food glorious food

The glass door slides open with my step and I move from cold to warm, Josie on my hip. Around the back of her scalp, her hair is a fuzzy blond tangle and I am too aware of her unkept look. This is my mom's thing, the hair, but I can't let go of it. Appearances.

Why should I care? I know I wash her hair, bath her, brush her teeth, read her the same story 438 times a day, sing to her, laugh at her two-year-old humor, hold her in the night when she wakes in terror. But, if I'm here then I must be failing, must not be good enough, must not be enough for my children.

The room is crowded, two-dozen people staring into any space that does not meet another's eyes. They sit on maroon vinyl chairs around formica tables wearing a singular expression. L.L. Cool J is talking to Jenny Jones on the T.V., but nobody looks at them either. Straight down, or straight ahead or straight through the faded avacado walls.

They are tight lips, streched thin and pulled down. They are weary faces, eyes blank with stress, eyes that hit the floor quickly, instantly, when they see me looking. A whole room full of people who'd rather be any where but here, who can't look.

I don't have to see their faces though, I'm wearing them.

They are a staggering statistic, a barely measurable percentage of the 200,000 Oregonians who fill their tables with food from an emergency box every month. TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. Every month.

What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with our society? We dump bazillions into fueling hatred and building bombs to drop on children guilty of praying to a different god, when 200,000 people in this one state, just one among 50, can't collect enough quarters for dinner. What the fuck?

You can recognize the regulars, they are tired but they don't care and their faces tell it They aren't humiliated by sitting in line for hours to get food stamps, so they can eat, just bored. So their children can go to school with full bellies, they sit and wait. And, good for them, why should they be ashamed?

Irate is what they should be. There is no dignity in this.

"Julie" a voice calls from one of the cubicles. Just a first name, like the signs on the wall say, they use first names only to protect privacy. And no one looks.

I sit at the kid's table, in a tiny chair, knees up to my chin, working through pages and pages. Do I have a 401K? How much is in it? How many hours a week do I work? How much do I make? How often am I paid? Am I married? Single? Divorced? Married but Separated? Does the father contibute? How much? Have I ever been convicted of a crime? I wonder, if I did have a criminal record, does that mean I don't deserve to eat? Do I receive other social services?

Josie matches wood peices to a cut out puzzle. "Mommy, look, a helicopter." Identifies the letters A-B-C-D on a coloring sheet and gleefully scribles purple across them.

When she tires of her sheet, she adds color to mine.

The woman across from me sits legs together to the knees, hugging a bright blue folder to her chest. Looking, but not looking.

"I'm tired as hell and a big part of it is her," a woman says to her friend, while watching her toodler scribble at the table with Josie. "It's good though. This will remind you of what you're getting into if you get pregnant.

"There's a double wide for sale for $8,000, $2,000 down." She looks around the room and back to her friend. Both women are overwieght, obeese. Easily 300 plus pounds. Jeans, Crocs, no socks, fadded t-shits, grey hoody sweatshirts. "It's sad that I recognize the ones that are always here."

The duaghter and Josie go for the same toy and the girl squaks.

"Honey," the mom says without looking "You've got to share baby. You know share, both of you have to use it." Then she dissapears past the cubicles into the back.

This is a way of life. Just something she does every month and there is no stress in her eyes.

Three people are reading and everyone else just keeps staring at nothing.

Straight ahead to nothing. Looking and waiting.

undone: part two - distance to the water

10 a.m. New Years Day.

Panic. I wake in panic. Daylight. Eyes open, mind frantic, surveying everything, everything, everything – laundry, bills, work – essay and news analysis due tomorrow at work, write, eat, the car – return Laura and Neil’s car. Waking into a new year, no gradual fade into light, acute awareness of everything. Breathe in the resolution, “I can” slow my brain, “I can,” stay still “I can,” until I’m able to put my feet down without running.

Dirty clothes cascade over the wicker hamper, flowing into a lumpy pool on my closet floor so I have to stand at the edge and lean over it to pull a clean shirt from the hanger. I didn’t spend NYE with Scott. Took six weeks and four holidays, but I finally said “No.” Okay. That’s something, right? That’s progress, right? I can. I can. I can.

