cacophony

But every time I try, I get tangled up in my head and nothing makes it onto the page.

I have been rocked by my grandfather’s death, more so than I ever expected to be. I feel adrift, untethered — all my grandparents are gone now. My son will have no memories of any of his great-grandparents. That seems so — final. Empty. Heartbreaking.

The services for Gramps were lovely. Nate slept through both of the actual services, which was a relief. And it was helpful for me, because I was able to just hold my son while I cried — and cry I did. Throughout both services, more than I expected to cry. The entire weekend was completely overwhelming. Of Gramps’ 18 grandchildren, 16 of us were there, with our spouses and our children. We had a party — a celebration of his life — after the graveside service at my parents’ house. From our family, there were 34 adults there and 19 children (17 of whom were below the age of 10). And some close family friends were there as well. Overwhelming, actually, may be an understatement. I saw family that I haven’t seen in a dozen years. My husband met cousins of mine that he’s never met before. I so wish that it didn’t take a death to pull us all together again.

Rather than anything cohesive, I have snippets of things that made an impression on me.

. . . .

I saw cousin Clay for the first time in more than ten years. He is touchier than I remember — reaching out, touching, petting, holding on. Very affectionate. Susan is everything I remember her to be, and it is good to see them finally married. They seemed very happy, very content. I don’t remember seeing that in Clay before.

Cousin Earl lost his beard. But the huge, bushy mustache leaves him still looking like Grizzly Adams, a comparison first made long ago by cousin Tracy. sww asked “Do you think if they hadn’t named him Earl, he’d have still turned out that way?” Yes. We do.

There were three 3-year-old’s among Nancy’s grandkids — Alex, Katie, Noble. They are all huge; so much bigger than Nate. Definitely got the genes from my “giant strain” of cousins. It was so much fun to watch them all playing together.

Nate got very upset at actually saying goodbye to Gramps — though it was his choice to do so. I really struggled with how to deal with this for him — and ended up dong the same that I try to do with everything that touches his life — explain it as well as I can, and try to help him find the best way to “deal” with things. I think I made the right choice in the way I handled it, but it was very hard. He sobbed all the way out of the chapel and to the car — “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye” — over and over again. I am so thankful that he fell asleep in the car on the way to the gravesite.

My baby sister got very, very drunk and she kept walking around, going up to her cousins and saying “I’m the youngest grandchild, and I’m getting married in February. How old do YOU feel?”

At one point, all of Gramps’ children and their spouses headed out to the garage for a “meeting.” I went out there to get a drink and was chided for interrupting. I said “Oh, so this is where all the grownups are!” because, in all truth, that’s how I think of them still — the same way I did when I was five. They are the grownups, and we are the kids. They all laughed at me. “Well, Carrie, what do you think you are, if not a grownup?” I laughed. “Well, I could have said old folks, but I didn’t think y’all would like that.” Susan said when she tried to sneak out there for a smoke, she said “Oh, I found all the parents!” Yeah, she’s probably more tactful than I am.

Cousin Serin asked me if I told Nate to do that — because at Granny’s funeral, I was the grandchild who started bawling uncontrollably, and apparently I set off all the rest of the grandkids. She said “We were all holding it together until you fell apart — but once you did, it was over for us all.” I was in second grade, and I don’t remember that at all. I don’t remember anything about Granny’s service except watching Daddy cry.

We talked about all the things we all remember — riding the golf carts all over the neighborhood, the fact that just the mention of Gramps’ name allowed us WAY too much freedom on the hotel grounds, playing on the golf course, the piñatas at Christmas, summers in Granny’s pool, haunted houses that we put on whenever we had the chance. It is astounding to have such a huge number of shared (collective?) memories with so many other people. There were always cousins around when I was growing up — at least until Granny died. So many of us sharing our childhoods. It rips me up that, as a family, we have neglected this for our kids — that Nate will grow up without that chaotic bliss of a large, close-knit family. None of Gramps’ children will ever have 18 grandchildren; none of our kids will ever have that many first cousins. But they all have a boatload of second cousins — 26 great-grandchildren, currently. But instead of being common for us all to get together, for our kids to be able to build that vast storehouse of shared memories — it’s a rarity. It makes me sad.

I looked around that night, and I saw so much life. Loud, raucous, chaotic, vibrant, intense life. Babies and old folks and everything in between. This is what Gramps left behind; this is what he gave birth to. All of us — his family. All of our energy and our joy and our drive and our ups and downs and . . . everything. And we are a pretty fucking amazing legacy.

. . . .

It seems that Gramps spent the last year of his life telling people he loved them, after a lifetime of not saying it. He started saying “I love you.” To his kids, to his grandkids, who’d never heard it. He’d never said it. But we knew.

We knew.

What the fuck does that mean?

Stay-at-home-mom. Women have gone through this “evolution” of what they want to be called when they don’t work outside the home (god help you if you say they “don’t work”). Once upon a time, we were called housewives. At some point, we became homemakers. Now we are SAHMs. We even get our own acronym. If you spend much time in the internet mommy world (on mommy blogs, forums, etc) you’ll find all mothers have acronyms attached to them — WOHM, WAHM, SAHM. Everybody’s got a little box to jump into.

