Every Now and Then I Fall Apart

If you live in Baltimore & are looking for reasons to force yourself out of the house this winter, come hear me and Annie Powell Stone read poetry in January. We have two reading events scheduled:

January 6th, come join us at The Womb Room Gala 6 pm - 8:30 pm (with our reading starting at 6:30). We’ll have books for sale with 50% of the proceeds going to The Womb Room’s Black Maternal Health Fund. There will be music, food, and an open mic period after our reading if you’d like to join in and share some work. I think you need to register? Maybe. You can do so here.

January 11th, we’ll be reading at our local library branch, the Hampden branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. Come join us at 6:30 for a short reading and then walk a block down to the Avenue to grab some dinner or drinks. What a lovely night out!

Plus I have two workshop opportunities coming up to start the year:

January 12th at 12:30 is the first of three sessions of my workshop The Written Womb with Yellow Arrow Publishing. This is an hour-long virtual workshop where we’ll be exploring writing about parenthood. You can take sessions individually or choose all three. Know someone who might enjoy this workshop? You can purchase a Gift of Writing card that can be used on this or any of Yellow Arrow’s offerings.

January 27th at 12 pm I will be offering an in-person version of The Written Womb at The Womb Room. This 90-minute session will incorporate some additional opportunities to connect with fellow parents and will also incorporate a bit more focus on body awareness and stress reduction as we tackle this complex writing topic.

Thank you as always for wading through this bit of housekeeping! Onward to some writing about running, overwhelm, and falling apart in front of your kids.

I am feeling far away from myself, so I’ve started running again a few mornings each week.

The air is bright and cold, the way I like it. Frost coats car windows and the baseball fields down the road from my house. It’s the kind of frost you can easily gather between your thumb and finger, press into a thin square like a pat of butter, and plop in your mouth to feel it melt against your tongue. It is not so cold out that you can’t help but think of death, but the kind of good chilly that makes you feel more alive. It is by far the best running weather, in my opinion.

This morning’s run was more plodding than the past few have been. The pain that arrives at certain points in my cycle is settled deep in my pelvis, a thick, dragging heaviness that reminds me of those ankle weights that were popular in the 90s. Something to make the task more difficult so you have to push yourself harder. But I am not interested in pushing harder right now so I simply shuffled along and let the morning wind pink my cheeks.

Last night I broke down in front of my son. He was playing with the stools in the kitchen while I was making dinner, turning them on their sides and climbing into the open space between their footrests to pretend that they were Mario Kart racing vehicles. He got a Nintendo Switch for Hanukkah and after only a couple of days of falling apart when he reached the agreed-upon time limit for playing and was forced to turn it off, he has rebounded beautifully and now expresses his disappointment as a simple “Oh darn it,” before moving on to do something else without complaint. I am thankful for him. The baby was eating because he is nearly nine months now and he eats constantly, delightedly shoveling food into his face like the lord of a medieval fiefdom, unbothered by manners or propriety, entirely unconcerned about the needs or growing hunger of those around him. He could not care less that his rapidly changing eating habits send my hormones and milk ducts into turmoil.

There was nothing remarkable about last night apart from my pain, though even that has become commonplace in my life over the past few years. So when I was suddenly crying, having paused in the stirring of scrambled eggs to crouch down on the floor and press my palms to my hands in an attempt to physically hold back my tears, my son came to a screeching halt. I mean this literally—he made a sound like a race car breaking hard, smashing into something, and then exploding. He’s a funny kid. “Why are you crying?” he asked me, and I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t have a reason. Or perhaps I did but that reason was *shrugs shoulders* “I don’t know, because of everything?” Sometimes you just need to cry, I told him instead, and he nodded with the kind of knowing look that little kids will often give you that makes it feel like they are wise beyond their years. Then he went back to racing.

I am trying to give myself rest, moments of solitude and quiet. I am trying to slough off anything that doesn’t feel necessary, to shuffle along without the added effort of the ankle weights the holiday season tries to force upon me. But even ease requires some effort, a conscious letting go, a recalibration of my daily mindset. I’ve told this to massage clients many times in the past: relaxation is a learned behavior. It’s a thing you have to practice. Like running, if you go too long without doing it, it’s a lot harder when you finally pick it up again. I kept trying to read new-to-me books, 2023 Best Of titles, and other recommendations, but my mind wouldn’t settle whenever I sat down to read, so instead I’ve returned to known favorites, novels I’ve read before and continue to love (the most recent are Commonwealth and Flight). The days are long and I am tired by the end of the evening, so I have been going to bed early, but really what I’d like to do is use those hours when both children are snoozing to watch the same holiday movies I watch every year. I’ve done a bit of this, but not enough. I should go out and walk in the evenings, peer through neighbors’ windows, and take comfort in their Christmas lights, one of my favorite pastimes.

There is a house on the road leading up to my son’s school that has a big blow-up Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus display. It’s not a full nativity scene, just the immediate family. They are cartoonish with oversized grins on their bulbous balloon faces. Joseph holds up a shepherd’s staff in a way that when you glance at it quickly, it looks like a phone attached to a selfie stick. Mary, of course, holds Baby Jesus, and they are posed together like a family trying to take a photo for their holiday card. The other day, there was something wrong with Mary. Either she wasn’t inflated properly or one of the branches of the pine tree she was standing beneath was pressing against her in a way that made her slouch to one side as if hobbled by the weight of the newborn she was holding, the smile on her face distorted just enough to look forced, one eye dipping to the side so that instead of looking toward Joseph’s outstretched camera, she appeared to be looking off into the distance, worn-out and sad. I was running late for school pick-up and my hurried stride pulled and jostled the center of my body so that each step was met by a burst of pain through my lower back and down my legs. I feel you, girl, I thought, as I walked past the display, Mary barely hanging on, Joseph smiling stupidly, oblivious.

This morning after my run, I took a shower while the baby napped and then after he woke up we played on the floor while listening to the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. He likes music and presses up onto his hands and knees to dance by rocking back and forth and wiggling his butt from side to side. The cat slept in the sun. The dog went outside to bark at passersby. The day moved forward with all its reasons to cry and all its reasons to smile, with all the lightness of a new year soon beginning, and all the heaviness of this one coming to a close. There are ten more sleeps until Christmas. I know because my son told me so this morning. We are halfway through the month. Only two weeks left until the end of the year. In three short months, the baby turns one. I try not to wish away the days, nor cling to the past, but to let each moment come and go as it will. To let the miles stretch out behind me and stretch out before me as I plod along, slow and steady, breathing in the cold, bright air.

I hope 2024 brings you joy and you find moments of rest and relaxation in the remainder of 2023. Thank you for taking the time to read Other Thoughts this year. I appreciate it more than you can know.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably had your fill of gift ideas, but too bad, here’s a list of books you should consider either as gifts for others, gifts for yourself, or just to add to your pile of things to read in 2024.

Parachute by Holly Rae Garcia

Eldest Daughter: A Break-up Story, or I Redact You, Too by Megan Cannella

Marooned on the Shores of Malaise by Rami Obeid

Flight Instinct by Sara Dobbie

Hampden Wildlife by Annie Powell Stone

What Is Home If Not A Person by Lindsey Heatherly

Under Memories of Stars by Natalie Marino

And here is where I mention that you can get my chapbooks, Mother Nature and One Good Thing, or pick up a copy of the latest Little Thoughts Press issue Fantastical Fall.