scenes from a life 

“the epitwee goes into fits/ from which it bursts into little bits”

“Things fall apart/ the center does not hold…”

mid Saturday afternoon

Fighting the second law of thermo-dynamics has been the name of the game all this academic year, ever since I returned to work so soon after Ethan’s birth.  The sense that things are going to hell at about one and a half times the speed with which I can hope to put them back together.  I feel like Gorey’s epitwee, about to burst into millions of little pieces.  Standing here in the kitchen, the dishwasher just clicked off, not all the groceries from this morning’s shopping expedition put away, Jacob, Ben, friend Angela playing video games downstairs, Ethan dozing in his car seat.  A moment of calm that I seize by picking up a pencil and forming words on paper.

“Shirthead,” screeches sweet little three-year old Jacob at the two older kids.

“I heard that Jacob,” I shout downstairs in what I hope is an ominous tone.

“Unhhh,” winges Ethan, opening his eyes and giving Mom a pained look.

Jacob wanders upstairs.  “Shh,” I say, hoping with great optimism that Ethan will fall off again.

“Why did you say ‘Shh” Mommy,” asks Jacob in his loudest voice.

“Because he was asleep . . . “

“Can I play with my paints,” Jacob whines, a request that has been denied at least five times this afternoon, by a mean mother who can’t bear to face the hassle of a ten minute set up followed by a ten minute clean up for an activity guaranteed to carry no more than five minutes of distraction time.

“Yeah, O.K.,” grudgingly from this same mother who finally has been worn down.

Multiply that interchange by at least ten throughout each day and you have the explanation for why I haven’t been able to do a single, worthwhile, sustained piece of work in God knows how many months, and have come to the point where I feel that nothing that I have to say has any weight or significance whatsoever.

“Teach your children well,” sings a voice on the radio. . . . .  Would that I could and maintain the “I” at the same time.

later, ca. 5 PM

At about this time I begin to look around, wondering where’s Dad. 

This is how we have divided up the day into equal his and hers portions:

Between 9:30 and noon Dad stays home with the kids while Mom goes grocery shopping.   Between 1 P.M. and whenever — we never did get to discuss just when —  Mom stays home with the kids while Dad goes up to the University to work on his lab report.  It’s now 4:45 and still no sign of Dad.  Was this an even exchange, I wonder.  

Okay — so I did stop at the discount shoe store, at Dad’s suggestion no less, to buy running shoes.  But I paid for such self-indulgent excess by taking a kid with me, after all, Jacob, the bouncy one, so that Dad could catch up on his sleep. Yes, all right, to be fair I must point out that he needed to catch up on his sleep because he got up at 5 A.M. to do some homework.  Yes, yes, and it is also true that today was not a total professional loss:  two of my colleagues stopped by for a meeting, held amidst kids running in and out, needing to be nursed, taken to the bathroom and fed peanut butter sandwiches.  But, I ask myself, in what column do I put this for the tally?  Lucky me because I did some work, or martyred me because it was done under such nerve-wracking circumstances?

Monday/Tuesday night sequence, shortly after Ethan’s midnight feed

I am dreaming a dream of suspense.  A kind of hide and seek in a farmhouse that I can’t recognize.  In the barn, someone significant — father? mother? husband, probably, since I also often dream that he is cutting down trees — finds a jacket made of many fabrics.  It reminds me of my favorite vest, a collage of fabrics from Metropolitan Opera costumes, or of the crazy quilt a student brought to my Women Artists class the night before.  Whoever it is suggests that it is old and needs to be thrown out.  I protest with mounting resentment and desperation, fighting to preserve more than the vest.  Next scene I am looking through old trunks, hiding in labyrinthine rooms, trying not to be seen by a bearded man who lurks through the house.  It all seems so familiar, so already-experienced that I feel that I have had this dream before, and that I am having it twice to double-strike it in my mind.  Or maybe simply to hang onto sleep a little longer.

From somewhere, a beeping noise suffuses the dream, relentlessly calling me back to consciousness.

“What’s that noise?”  I ask stridently.

