Just A Man

Genevieve's father has been on my mind a lot recently. There is more than one reason why this might be. Certainly another failed attempt at a relationship will call him to mind, but I think that it's rather this incident:

Genevieve likes to play in "Mama's room." We go up to the attic, I sit on my bed with a book or a magazine or a newspaper and play music on the BlackBerry, and she runs around, pulling things out of drawers and off of shelves and hangers. Sometimes I don't read like I'm supposed to; sometimes I watch her frenetic activity, driven to fever pitch by the sheer delight of playing around in "Mama's tings."

I keep a picture of Jim in my nightstand. It used to be on the nightstand, but when he disappeared, I moved it into the drawer and there it has stayed. I hadn't actually thought about it in quite some time.

Last week, my little girl found the picture. It was buried amongst the accumulated detritus of a year and a half, but she found it. She is nothing if not tenacious. I was actually reading, this day, so when she held up the picture and announced loudly, "Picture of man!" I had to look up to see what she was talking about.

My breath caught. I literally could not breath in for a full five seconds. She brought the picture back down, so she could study it again. She did so for a good length of time. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Just a man."

And then she tossed the picture to the side.

I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. Genevieve was incredibly startled; she climbed up on the bed, leaned against my back, and stroked my hair and exhorted me "No sad, Mama. No cry."

I'm the mother-of-the-year. Letting my not-yet-two-year-old comfort me.

I did pull myself together pretty quickly (for me, anyway) but he's definitely been on my mind since.

Something I've never really told anyone: I'm not actually sure I know anything about the man. I was deeply, completely, hopelessly, helplessly in love with him, and I realize now that I might not even know his real name. That's the real reason I've not made any serious attempts to find him. I did quite a bit of investigating on my own, a year and a half ago, and what I discovered rocked the foundations of my world.

His house, might not be his house. His name, might not be his name. I may know nothing true about the man whose DNA composes half the genetic material of my child.

I may have been quite thoroughly duped. He may be sitting somewhere, laughing to himself about how easy that dumb American girl was. It is a possibility I can no longer fully ignore. I'd like to think that if he is out there somewhere, he feels some pang of regret for what he did. To that end, I do still email him once a month (or, maybe once every other month) with a few pictures and some choice anecdotes.

This unbroken stream of unreturned communication has turned him into something of a priest, or a god, for me. I confess my sins to him. It's something I always did; he always did know all my secrets. But this is different. I have no expectation of ever hearing from him again. He is a non-entity, but one I still feel immeasurably close to. I tell him everything now without hesitation, without remorse, without anything at all except relief. Knowing that he can never, never pass judgment on me because of what he's done, I feel absolved after each of these missives.

I imagine this is how people feel when they talk to God. Or go to confession. I do neither, these days, but I do email my daughter's father.

A Mini Me.

While I may still be a little apprehensive of this whole motherhood thing, I must confess: I love my baby.



She's not really a baby anymore, which might account for the outpouring of affection I feel for her at this particular juncture. She's a toddler now, a tiny little person, with enough personality for something 10 or 15 times her size. And it's a personality I like.



My baby is brash and assertive and fearless. She runs, she jumps, she climbs, she recites at the top of her lungs without the least hint of timidity or caution.



My father is the one that spends the most time with her, and he took her to the playground last week. The weather is finally getting warm enough for that to be a pleasant experience again. Thank god. This child needs about the same amount of space a wild horse needs to be truly happy.

Anyway, they're at the park, and she's on the swings, swingingswingingswinging and giggling with delight. When, all of a sudden, her giggles give way to spontaneous recitation. At the top of her lungs, while her grandpa continues to push her in rhythm, my not-yet-two-year-old (apparently) recited her alphabet (only missing three or four letters) and the first two verses of "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop" (without missing a word).

What. The. Hell.

According to my father, other parents within earshot stood agape. I don't blame them; I would have, too. (I have since had the pleasure of hearing her recite "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop." It is a thing to be hold, I'll have you know.)


And I believe the alphabet bit of the story, too, after this weekend. We get home from grocery shopping, we're putting the groceries away. My mom is having a medical test done this week and she's going to be on a broth-and-jello diet for few days, so we bought lots of Jell-o. Lots. We never have Jell-o in the house.

