The downside to independence.

G.K. Chesterton wrote "The principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evoluationary principle that all growth  is a branching out.  A woman loses a child even in having a child.  All creation is separation.  Birth is as solemn a parting as death." 

I've been reflecting on this passage from Orthodoxy for the strangest reason.  Boogaloo no longers needs me to wash her sheets every morning.  She has now slept drily through the night twice.  I no longer need to get up in the middle of the night, pull her out of her puddle, pat her down, dry her off, strip her bed, and settle her back on clean sheets.  From here on out (with a few exceptions, I'm sure), my baby will only need me for nightmares and vomit episodes, at least between bedtime and breakfast.

For most people this would be a point of celebration. Hooray! She's dry through the night. Maybe poop in the potty come next. I actually felt kind of displaced.  At first, I really didn't like it. Ditto for her growing potty independence during the day. She doesn't need me anymore. I feel as if I've been sloughed off. My maternal programming dictates that I do something that isn't necessary any more.  I have this urge to go where there's nothing to do. 

I guess that's the process of raising a child.  I wasn't bothered by her attitude of independence (she is, after all, three) because it was so obviously undeserved.  Now she's starting to deserve it.  She can button her own buttons and zip her own zippers.  She hangs up her own coat and chooses her own shoes.  She thinks she can get her own snacks, but I still intervene there.  Most of the time I appreciate that when she does what she can do, I am freed to do the other things I need to do, but sometimes, it just goes against the grain.

Chesterton continues his profound thought thus:  "It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the newborn child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world.
    "According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it.  According to Christianity, in making it, he set it free." 

I wonder if God feels this kind of pain when he watches us grow up.  But then God doesn't have to be worried about being needed.  He's the upholder of the universe.  And he wants to see us grow up.  He can go with us through everything we grow into.  I'm just starting to realize that my little girl is going to have separate activities, separate pursuits, a separate life.  Sakes alive.  What am I going to do when school starts?

There and back again . . . in time for supper on Saturday.

It's official.  We are now fully residents of Hillboro, Oregon.  What makes it official, you ask?  We finally moved my car down from Bremerton.  Due to lack of drivers under various circumstances, we have had to leave my poor car sitting neglected in the driveway of our little house until now.  We couldn't drive it down the first time because Seth had to drive the moving van.  And then we couldn't bring it down when I went up to clean the house because Seth was in Taiwan.  So finally, after a month, I am reunited with my battered Buick, and we are once again a two car family.  The only thing we have left in Bremerton (besides friends and memories, of course) is a house. 

It was interesting being a one-car family for a month.  I was used to running the house independent of Seth's schedule.  Independence is kind of necessary when your husband may or may not be on the other side of the world. (Of course, if he was on the other side of the world, I had sole use of the car, so it balances out.) If something had to happen, I just needed to go make it happen -- groceries, doctors appointments, church functions, brief trips to friends houses.  They were all just a matter of course.  But over the last month, I've actually had to plan these things around my husband's schedule, and the funny thing is, it didn't really interfere with our lives.  Having a car only twice a week was enough.  In fact, it was kind of nice.   It made me focus on my home and my kid.  Fancy that. 

But we couldn't just leave Billie the Buick sitting in Bremerton.  People want to move into our little house, and they can't do that if we're still occupying the driveway.  We left for Bremerton after work on Friday.  Seth got us a room at the Bremerton Hampton ($89 with AAA discount), I packed the duffle and deflated the dogcrate, we tossed it all in the Jeep, and we made it to Bremerton about nine o'clock at night.  We even got a bottle of wine and watched the lights on the bay, in between telling Boogaloo to get back in bed.  Then we turned around and came back this morning.  Now I don't have any more excuses to keep me from getting out and getting things done. 

An unexpected milestone

Well, it's been a rough week in the world of headlines.  Kim Kardashian's divorce is turning ugly.  Joe Paterno has gone from potentially resigning to fired, and Ashton Kutcher is no longer allowed to tweet his own tweets as a result.  Herman Cain maintains that he doesn't know the women accusing him of sexual harrassment, and Rick Perry stuck his foot in his mouth, but he'll survive to joke about it.

