A Moment to Notice the Moment

It is so hard to keep up a blog. I’ve started two or three posts since I last published anything, but I’m a bit of a laborious writer and I can never finish a post in one sitting before I’m interrupted by a waking child or some other responsibility. Before I can get back to it, it’s outdated and seems boring anyway.

Anthony is almost 11 months old. He is a happy crawler, slapping his way across the hardwood floors with speed and a giggle that suggests he’s getting away with something. He talks a lot, but doesn’t speak English yet. We’re working on associating his mamas and dadas with the corresponding people in his life, but it hasn’t quite clicked yet. Still, his words seem to convey meaning, and he looks at you so expressively as he’s talking that it’s clear he knows what he’s talking about.

I love this age, I love it so. Since he is probably my last, I am not eager for him to talk and walk. He will talk and walk for the rest of his life, I hope. Right now, he is learning, moving and expressing himself in his own delightful way. I am still his primary reference point in the world. It is a special thing, not one to take for granted, not a pleasure I will have for long.

Chewy Chewy

I go through phases during which I have this problem: if the  kitchen is clean, I take it as an urgent invitation to get in there and make a mess. It’s never cleaned promptly, but when the dishes are finally done, I’m back at it with another recipe.  The last week or so has been like that, and although Jeff is fighting a heroic battle to keep the kitchen clean, it is fun and we’re eating well.

I have been trying to perfect homemade yogurt, thanks to a helpful recent article in the New York Times. Fruit sauces for the yogurt are also in the experimentation phase. I’m also back to making my own (well, not my own; my baby’s) baby food. And today, granola bars. Chewy ones.

In general, I don’t like to buy single-serving snack foods, both from an economic and environmental point of view. But I found myself buying granola bars whenever they were on sale at the co-op because what the hell else do you give a 3-year-old who wants a snack?

A few weeks ago, after going through several boxes of too-small, overly processed, mediocre ‘organic’ granola bars, I searched for a recipe online. I started with this one from allrecipes.com, and I’ve made a few batches so far. Today I made my favorite variation yet, a cranberry-ginger granola bar. Here it is.

Chewy Cranberry-Ginger Granola Bars

3 c. rolled oats
1 1/2 c. crisp rice cereal
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. honey
1 heaping tablespoon Ginger People ginger spread
2/3 c. dried cranberries
1/3 c. almonds, chopped
1/4 c. crystallized ginger, chopped

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 12 x 15″ jelly roll pan. In a large bowl, combine oats, rice cereal, flour, baking soda, and brown sugar. In a small bowl, combine vanilla extract, butter,  honey, brown sugar, and ginger spread and mix well. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix to coat evenly. Stir in cranberries, almonds, and crystallized ginger.

Dump mixture into jelly roll pan and press to distribute evenly. Bake 18-22 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool 10 minutes, then cut into bars.

Mother’s Day

To be honest, parenting has been a bit of a grind lately in our house. Si is in a whiny and demanding phase. Anthony is sweet but clingy. The house is perpetually a mess, meals are never properly planned, we need to find and buy a house and move soon, for God’s sake, and Jeff is working longer hours than he has worked since we had kids.

So Mother’s Day loomed both as a promise and a threat. It could be a special time for us to spend together as a family, with a focus on things that would be nice for me. Or it could be a furious, special-occasion kind of grind, with Jeff feeling burdened with the expectation to properly and ceremoniously celebrate the motherhood of his wife, mother, step-mother, mother-in-law, and two grandmothers, along with the usual challenges of our daily life. The likelihood of it all falling apart in disappointment and guilt seemed too great.

The weekend was not idyllic. Saturday included fights, shopping for Jeff’s new only pair of pants (he only ever manages to have one pair of wearable pants at a time, and his current ones were stained and tearing; so much for a special outing for me), and my getting left with the kids in the evening while he went to a jazz concert with his boss. By Sunday morning, both kids’ longstanding snotty noses had evolved into full-fledged, plan-canceling colds.

It was not idyllic, but it worked. The lens of the holiday made the mundane events of the weekend seem sacred. The fights were curtailed more quickly than usual in laughter. Some measure of the beatific patience I had when Si was my only child returned. Jeff made a quick gift-buying run and chose lovely things.

A grind, but a special one. We visited all of the in-town grandmas and great-grandmas, and managed to get cards mailed out on time to those in Indiana and Iowa. I saw myself as part of a lineage of women who were all over-stretched in their time. Now the time is mine. The challenge is to relish it while it lasts.

Undone

A week and a half ago, a woman I do not know who lives at the other end of my block was raped in her own garage in the middle of the afternoon. She was in her house with her young daughter, and heard a noise in her garage. When she went to investigate it, she was beaten and raped, after which she fought off the perpetrator, who fled.

A community meeting was held the following day; everyone was disturbed, including the police. There were no suspects.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was picking up my kids from our neighbor friend who babysits them, we saw three police cars and an ambulance at the victim’s house. Eventually the woman walked out in her bathrobe with the paramedics and climbed into the ambulance, which drove away quietly. The police, moving solemnly, locked up and drove away too. Our hearts sank: Now what? Emotional breakdown? Suicide attempt? Outward violence? I resolved to reach out in support, despite the awkwardness. Introduce myself. Bring a meal. Offer childcare.

Then today, an email notice from the police department in my inbox: “Victim reports second sexual assault in neighborhood.” She opened her back door and a man (the same man?) forced his way in, sexually assaulted her, and fled.

The first incident was disturbing; this is utterly dumbfounding. I called the sitter to tell her. “I don’t even know what to do with that information,” she said. All of the neighbors are saying something seems fishy. Is the perp actually an acquaintance, contrary to her reports? Could she be making the whole thing up? Or do we just want to believe that because the alternative–that this woman really was raped in her own home by a stranger, twice–is so gut-wrenching, so life-ruining, that we cannot wrap our minds around it?

The combination of horror and disbelief makes it hard to process, to respond, to pray. In any scenario, it is horrible and tragic. But my prayers want specificity. Am I praying for a mentally ill woman or am I praying for an actual rape victim–or both? If it is true, then to doubt it happened can only continue to victimize her.

A few months ago, at Minnesota’s annual Femicide Memorial, I heard a testimony from a woman who was raped by a stranger who broke into her home. Ten years later, she was not okay. She had broken her husband’s heart and gotten divorced, was unable to be a good mother, and she lost, as she put it, a “breeziness” to her personality. I understand all of that. I can imagine all of those things happening to me if I were in her shoes.

So I have to pray for this neighbor of mine, pray as though it happened, pray for her mental and emotional stability in either case, pray for her husband and child, pray for the possibility of breeziness in her life.

Pray for all of us on the block, in the world, who don’t want to live in fear–but who wisely close and lock our doors, shutting out the fresh spring breeze.

The First Post

Jeff is about to bust his britches that I am starting a blog. God bless him, he loves blogs and he loves me, and I know he is concerned about my lack of intellectual stimulation, my lack of a “thing” that is just my own. How I wish sometimes that I were engaged in a life of reading and writing and thinking! And yet I am honored to be engaged instead in the messy, frustrating, surprising, and heart-swelling work of parenting. This blog is my way of trying to introduce a little bit of reflection into my days, otherwise characterized as they are by half-thoughts and general mental swampiness. If it becomes too self-indulgent, as I am sure it will, please feel free to stop reading and spend your time doing more useful things.