Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Restraint

This business of blogging is strange to me. As the audience grows, the community widens, the bonds are made and some are broken. This is my 794th post, actually, and I love the whole thing, but I'm feeling constrained and, to be honest, restrained. There's the flinch of embarrassment of revelation, the intimacy that might be illusory balanced by the perception that all of us are connected in a way that is near to revolutionary. The restraint, I think, is due on the one hand to my particular personality -- a desire to meet expectation, to live up to ideals -- those placed upon me and those that I place upon myself.

This vacation I'm on, for instance, absolutely sucks.

There, I've said it. I've held it back for almost two weeks. I've held it back because I don't want to sound complaining. I don't want anyone to tell me that I need a tranquilizer (someone actually said that to me). I don't want to watch Sophie seize over and over again, not because she has somehow gotten worse the last two weeks but because I erroneously brought her here and she is having the worst -- and I mean the worst -- time adjusting to everything from the time change to the godawful heat and humidity and east coast thunderstorm/heat lighting barometric pressure thing. She has not been able to walk freely around like she can do at home because it isn't safe here. She has slept horribly for the most part, and I've had to sleep with her every single night, and I hate sleeping with her. I desperately need a break, a real vacation and I'm not getting one any time soon.

I feel like I'm losing, if not completely lost, my spiritual center.

So there.

But I'm a good girl, really. So here's what I'm grateful for:

My husband's week here and his attentiveness to her and her needs.
My sons' joy in being here.
My parents' concern and support. They love me, I know.
My parents' beautiful house that they open up each year to the extended family's crazy shenanigans.
The gorgeous view behind my parents' house, the water snaking up into the distance, live oaks with moss hanging down, white birds in flight.
My dear friends, Cara and Audrey, who have arrived with their children and are hanging out with me, and I mean hanging out because Sophie can't go anywhere or do anything and neither can I.
The fact that I only have one week left to endure and then I get to go home to beautiful, mild, sunny Los Angeles, my politically liberal people, Sophie's comfortable adaptive room and my own bed.
All of you.

Someone tell me something funny.

34 comments:

  1. Oh God Elizabeth it's all fucked up sometimes and that is just true, not your perspective. Being a good girl is not for women. My thought is don't concern yourself with good, concern yourself with integrity, humor, grit, fortitude, strength, bounce back, honesty, and the ability to throw back a stiff drink when necessary.

    The intimacy of blogs is not always translatable to a connection with the physical reality of a person but that doesn't make it unreal to me, just a different connection. And if the writer connection does translate to a real one, then it's even more kick ass in the end.

    I feel the same about living up to expectations. I'm not a blog or a post, just a boring fumbling sometimes awesome person living her life who wants the same things most of us want.

    I'd want a night without my daughter in my bed, seizing, too.
    You do need a REAL vacation.
    You do need time off.
    Those things are truths that you are saying and I love you for it.

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  2. i'm sorry. i have no jokes tonight, though i do feel you...

    the disorientation, the not-quite-melding with the family even as you love each other beyond measure, and the awkward, distant intimacy of the blog world.

    love, peace, and prayers that your center is perhaps not so far from you as it seems.

    xo.

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  3. Um. Nothing funny. Just understanding. 100% understanding.

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  4. I'm sorry. I never have anything funny to say. Ever. But I do understand, having been on/in a somewhat different but equally disorienting mess while spending 4 weeks of "vacation" time with my own family. Hugs.

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  5. I get it.Truly I do and yes,hurry back to LA ...

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  6. A completely inebriated man was stumbling down the street with one foot on the curb and one foot in the gutter. A cop pulled up and said, "I've got to take you in, pal. You're obviously drunk."

    Our wasted friend asked, "Officer, are ya absolutely sure I'm drunk?"

    "Yeah, buddy, I'm sure," said the copper. "Let's go."

    Breathing a sigh of relief, the wino said, "Thank goodness, I thought I was crippled."

    --------------
    Okay, so it's sorta funny. I'm sorry your trip is sucking. I'm glad it's almost over.

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  7. Did I ever tell you about the time I took my first husband (the Yankee) to a Mississippi family reunion and all the old aunts said, "Ralph, honey, just make yourself at home and go right on and help your plate?"

    Ralph, the buttoned way way too tight fella from Champagne-Urbana, took me aside and said, "I don't mean to be rude, but what am I supposed to help it do?" ;}

    Love you, and hope you can get a vacation of some sort when you get back home.

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  8. Nope nothing funny here either just my compassion and desire for a moment of respite for you. Your blog is a remarkable piece of story telling, whimsical, intimate, heart-breaking, intelligent, honest. It makes a difference to those of us who read it so I hope it provides you a meaningful outlet. Don't hold back and get through the next week.