The idea behind the current term is that we don’t stay home in order to cook, clean, or otherwise do “house” stuff — we stay home to mother our children, and that is what the focus should be on when we describe what we do. So the phrase “stay-at-home-mom” was coined.

You’d think this would be simple. It’s just a phrase, right? But I have seen so much ugliness over this issue. Some mothers don’t like SAHM because “well, that implies we stay home all day, and we don’t — we’re usually out doing interesting stuff.” Some call themselves “full-time mothers,” which of course offends the WOHMs (work outside the home mothers) because they, of course, are also the full time mothers of their children — it’s not as if someone else becomes “mom” while they are at work all day. I could go on and on and on about all the different “titles” that have been suggested, and all the criticisms of them.

The things I want to say about this issue are complex, and convoluted, and it may take me many, many tries before I can truly articulate them.

But. What does it come down to? Women — mothers, specifically — fighting among themselves about “who’s doing it better.” This is what the press knows as “The Mommy Wars” — and they are awful. Women already have enough problems on their plates. Why are we adding infighting among ourselves to the battles we need to wage?

Is it better for a child to have mom at home, all the time, rather than go to daycare? Is it better for children to have the role model of strong, independent women who work outside the home to emulate? How do you decide? Is what’s better for one the same as what’s better for another? Is it setting feminism back to have so many college-educated women choosing to opt out of the workforce? Does my individual decision to stay home with my child have a negative effect on society as a whole? Does it have a positive one?

And that doesn’t even touch the surface of the mommy wars. Where it gets really vicious is in the “I have it harder than you do” battle, the “I’m a better mother than you are because I’m willing to make the sacrifices for my child” rhetoric. All of which, to be perfectly honest, makes me want to vomit. I’ve done both. I’ve been a WOHM and now I’m a SAHM. Without a single doubt, being a WOHM was harder for me day-to-day, and caused significantly more guilt on my part. Without a single doubt, my being a SAHM is harder for my child, and harder for me in a long term sense. But that’s ME, and MY family. I would never presume to judge for another family which way would be harder, or best, for them.

Some of the things I’ve heard from other women are stunning in their venom. As a WOHM, I heard “Why did you have children if you were going to let someone else raise them?” “How does it feel not to be the primary caregiver for your child?” “How can you call yourself an attached parent when you spend so much time away from your child?” “You know, your child doesn’t really THRIVE in daycare, you just tell yourself that so that you feel good about leaving him. I understand that sometimes we have no choice, but don’t fool yourself that daycare is really BETTER for him.” “I really miss working outside the home, but I care enough about my kids to give it up for them.” “It must be nice to have that break from your kids, to go to work so you can get some rest.” ” Being a SAHM is so much harder than working.” As a SAHM, I’ve heard “So how does your child get any stimulation during the day?” “It must be nice not to have to DO anything all day.” “Aren’t you concerned that he’s growing up seeing that you don’t have anything of value to offer society?” “Being a WOHM is so much harder than staying at home.”

It’s never ending. And watching it play out in my life, in the lives of so many women I know, just makes me sad.

Here’s the truth as I know it: having a SAHM is NOT best for every child. No matter how much the “world” at large would like us to believe it, it is simply not true — and, moreover, I think the idea is something that a bunch of men came up with that does nothing but weaken women. This pisses a lot of women off, because they are living in poverty, making supreme sacrifices, going on welfare — so that their children can have a mom at home. They don’t want to hear that it might not be the best choice because having that SAHM is not the most important thing in a child’s life. But there are so, so many things that are just as important, that are more important. And EVERY mother has a hard job. And working outside the home does NOT make a person less of a mother, in any way.

I wish mothers would quit fighting amongst themselves. I wish we could unite to push for BETTER care for women and pregnancies, better care for babies, MORE choices for women.

Instead, we fight amongst ourselves.

Which, I think, means the people we SHOULD be fighting against have already won.

I tell people this all the time. I think it is the most important lesson we can learn in life — to do those things that feed us, sustain us, make us whole. Of course, I do not mean it in the literal sense — but in the spiritual (or emotional, if you’d rather) sense. We all have things that we do that “fill us up,” and I truly believe that the key to being happy, then, is to “do what feeds you.”

Why, then, do I have such a hard time doing it myself?

I know exactly what feeds me; what my passions are. Writing, photography, knitting, reading good books, bookmaking and other “paper arts” type pursuits — all these things fill me up to overflowing. Notice what they all (save reading) have in common?

They are creative. What feeds me is to create. I have this intense, driving need — ache — inside myself, that is larger than my body can hold and yearns to be set free, let out, in the creation of something. Anything. It’s as if I am, my self is, too large to be contained within the confines of my skin. So I have to bleed it off into creative endeavors.

But. But. I don’t. The actual amount of time I spend creating is so small, compared to the need I have for it, and it leaves me, almost always — discontent. Unsatisfied. Disappointed with myself. So. What holds me back? What keeps me from writing, from picking up the camera, from grabbing my knitting needles or sitting at a sewing machine or or or or . . . any of the dozens of things that might slake this thirst, lessen this need?

I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I only know that, in order to navigate this life I have, I must find a way to push past that inertia, to set free that “creative spirit.” Or it’s going to eat me alive.

Do what feeds you. Surely, surely, I can do that.