I recently sold some clothes that I no longer  wear and had a sort of bittersweet moment where I almost didn’t want to let them go. They are beautiful, they are designer, they are valuable, and they look fantastic on me. I hesitated to sell them for years for all those reasons, and now that I have a daughter I even thought that maybe I should save them for her. But I don’t wear them anymore, and even when I did wear them I felt a bit like I was in someone else’s skin. They were never quite right, never quite me. So, I decided to let them go. In doing so, I am making space for things that better suit my taste, and I am freeing up my never-worn clothes for someone who will love them and wear them all the time. It feels good!

As much as I envy women with expansive wardrobes I know I could never be one of them. I don’t have the space, and even if I did it would stress me out to have a lot of stuff hanging around not getting used. I can’t remember if I was always this way (maybe? probably.) or if this stems from the insane amount of time I spent going through my mother’s belongings after she died. It was awful! Of course, when I was a little girl I was super appreciative of her tendency to hang on to clothes she no longer wore–the dress-up options were endless and amazing because she had countless furs and sequined cocktail dresses, fancy bags and shoes, and enough costume jewelry to adorn a small army. I wonder if I’ll be depriving my kids of some of the magic of discovering old things around the house by my constant cleaning out of things no longer used. Or am I modeling a healthy detachment from “stuff” by periodically getting rid of some of mine? All I know is that I rarely, if ever, miss the things I’ve let go, and there are only a few things I could never buy again if I felt I needed or wanted them. I’m thinking a lot lately about that William Morris quote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” and it feels like a good touchstone for “stuff” management. And yes I include wardrobe in the “stuff” category!

When I told Brian I had sold a particular dress he said he felt a bit sad because he had such sweet memories of me wearing it when we’d meet on a street corner in Dupont Circle after work to drive out to my father’s house in MD (we lived at my dad’s for a few months after we sold our apartment in DC and before we moved to Seattle). I also have wonderful fond memories of those times, some of the best of our lives because we got to spend a lot of time together and because we were almost totally unencumbered by belongings or responsibilities (funny what living in someone else’s house with all your possessions in storage will do for your psyche…hmmm…). That’s when I felt a tiny little pang of, well, not regret, but maybe uncertainty about my decision. And then I remembered something I’d read a while ago in reference to belongings and life:

The things are not the memories.

It feels good to let go of the things and hold tight to the memories.

I should probably have an “Anna Quindlen” category on this blog. Especially when I consider that I posted 12 times last year and two of those posts were me either reprinting the brilliant Mrs. Quindlen’s wise words or linking to an essay she wrote. But whatever. The following essay really speaks to me and I bet it will strike a chord with all you other parents, too. I need things like this to help remind me, in the craziness of adjusting to a new baby, what it’s all about.

“All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education,all grown obsolete. Along with “Goodnight Moon” and “Where the Wild Things Are”, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations–what they taught me, was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet,and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, “Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame.” The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded,”What did you get wrong?”. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.”

I’ve been doing more reading! I’m not sure what the typical “spring reads” are but my recent reads are all over the place in terms of content. These are all highly recommended, but I will warn you that Room will make you cry (in a good but still very emotional sort of way).

An Object of Beauty: A Novel by Steve Martin

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

I also started Life by Keith Richards and I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, but I couldn’t get into either one. I think Life is better suited to winter reading, though I’m not sure why. I kept it on my list to try again later. As for I Was Told There’d Be Cake…well, ugh. It came highly recommended by multiple people who tend to like the same kind of stuff that I do, but I found the author’s voice annoying. Or maybe it was the subject matter? Either way the book was way too self-indulgent for my taste (this coming from a huge David Sedaris fan) so I stopped halfway.

I am currently about halfway through Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes, which is awesome and I can already say you should read it, especially if you give a shit about family and community and living life on your own terms. Also on the bedside table are Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (this has been on my “to read” list for years; I’m very excited to read it especially because Outliers was fantastic!) and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (as a mom, how could I not read this?! Also, I’ve been on the waitlist for it at our library since January).