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  9. Today Hollywood Drive was half closed for a premier of the Invincibles, red carpet and all which wowed my kids bigtime, they are having a blast at acting camp, (Shawn doing his Hey Ralphie, you want a kumquat routine from the Honeymooners all day long now), we have eaten at Cantor's Deli three times for dinner and every time we get way too much food but we can't help it cuz it's all so good, the first time the waiter told us he did a Legoes commercial when I asked him what I might have seen him in...the characters, the people in LA are so great with their weird hair and wild clothes and dramatic ways. Saw a Spiderman the other night on Hollywood Blvd, two Michael Jackson's and a Marilyn Monroe today. Went to a park in Beverly Hills and met an actor from Lost but since we don't watch tv I had no idea who he was. Went out to dinner with some of G's music biz people but all I had to wear on my feet since we are traveling were my hippee Birkenstock sandals which really don't do it in LA, esp the restaurant we were at. I was so not cool. I don't know if this is funny but I am giving you a taste of your home...and your dorky friend visiting... I am sorry for the weather and trying times with the Soph. I am sending you love. T

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  10. At what point in your life did someone tell you that you had to balance your feelings that "it sucks right now" with feelings of gratitude? If it sucks right now, dammit, let it suck and don't feel guilty if you don't feel the least bit of gratitude. That can come later. I live in the sort of heat you talk about..it kills my Sophie too. Our kids do not do well with low barometric pressure.

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  11. my 20 year old daughter told me that my haircut makes me look like a lesbian who became a man.


    And though we travel down some dark and windy roads, the sun still shines upon us at the time we need it the most.

    xx

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  12. I have nothing funny. But you don't seem to be as far from your center as you think.

    I can only imagine what variable barometric pressure can do to your girl.

    I 100% understand the need for respite. I can feel how much this sucks.

    Wishing you a smooth trip home.

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  13. I think what you didn't say in previous photo posts spoke volumes; I assumed the vacation was sucking when you weren't writing, but also assumed that I could be wrong.

    I like happy posts and not-so-happy posts when I read a blog--that's life, right?

    Family vacations are SO HARD.

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  14. I love the you that I sense here. All of you.


    I wrote a gratitude filled post about finding the magic and miracles of creation at soccer,
    and last night sent the hubby and the driving younguns and everyone out the door to their various soccer games and stayed home all alone dammit. And drank wine and read an old Margaret Atwood book .

    not funny, a little ironic, very real.

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  15. Hi Elizabeth. Been meaning to say hello again for some time (was gone a half a year). Hang in there. You'll make it. Vacations with kids should be called something else, not vacations. While they may have pleasant aspects in their own right, they are anything but restful.

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  16. my darling,
    i am holding you so close you just might believe in the realness of this cyber connection.
    continue to hold you i will....
    forever and a day.

    this lamenting of your heart,
    this willingness to simply be honest is more than necessary...
    use us.
    we are here for you.
    xoxoxoxoxox,
    rebecca

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  17. Elizabeth, there are blogs and there are blogs. There are blogs where people speak of everything under the sun, whether jewelry or music or their adorable three-year olds or sobriety or writing or gardening and then, there are blogs where people write THE TRUTH of their hearts and their lives and those are the ones I love, need, want to bleed with.
    There is something of your soul that you give with every word you write, whether it's funny or heart-breaking or fierce and angry or resigned and barely holding on.
    I take that piece of the soul you give us and I carry it around in my own heart all day, very gently, very lovingly, and I think of you throughout the day. Do you know that?
    You are a real person in my life.
    And thus, please don't ever be afraid to write real things.
    I love you.

    Now. My only joke:
    There was an old bull and a young bull and they were on a hill watching a lovely herd of sweet cows below them.
    The younger bull said to the older bull, "Let's run down this hill and fuck one of those cows."
    The older bull shook his grizzled horny head and said, "Let's WALK down this hill and fuck 'em all."

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  18. First of all, your revelation about your vacation made me throw back my head and laugh. DOn't think me harsh or unfeeling - I'm neither. It's the familiarity and the TRUTH in the revelation itself.The angst..the amazing coping, and the truth.

    Gp home. Get some rest. And thank you for reminding me why I don't even try anymore. And my hat is off to you for trying.

    Finally - isn't there a saying about well behaved women rarely making history?

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  19. Once, after traveling across the country with my children, I became so unhinged that my father-in-law (in all seriousness) offered me valium. And a bourbon.

    I miss you dear friend.

    So, this horse walks into a bar and the bartender says... Hey buddy, why the long face?

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  20. I understand about the restraint. Been wondering how your "vacation" was. I've been gone for 11 days and grateful every moment I didn't try to bring Rojo with me, as much as I miss him...

