.

But enough about that.

The other night, which I previously spoke of, I read an article on a specific birth doula in Brooklyn, and BOOM, I got that funny feeling. A funny feeling that I’m accustomed to but that this time, somehow, felt pretty tangible. Working as a birth doula aligns with my passions and my pyschic goals, while also presenting powerful challenges that I’d love nothing more than to meet and overcome. It also, by definition, has the potential to provide for my continuous, ferocious, internal urge to serve.

The thing is, it’s hard work. It will take money, time, and initiative to become certified. The certification process and subsequent work will require a lot of me, of my time, energy, and undying commitment.

I’m fearful of all of this, which is to say that I’m fearful of falling out of love with the work. Here, already. Just on the precipice of making the decision to go for it.

I also have a mightily supportive and trusting husband who happens to be (it’s no coincidence) the most intentional, hard working, committed person most people will ever meet. Hmph.

So here I lie, in the early stages of the process of committing myself to a kind of work, which is in itself already a commitment. And I’m fucking scared.

A 63rd Birthday.

Last weekend, we celebrated my mother’s, Bastian’s meemaw’s, birthday. We took the bus out to our old ‘hood, North Portland, to a truly noteworthy little brunch place called sweedeedee. Bastian was still fighting the tale end of one of the many winter ailments he’s suffered this year – the worst of the lot actually – but it was still a good day.

I don’t know that I ever shared on here that Adam didn’t get accepted into any graduate programs last year. It was a crushing blow to us all. I was still selling my soul at my empty, empty corporate job, and Adam was doing everything he could to find something, anything, to get me out of it. Then, when what felt at the time like our only option was taken away from us, we actually dusted ourselves off pretty quickly. We made things work. Adam made things work. He went about the painstaking process of starting over. And he killed it.

This month, he’s received a flury of acceptances to graduate Sociology programs all over the country, including the absolute best. Out of the eight he applied to, he was accepted to six. This summer, we will either be moving our family from Portland, OR to Bloomington, IN, Madison, WI, or Providence, RI. The choice is impossible, so I’m glad I’m not the one making it.

This post started out as a recap of my mother’s birthday, so to tie it all up: my mother is an enormous part of Bastian’s life. He delights in her and she in him, in a way for which I don’t quite have words. Though we live in a culture where families are split all across the globe, and this has become the norm, almost the expected; when you have children, things change. It would simply be devastating to separate meemaw and Bastian.

So come summer, she will be joining us wherever we end up.

Because I tend to keep to myself, my mother is my help with Bastian. I rely on her probably a bit more heavily than I should. She watches Bastian every Thursday so I can write for a few hours – if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be writing. She helps this anxious, sensitive, introverted, weirdo mama feel a little less off, a little more productive. I wouldn’t be the mother I am without her.

A lot of blood-and-guts thoughts go hand-in-hand with this decision. For instance, I was away from my mother for one year, my freshman year of college at the University of Oregon. After that first year, I missed Portland something fierce and have been here ever since. This isn’t to say I haven’t been on my own. I’ve lived on my own and supported myself financially since then. And our relationship has almost always been a tumultuous one that has most certainly suffered its fair share of setbacks.

So, I sometimes do think about what kind of woman I’d be without the intense air of my mother in my everyday. What I would have done with freedom from that. I haven’t yet answered these questions, and probably never will. What I do know is that there is such an innate connection between mother and daughter that some of us go about unraveling it pretty early on, or some of us really only know how to cope with it from afar, on certain occasions and holidays, over the phone. My relationship with my mother is and almost always has been an everyday one. One that still has a long ways to go.

My mother’s relationship with my son is beautiful and crucial and not anything I’m willing to compromise, especially not with cavities of time in between when they can see each other next – not now anyway. Not yet. Not when he’s so young and so desperately in love with his own enamored, everyday world of three.

Happy birthday, meemaw.

A depressive.

I was my happiest when I was pregnant. Then, I was my happiest after I’d had him and was working Mon-Fri 8-4, pumping breast milk in an empty office three times a day, and writing in this blog about how happy I was, thinking constantly about how much I just wanted to stay home with him. I think I was writing honestly. It felt pretty honest at the time. But I was in a dream world where I was constantly reflecting on how it felt and what it meant to be a mother. Now I’m actually living it 24 hours a day, and that makes it different. For whatever reason, a lack of distance perhaps, it also makes it more difficult to reflect.

Now, I am finally back to my old ways of sometimes finding it difficult to get out of bed. Only now, I have this remarkable little human to snap my ass out of it most of the time.