The car doesn’t have a chance to warm-up during the quick drive, but in the house it’s cozy – fire crackling, pancakes frying, kids on pillows watching Cars while dad cooks and mom sleeps late. MMMM. I want this scene, and it digs into my ribs. It digs and this essay/application, the one I’ve had weeks to do and haven’t started, kicks. Walk home smoking a camel light, fingers numb, down to the butt. I do this, smoke, and I’m not a smoker. Off and on, and off and on, and off and on, again. Smoke the stress in and out. Am I just so ADD that I can’t even follow through with addiction?

A New Year begins.

Climb into pillow nest, swaddled in blankets on the floor and stare at the computer. Read pages of white on black and pages that didn’t make it. Everything but this one day I need to dissect, rebuild and turn-in to the head of the online team tomorrow. I don’t.

Everyday I don’t. I can’t. Start tired and sleep less, lay awake worrying but not doing until “I can” is not a meditation nor a resolution, simple desperation. Unconvincing encouragement spoken quickly, unevenly. Begged.

I can I can I can I can I can I can I can I … Can I?

Exhuastion becomes a bizarre kind of forced mindfulness where I feel each foot fall, every bend in my legs to pick that foot up, because if I stop paying attention to my legs, they will stop going. Light and heavy, both. Step. Step. Step. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Step. Step. Step. Stepping in every step. If I stop being in every step, I will be laying on the cement. This is how it is in my body. This is me as the subject of my own sleep deprivation experiment

David Bowie climbs into my brain while I sleep so I wake to a tune I haven’t heard in months. There it is – David Bowie and Queen - sounding off as my internal alarm clock: “This is our last dance. This is ourselves .. Under pressure ... Under pressure ... pressure ... pressure ... ”

2007
~ ~~~~~~

It's next week. There is distance and there is the relief and there is the bud, not even the first bud but the puffy spots pushing out of the end of each branch quietly trying to become buds, tenatively preparing, of understanding. Of course it was the holidays. Of course last week was the ugly re-entrance into reality. Of course, last week was the end of excusing myself. Of course. Last week was me remembering, without any words, something I said to Karin a week before Christmas on the day I was meeting Scott and the kids at Saturday market.

We're standing in her doorway. I'm there for hannukah wrap and she's putting a kettle on. Saturday morning comfortable in slippers and a sweater.

"Are you staying for tea."

"I can't," I say, and I don't want to say the rest. "I have to stop by the post office and I told Scott I'd meet him and the girls I'd meet them for Pad Thai at the market." I say the last part soft and fast, hoping to sneak past it without calling attention to the reality of what I'm doing.

She doesn't need words to question this plan.

"I know," I say. "I know, but it's just the holidays. And this is it. Then it changes back, no more dinners together." What am I doing?

"Okay. The holidays, but after the first of the year, if you're still having diners with him, we're talking about this."

It's the end of the second week of the year and in the steam rising from my tea cup is everything I already know, it's from the voices across the table and it's rising in the steam and it's already huge inside of me. Now. Now it changes, again. The diners have to stop. The baby sitting has to stop. The nights of me coming home to him on my couch after two full workdays - first with the girls, then at the paper - and fighting about the same shit. Has to stop.

There are the ideas coming from across the table, swirled in with the honey, dissapating in green tea and they go down pretty easy this way. No Scott. I can go a month without seeing him, even for the transitions. Extreme maybe, but bounrdies are blury to me and, on this one, I'm not so different from my kids. The lines have to be fat and solid, inflexible, or I will just keep crossing further into confusion. Tell myself I'm still confused while hearing in everything I say, reading in everything I write, that I'm not. I'm not confused. No Scott. I'm done.

It's one more tiny, fucking ginormous, terrifying step into, into me. Why do I keep using these words "terrifying, horrifying, scary" and "Me?" Really, I'm not so bad.


~~~~~~


Five days into the new year everything crashes into me, within me. A Friday. Can't find my efffing phone again, can't find child care for this afternoon appointment I haven't prepared for, can't find a speck of anything within me to keep doing. And we are running late for school again.

I'm in the girls' room, floor peeking out in patches from beneath strewn toys, picking through the mismatched sock bag for something to put on Amelia's feet. If not a pair, something in the same shade.

The girls' voices singing from the living room.

"Lights dim, voices low, it's time for a puppet show ..." Amelia, tucked between the chair and the wall, fingers tucked into a frog, a cow and a pig, playing her happy play.

"I'm climbing onto the chair to see," Josie, half into the blue glidder.

I hear all of this. See it without looking.

"NO! Stay down. You are too close. You can't climb up. Josie get down"

A thump, tiny body hitting the floor. Screams.

I'm still in the bedroom. "Amelia Rose GO TO YOUR ROOM. RIGHT NOW!" The yell rakes my throat, broken glass pulled hard over vocal cords. Puppets laying like little soilders, down, on the floor.

I am a wretched mom. Short and angry and ruining her child's play. Damn it, what are you doing? now I'm scolding me. They didn't choose this. They have no say in this. This exhaustion is yours, your choosing to have life this way, not them. Don't take it out on them. You are the only mother these kids have and they have no say in these changes, so fucking pull yourself together and stop punishing them for the strain of YOUR life. You are ruining these girls. My head tells me.

Then it pounds. My head pounds in the car, throat still aching from the yelling, chia pet alarm clock harmonizing with winnie the pooh talking phone, tormenting me. The pounding sinks down through my skull, throbbing teeth. Breathe.