My spouse mutters and fumbles with his watch.  The noise goes away.  The baby wakes and starts to moan.  I check my watch — he was fed just an hour ago.  “Why don’t you give him his pacifier,” I say petulantly and lie back.  I wait awhile — it seems to have worked.

Next.  A door creaks open, feet pattering, heavy breathing getting closer.  

“I’m cold, Daddymommy,”  a small voice complains.

“I’ll take you back to bed, Jakie,” from his dad.

I shift positions in the self-righteous snit of an insomniac robbed of her sleep.  The dad returns to bed.  “Why did your watch go off?  It happened last night too  . . .” I accuse.

“I’m sorry, dammit.  I don’t want to be awake either.”

The obligations of the day, past and present, shower me like rain, or more descriptively, pelt me like sleet.  “It’s no use,” I hiss and go downstairs to grade papers.  For two hours I read through turgid undergraduate prose.  My frustration remains unbroken — this certainly does not make being awake at this ghastly hour a joy.  Like clockwork at 3:25 I hear screams emanating from upstairs. Then footsteps clomping down two flights.

“Well — he’s been tossing and turning,” mutters his dad coming to fetch the milk supply.  “You didn’t miss much.”  

I put the papers away and follow him back upstairs to nurse the baby once more.

our lady of the plants

In protest, out of spite, I am killing off my plants.  I just can’t deal with them. First noticed this in early January.  When I returned from Christmas vacation, I refused to water my office plants although they looked parched and desiccated after my two week absence.  Right before a meeting with my plant-loving colleague I realized I had to do something so I stuck the peaked blood-veined prayer plant behind some books.  Sure enough, she saw how dry the others were and asked me to let her water them.  What could I say?  I fooled her however.  The next day I came in and tossed the prayer plant and another whose name I can never remember, Chinese something or other, that I had hidden behind a picture, into the garbage.  I haven’t watered the others since.

The same thing has begun to happen at home, except that they won’t find a saviour there. The leaves on my two-year old poinsettia have wilted and dried.  It’s quite dead now and maybe tomorrow I’ll get the energy to toss it.  Likewise my white oxalis, inherited from an old friend in Ithaca, going going gone. The others, wilting, shedding brown leaves, stand like accusations of my guilt, my failure.  I think that the rosemary tree has dried out and that makes me sad.  And the avocado tree, started in greener Vermont days; I had to stick that out in the cold, it was teeming with so many little white bugs

But as I explain to all who will listen, my days are so packed that, mornings, I have to decide if I have enough time to brush my teeth.  And if I do, I have another big decision:  is this a day when I have time enough to floss them too?  How can I fit forty plants into such a schedule?  And why would I want to?  

Nonetheless, my amaryllis came back this year, early and with a vengeance.  Loving the warmth cast by the woodstove it sent out green shoots whose growth towards the ceiling could be measured daily.  A vindication, I thought.  When the first flower stalk broke off because it was so laden with blooms I started to cry.  My spouse rescued the second which is now blooming away, shouting red from the top of the television, propped with a ruler. But I doubt he’s going to do much for the other plants, victims of my depletion.

fraud thoughts for Tuesday

I can’t stop feeling like a fraud.  All these years I’ve just been passing as a scholar, and it’s remarkable that I’ve been able to push my rather limited talents as far as I have — Ph.D., teaching job, modest publications, tenure.  When I tell this to my friend Jill she laughs, says it’s absolutely classic.  But in this case misery does not want company.  I feel like just another silenced woman.  Something I teach about.  Now I’m living it. Can’t believe that I ever did any work.  Can’t believe I’ll ever do any again.  Can’t believe it was or will be anything other than a tenth rate rehash of the same old garbage one hears all the time.  The rejection slips are right — I have nothing “original” to say.

Tuesday morning I bump into L. a woman colleague in the History Department. We talk of a grant she’s writing.  Needs “a renowned scholar” to write into it to teach an art seminar, part of a University-wide proposal.  Would I be interested?

  “How renowned?” I ask. “I’m not exactly publishing up a storm.”

“Well . . . ”  It turns out that they want someone who is more renowned than I am.  She gives me a pitying look.  I think she’s genuinely disappointed, but after all,  she has a book.  Who am I to teach anyone about anything?