It’s truly hard for someone like me to have to wake up, get out of bed, and get on with a day unless I absolutely have to get up and get on with a day – like, unless something with high, high stakes is hanging in the balance, such as a job or a flight or something. Like I ever fly anywhere; case in point.

This pisses Bastian off to no end, only now, he’s sort of adjusting. He’ll lie there sort of patiently and ask for a banana, then maybe doze off again. Hallelujah. Then he’ll nurse, which really can’t be offering much sustenance or magical sleep potion power as it once did. Then, he starts demanding that I get up. Literally. “Get UP. Get out of that bed, mama!”

When he starts tugging on me, that’s usually when I sluggishly oblige. I’m such an asshole.

So, naturally, the questions are: does this make me a lousy mother? Sometimes it feels like it. Does this make me a hopeless depressive? Well, there was a time in my life when I would have been more comfortable giving into my stupid feelings and my past and all that mumbo jumbo and saying, yes, I have strong depressive tendencies. But now, I am a mother. Now, I have a tiny human who depends on me to be a whole person. I’ve lost the opportunity to sink and wallow in my million and one feelings and allow myself the luxury of feeling all black and blue and tired all the time. But I can’t keep all of my mortal secrets from him – he will probably always know that I am not much of a morning person, unless I have to be, and that it takes me far more time than daddy to get out of pajamas. Oh, and that I have an unfortunate, nasty temper. He may even be lucky and human enough to inherit some of these awesome traits.

The thing is, as it so gracefully turns out, having someone of my flesh and blood and ultimate responsibility, who is relatively helpless and entirely dependent on me, suits me. I may have started having those first moments of morning again where my thoughts race a little for something worth functioning for – something worth life participation – but for the rest of my days, if all goes as planned, I will have that something, that someone. And the way my very nature seems to see it, when I became a mother, I ran out of stupid excuses to not be happy.

Sadly, I’ll probably always be flawed. I’ll probably always have more lazy mornings than not, and I’ll probably always think way too much about how I feel about shit. Oh, and I’ll probably always only be good for two things – writing (what I want to write) and being a mama. But at least it’s two things now and not just one, and at least the very core of me chose these things with great purpose. I’m proud that my mind, body and soul responded to motherhood in this way, and I feel so very fortunate that it happened like that. I was recently reading a vague and uncomplicated piece about Postpartum Depression, and all I could think the whole was how I can’t imagine experiencing anything resembling a state of depression upon the arrival of a newborn. Sure, I was weepy those first super hard weeks, and sure I went through a state of grieving the loss of what had become precious, amazing pregnant time with my partner, but I was also a new mama. All that weepy bullshit was constantly being overpowered by the fact that I had brand new tiny Bastian Wilde. This may sound totally selfish and irritating and not at all sensitive to this awful thing that so many women go through, and mostly silently, but it’s my honest response. It’s just true – I’m stoked that my entire being immediately agreed with becoming a mother and I’m really proud of my chemistry for that because I guess I’m just not all that used to it responding the healthy way.

I guess I felt the need to sort of apologize just then to cover my ass, but I do know in my heart that if another baby is in the cards for us, my future experience won’t necessarily follow suit. So, I suppose I feel that as a woman and a mother, it is my right to bathe in the glory of an enlightening, invigorating, inspiring postpartum experience and sort of also choose to forget that my nether regions felt like freshly ground hamburger meat for months. The end.

A 24th Month//A 2nd Year

Happy birthday, my little wonder. You are such a bright spot on our lives. Your arrival on this planet almost instantly made me a stronger, braver, fuller, more purposeful person, and I will never forget the powerful tide of perfect, comfortable change your new life brought my 26 year old life when you made me a mother. This second year has been one of so much discovery and growth. You are a walking, talking, rationalizing, demanding, energizing, exhausting little tyrant, and we love you so very much, little boy. I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life than I am of your father and I and you. We’ve all done a lot these past two years. It hasn’t been easy, not in the least, but it’s been happy and it’s been fruitful. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Here’s to another year of all that and more. Hey, You – You’re Two!

In lieu of a big old party, like we toiled away at last year, Adam and I decided to celebrate this second year of Bastian’s life just the four of us: mama, daddy, Bastian Wilde, and meemaw (our word for grandma around here.) In 2012, we stuck to ourselves even more than 2011, the year the boy child was born, and it felt a little silly to get people we’ve lost touch with together to celebrate our little boy, who they barely know.

