de-stressing about the future

I decided today to defer my admissions for one year for the MSW program. Nuc asked why I wanted to do that, instead of going either in the coming fall or in the spring. I thought for a minute and then replied honestly, "it's all instinct. i could list reasons that justify the decision, like money and lukas, but in the end, it's just instinct."

even though i am looking forward to it, i do feel a weight off my shoulders about the fall.

in other news, one year ago today, i was experiencing my last day of pregnant life. i ate a danish in the morning, walked the lake, made shish kabobs for dinner, then started having contractions. around 1 am we finally went to the hospital and at 8:18, Lukas made his first appearance.

The only thing similar today is that Lukas and I walked the lake. A different lake, but a lake I often walked during the last couple months of the pregnancy. I liked to go and see all the baby ducks and geese (preparing for motherhood, i suppose), and the lake does not disappoint this year in that regard. Lukas didn't seem to notice the small ones of the species, but I thought he might have convulsions in his stroller out of the excitement of seeing a goose up close. Then, he played on the playground for a good 45 minutes, just walking around and digging in the dirt and moving sticks around. Very Zen.

the one year crash

Lukas turns one year on May 22. We had a party for him yesterday and it was great fun. I think he and I both are crashing, in different ways, today.

For his part, my guess is that he's just needing to renegotiate a new nap schedule and/or is hitting some developmental milestones that is making him older one minute, younger the next. He's in his playpen right now reading some books (yes, he "reads" books to himself) with his back to me- probably fed up with how little his mom understands him.

For me, I'm feeling a need to renegotiate some things as well, though I'm not quite sure what. I've had a great first year with him, better, I think, than most new moms can boast. He's an easy baby and I was in exactly the right emotional position to do nothing but care for him this past year. But now I, too, am feeling older one minute, and younger the next. I struggle with decisions to go back to school, not being able to wait another minute, then, never wanting to do it. Today is a day of wanting to do it, and more. I feel resentful, mournful, sad, frustrated. If he'd only take that nap, I think, I could just get an hour, an hour of thinking to myself. I miss thinking. I miss creating things out of selfish self-expression and nothing else. I miss being thin and fitting into those boxes of my favorite clothes. I miss wanting to do something and then doing it. I miss planning fun summer vacations. I miss being able to go to movies on a whim. I miss feeling like time stretched out in front of me and around me and was just waiting to be filled up with emotionally fulfilling activities. I miss seeing moms of little ones and feeling curious about what their life was like.

He's glaring at me, now, from the playpen. The book has worn thin and he's whining. His nose is running: we're both dealing with allergies right now. He gave me hell this morning and then was so cute on our walk, but I had no interest in the cuteness. I'm not quite sure how he and I are going to get through today. Now he's waving beads at me and, I can tell, trying to foster some good will. As usual, the child is much more forgiving, buoyant, and wanting to please than the adult. I wish I could find that youth in my soul today.

the angst I cant live without

If it's been awhile since you listened to "fake plastic trees" by radiohead, I suggest you go do so. I've missed this song. It's been a few years. It's just so beautiful, so lucid, so desperate... yet so comforting. if harp 46 makes another album... that's what i hope for it... lucid, desperate, comforting. probably somewhere in my soul, creations like that still percolate.

insomnia

I'm up at night and can't sleep. i hate nights like this. it's like the past is assaulting me. It's not even bad memories, it's good ones, mostly, different times, places. questions never answered, hypotheses never proven. friendships never followed through on. i dont know why our brains do this (i use first person plural because i am assuming, and hoping, that i am not the only human being who struggles through nights like this.) religious language can be helpful here, because what is actually going on and why is so, so impossible to untangle.

i realized it has been 10 years since i visited wales. i went to the eisteddfod music festival with my boyfriend and heard the most amazing piece on harp that i never was able to track down because i lost the little slip of paper with the title on it. in the welsh language. saw a million harps. i wonder where those pictures are? i played a triple-strung, the first time ever. i remember turning a corner on country roads and seeing a hillside covered in purple.

great gifts for a baby shower

lukas spent about 15 minutes this morning marching around gleefully with a crumpled up, been-through-the-washer-and-dryer grocery coupon. He found it on our closet floor and it was like he had discovered a secret treasure. this is one of the stranger things he has become temporarily attached to so I thought I'd take some time here to list his favorite toys. This is meant to discourage the parents-to-be who read this blog from spending money on "real" toys (there are a few of you, i believe.) don't bother with the toys, folks.

These are in no particular order, and are completely factual. NONE of his favorite toys are actual toys.

-empty gatorade bottles
-cell phones
-laundry baskets full of clothes
-dirty socks
-magazines
-nuc's drum equipment
-dining room chairs (although one fell on him two days ago and he has since displayed little interest in returning to them.)
-belts
-shower curtain
-shampoo bottles
-nuc's undershirts when they are stacked on the shelf
-empty gift bags, tissue paper is a plus
-nuc's old rosary
-window blinds
-the little connector thing that is meant to connect a pacifier to his shirt (never actually used for this purpose, it has become a favorite toy.)
-the dishwasher (this is a cause for arguments, because i don't let him climb inside. i'm in the habit now of never opening it when he is within eyesight.)
-doors
-spoons
-books

last but not least, the computer. really what we need to do is take someone's broken down laptop and just let lukas have it. he loves to bang on the keys.

in other news, the no-tv thing may be working too well. yesterday in all the rain, i decided we should watch some of a sesame street video. i loved it, lukas lasted about 10 minutes.

proof that he really has changed things around here

I was accepted to all the MSW programs I applied for. (I think I shared that here before.) I should be excited. It's something I've wanted for awhile, perhaps what I "should" have done right out of college.

