Of Skull-squeezing and Maturity

I ran down the street this morning trying to convince myself that I wanted to run.  I didn’t want to run, but I was doing it anyway.  I had a perfectly reasonable argument about why it would have been better to sleep an extra forty-five minutes.  On this morning, like the past several mornings of running, a song popped into my head.  “That’s How People Grow Up” by Morrissey, delivered with irony, but true nonetheless.  Maturity may represent those moments when we do things even though we don’t want to.  

That sounds more skeptical than I mean it to sound.  I was really pondering self-reliance at the moment the song came to me.  I was considering whether I could rely upon myself to take care of myself.  A blog post yesterday by Jamie Ridler inspired the rumination.  A number of different people rely upon me to do things in any given day.  My children, my partner, other family, friends, teachers, neighbors.  I think I’m fairly trustworthy.  But it has often been the case that I sacrifice my own personal goals and intentions in order to fulfill the needs of others.  This is natural for me, and to a certain extent necessary, as a fully-functioning member of a family and society, but it grates upon me sometimes.  

Another song often occurs to me in those moments of frustration with the world and myself, also Morrissey, singing “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” delivered with the charming aplomb of the chronic depressive putting on a good show.  

I’ve heard some people say, skeptically, that if you don’t take care of yourself no one will.  I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, but it is true for my personal goals and intentions.  If I don’t run, no one will run for me (and what good would that do?).  If I don’t run, no one will force me to run (and I’d resent it if they did).  I could substitute other intentions for running: writing, updating this website, thinking.  If I can’t trust myself to take care of myself physically and emotionally, that could at some point undermine other people’s trust in me. 

So when Morrissey chides me about maturity, I can take it.  Lately I’ve motivated myself with the idea that the morning run is to scrub and tighten.  I scrub out my asthmatic lungs and the fog from my brain.  I tighten up my bones and heart and will.  When I think that way, the skull-squeezing lessens, and so does fear in all of its insidious permutations (Will my work be good enough? Will someone jump out from behind that bush and harm me?)  

I’ve written before that I was inspired to return to running by Haruki Murakami’s memoir about running.  When Murakami talks about running, it is both literal running, and a metaphor for what he can accomplish in himself, and what limits him.  When I talk about running, I am staking out a space in my life for self-reliance.  I can and will take care of myself, physically and mentally.  Don’t ever doubt that running is just as much about my mental health as it is about my physical health.  When my life is frustrating, or the skull-squeezing starts, I run away.  I run away just long enough for the endorphins to kick in, and then I can run back, confident that I can handle anything that comes along because I have taken care of myself.  

When the endorphins kicked in this morning, I did enjoy myself.  Being prickled by maturity is perhaps a good thing.  It’s when I’m prickled by the skull-squeezing that I know it’s time to run. 

Choose Your Own Rambling

I know there are about five of you out there who occasionally read this blog, and in the interest of giving a vague appearance of audience-awareness, upcoming blog posts may be chosen by you. Here’s a list of things I’ve been doing and thinking about. Let me know if you care to hear more about any of these things, or if you’d like to suggest a topic for rambling.  In the absence of actual votes, I will, as usual, ramble randomly.

1. A pot of chili. For dinner.

2. The Magic Wheel of Chores. In which I could tutorialize the creation of a device to order and maintain offspring chores, and in which I could further pontificate that it may not always get the children to DO the chores, but that it has worked better than I ever expected as an organizational tool.

3. The Pouf of Using Up T-shirts. In which I could talk about the construction of a device for sitting, or napping, or whacking a sibling.

4. String Theory. In which I could tutorialize the almost magical transformation of two lowly (free) string backpacks into one (free) messenger bag. With pockets!

5. Free Parking. In which I could share photos of Partner’s clever (free) solution to the pile of bikes and skateboards in the garage.

6. Upcycled personal portfolios. In which I could tutorialize the transformation of fabric scraps and a sheet of corrugated plastic (found in the neighbor’s trash) into sketch portfolios for our vacation this summer.

7. Mama Ray Jack (and her brother Monty). I won’t talk about her yet, except to say that she’s a bit Cheesy, and she might be the subject of my NaNo novel this year. Unless I come up with an actual Real and Serious idea before November.

8. Books books books. In which I could review the books I’ve been reading, starting with the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. Or perhaps you’d like to wait and hear aboutThe Strain when I finish it? No? Too scary? Maybe.

9. More pictures of those Sonars and some rambling about the amazing/annoying/cute thing(s) they’ve been doing.

10. The supposed separation of church and state in United States public schools. This one would likely be a rant that wouldn’t be pretty. It might go something like this: I respect everyone’s right to their own religious beliefs and practices, but draw the line when they judge my children and make them feel inferior in the name of that religious ideology, especially if a person is employed by the government and directly or indirectly responsible for my children’s education. On second thought, Let’s not go there.

11. The frog. You want to see the frog? As far as I can tell, she has no religious ideology or educational prerogative. But she does like to eat fish.

Heeeere, fishy fishy.

Unusual Superheroes

We had a mountain of clean laundry to put away this morning.  A week or more worth of clean clothes, plus bonus laundry from one barfing Sonar (better now).  