(It’s funny though, just as Bastian was winding the last corner of babyhood, he really began to open up socially and start to show interest in connecting with others, so it’s become my goal to socialize him more now that he’s ready, but at his pace. Sometimes this feels like quite the intimidating undertaking, but most of the time it feels like I am fully prepared to embrace this part of the parenting process and trust that I will always do what’s best for him.)

So, 2013 is the year of seeking out other parents who we enjoy spending time with, with children close to Bastian’s age, who he likes spending time with. This must be possible – right? I mean, people look to be doing it all the time. Sometimes I marvel at how weird we can be, this little family of ours.

Anyhow, on the 9^th, Bastian’s actual birthday, he woke up to a sea of red, green and yellow balloons strewn all across the living room, which he LOVED. He seriously played for them for at least a half hour, pretending to blow them up and throwing them “high up in the sky” (his words.) Then meemaw came and as they played with the balloons some more, I attempted to make buttermilk pancakes, completely disregarding the fact that I am perfectly and consistently terrible at making pancakes. So, that took far too long and resulted in some so-so bunny shaped pancakes for Bastian, and some ridiculous burnt scraps for meemaw and I. Kind of a sad start to a birthday if you ask me, but he seemed unphased, so we moved on.

Meemaw left for work and we went about our day, scooted (literally) down to the Dollar Store for some “peep-peeps” (birds) to decorate his cake, and spent way too long there because he was in an awesome mood and totally loved it. We left with lots of dinos because they had some really great ones and no peep-peeps. Oh, and a “happy face” helium balloon for good measure. Plans for the cake changed, but Bastian and I think it was all for the better.

When daddy got home, I set to work on the cake and stovetop mac and cheese, his favorite (snore.) I went with a southern hummingbird cake and, at the very last minute, decided to tint the buttercream a pale grass green with a little spinach juice – it worked out beautifully and I highly recommend natural dyes. You can’s taste anything other than your delicious frosting, I swear. I also dusted the top with some chopped pecans and decorated with the dinosaurs. It made me so happy to see his little face when that little green dino cake came out. First off, the kid LOVES candles, but he was also just so stoked on the colors and that it was all for him. Such a proud mama moment.

After cake, we opened some presents, which he totally gets the concept of now since it was just Christmas, and rushed him off to bed since he’d bypassed his usual afternoon nap. It was a really sweet, relatively low-key day, with nearly every minute of it spent helping him realize that this day, every year, is his special day. No matter what.

Just as daddy was taking him into bed, he said ever so softly in his tiny little Bastian night-night voice, “thank you for the balloons, mama.” Oh no way, I didn’t shed a single tear (yeah, right.)

I think we made the right choice this year. Bastian’s birthday was all about him and not about us or anyone else. He got to experience his normal life with just a little extra love and attention, complete with presents and cake and two little rainbow candles just for him and his two years, and I think that’s just how he wanted it. On Friday, we headed to a very generous friend’s cabin – and the snow – in Sisters, OR. More on that birthday weekend adventure later.

A moment to clean, bake + write.

Photo by Shayda Rohani - Hodgdon for General Merriment

How hilarious and kinda sad is that title? These days, when I sit down to write, I get pretty giddy. My heart inflates a little and lets out a small sigh as my fingers hit that keyboard and remember where to go. To do. To create. Or, as Bastian would say, to make.

From where I sit, the living room window is open about a foot, so I can hear the first rain in a long while – what felt like forever – smacking the pavement of our courtyard. I can smell chocolate malt cupcakes cooling in the kitchen. And the apartment… is quiet.

Bastian is visiting meemaw today, which can almost always account for why I am visiting you. I felt a little off handing him over on this first rainy day, but after walking the thirteen or so blocks to library story time in the pouring rain, with a toddler who was mucho peeved to be staring out his stroller through a rain guard, and walking back under the very same circumstances, I was ready to clean, bake and maybe even write – all by my lonesome. The best thing about this is that I can always count on the fact that Bastian and my mother will have a beautiful, precious day together. And that, my friends, is the truest gift a parent could ask for.

Which brings me to what’s been on my mind. As we tumble into the latter months of the year, so very very close to Bastian’s second on this planet, the times, they are a’changin.’

To be real honest, Bastian has never been a sensitive boy. He knows just what he wants, when he wants it, and he knows just when he wants to go go go and when he wants to love love love. He kisses and hugs and says “olive you” before bed. On that rare night, when he lies down with his eyes open, he gives constant hugs and face strokes and kisses as he drifts off. He hugs meemaw a lot when he first sees her.