Genevieve has never seen a box of jello before. But she picked one up and announced to me (again, at the top of her lungs- we're still working on the "inside voice" concept) that is was "jelly."

I think my jaw actually dropped.

Yeah, she got it wrong, but she was damn close. SHE'S NOT TWO YET.

What. The. Hell.

My baby is brash and fearless. My baby takes no prisoners, asks for what she wants (ok, she demands it, but we're working on needs first, manners second), likes to be read to, dances, and has begun to try to sing along with me when I sing nursery rhymes at her. This is a child that I can get into.

And she's sweet. Despite the brashness and the boldness and the demanding, she's so incredibly loving. We've been dog-sitting for a friend's black lab; her and the dog have become fast friends. She has spent the last 24 hours announcing that "Moonpie needs a hug" and then proceeding to walk up the dog, wrap her arms around whatever part she can get to, and lay her had on Moonpie's back. She does it with particular alacrity whenever Moonpie cries, which is frequently, since she's been dumped in this strange house for the weekend.

Her empathy takes my breath away.

She knows when I need a hug, too. And she usually brings tears to my eyes when she wraps both her little arms and her little legs around me and squeezes and tells me "Don't be sad, Mama."

Indeed. What on earth do I have to be sad about? I have the best little girl in the world.

Work-in-Progress

I am a work-in-progress. There's nothing at all complete or finished or polished about me. I say the wrong things at the wrong times, I stay out too late, I don't get enough sleep, I can be unbelievably crass and at other times inexcusably thoughtless. I let go too easily, or else I hang on too long.

Most notably, I make the same mistakes, over and over and over again. Each time, it feels like a new mistake. But it's not. It's the same one, dressed up in new packaging so my poor pathetic and remarkably insecure head can fool itself into thinking that it's not about to do a real number on my long-suffering heart, who always seems to bear the brunt of these mistakes I make.

(If my body parts were relationship archetypes, my head would be the wife beater and my heart the battered wife. Right down to my head always telling my heart, "This is your fault. You deserve this." No joke. Ha.)

But I do. I make the same mistake, time and time again. I think that if I care enough, someone will care about me. I think that if I can just give enough, I'll get something back. In a far less positive light, you might say that I have a tendency to attach to anyone that shows me the least affection. God knows why, but I seem to be starved for attention. I just want someone to notice me, care, and continue to do so in perpetuity.

Isn't that what love is?

But this is not about love. I don't want to talk about love. Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.

This is about my eager-puppy syndrome, the one that keeps coming back after it's been kicked. This is about my attention-whorish bids for attention when I'm feeling down. This is about the fact that I seem to have no boundaries. I will give anyone whatever they ask of me, if they just hint that they might, at some point, maybe, in the future, reciprocate.

That's just bad business sense, right there. Can you believe I work in accounting? I can't. It's a good thing I don't set policy, just balance accounts. We'd be bankrupt.

I am bankrupt. I've given away so much for nothing but IOU's that turned out to be not worth the ink they were written with. I've given away huge chunks of my heart, of my self-respect, of my energy. And I don't really have enough left any more to cover my responsibilities. I am emotionally bankrupt. Also exhausted.

But how does one unlearn the behavior patterns of a lifetime? I don't even know where they come from; I got plenty of love and affection and attention as a child. I was not an abused youth.

How do I unlearn this impulse to give and give and give and hope that someday it'll come back to me? How do I forget everything I believe about karma and do unto others? And do I really want to?

No.

Why don't the rest of you join my world. Because, while I may be occasionally needy and while I may be occasionally childish and while I may occasionally display a level of immaturity that shocks the senses, we would all be much better off if we all gave instead of taking, if we all sometimes or even often did things without having a firm expectation of reciprocation in mind.

A little naivete goes a long way towards making the world better.

Riding the Rollercoaster

I've been sick lately. I don't know what's up with that, but for a solid month, maybe even a month and a half, I've been unable to eat hardly anything. My stomach is constantly doing flip-flops, I feel nauseous, and the smell of most food is enough to make me sit and push it around my plate rather than consuming it.

This has been great for my appearance. I'm down to 128 pounds. Only eight more to go, and I'll have gotten where I've been trying to get for five years. I think this is the first time I've been under 130 since I was just barely pubescent.

And everywhere I go, people ask me, "Have you lost weight? You look fantastic!"

It's very gratifying to my ego.