In the Atsma household, however, things have been looking up. After two weeks of training in Taiwan, my husband is home again.  The irony there is that we got out of the Navy to find a job that would allow him to spend more time with the family, and now we find that his new job is going to send him away for the whole month of December.  That means that once again we most likely won't put up a Christmas tree this year, but that doesn't disappoint me as much as I thought it would.  I guess I'm getting used to it.  I got a half an hour with my best friend and cleared up a few matters that needed clearing.  I found curtain rods for the livingroom and got half of our kitchen table stripped.  Boogaloo made overtures toward going #2 in the potty after a disastrous accident at the park Tuesday morning (oh ick).  I found a good chiropractor, and I made the acquaintance of the dog-walking lady.  Oh, and the Broncos won last Sunday.  Overall, this week has been a week on the heartening side.

But I had a growing moment today that gave me pause, and after reflecting on it for a while, I just have to share it. 

Boogaloo and I were at the park walking Max and playing on the climbing structure, and there was another mom there with a little boy about two years old.  She had overheard my conversation with the aforementioned dog-walking lady, so we just pretended that we'd been introduced and started making conversation.  Her little guy was named Merrit (which I think is a brilliant name for a boy), and he was living up to his name by trying to do everything on a playset designed for five- to ten-year-olds.  We as moms deplored the lack of toddler friendly equipment and the presence of a slippery dew.  Then as conversation lagged, I noticed that her sweats said Air Force down one leg, so I said, "I see you have Air Force connections."

"Yeah," she said.  "My father was in the Air Force, and my wife's father was too, so it's something we like to commemorate. Do you know someone in the Air Force?"

My mouth made reply.  "Yeah, my dad was in the Air National Guard, but my husband just got out of the Navy."  My smile did not falter, and my tone of voice did not change.  However, my brain and gut both screeched to a halt as I tried to process, "Did she just say wife?" 

Yes, she did. I'm embarrassed to say that I ran an internal diagnostic to make sure that I wasn't mistaken in what I was seeing or hearing.  I mean sooner or later I should have expected to meet someone of the homosexual persuasion, but I guess I didn't expect to meet one at the playground.  I was thinking in a group of theatre people or maybe among Seth's coworkers.  I think my basic mental picture was yuppie intellectual male, not mom in sweatpants who refers to her partner as "mommy" in the hearing of her little boy.  I guess I didn't expect something so foreign to my psyche to be so close to my world. 

I related my little adventure to Seth over lunch.  He laughed at me.  He even grinned a little when I admitted that until she said wife, I had been thinking about proposing future playdates, and after she said it, the desire just died away completely. 

"Love," he said.  "You let her play with Wiccans." 

He's right, as usual.  One of my best friends in Bremerton was a Wiccan, and Boogaloo played with her kids all the time.  People thought Boo and T's youngest were twins because they were so close to the same size.  I was similarly startled when I found out that S. and T. had kids, but then I had the excuse of processing the appearance of two totally pierced-up, gothed-out, black bedecked people at night. Somehow, that image just didn't fit with my concept of "parent." There was nothing strange about this woman that I'll call M. (for mommy).  I wouldn't have been surprised to see someone like her at my Bible study.  Someone like her just doesn't fit my concept of "lesbian."

So what does it say about my mindframe that I get a gut-check at the idea of letting my kid play with the child of a lesbian but not at the idea of playing at the house of a witch?  Wicca is a religion, a spiritual state, and it's contrary to Christianity.  They don't acknowledge the rights of God, and they're inclined to defend the claims of the devil, literally.  They open spiritual doors and converse with spirits that are by Christian definition hostile to humanity.  I don't regret my friendship with T.  It helped me grow a lot, and I hope it leads to her to Jesus eventually, but the fact remains: you can't be a witch and be a Christian. 

You can be a lesbian and be a Christian.  There's considerable controversy over whether or not you can indulge your feelings, but the two are not mutually exclusive.  Homosexuality is not, in itself, a spiritual activity.  So why did it cause such an instant change of emotion in me?  Why did the urge to get to know her better just die? 