Other than that, the kid prefers to party. He pinches with great purpose, like he has all the power in the world at that moment – you can see the thrill of calculated experimentation in his eyes. He bites daddy’s shoulder like he did when he was first sprouting teeth. He swipes at me sometimes when I’m too close for him at that very moment. I’m sure this all sounds totally crazy to some of you, or maybe you know just what I’m talking about, but either way, it’s Bastian – through and through.

He’s yet to attach to a favorite blanket or stuffed toy, and he never had a pacifier, so he doesn’t really nurture anything, nor does he know what that feels like yet. The other night, I was pretending to cover his Incan doll, Cocha, with a blanket and soothe him to sleep. All Bastian wanted to do was yank him from the covers and throw him across the room. Everyone always seems to talk about their gentle, sensitive toddlers. Well, not this toddler, no way.

The funny side of this is that I can guarantee you I was the very same way as a tot, which has had me thinking a lot about nature vs. nurture. I’ve thought about this, to some degree, since Bastian was born, but now that he’s sprouting into his own little person so rapidly – now that words and sentences and thoughts and feelings may as well be written all over his body and are definitely coming out of his mouth – I think a lot about how much of Bastian we, his parents, have control over. Because right now, it’s feeling like very little.

Our Bastian is wild – not hyper, per se – just constantly curious and experimental. He’s incredibly verbal, speaking in small sentences now, and loves being read to. His current favorites are Madeline and Eloise Takes a Bawth, which is handy because they’re mama’s favorites too (funny how that works out.) He spends more time in my lap than ever during story time at the library – when he’s feeling vulnerable – when we read his something he’s interested in, and when he gets his hour of TV (Sesame Street, Yo Gabba Gabba, or Curious George.) So, when he’s caught off guard, essentially. Nothing scares him. He trucks it up ladders and flings down slides on his tummy, walks right into a group of big kids at the park and just stands there, checking them all out. I’m so proud of him, it takes my breath away on a daily basis, yet life with a toddler is hard. Some days, it grates on my nerves until the tiniest of things lifts my feet off the ground in panic. When you live day in and day out attached to a dynamic baby human who explodes at you at a moment’s notice, for whom you have to always be at the ready with distractions, activities, food, water, a clean diaper, etc., the world shrinks a little. Unless, of course, you yourself are a dynamic adult human who goes with her gut.

So, my most recent philosophy looks a little like the following…

If Bastian has spilled an entire carton of expensive hemp milk on the kitchen floor and made it to “time out” over three times in a day, we leave the house. No matter what. Boredom usually equates to trouble and if I don’t feel like I have the energy to bring the fun to our house, we find it elsewhere. This is why we’re most definitely investing in annual passes to OMSI and the Portland Children’s Museum, ASAP. Story time at the library is such a wonderful little blessing for us at the end of the week, but I’m really feeling like we need more structured activities all week long that do not also cost nearly $200 for just 10 weeks – like a lot of things I’ve researched.

Also, no matter how early he wakes up or how exhausted I feel, we must get dressed before 9am. The amount of newfound energy I feel just by getting Bastian out of his pajamas and into his clothes for the day is invaluable.

Lastly, I’m not a crafter, but I am a baker. I feel that Bastian should make something on most days, and since I can’t yet seem to muster the inspiration for crafts at this stage in our lives, we make healthy(ish) scones and muffins!

This is an obscenely long post that should probably be about two or three, but I guess I needed a receptacle to toss all of my “raising a toddler” thoughts into, for my own good and maybe someone else’s. This may very well be the most rewarding, electric time of my life, which also makes it the most difficult. I had a thought the other day that in not too long, Bastian will go to school and I’ll have some days back from him, and not too long after that, he’ll have more days at school and before I know it, my time will often be my own again. This was such a sad yet somehow comforting thought. I’ve been nagging at myself, picking away at the things I need to do and haven’t, the excuses that I continue to make on a daily basis to avoid all things that aren’t Bastian – and I’m finally coming to peace with the fact that what I do now is all I want or need to be doing. I will be present for other aspects of my life – eventually. But maybe not now, not yet. The here and now, for me, is baby raising.

I will say, however, that a night out with Adam where we can discuss anything and everything – the ins and outs of our time together and apart – is indispensable and such a revitalizing force. Right now this happens about once every couple months, but I’m looking to make it more often, duh. We’re both working our butts off right now in very different ways, and if we can’t tell each other about that, and validate one another in that, then we’re bound to run out of steam somewhere down the line. Marriage, I’m learning, is about soothing the imperfections and demanding, gently, the best of one another. It’s about kindness in the purest form – understanding – and it’s about unification. For some of us, ahem, these things don’t exactly come naturally. So practice makes perfect, I say.