On the other hand, none of my clothes fit. The jeans I bought less than six month ago? Falling off. The great taffeta party skirt? Requires a belt. My cincher belt? Slips and slides around. And I don't currently have the funds to replace the entirety of my wardrobe. I did just go to Mexico.

Also, I feel ILL all the time.

Every moment of every day is a little battle not to pass out, vomit or just put my head down and cry because it's exhausting to feel so crappy all the time. My head spins, my stomach dances and still, I have to concentrate on what I'm doing and get it done and smile while I do it, because it's now been so long that I just have to function regardless of how I feel.

I hate being sick. Generally, I take to my bed when I don't feel well, and don't get out until I feel good again.

But, I cannot be an invalid schoolgirl forever, and a month and a half in bed would not only be impractical given my life, I'd also probably have lost my mind from the boredom by now.

Who knows what's wrong? I certainly don't. All those ridiculously expensive tests they ran in the ER 5 months ago didn't tell anyone anything. The only way to find out is to subject myself to another battery of ridiculously expensive tests, and really, the upshot is that they might not tell anyone anything this time, either. Unless I'm actually in the grips of the severe cramps and the nausea and the heart palpitations when I go in, and that's hard to schedule. Even I, as German as I can be, know that much about bodily processes.

And, as always, I must consider the possibility that this is all psychosomatic.

More than most people, my mental and emotional state has effects upon my physical being. This is something I've struggled with for more than half my life: being upset makes me ill. Always has. I learned to control my temper as a child mostly so that I wasn't getting sick everywhere, at the drop of a hat. Crying gives me headaches, anger makes me nauseous, bliss leaves me light-headed and dizzy.

There are indications that perhaps this is nothing more than a response to extreme stress. The whole thing started when I was putting myself under a great deal of pressure for having lost Genevieve's father, and since then, it's flared up from time to time. I can correlate most of the major episodes with events that certainly were not pleasant to deal with.

However, this is has been ongoing and constant for some time now. And while I am more emotional than I was six months ago, that's as likely to be a consequence as a cause. Always feeling like I want to sit down and cry has made me more apt to actually sit down and cry.

And lately, there's certainly been a rollercoaster around. The ups and downs of it are unpredictable and numbing. Small wonder my stomach is doing flip-flops: it's being thrown around like a lacrosse ball, up and down and sideways without rhyme or reason. This is the point where I say to myself, "Get a grip and just get off the damn ride."

But I don't want to. Even if it is throwing me willy-nilly and bruising parts of myself that really can't take anymore abuse, rollercoasters are fun, too. The thrill and the danger and yes, even that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when it drops out are all pleasures of their own, to be savored.

And, I refuse to get off before the ride is over. Even sick, I'm stubborn as a bull.

Love and Mexico

I'm going to Mexico in two days.

This is the highlight of my year, and by "year" I mean the preceding 12-month period, not the short time that 2010 has been around.

There's this man, you see, this man that I'm almost certainly completely in love with, although I would never say that out loud. (Whoops. Did I do that?)

Anyway, there's this man, and he wanted to go somewhere warm. Before he takes off for London for three months. Which is it's own story. So he tells me... "I'm either going to Mexico, or Thailand. I want to go to Thailand by myself."

Then, the next day, he tells me he's going to Mexico. Then I tell him I'd love to come, but I don't want him to take it the wrong way. Because we're not dating, you see. We're both single. We're just friends. And he says ok, he won't, but that I should have my own reasons for going to Mexico.

Which I do. I mean, I haven't left the country since the Snugglebug was conceived, and I have a serious problem with wanderlust. Also, I live in Wisconsin, and I'm being offered a trip to Mexico in motherfucken January.

That right there is a reason to go, man or not.

But he's been down there for a week, now, and he's called me every day. Also, we spent the three days prior to his departure in pretty much constant company.

But we're not dating.

Last night, the idea that I should cancel my hostel reservation and just stay with him in this beach house that his friends have rented was floated.

But we're not dating.

Also we're going to spend the last couple of days of this trip in Cancun together. Alone.

But we're not dating.

Also I was awakened by my phone notifying me of a message yesterday at 5:30 in the morning. The message was, "I can't wait until you're here."

But we're not dating.