And I am, in certain moments. I'm excited about getting back into school, excited about a career ahead of me that I'm 90% sure I will love. I feel passionate about it.

But right now I'm considering deferring my admission. I don't do anything but watch the little one and teach/perform occasionally, but I'm reticent to be "too busy" or "too broke." This from the chick that has never done any schooling slowly in her life--social life, mental state and marital relationship be damned. I didn't even do grade school in the "normal" time; I skipped a grade. That legacy formed the rest of my educational experiences.

Now I'm like... hum dee dum... maybe I'll be 35 before I get the MSW. Oh well, what the hell.

More than that, when I think about the program, I have no more aspirations of being top of the class, or writing a ground-breaking thesis, or anything at all like that. It's not that I don't care, because I do care about it, just not in the same way. It's unsettling, but it does, perhaps, feel more... holistic?

Not sure what to make of this. Or, if I should put the blame on Lukas, or antidepressants (!)

inner race relations

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I made chicken curry for the first time tonight. It's ok. Pretty good, actually, and makes me realize how much sugar must be in the chicken curry salads I've had as prepared foods at grocery stores. At first taste, mine was pretty plain. But remembering how it's sugar-free and made with skim milk made me re-ponder the taste and eventually come to really enjoy it.

This is a big step for me, April, a 28-year-old woman who tried Mexican food for the first time only 8 short years ago. My entire life's cuisine until that point was your basic white-American fare, and it has taken me a long time to venture out. Now, I make chicken curry. I'm a domestic goddess, and multi-cultural at that.

Speaking of multi-cultural, I took the bus to the mall today. It's probably about my 4th or 5th time using the Howard County transit system, which is wildly convenient for the places I go (except for the library, which is a long bus ride I haven't had the patience to take yet.) I take the bus to the mall and, when it's raining, the grocery store, both of which are within 7 minutes on the bus route. Each of the four times (eight round trip) I have been the only white person on the bus. There were a good deal of white people at the mall today, but, delightedly, there were also a lot people of other various backgrounds, including lots of kids in the play area who were of mixed race. Including, of course, my son.

That is one thing I've been noticing more of in Columbia- I don't know if I'm imagining it, if it's like this every where and I'm just now noticing it because of the privilege of "race-blindness" that my color affords me (although my husband rarely lets me enjoy this privilege, I must say), but it seems to me that Columbia has an unusually high number of biracial couples who have produced offspring. It makes me feel good to see Lukas in that environment, as he was today, running maniacally around the rubber-foam play area with 20 other wild things. The whole "race thing" crosses my mind from time to time, as people occasionally ask if I've adopted Lukas or ask me "where he came from" (I could give a graphic answer here but have yet to take the plunge! Someday I'll do it- with all the gory details, believe me.) When people see us as a family, Lukas makes sense to passersby. With Nuc, Lukas makes sense. With me, Lukas is often assumed to be from a different country. This isn't a bad thing, just interesting.

Another interesting point to this phenomenon is that white people tend to think Lukas looks like Nuc, more Filipino than white. Filipinos, on the other hand, exclaim, "He is an American kid!" (meaning: white).

Nuc grew up in Columbia and remembers when most of it was undeveloped. He had a mildly traumatic time with racism, often being "forced" to admit that he was black or white, one or the other, by the kids in his school. He was friends with black kids, friends with white kids. But he never felt completely accepted as "one of" either crowd. Eventually, in later high school, the color-crowds merged a little more comfortably. But it's something that's followed him around, I think, affecting some things for the good (he can relate well to his students of all races) and other things that I wonder about, different insecurities that pop up here and there, strange little self-doubts that peek through the surface now and then.

I wonder if Lukas will have it harder or easier. Easier than Nuc in some sense, definitely, with two parents who have grown up in the country he lives in. I wonder if the racial climate in a place like Columbia is easier now, more accepting, more mature. I wonder if having parents who differ in skin tone and bone structure will give him the same sense of "outsiderness" that Nuc dealt with.

Oh, I hope not. Life is such a lonely place, and being someone who always felt a little different than my classmates (for reasons non-race related) most of the time, I hope for Lukas to feel as normal and integrated as possible. Right now he stands out in play yards because he's tiny and walking and... ok... is so darn cute, he gets so much attention. I guess I'm just ruminating, now, on how this will follow him around for the rest of his life.

something is eating at me

Been in a terrible mood the past two days. Couldn't sleep last night. Something is eating at me.

I think it might be this.

By a strange twist of fate I got to meet this beautiful woman, Odette, several months ago, and learned about her situation and her two girls back in Rwanda.

Now there is news that her oldest daughter, 12 years, has been diagnosed with TB. No matter what I am doing, it seems to always been silently nagging me... thinking how horrible it is for a parent and child to be an ocean apart, when the child is sick and scared.

Sigh. The world seems dark today.