I don't know.  Part of my response probably comes from hanging out on the pro-family scene.  Most pro-life organizations are also against homosexual normalization.  I've been telling myself that I'm not going to form any opinions about LGBTQs until I know one well enough to ask awkward questions, but I don't think I ever expected to meet someone of the persuasion.  Maybe, and most likely, I just need time to process this.  A part of me ponders the boundaries and requirements imposed by my faith.  If we become friends (and we don't even know each other's names, so really, I'm fussing about nothing at this point), how far can I reciprocate friendship?  Can I invite them into my home if I decide that I can't validate their lifestyle? How do I explain to my daughter that good, friendly, responsible people that we like a lot can be live contrary to what we know is true?  I needed 30 years to come to that conclusion.  How do I teach her to stick to the Word without sticking it to her neighbor, a fence the Christian community walks all too often?

How do we do this to ourselves?

I've been watching this whole Kim Kardashian/ Kris Humphries thing blow up. I know I shouldn't. I wish I knew what it was about these people that makes the rest of us people sit up and watch them make ruins out of their lives. I've never seen one of her shows. I just feel compelled to click on her headlines. Boy is she sure getting the headlines now. Magazines alleging that the whole marriage was a scam for headlines. Entertainment websites analyzing every mistake and facial expression. How does he feel? How does she feel? How did she tell her mother? Does she keep the ring?

The thing is, I really don't think this marriage was a ploy for media attention. She says she was looking for a fairy tale ending. I can see how someone who makes a career out of being the center of attention, being pretty, and telling other people how to be pretty would expect to marry and live happily ever after. Her life is something of a fairytale to the rest of us.  I think a lot of people expect a fairy tale ending at the point of "I do," as if some serene happily-ever-after will coat our feelings, habits, and expectations with a glowing light of affability, and we'll never hurt or be hurt again. And when it doesn't happen, well, that's probably where a lot of divorces come from.  I feel like I'm watching a little sister make a mess out of her life, which is funny because I'm 30 to her 31.

 

The simple fact of the matter is that we're none of us at the ending yet. Happily ever after in the fairytales means that the wicked witches aren't chasing you anymore, and you're free to get on with your life. But the heroes of fairytales earned that ending. They slew dragons and cut off giants' heads. They wandered through wildernesses for years and lovingly served wicked stepmothers who would keep them down at all costs. Their love was already tested and their virtue proved. That's why the marriage is the end of the fairytale.  They achieved something in order to get there. 

But for the rest of us, marriage is the beginning of the love story, and sweetheart, you didn't even get past the "And in that village lived a shoemaker" stage. Any decent love requires more than seventy-two days to put it to the test. You didn't give yourselves any chance to sacrifice, persevere, and overcome.  The modern American fairytale should begin "There once was a lovely young woman who married a handsome young man, and they promised to stay together forever. However, the spirits of self, stress, and fear conspired together to take away their happiness and drive them apart forever." This is only the start of your story. This is where the witch catches the prince with Rapunzel and casts him out to wander blindly through the wilderness. This is where the trolls snatch Puss Cat Mew from her fireside and lock her in a hidden dungeon. You've got whole chapters of ups and downs to go before you get to the fairytale ending.

I know you said you have to follow your heart, but the heart isn't any more reliable than the rest of a person.  It feels unreasonable passions.  It responds to fears that are real and imaginary.  It holds the hidden motives that we aren't fully aware of, and more often than not it responds to those instead of taking in the truth of the matter. If you want a husband, a marriage, and a family, then you have to learn to evaluate your heart in terms of your goals.  You have to learn stick-to-itiveness, and you have to learn to weather doubts, frustrations, and seemingly "irreconcilable differences."  Your marriage has to be a higher priority than your reputation and your career because your marriage is a committment to more than a dream.  It's a committment to a real, living person. 

Once, when I had been married for about a year, I had a moment when I thought I could have pitched everything.  The year hadn't been unhappy, but it had been lonely.  My husband and I had weathered the basic adjustments of marriage pretty well, but we had moved across the country twice, he had worked twelve hour days on rotating, seven day shifts, and for me there had been a lot of sitting at empty tables, sleeping in empty beds, and walking alone through empty housing developments at twilight, waiting for him to come home.  I felt like all the loneliness had left a hole in my heart.