Let me leave you with this: make those cupcakes. Holy malted paradise – they’re perfect.

A sunday in a field.

These aren’t our wedding photos.

Shot in the field behind a general store on Sauvie Island, this was a product shoot for an old friend of mine, Shayda Rohani-Hodgdon, who is starting an event styling company here in Portland, called General Merriment. Though taken by our good friend and wedding photog, Crystal Tillman, these photos are post wedding, which is really kind of a nice sentiment.

I spent the earlier part of the day trying to figure out what to wear. I wanted it to be clean and unobtrusive, yet lovely, since the shoot was about Shayda’s garlands. This mama’s wardrobe has taken a bit of a nosedive since I’ve begun to priortize the purge over the collection and currently can’t go pickin’ for a number of reasons, but I did happen to have two dainty old slips, which I layered and paired with a braided vintage belt and well worn Minnetonka moccasins. I think it turned out nicely.

Bastian played coy with Crystal’s camera, as he always does, but she still managed to capture some breathtaking moments, as she always does. These are just a few black and white shots of the family – I’ll share more once Shayda has had the opportunity to incorporate these into her forthcoming Etsy shop and site.

That sunday, I was grateful for friendship and how it brought our family to a little field dusted with gold and precious grasses, where the last winds of summer whispered through sweetly colored garlands, to capture a period. Some two months post wedding, here we are.

A homecoming.

The last time I stopped in here was, 1) too long ago, and 2) to write the heartsick words of a woman, a soon-to-be-bride, under great duress.

Today, I come to you with pressure quite possibly and finally on my side, and that dribbling little pissant depression is here too, desperately seeking, with both beady little seasick eyes and flaccid antennae, a rupture of sorts to worm its way out of my soul. Yes, that’s right: my depression is a kind breed of slop sucker – it wants out. I’m a roller coaster ride of a host.

Therefore, it is time, my friends; to write.

But now that I’ve started, (and oh, how good it feels), I’m kind of deciding that this post isn’t meant for its original intention. No, this is not a wedding post at all, but a greeting. A homecoming. A chance to begin again.

It’s true, I have a wedding to share, and so many months of my little one to recap, but I’ve missed this, and I want to talk about that for a minute. And since I run this ship, I’m going to do just that.

Since I left work to stay home with my now 19 month-old, I haven’t written but once or twice. I’ve had an entirely new career to adjust to, a tiny human to mold. Suffice it to say, I don’t multitask well. I think I’ve secretly always known this about myself, wincing a little each time I typed “excellent multitasker” (though I hope I didn’t put it that way) on a resume or babbled it out in an interview. I am a woman of focus. Supreme, indelible, irascible FOCUS. When I’ve got something on my mind, it rules all, and not always in a good way. And these past few months, I’ve had Bastian, our wunderkind baby mischief-maker, to fill up my center. So, he’s been my world. Over these past four months and some, Bastian has not only taught me that I have a one track mind, but also that in order for me to be a happy, full woman, and a dedicated, present and engaged wife, I cannot only be Bastian’s mama.

I need to be Bastian’s mama, and a writer.

Even when I was in my late teens and early twenties and not really writing at all, I still always had the nagging, depressive itch of a partial person. It may sound trite, but a writer has to write, just as a surgeon has to cut or a musician has to play. I guess that’s how one knows what one is supposed to do – you can’t quite live without it. You can breathe and walk and even smile, but you can’t live – not how you’re supposed to. The only time in my life where I was genuinely happy and not writing was while I was pregnant. Building a person from scratch trumps calling, I suppose.

Anyhow, The Long Bonds has to be a part of me. Just as I must plan an awesome activity for Bastian, cook a meal, and respire each day, I must also write. In these past few weeks, I have been incubating some promising ideas, but they certainly don’t do any good scratching haplessly at my gray matter. I’m tired of being really, really bloody irritated by my art. It’s time I let it do its thing.

All that being said, though my heart finally admitted to me that I was doing it quite a disservice, I can also say that I was being kind to myself. I was giving myself time to adjust, to feel my way through spending my days devoted to a growing boy – to learning my life as mama. I feel pretty confident that I will be a better writer having almost solely devoted this time to motherhood. It’s just that now is the time to both be and do.

I also want to say thank you for your patience if you have at all held on to the promise of me preserving The Long Bonds. And to thank you properly, I promise to again come back regularly, barring new offspring or otherworldly tasks of that goodly nature. But for now, I’m back.