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  21. I don't know that I was ever a "good girl." More like the one who attracted trouble like a magnet. But then here I am, a 53 year old woman, who sits in her little garden room everyday writing and reading blogs. A very peaceful, completely respectable life. I don't like to travel. As soon as I get somewhere, I'm ready to return home. I totally understand.
    Brenda

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  22. I guess it depends on who you are blogging for and if that is for you then say whatever you want. Not everybody is going to like what you have to say or agree with you and who cares. If they don't then they don't have to ready YOUR blog. Then just delete the comments you don't like.

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  23. Well, right now the only "joke" that comes to mind is an old Irish ditty that my dad taught us when we were kids. (He also taught us the witch's chant from Macbeth. He got a kick out of teaching us stuff that would shock our maiden aunts. Although, come to think of it, our Irish maiden aunts may have taught HIM this ditty...)

    It was early in December,
    when I went out on a bender,
    I was feelin' mighty fine,
    then my heart began to flutter,
    and I lay down in the gutter,
    and a hog came up and lay down by my side.

    Two women were passing,
    and talking and laughing,
    and I overheard one of them say,
    "You can tell the one who boozes,
    by the company he chooses"
    ... and the hog got up and slowly walked away.

    It's okay to write that things are hard when things are hard. I'm sorry things are hard right now. Hoping for better times and restful nights in your own beds in your own house, soon.

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  24. Elizabeth, I always enjoy your civil comments on my blog, and I'm looking forward to your "rant" (as you put it) in favor of the public sector.

    On a different note entirely, do you know any parents who have a child with peroxisomal disorder? I'm in an information-gathering mode, and these folks are hard to come by, since it is so rare (or at least perceived to be).

    Thanks.

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  25. I can relate, somewhat, to your family vacation. I remember them well with young children--joyous, tiring, loving, guilt ridden, advice giving, etc. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Sophie away from her familiar and safe environment. Leaving the children with family and escaping to be with my friends made the vacation more palatable. I'm sorry that you can't do so. Even now, when I travel back to Virginia in October, I chant to myself all the way: "Do not discuss politics. Do not discuss religion." Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I love my family! I'm still getting to know my blogging community. I, so far, apply the same rules as for a family visit. For the most part, it has been a great time.

    Best,
    Bonnie

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  26. As you know, expected upbeat behavior in spite of difficulties is not part of my italian culture, and I frankly don't even quite understand it. Don't feel restrained! Also, it was sort of clear that you weren't having an entirely blissful and relaxing vacation. However, did you have a choice? Could you have left Sophie back home? Would she have been better off safely back home, but alone and without you all?
    I admire you for making this trip to be with your parents and family, and make your boys happy.

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  27. Elizabeth, I am so sorry it's been hard. And I'm afraid I've lost the funny while my boys are with their dad. But I'm keeping you in my thoughts and hoping that helps somehow to get you through. I completely believe that we are all connected. xo

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  28. I'm getting caught up with you and the awful vacation. And I'm sorry I don't have much funny to say.
    Your photos are wonderful. Poet's pen, artist's eye you have--and somehow still functioning in all that fretful sorrow and frustration. Damn the heat and all Sophie's suffering. And yours.
    How about this?
    I have a new name for my old house....it's on Highland Ave. so I call it Bollyland Ave. Not much, but it makes me laugh. A little.

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  29. i don't know you but i love you, blogger girl.

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  30. I wish I had something funny to tell you. Vacation is such a funny concept for mothers. I think it's only a vacation if we don't take our kids, though we love them and want to rest together. When do you stop mothering? That's a full-time, forever job, a calling, a vocation. Unless you have a full-time nanny (we don't), how is it a vacation for you?

    I'm sorry it sucks, and I'm grateful that you are being honest. It's cathartic for you and for us. It reminds me of Mother's Day and all of the horrid, competitive, salt-in-the-wound crap I heard/read. My Mother's Day sucked, and I know LOTS of mother's who experienced the same thing. I love you and your family. LOVE YOU.

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  31. I love how you wrote this. I get you. I liked how you said that about the intimacy being illusory balanced by the connection thats near to revolutionary. Wonderful, perfect, true words.
    I'm sorry your vacation sucks.
    Just tell it like it is. That's one of the things I love about you, your blog.
    You for sure need a real vacation and some rest.
    I didn't notice the date on this entry, but I am so behind on blog reading, maybe you are home already and Sophie and you are both having long, sweet dreams.

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  32. I hear you and believe everything you say here. I can also tell you that I suffered a strange two-week-long depression while away on vacation with my family last summer. And my children are healthy. Hmmm. Something funny? My 6-year-old son often mixes up words. We have a new kitten that is part Siamese. He keeps calling the kitten part Hyena, the word that somehow comes out of his mouth when he thinks Siamese. Go figure.

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  33. sending you love and safe return to L.A.

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  34. I suck at being funny on the spot, sorry. But I can't wait for you to come home, too!

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