I wish I had something more insightful to say about these books, or a cute photo of my current reads stacked up on the floor next to my bed, but as I type this there are SIX sweaty men digging up the sewer line in my front yard and I am having trouble concentrating because I can physically feel the money being drained from my bank account. Also I have a headache (unrelated to the sewer line. I think). Here’s hoping that your spring is getting on well and that you are reading or otherwise expanding your mind and your horizons. I have lots to tell you about and hope to see you back here a little more frequently in the coming weeks!

I am having one of those days (weeks? months?) when I realize that I really just need to relax. I am taking everything so seriously, especially in regards to Dylan, that I am sure to have a nervous breakdown and also drive my family crazy if I don’t find a way to chill out. I am just amped up and cranky. Is it the season? The moon? Bad personality habits? Too much chocolate?

Dylan has been up at night the past three nights. Not just waking up and we go in, change his diaper, and put him back down. Oh, no. He has been waking up and staying awake and getting all kinds of emotional if we try to leave him in his room. Brian has slept on the floor in Dylan’s room, with Dylan, for at least some part of the last three nights. Have I mentioned that the foundation of our house is concrete slab, and that the carpet in the bedrooms is laid right on top with just a thin layer of padding between? Our floors are hard. I guess this is just another of those little “phases” that babies go through, but every time we encounter one I feel blindsided. Like, everything was working so great, what did I do to cause this? I search my brain for the reason (daylight savings time? not enough outside time? staying up a little too late a couple days last week?), but I know it just is what it is and I hope that it ends soon.

I think a lot about this blog, one of my few creative outlets, and I still don’t know what I’m doing with it besides neglecting it. I have a lot of recipes in the queue and some posts on gardening and fashion and design, but in the spirit of cutting myself a break I am going to try not to worry about the drafts piling up in my WordPress dashboard. Right now what I need is less computer time, more productivity, and to shake up the routine a bit. I think part of my crank is coming from just feeling like we are in a rut of doing the same things, eating the same foods, bickering over the same stuff (we don’t even really know what it is, don’t you hate that? fighting and then stepping back and saying, hey, what are we fighting about? I think we are all just tapped out around here), etc. I also think I am missing my CrossFit! It’s been two months, thank GOD I am going back on Monday before my butt completely disappears. I am not 100% but definitely much better and the plan is to just modify and scale as needed. My ass needs CrossFit for sure, but after this break I am certain my mind needs it more.

The weather in Austin is amazing lately, kind of hot for the season but I’ll take it over the cold. I bought all the transplants and seeds for our spring garden (no such thing as a summer garden in Austin, really) and am working this week to get the garden prepped, planted, and outfitted with a new fence! We are also going to build a trellis for the tomatoes and cucumbers since we do square foot gardening and don’t have the space to let them spread out–they need to grow up up up! Maybe I will turn this into a photo blog and just post some shots from around the house and garden and call it a day. I dropped my iPhone on the patio yesterday but it still works so I still have my trusty everywhere camera. Ironically, I dropped it while trying to take a photo (and shoo away a mosquito, WTF, it’s only March!).

Also, unrelated, my house is such a mess and I want a maid so badly that when the across-the-street neighbor’s maid shows up on Tuesdays (I am watching her unload her cleaning supplies right now!) I just want to cry. In my future life of riches and leisure I will have a maid. Just putting that out there now so the universe can work on it for me.

What are you all up to? Gardening? Spring cleaning? Traveling? Exercising? I think a lot of us get a little funk or a little bug to change things up around this time of year, so what’s doing?

So this song came out in June 2010 but I just heard it for the first time last night during the pre-show for “True Grit” at the Alamo. How am I always so behind on this stuff?

Mark Ronson & The Business INTL “Bang Bang Bang”

I don’t know that I was ever really cool or hip or cutting edge but having a baby has somehow made me even more disconnected from pop culture. I guess I can add “be cooler” to my list of non-resolutions this year.