All three Sonars piled onto our bed and sorted and folded their clothes.  As they worked, they rolled around, upsetting already folded piles (and each other), and made up superheroes.  

A sample:

Office Man, with the power to cover people in a swirl of papers or to make people late for work.  He can also deploy his army of paperclip people.  

Restaurant Man, with the power of Pie in the Face.  

Bathroom Man, with the power of Pee.  

I had to stop listening at that point.  Where did these kids come from?  

Many thanks

I am, perhaps, a few days late on my thankfulness list here, but I think it’s probably ok to be thankful on other days of the year besides Thanksgiving Day.  I am thankful for a lot of things this year, and every year, but I’ll focus for the sake of brevity.

I am thankful for my Partner, who is not only warm and sexy, but knows just exactly how to make me feel good.  He’s also a handy reader of books, happy to discuss whatever he’s reading or I’m reading in ways that are fun and thoughtful.  

I am thankful for Sonar X3, who not only has a lovely spot of quiet time every afternoon, but is among the cutest readers on the planet.  He has proven to me that reading need not be a sedentary activity, and can be accomplished quite well while rolling back and forth on the floor.  

I am thankful for Sonar X5, who, besides being a pretty adorable reader himself, is also capable of working out puzzles in the most delicious way.  Something in that brain of his just seems to ‘get’ puzzles in a way that I think is fabulous.  His patience is also a good model for all of us.

I am thankful for Sonar X8, who last night begged to stay up to finish a book, not because he had to for school or something, but because he was “this close” and he just had to know how it turned out.  Susceptible to this urge myself now and then, what could I do but say yes?  And though I often grouch at it, the bouncy, indirect way he moves through the world gives me a little joy when I can remember to lighten up.  

There is something so incredibly ingenious about the acquisition of reading skills and I am so thrilled and giddy to be able to witness this process in my children.  I laugh and tell them that the world won’t be the same now that they can read.  They look at me askance, and roll their eyes, of course, but that’s ok.  Someday I hope they can watch someone else learn to read and to know the sheer joy of it.  

We had a lovely Thanksgiving celebration with family.  There was good food, fun games, and just the right number of days cramped together with extended family.  A field mouse tried to join us for dinner, I finished a kilt sock (pictures soon), and whether she realizes it or not, my mother-in-law made me feel like I was one of “hers,” a feeling that makes me feel warm and happy.  

If you had the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving recently, I hope it was survivable at least—though cozy and full of love would be better.  

Rituals

Day 22 — 45,403 and counting

When I say that I like Friday night high school football in Texas, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I’m not some rabid, season-ticket holder, though I go to most home games (at least through halftime).  The only school shirt I own is a hand-me-down.  I’d mostly rather see the band than the football team (but then I was a band geek).  I don’t even have a kid in high school.  I am aggravated when the athletic boosters step over the line and make offensive statements in the giant spirit signs that line our main street on game day.  And I am indignant when the football players get advantages that other athletes and other disciplines do not enjoy.  That happens, almost every week.  

And yet.

There is something really marvelous about a high school football game in Texas.  Last night I went to a good one.  The air was crisp and just a little cool.  The wind chilled our noses.  The band played loud and proud even though they’ve already shifted most of their activities to concert work.  The stands were packed, the yells were loud, the air horn startled us every time.  A good slice of our town was there.  People who haven’t been to a single game all season came to this one.  At least one person who has never been to an American football game of any kind was there.  

Five teenage boys took leave of their senses to spend three hours in the chilled wind with no shirts and their bodies painted in the school colors, so that they could run up and down the sidelines with giant flags when we scored.  Girls in tiny skirts with glittery cheeks (and sweatpants, and turtlenecks, because they were smarter than those five boys in the paint) stacked themselves into impressive pyramids from which they tossed and caught the smallest of their number in stunts that I can only imagine their mothers find hard to watch.  It was so much fun.  And our team won, which made it even better.  They played well, they acted right, and they’re moving on in the playoffs.  It was a scene repeated all over Texas and the rest of the United States last night.  

I haven’t ever been able to find just the right words to explain why I enjoy a high school football game.  Then my kids led me to the right words.  

Tonight we were all sitting here in front of the computer, and I was doing random searches of whatever popped into their heads.  We searched speed stacking.  Ipswich lace (really it was Partner that threw that one out; he recently read this book—good idea, not a great ending).  Pseudonymous Bosch.  Treasure Island.  And hula.  Which led us to some You Tube videos of people doing hula.  The kids were really into the guys who do hula.  Which led us to a conversation about why people hula, and different styles.  Which led to a search of haka.  Which, beautifully enough, led us to this NPR story about the Trojans of Trinity High School, in Euless, Texas, of which, I’ll quote a smidge:

“The rituals are precisely defined:  There must be music and dancing, chanting and marching.  Sticks are twirled and thrown spinning into the night sky.  The tribe’s future — its strong, beautiful young men and women — paint their faces, don costumes and perform amazing feats of physical prowess for the pleasure and admiration of their people.”

And that refers to high school football, not the haka that the Trinity players perform before each game.  

Oh, and the Euless Trinity Trojans beat the Plano Wildcats 42-35 to advance to their next round of the playoffs as well.  We’re not in the same class, but maybe we’ll see them in Dallas in December.