Pasta Salad and The Muse

I just finished making a pasta salad. If that were my only accomplishment today, that would be fine with Paul. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I stare into the diamond chips on my wedding band as if gleaning insight from a crystal ball, I cannot wrap my head around that fact.

My job is to run a household. All I have to do is get out of bed, make sure things don’t explode (which does happen sometimes—slippery bottles of Low-sodium V8 juice and falling glass mixing bowls, for example—and then my job is to clean up the explosion), buy groceries at the farmer’s market, make food, deal with laundry/dry cleaning, keep dustbunnies out of the crevices of the apartment and mold from growing in the toilet. There are other “responsibilities,” of course, but I don’t need to go into those here. And besides, I don’t consider them responsibilities so much as sublime gifts from God. (Yeah, I’m talking about sex.)

But wait! Is that all? Really? All I have to do is keep things running smoothly on the homefront? Can someone please point to the day on the calendar when my husband will wake up and look at me and become terminally bored with this automaton of a creature he seems to have found himself married to? Seriously. I want to buy a pretty new frock for the occasion. And book a therapist.

What I’m getting at is this: I am a vital, creative woman with a brain that works pretty well. I’m no logician (ask my first husband), and my eyes do tend to glaze over when the rules of some professional sports are explained to me. I’m sorry about that. I do wish I were smarter about a lot of things. I’m working on it. Meanwhile, I do have a writer’s soul that needs nurturing and exercising. I like to chew on things, wrassle with them in my journals and notebooks, grapple with life dilemmas and find keys to unlock the bliss in others. It’s what I do.

If I cease to do that, a light goes out in me. I feel it. I sleepwalk through my day or quite literally “nap” until 2pm, funked out in some low-grade depression I cannot shake. What to do? Make a casserole. (At least I’m creating something.)

Now, it should be noted that Paul does not expect me to abandon my work as a writer. In fact, he’s been more than supportive in all ways. I gave him the test: “What if you come home and there’s no dinner made because I’m caught up in writing TGAN*?” His response? “I know how to cook, too, you know.”

So, there is no outside pressure for me to stop being who I am. Then what’s the conflict? I’ll tell you: It’s me. The thing of it is, I like running a household. I’m good at it. Besides, it’s so easy to get caught up in the traditional role of wife (even though it is a role I’ve eschewed for decades, and one that even landed me in Jungian therapy to squeeze the dankness out of that aspect of my Shadow).

The problem is now that I get to play house, I can ignore my duties as a creator. The really hard work is not mopping floors or bleaching bath grouting. It’s facing the psychic abyss, diving into it, and retrieving nuggets of wisdom that I’ll melt down and craft into books and articles and poems and scripts that will help bring us all a little closer to ourselves and each other.

I’m vowing now to take my work and myself more seriously. Or, what I mean is, give it more respect. Sure, I’ll pick up Paul’s work shirts from the cleaners. But I’ll probably be making mental rewrites of my latest whatever-it-is while I do it. Such is life.


*The Great American Novel

Age & Life, Vol. 2: The Baby-makin' Issue

On this, the first wedding anniversary of my dear friends, Tom and Lisa, I think it’s appropriate to continue my thoughts about maturity, relationships, and families. I was honored to be part of their wedding celebration last year, especially since I’d watched their relationship develop from friendship to committed relationship. I was further honored when, five months later, Tom (a shaman-in-training) agreed to be the officiant at my own wedding.

We—Tom, Lisa, Paul, and I—are around the same age. That is, hovering around or already into our 40s. Some of us, such as Tom and me, are in new phases of our careers. Tom is devoting his life to assisting others toward spiritual growth, and I am honing my craft to honor the healing portion of my calling as a writer. For himself, Paul is beginning to write more than he ever has before, and we're planning to build a Music Room into our new home so that he can keep creating music. In fact, all four of us are going through massive changes; as I write this, Lisa is approximately eight weeks away from giving birth to hers and Tom's first child.

How did we get to this point? If you look at it as a timeline, we simply lived our lives as they unfolded for us. Following our drive, making mistakes, fixing them. But now, we find ourselves at the point (albeit relatively late by societal standards) of beginning to grow our families.

Some of my peers are sending their kids to college next year. I’m trying to plan next year’s trip to India based on what trimester of pregnancy I might be in if I get pregnant before 2008 disappears. Very different feeling. And not one I’m altogether comfortable with.

The downside to starting a family so late is that I have become accustomed to my life as it is. The freedom, the spontaneity, the quiet. (Of course, within that life of freedom and quiet, I spend a fair amount of time watching childbirth programs on Discovery Channel, but you get the point.) I've lived with this body for my whole life; am I really ready to watch it radically and permanently alter? Will I get used to living in that new shell? I finally found the love of my life and I want to be selfish with him for a while. But it feels like there’s no time. We’re both 40 next year, and both concerned about waiting too long to become parents, not to mention the health risks to both mother and baby.

Then again, there are many wonderful aspects to beginning a family life so late: The most obvious is that life has taught me to be secure about what I want as well as what is unacceptable to me. Little things no longer bother me. I’m happy to be alive, and that feeling alone sustains me through most of my days. I’m humbly thankful for getting to be here. And that very idea is what makes me want to share the joy of this life with a child. My child. Our child.

My transition from single woman to wife to (possible) mother has had to come hard and fast for me. In a way, it’s what I’ve been practicing for my whole life—even when I said I would never remarry or have children. All of what I experienced before now has led me here. I have to remember that. In turn, all my contemplation now will feed into the woman I become later on.

I finally realize that there was no other time before now for me to start a family. I couldn’t have done it fifteen years ago, or ten years ago. Even five. No time before this one was the right time for me. I have no idea if Paul and I will have children one day. But I have to assume that if it happens, that will be the right time, too.