taking stock

Today is my birthday.

Part of me wants to sit there and say, I'm thirty-whazzat you say now? The other part is thinking about Yom Kippur, oddly enough.

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I typically step away from the day-long services to sit in a quiet room and have a heart-to-heart with the Big Guy Upstairs. In past years, this has involved a lot of irritated finger shaking on my part, more recently, it's been characterized by some mildly irritated, mostly 'okay, nu, enough already' tones.

This year, alas, I spent Yom Kippur feeding and tending to young people, even when they were meant to be in the hapless care of a babysitting service. (Boston's Best What-Now? I do not think so.) So much for spiritual insight. So much for taking stock of the year.

So, I'll do it now.

Things that Happened in the Past Year:
*my infant turned into a toddler
* I found a gym
* I lost a gym
* I lost weight anyway
* mice arrived and pooped on the floor
* exterminator arrived and less mice poop was found
* I found a gardener, and together we are extracting glass from the garden
* the gardener realized that my garden is just landfill, dumped on the site.
* the gardener gave up on the glass extracting
* I wrote a story
* I promised I wouldn't care what I thought my goals should be, and instead look for what they must be
* I became a drop-out from Famous University X
* I continued work on my dissertation anyway (apparently, being enrolled is an expensive bit of paperwork that makes no difference to a dissertation committee)
* I learned to match my expectations to the size of the (as magid says) small
* I forgot this and became a screeching fishwife mama
* I kicked myself in the butt and tried to remember again
* I watched my ability to focus intently on the Eldest, knowing each quirk and need, disappear.
* I started scraping together some idea of how to parent two in a way that nourishes us all, rather than just getting us through the day. Still scraping.
* I took a job that has me writing about this, in a position dangerously close to being a spokesperson of sorts. (shudder)
* I became independant of our homecare nurses
* I celebrated my partner's independance from the homecare nurses
* I gardened
* I shrieked a lot at the Eldest for not being a mature adult, then remembered that I hadn't eaten all day. Whoops.
* I told my child I was sorry
* I got used to not getting a daily newspaper
* I got used to not having TV, but still missing the newspaper
* the baby started walking
* the baby started signing, 'enough,' 'bye,' 'throw the ball'
* I watched my relationship with the man grow stronger, more nourishing than it has ever been
* I told my child that I was wrong, and watched him learn that this can be okay
* I ran around a lot, then learned to slow down. Still trying to remember that one.

Okay, Big Man, here's the deal. The allergies suck, yes. My head is still spinning with that one. The hemophilia is tricky, true. All of this is manageable. All of this will happen in such a way that we all can laugh at the dinner table, shriek happily on play grounds, chase balls, laugh quietly together in bed, love the baby who wakes us for the third, fourth time that night, and find joy. Happy, silly, bubbling joy.

All of this will happen because I am my children's mother, because he is their father and my partner and because they are simply, absolutely themselves. Together, we can make our world be what we need it to be, and I am proud and damp-eyed at the thought.

But I'm still pissed at You.