Also, “True Grit” was holy shit fucking rad. If you haven’t seen it you better go while it’s still on the big screen. You will laugh, you will cry, you will be like, wow. The star of the movie was only 13 when it was filmed and this is her first film, she’s amazing, the whole cast is amazing and the film is just beautiful and fantastic and Coen-y. You will love it.

Ever since I quit my job to take care of Dylan I have been out of the loop. I wasn’t super on top of what’s cool when I was working, but now it’s comical how out of touch I am. I find out about stuff months after it’s had its moment and then I email links to Brian and am all DID YOU SEE THIS IT’S SO COOL and he’s like oh, I thought you saw that, it’s old, it was big on Twitter. Sigh.

Two recent examples of me being late to the party are below. I am posting them in the off chance that there is someone even less connected than me who might appreciate these lovely bits of the Internet.

The Wilderness Downtown, Chris Milk’s interactive film music video thing. I knew what it was going to be and I still cried because I am emotional like that. Go do it if you haven’t already! (Yeah, I know, you did it months ago when it was all over Twitter.)

Christoph Niemann’s NY Times blog. It’s almost painful that one person could be endowed with so much talent, nevertheless, I am grateful. This made me cry, too, because it’s that funny.

2-day weekends feel like the government’s way of punishing us. For what, I don’t know. It’s inhumane.

Today Dylan only napped long enough for me to paint my toenails. Which means that I didn’t get any of the other 8,796 things on my to do list done. Priorities, people!

I think I need to wean myself off the Internet at least a little bit. Being alone in the house with the baby so much is making me a little crazy-addicted to checking email and reading blogs and such. And of course this pseudo-connecting doesn’t really assuage the loneliness, it just makes me restless and cranky and I want to do something more tangible.

I made Brussels sprouts for dinner. I have hated them all my life and then I decided out of the blue that carmelized Brussels sprouts sounded really good. I remembered a recipe I saw on Heidi’s site a long time ago and I made it for Thanksgiving and now I can’t believe I ever hated Brussels sprouts. They have appeared on our weekly menu three times recently and I still can’t get enough. Yay brassicas!

I suppose I have returned to blogging. Just a little post here or there lately, but I know I am back now. I never meant to take a break from blogging, especially not a 5-month break, but that’s how things turned out and that is okay. I still don’t know what I am doing with this blog, but there are a lot of things I want to do. I am going to try to not get all worked up about it and just see what happens. Let’s fight the good fight against paralyzing type-A perfectionism!

I feel like I owe my few readers some sort of explanation for the sudden disappearance because it always bugs me when a blog I have been enjoying just suddenly stops. There is a long story and a short story. I would like to tell the long story at some point, but for now, the short story is that I was both very busy and also quite depressed. It took a while for me to figure out something was wrong, but I got some help and I am feeling so much better. I sleep at night, have more good days than bad days, and no longer feel like I might be ruining my child by being an awful person. I am finding myself and living my life again, and I am so, so grateful to be doing it.

Me: I can’t believe it, something ate the cauliflower right out of my garden!
Dylan: Garden!

—

Me: C’mon honey, we have to go to the store.
Dylan: Kong!

—

Me: When we are done with snack, we can go play outside.
Dylan: Outside, outside, outside!

—

Me: I think you have a load in your pants, I can smell it.
Dylan: Looooad!

I got barbeque sauce on my face today while eating ribs.  Of course I didn’t know it and of course Brian looked at me, laughed, and then said, “You’ve got shit all over your face, go look in the mirror.” This happens all the time. I’m not a messy eater but I do like to get all the meat off my ribs and that has certain consequences. I asked him if this shit-on-the-face-all-the-time thing was disgusting or endearing. He said, while still laughing, that it was endearing, and then explained, “You always think I’m making fun of you, but I’m not. I’m laughing along with you, it’s just that you haven’t started laughing yet.” Ohhh, right. Because you can totally laugh along with someone if they’re not laughing!

When I told him I was going to blog his explanation of why it’s okay that he laughs at me all the time, his response was, “Are you going to include a photo of yourself with shit in your teeth?”