~~~~~~

Same Friday. Five days into the year. The phone rings at work, I answer and stand to look for the slot, the caller is looking for the slot, and I stand to look. Reach down for the desk, smooth beneath my hand, and stabalizing as I start to feel myself fade, hold on and surf through the rush. Dizzy. Sit down, regroup and type in the request: "If we have enough staff to cover the workload tomorrow, can I take a vacation/mental health day?"

~~~~

That we are 70 percent water has never made sense. How can it be?

I get it now. The tears come and come and come untill I'm not sure there is even one percent solid. Ninety-nine precent liquid rushing out while I walk through the warm of January down toward the park. Follow a street that dead ends into the high school, past the house Amelia likes. A yellow house with a for-sale sign on the lawn and prayer flags across the porch. We play this game on our walks, picking out houses it would be fun to live in. She picked the yellow one. I pointed out a dark green, Old Portland, craftsman.

"I don't want to live in a swampy green house. I want a color that's more delightful." I laugh, still hearing her, as I pass the yellow house. Tears and rain on my face. I know what I know.

There is the darkness, yes,and my eyes have adjusted. The quality of it has shifted, lightened, my night vision is keen. It might be hard and I may be unraveling, and still, I know what I know.

There was a time when I gaged the distance to the water from every bridge in Portland. But I know (without ever having tested it) just how to drop, and I’m a strong swimmer, and I don’t want to jump from bridges anymore, just safe passage across. Just get me to the other side and let me feel solid, steady earth beneath my feet. I want this life. Tears and terror and exhuastion and all. I want it. Hard maybe, but still better than it was when the work was divided between two of us. When I wanted to jump. No retreat.

Round the corner of the school into the park and duck under my favorite tree. Branches spreading above, perfect nesting spot out of reach. Maybe ten years ago?
Sit on the roots, looking through the canopoy. Eyes burning.

God. Oh please, God, let the fibers be strong enough. Let the fabric hold.

Out of the park to the library, to the Tibeten place on Sandy for diner alone with my book. Potatoes and spinich and "Little Miss Strange." I like my company. Everything will be alright. I will be. Alright?

undone: part one - the strain

I’m home from work, taking a mental health day today. I’ve never done that before, taken a day off for the sake of sanity. When I was younger, I’d call-out to go to a concert or go to a party or whatever other thing I thought I HAD to do, so I didn't miss out on something. Or, I’d call in sick because I’d done one of those things and needed recovery time. The only class I ever had to repeat was the newspaper design class I got a “D” in after deciding, in the larger scope of my life, sucking down a puddle of liquid at a Dead show with my friends was more meaningful than studying for a final in a class I was probably going to repeat anyway. I was still tripping when I showed up for the 8 a.m. test, made a pretty pattern with the multiple-choice bubbles and left 10 minutes later.

Today is truly a mental health day. And it’s not about playing hookie to make poor choices or because of poor choices already made. Or maybe it is? It’s about feeling the fabric of me wear and thin and fray until I am completely thread-bare, without a sewing kit or patches. The fright of feeling those worn spots quietly begin to rip and knowing what happens when thin fabric starts tearing. And, of having no recourse beyond this keyboard and the raking sobs that shake me as I type. I slept for more than 10 hours last night, and the weight of everything undone has me staring back to the unmade bed ready to retreat.

It looks warm outside and I need fresh air, I need a good hike. I need to return the wifi card I bought last week, but don’t need. I need to return training wheels Josie doesn’t need. I need to take my car to the DEQ and the DMV (YEA! I have my own car that I’m not sharing with Scott. Yea for my friend Karin, who GAVE me this car. I love my friends. I love Karin!) I need to pay bills and deal with the collection notices pilling up. Who has the “no means to pay" file now? I need to do two weeks of laundry, but first I need to go to the bank or Safeway to get a roll of quarters for the machines. I need to clean yesterday’s lunch from the table and floor where Josie and Amelia were sitting. I need to make a cup of tea and break this habit of not nourishing myself. I need to grocery shop before the kids get back so I can do it quickly. I need to be quiet, let myself get quiet, and meditate. I need to do all of this, all at once, all the time, and every now and then the mundane stuff that keeps life going becomes so big and so present that I freeze. Can’t do any of it.