Later that afternoon I’m sitting in the New England Center lounge with an alumnus who gave a guest lecture to the Art Department, his wife, and a fellow who used to teach here. We’re having late lunch, beers, making chatter.  Actually it seems as if we might be any four people, together through choice rather than obligation.  On one level it even seems enjoyable, as if we might actually have something to say to each other.  But round and round in my mind goes the refrain — “What am I doing here–whom am I fooling?”

To prove my unsuitability for the job I walk away without leaving a tip for the waiter.  I just can’t figure out how to write it on the transfer order from the Department.  I can’t bring myself to ask.

Wednesday warm-up

Six A.M.  It’s been a bad night with Ethan up every couple of hours, screaming when I won’t feed him.  I’m desperately trying to cling to sleep for just awhile longer.  Ben walks in the room.

“Hi Mom — is school cancelled today?”

I turn my head and open one eye. “Why should it be? There hasn’t been any more snow,” I grump.

“But the driveway and the street are completely covered with ice,” he says with glee.

“Mumble mumble mumble,”  into the pillow.  He goes downstairs.  I manage to delay consciousness for another hour.  

At seven when the dad appears, carrying a load of laundry I ask him if it’s really true.  It is. I pull the covers over my head, knowing that it is my task to stay home with the three kids, just like it was the last snow day, because he has a day full of classes and “all” I have to do is to prepare for mine tonight.  Along with at least one meeting and umpteen other things that can never be done in the hour and a half allotted me after he gets home.  

It’s not staying with the kids in itself that bothers me. At this point I wish that were my only concern.  But since it is not, I’m frustrated at not being able to get to the other ever-compounding items on my agenda for today.  So I brace myself and when he wanders back into the room I ask if he couldn’t possibly manage to come home at ten during the three hour hiatus between his classes so that I can get out.  This request does not meet with enthusiasm.  We jerk it around for awhile, upstairs while I get dressed, and downstairs while I make and then drink my coffee.

Finally we agree on his alternative suggestion that he stay at school to study all day but come home early from his lab. We had to negotiate that one too. Turns out that he was talking of returning only half an hour early and had originally assumed that I would take Ben to Tae Kwon Do en route to the slide library. He stands firm on the former, but yields on the latter: he will cut off a half hour from the end of his day but allow me to go straight to work after he gets home.  Which means that I cannot get to any of the tasks at hand for nine more hours — the entire day.  Which is why I confront him as he’s leaving the house in a funk, muttering, as is his wont, “shit, shit” under his breath. 

“Say, you’re the one who’s leaving for the whole day.  Why am I supposed to feel guilty?”

Then the fun began.   Need I describe in detail the scenario that took place back and forth between the car and the front door? Garage doors breaking. Car doors slamming.  Coffee flying out of cups. Grabbing and pushing while sliding on glazed ice.  The grand finale:

“You think you’re such a big shot,” from him.

“If I were such a big shot I’d be going off to work now,” from her.

“Well, goddammit, go off to work now, big shot wage-earner,” from him, getting out of the car.

“Not on your life, stay away from the kids,” from her, pushing him back and running into the house, locking the door.

Then quiet. He drives away. The bigger kids are still downstairs glued to the “Wizard of Oz” on the VCR.  I go into the kitchen and wash the dishes, a small way to make some order out of chaos.  Have another cup of coffee.  Talk on the phone.  But keep a close eye on the clock.  I’ve already decided that we will take a walk uptown as our morning excursion.  At ten o’clock I want to be far from the house.  Because I know that he will feel guilty about the recent confrontation and will come back, saying that oh well, he decided he could try to study at home after all.  And I am loath to accept his offer of time under circumstances that would negate the reality of my struggle to get it. I don’t want him to be able to say that he sacrificed his morning for my career.  That just wouldn’t tell the whole story.

A coda.  At five minutes before ten I bundle the three kids up and we start walking. Sure enough as we are turning the corner from Faculty onto Mill Road who should pull up in his car, heading for home.  “It’s Dad,” laugh the older boys with recognition.  Sure is.  He looks at me quizzically, I point up town and shrug.  He turns around and drives back to school.  