 I had gone to spend a week with my parents and attend a friend's wedding, and to go from home and company back to an empty apartment was more than I could handle.  As I crested the hill above the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which is a beautiful sight in early August, by the way), I literally thought, "I have to turn around.  I want to go home.  I can't do this anymore. I want a divorce."  My heart was ready to turn the car around, but my hands and feet knew better.

I got home, and Seth opened the door for me.  He saw the look on my face and said,  "What's wrong?"  I said, "Don't ask me.  Just hold me." And we sat on the floor in our narrow little entryway while I cried on his shoulder. I think I told him how miserable I was.  It was years before I told him that I'd been on the brink of asking for a divorce.  Even as I was driving that day, I knew he didn't deserve the pain that that would cause him, and that knowledge was what kept me going forward.  He was and is a good guy who loves me, who has done everything he could under the circumstances (and we have had circumstances) to make me happy, and knowing how I would have hurt him kept me from doing what I felt like doing then. 

If I had followed my heart that day, I would not have a husband.  I would not have a daughter.  I would not be as strong or as independent as I am today.  I would not have learned the lessons of intimacy and patience that are making me a better wife. The last seven years of my life would not have happened, and whatever would have happened instead would not have gotten me any closer to my happily ever after.  But instead of following my heart, I thought about my husband and what was right and fair to him and I kept going forward.  And now, even though necessity takes my prince away on a regular basis, I can say that I have learned to be happy, and I can see my happily ever sitting far off on my horizon. 

I'll probably come across as naive if I say go back to him, but I hate to see any marriage break up.  You really haven't given yourselves a chance to grow into something good.  Go back.  Talk to him.  Find a counselor (or better yet a pastor. A little post pre-marital counseling will do a world of good.) and together put some effort into this.  Making this work will make you happier than leaving this behind.  

Settling in.

There's nothing like looking through the memory card of my camera to remind me how little I've been posting lately. I have homecoming pictures, camping pictures, painting pictures, packing pictures, and a few random Boogaloo pictures all begging to have something done with them. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I'm a little to full of the present to revisit the past. I'm learning that moving is more than packing and unpacking. It's reestablishing ones' self, and that's just not easy.

The whirlwind is largely over. All of our deadlines have come and gone. Our furniture is all in place, and our garage is largely empty of boxes. Annika's toys are all assembled. We have even hung some pictures on the walls.

Still, there are so many things that are out of place: shelves that aren't up, lamps with no bulbs, lightswitches that pertain to that mystery outlet (you know the kind), boxes of books, and bags of screws and other hardware with no perceivable purpose. We now have more windows, so we need more curtains. We have more sinks, so we need more soap dispensers. We have more space, so we need more livingroom furniture. Now there's a broadening experience. We, who still have our posters from college decorating our walls, are now the proud owners of two recliner rockers and two more bookcases. We are looking for something that might pass as a couch.But the biggest adjustment, I think, is learning to live in an apartment complex again, and a complex with no binding ties. In college, we lived in apartments, but we all went to class together. In the military, we lived in apartments, but we had a common experience to keep us interested in each other. This is just a plain old apartment complex, and now I know the truth. An apartment complex is the only place where you can hear a person through the wall, but you don't talk to them in the street.

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. I've been here two weeks, and I know the names of two people outside of the leasing office staff. These people are my neighbors on each side of me, and I only know the name of my right hand neighbor because I had to ask her permission to block her driveway for an afternoon. She helped me unload my trailer, and we shared lifestories in about five minutes, but I hadn't said ,"Hey, by the way, . . ." as she was leaving, I wouldn't have gotten her name. Seth got the name of the lefthand neighbor for me. He thinks I should pop over and arrange a playdate. They both have kids the same age as mine, but we never seem to run into each other.

That's what I don't get about this place. I know people get to know each other. I've heard them talking outside the window. But it seems like there's no crossdwelling intercourse on a daily basis. There was no welcome wagon, no neighborly curiousity, no "Hey, I see you have a toddler. Would you like to come over and play?" For all this is called a "community," it doesn't feel like one. I have actually introduced myself to people I've met in the park (after the second or third meeting), and they wouldn't tell me their names in return. They looked at me like I was odd for bringing the subject up. It seems to me that when people live this close together, they should know something about each other. Like the old Papiamento saying goes, get to know your neighbors. If you hurt yourself, they're the ones you're going to call first.