I need to cry, hard and long, to what Prema called "the zero feeling." And crawl back into my bed.

I need a week of mental health days to preserve my sanity. To deal with the weeks of life left undone.

The holidays were brutal. Is that what this is about? This week – post holidays – was total meltdown. Some things, I counted on, even forgave myself for doing, even before doing them. I knew I’d spend more time with Scott in awkward situations than I should. Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas … I knew I’d say it was just for the kids and that it wouldn’t be, and it wasn’t. What I didn’t count on was how shitty it would feel to be at parties without him when I wanted to go alone. Places we have always been, together, where everything is the same and everything is different. Place after place after place, full of situations call that for recalibration.

And, I didn’t count on the strain of constant doing. Two people quite at work, shifting my schedule. Scott finally gets a job, another change in my routine. Now my rhythm – built on separating me as a mom from me as a single working woman – is shattered, just when I had it down. Start the work week Thursday evening –life without kids – sleep in Friday and Saturday, catch up on sleep and bills and writing and taking care of me until Sunday night or Monday morning. Shift to Mommy-mode where, sure, it’s taxing to be on ALL of the time, but doable. Then two people quite and Scott starts working and my separate worlds collide, leaving me with no time, NONE, for me. My work week shifts from four days to five days so Tuesdays become this marathon of parenting for thirteen hours, then leaving my girls with a sitter at 8 p.m. so I can go to work. Thursday nights they go to Scott’s, but I can’t punch the clock and be done, because, guess what, I’ll work until Midnight and they will be back before 8 a.m. No sleeping in. No bill paying time. No time to work on the freelance stories that are supposed to be paying the rent. What’s left is a little slice of daylight on Saturday before work, and every other Sunday evening – and those have been devoured by the holidays. It goes on like this for weeks.

Then. MELTDOWN.

Saturday night, I stay at work long after the room is empty, writing until almost morning. Take the 6:30 a.m. bus home, the lone passenger from downtown to way up on Sandy, and watch the earliest dawn streak dark blue across the sky. It’s going to be a clear New Years Eve day. I sleep the lucid, fitful sleep that comes with laying down at the wrong time, never sure if I’m asleep and dreaming, or awake and having really bizarre thoughts. Dreams of running, and falling, and sex with Scott. A flash dream, awake? About what I think should be a book. But, it’s not my book, it’s Jess’s, something from an email conversation we had in the middle of the night, both of us still up and pounding at the keyboard. It goes on like this until I rise, shower and ride the same bus with the same driver back to the paper around Noon. It’s a different driver when I head home for the second time on New Year’s Eve. Now the first streaks of dusk are showing dark against the cloudy sky and I take three steps in the door, drop my bag and my coat on the floor and my body into the unmade bed. I sleep hard and dreamless for hours.

It’s close to 9 pm., when I wake. My stomach is turning and I have work to do and I could turn over and sleep the rest of the night. My plan was a quiet New Years at home, alone by choice, seeking solace in myself. Instead I drag myself back to the shower, dress and walk five blocks up the hill, past the big houses on Alameda ridge, to have diner with my friends. They are five blocks away and I’ve seen them twice in the three months since I moved here, to be nearer to my friends. I should go, I coax. Most of the night I’m too aware that my family is not there. My kids aren’t running around with theirs. A lot of their lives, a lot of mine and Scott’s, have been lived in this house. I see Amelia sitting-up frog style on the rug, five-months-old; taking wobbly steps, 10-months-old; Jesse feeding her cranberry juice from a toy spoon long before she’s tried anything but breast milk, all of us laughing that this will be the first of many things Jesse will turn Amelia on to. Likely, the most innocuous. Too much of my life has been lived here for me to be here right now. At two-minutes after midnight I borrow their car and drive myself home in the cold.