When he gets home at exactly 4:45 as agreed earlier, he asks if I had been going to see my lawyer when he drove by.

the archetype of the destructive mother

I feel that I am in a dangerous place.  While walking to my car this afternoon to begin the daily round of kid pickups after dealing with numerous student conferences and a myriad of Departmental screw-ups I fell into step behind a mother and her child, about four or five, and listened to their interaction.  He was holding a candy box filled with crayons.  She was going over the rules about how we use crayons with him.  I listened as she talked to him and elicited his acceptance of the rules.  We write on the special paper.  Not on the table.  Not in books.  Not on your hands.  I listened and smiled inside.  The rhythm of address seemed so familiar, so typical of the mode of discourse one uses with young children.

I followed them into the parking lot and got into my car.  As I started to back up I saw her grab his hand and pull him to her, to make sure that she had him under control around a moving vehicle.  That also seemed like a familiar maternal gesture.  But what went through my mind was frightening.  A flash.  A tease.  What would happen if, I thought, instead of being the careful driver, nurturant mother-person that I usually am around children particularly, I gunned the motor and ran them both down?  Just backed up and kept backing up until I knocked them under the car.  I could almost picture the look of hurt astonishment that would mark her face as she saw the car careening towards herself and her child.

Somehow I relate this to the precarious position in which I held Ethan later this evening when I stormed upstairs to give him his bath after both his dad and Ben interrupted me in rapid succession, both in favor of the garbage on T.V.  

And I clearly read what my unconscious is telling me.  This mother feels that her ability to nurture is being stressed, eroded.  The mother in the parking lot looked so vulnerable — it was that to which I responded.  I’m vulnerable.  I am crying for help.  But no one is hearing me.

Do I have to do something rash to get attention?  How can I calm myself down and walk myself through the rest of the school year with a modicum of equilibrium, without losing my center and without making some foolish, self-indulgent grandstand gesture to show how hopelessly put upon I feel.

flashback – it’s a mouse

The first day of the Spring semester.  Not a day that filled me with glee.  But nonetheless I was coping.  We were coping.  Began it as usual, by walking downstairs, pouring myself a cup of coffee from the pot that had been sitting on the counter overnight and heating it in the microwave.  Fed the big kids breakfast.  Nursed Ethan.  Packed up a lunch for Jacob to bring to nursery school.  Supervised everyone getting dressed.  

Much to my amazement things seemed to be going smoothly, no particularly big hassle at all.  And lo and behold, here we were running a bit ahead of schedule. Ben was out waiting for his bus. His dad had just packed Jacob into the car, and I had plenty of time before my 10 A.M. meeting to which I was bringing the baby.  In my usual attempt to improve each shining hour, I began to straighten up the counter while waiting for Ben’s bus to come.  Picked up the pot of old coffee, just happened to look inside and saw what at first looked like mold floating in it, a kind of greyish green ridge.  That surprised me somewhat since mold usually only forms in the summer, when it’s warm and humid.  I watched as I poured it into the sink, but no mold came out.  What did land in the sink with a thud, however, after the coffee had spilled out, was a very dead, very bloated greyish green mouse.  A mouse solid from rigor mortis.  

I screamed.  There was nothing else I could do.  The damage had been done already.  It couldn’t be undone. I screamed again.

My screams brought my spouse in from outside.  As coherently as I could I explained what had happened.  With a handful of paper towels he scooped the mouse out of the sink and carried it outside to the garbage waiting for the trash collectors at the end of our driveway.  He then proceeded to take Jacob to nursery school in accord with our previous game plan.

The thought of the mouse juice sitting in my stomach revolted me, and I realized that there was something that I could do, after all.  I broke open the seal on the vial of Ipecac that we keep around for our children’s emergencies and swallowed two tablespoons of the stuff.  A friend later told me that it was a favorite of anorexics.  No wonder.  Nothing happened for twenty minutes.  But from the twenty-first minute until suppertime the next night my stomach could tolerate only the scantest quantity of the mildest foods.  What’s more, until the third day, I existed under a cloud of nausea that was at least as bad as that experienced in the first trimesters of my pregnancies. 