I am crawling out of my skin here, though. I had enough to keep me busy for the last week, getting ready to take a week off of work, then Gallery Night debauchery, then my parents' 25th anniversary party. But now I'm just... waiting. Waiting to go to Mexico. Waiting to find out whether being almost certainly completely in love with someone that is playing at being unavailable is going to pay off.

Now I have nothing to do but analyze the last week and wonder to myself whether I'm completely in over my head, and this man is just really good at playing me, or whether perhaps something has healed in him, between the move to London, the sunshine, the patience.

I have nothing to do but pore every word and every expression and every inflection and wonder what is going to happen.

He called me this morning, when he woke up. I am almost certainly completely and hopelessly in love.

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that can't just leave well-enough alone?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that falls in love at the drop of a fucken hat?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of woman that falls in love with men that don't or won't or can't reciprocate?

Why, why, why do I have to crave intimacy so goddamn much?

Seriously.

I suppose I don't actually *have* to be any of these things.

We are all infinitely malleable, and we can alter whatever we'd like to about ourselves if we are willing to work at it. Sometimes the work is hard, and long, and we want to give up and we do give up before we accomplish the change, but that doesn't the change was impossible, just that we were frail and weak.

Which is also human nature, but that's another story.

But I guess what it comes down to is this: despite seemingly endless heartache and hurt that are no one's fault but my own, despite conflicting imperatives from my body and my mind and my heart, I just really, really don't want to change.

Giving up the parts of myself that leave me vulnerable to falling in love, eager to know other people, desperate to be known, would mean giving up the last bits of innocence I've got. I really, truly believe that giving up the optimism and the idealism and the drive that make me so goddamn easy to hurt would leave me so jaded I'd never love anyone ever again. I'd end up dead to the world.

And I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that because it's not fair to my daughter to leave her with two parents that are both so self-absorbed and hedonistic they can't care about anyone. She's already got one. He took that road; I can't follow. I can't do that to her.

So here I am, stuck between a rock and a hard place, feeling like I'm getting my heart stomped on and the only way I can think to stop it is to kill the damn thing myself.

And it's no one's fault but my own.

And if anyone is nice to me, I'm going to collapse in a puddle at their feet and cry and cry and not stop until I've drowned myself and then I'm going to love them.

So don't be nice to me.

I can't handle it.

I had an epiphany today.

I'm talking on the phone with this man, this man I've been on a date (or two? It's often so hard to tell) with, but haven't yet slept with.

And he lays on me this speech about talking it slow, and getting to know each other before we become intimate. About how he doesn't really know me.

And that he's also sort of, maybe, kind of dating another woman, too.

He is quick to assure me he hasn't slept with her, either.

My first reaction is actually a kind of gut-wrenching dread. I've never, ever been chosen over someone else, not in my entire life. This is my insecurity.

My second reaction is indignation. Why is telling me this? Is this supposed to make whatever he does ok? This is my feminism.

And my third reaction is, "Why on earth am I at all concerned about whether he'll pick me?" This is my epiphany.

Why on earth am I concerned whether he'll want me?

I haven't really decided if I want to pick him.

I don't know him that well, either. I don't know what he believes, or where his politics lie. I don't know if will be disgusted by the fact I spend most of my summer running around barefoot, and that I have to slather myself in sunscreen to be outside for longer than an hour.

I don't know if he cuts his toenails in bed, or refuses to wash dishes.

I don't know how he feels about children.

These are all important things. Some of them are actually monumentally important.

And here I am worrying solely over what he thinks of me.

I really am a pleaser.

And this is not a good thing.

I vowed years ago that I would never again sublimate my identity to someone else's whim, but I have done it over, and over, and over again. I have done it repeatedly and without a second thought. I have not actually learned from my mistakes, as painful as they were. I have not remembered the lessons.

I am, at heart, a silly romantic girl that wants nothing more than True Love. Capital T, Capital L. I have never outgrown that fairy-tale stage of emotional development. And quite frankly, I don't want to. I don't want to give up on that dream. I don't want to develop skin so thick it can't feel when someone touches it or a heart so guarded I can't get out of myself.

I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to give up on the human race as a whole, and it seems to me that giving up on love is the first step on that treacherously slippery road.

But maybe, just maybe, I don't have to.

It must be possible to remain open, without grasping at whatever is put in front of you. It must be possible to love, and still choose to bestow that love where it is wanted and appreciated.

So this is my task then.

This time, I choose.