That’s how this current semester began. 

My cosmic revulsion at my body’s violation was expressed through the state of nausea caused by the Ipecac.  However, it disturbed me some that had I not taken the Ipecac I might not have experienced physical nausea at all.  And I was even more disquieted by the thought that if I hadn’t actually seen the mouse, I would certainly never have realized that it was there, despite my alleged ability to discern contaminated ingestibles.  The coffee that I drank that morning tasted no better or worse than reheated coffee usually tastes.

A couple of weeks later I showed my Women Artists class a still life painting by the seventeenth century artist Clara Peeters.  Emerging from a dark background, a vase filled with brightly colored flowers rests on a shallow ledge.  As one contemplates the painting one realizes that not all the flowers are at the height of their glory — some are wilted, faded, their petals turning brown like the leaves of my dying plants.  Some have even fallen to the ledge.  Furthermore, when one looks more closely at the right-hand side of this ledge, the image of a greyish green mouse comes into focus.  We see the mouse tiptoeing along the ledge, nibbling on kernels of corn scattered in its path.

In the seventeenth century, the mouse, like the fading flowers, represented the process of death and decay inherent to life.  As flowers lose their petals, so too do mice creep around, often unseen, nibbling corn, bread, potatoes, even eating the walls of houses, leaving behind their sprinkle-shaped droppings, undermining the order and stability of the world.  

This symbolism also seems relevant to the twentieth century. 

running it out    

A cold, crisp sunny New England winter morning.  I’m out there, feet pounding the pavement in time with my breath, hammering out my morning run.  I’m not exactly running a marathon but I’m proud of my progress — I’ve tripled my distance in the two and a half months I’ve been doing it, which shows what growth can occur when you start small.

I was surprised to find that I didn’t completely hate running.  I like being out there, alone in my head, unable to dwell on the mundane, yet able to give my unconscious free rein to renew itself.  My Sony Walkman helps, driving my feet along one after the other to the beat of rock ‘n’ roll.

But today I’m not running to rock music.  It’s the day after Christa McAuliffe and crew exploded into tiny pieces ten miles above the earth and I’m listening to the eulogies.  I don’t turn the dial as I usually do when subjected to talk in the middle of my run; instead, I keep listening.  I can relate to the concept of Christa:  a teacher, a mother, a peer from New Hampshire.  It makes me very aware of the actual:  the light, the cold, the snow on the ground, and the smell of smoke which I see rising from chimneys to the sky in which she met her death.  Yesterday morning at this time she, too, was part of the actual.  Today she isn’t.  She will never again come home from work, pick her kids up from day-care, throw wood in the stove and defrost chicken for dinner.

This thought makes me thankful for the now which enables me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out, heading home for a cup of coffee (freshly brewed), and a day filled with hassles.

Much of what the announcer says is pure hype. These “brave heroes who were reaching for the stars” were ripped off by human error and hubris, a disrespect for the intensely fragile balance between being and not-being.

Nonetheless, I realize as I round the corner of the home stretch, that I too, am a sucker for reaching further, for pushing on, for overcoming the natural tendency of things to fall apart.  Why else am I out here in twenty degrees of cold, panting away as I locomote my too many pounds of flesh through the landscape?

I turn into my driveway and feel the endorphins rush through my body with that heady exhilaration that only comes from having completed a run.  It makes me feel so good that I almost believe that I could turn around and go right back out again.  I realize that as long as I can I will keep on running, trying to keep as wide a berth as possible between me and entropy.  I will not willingly let my voice be silenced by those forces of decay and destruction that break down the material world and eat away at the fabric of life as surely and persistently as Clara Peeters’s mouse still nibbles on its kernel of corn.

I open the door to my house. Ethan’s wails pierce through the memorial service still playing on the Walkman.  It’s time for his next feed.  

Jacob scampers over to me and grabs my hand, still frozen despite two layers of gloves.  “Can I have hot cereal for breakfast, Mommy?”

And so it begins again.

–Mara Witzling 

January-June 1986