When I was a kid, or maybe an adolescent (is there really a difference?), somebody once told me I should write a “pros and cons” list about people I date, so I can determine if they’re the “right guy” or “the one.”

In other words, if I should keep him or bag him.

I never did that, probably because for me, “dating” was something like “meet in bar, drink, wake up next day, wonder what I was thinking, leave.”

Well, there were some long relationships, but the only real difference between those and the short-term ones is that the “what was I thinking” stage lasted longer.

But I digress.

The point is that today is the husband’s 31^st birthday, and in honor of it, I’ve decided to write a Pros and Cons list about him.

I realize it might be slightly late in the game to be analyzing what the guy’s got going for him, but I think I can craft a significantly more accurate depiction of this gentleman, having spent the last 11 years with him.

So here we go.

The Pros and Cons of this Mac Guy:

(if you click on this image you can get a larger version…)

And so, there you have it. Guess the pros outnumber the cons, though as you can see, it was a bit of a close call.

So I guess I’ll keep him.

Happy birthday, Mac.

You’re pretty much my favorite.

I feel the urge to write something interesting.

I want to be funny.

I want to make you laugh.

But I’m gonna level with ya. I don’t have much in me right now.

Sometimes, I’m a shit-talking nutcase who thinks EVERYTHING is funny and cracks herself up in the car writing blasphemous things in her head. I get home, crank something out, and laugh while I’m doing it cause it’s fun and it’s real. There is no effort.

But lately, there’s been effort.

It’s ALL BEEN EFFORT. My whole life has been effort.

I’m in one of those spots where I just don’t see it. I’m not seeing the meaning. I’m not catching the vibe. I’m not smelling any damn roses.

I feel a little lost, though I’ve been here before.

I want to blame it on my life. I want to blame it on our lack of money, or the fact that I hate our neighborhood, or that I’m tired or worn out or stressed about school…or cause I have no idea where I’ll be in a year – will I have a job? Will I go on for my PhD (shhhh! Don’t tell! But I’m thinking about it.). Will my husband still be wishing he were doing something else? Will I have lost these final 30 pounds? When is it going to change?

Will it ever get smooth?

And when, people, WHEN, will I grow up?

When I was a kid I had this idea that someday life would make sense. That there was this place, right around the corner [Right there! I can almost see it!]  that I was heading for. It was waiting for me, and when I got there I would know. I would just know.

The hole would be filled. The questions answered. The hunger satisfied.

But instead I have life. Moment to moment, fired at point-blank range.

Nothing else. Just life.

Sometimes I look around and I see no meaning in any of this. The grind. The working. The marriage, the kids. The dog pissing on the floor. The boy who won’t EVER JUST FUCKING DO WHAT HE’S TOLD. The girl who insists on growing up and asking deep questions I’m unqualified to answer. The toddler, oh, the toddler, who runs runs runs and drags and pulls and sucks my heart right into her smile and my whole life into her chubby little palm, as she tows the last shred of my energy with her constantly spinning feet.

I want to blame all that. But I can’t.

Because I know life is RIGHT HERE, right now. This IS the spot “around the corner.” This is the space where meaning lies…there is nothing else.

And these kids bolting around, driving me nuts, are like flashes of lightning against a night sky – so astonishingly beautiful – if only I can catch a glimpse.

See them for what they are.

Boom.

See the shattering light of their energy against a limitless night sky.

But instead, lately, I’ve been preferring to stare at the small dark circle around my own wandering feet. A tiny patch of ground.

I know it’s my choice. I know I’ll pull out of this. I know my perspective is small right now, and self-centered, and ineffective.

But sometimes, damn it, life just isn’t inspirational. It isn’t funny or cute or even vaguely interesting.

It’s just WHAT IT IS.

And the hardest part is that I am just what I am. A flawed human being, unable to perform all the time. Telling myself “Janelle! Write something funny! Be entertaining!”

And I’ve got nothin’.

But I write anyway, cause this is the truth, and I don’t want to be fake with you, and I don’t ever want to write because it’s what I think people want to hear, like it will cast me in a better light, make me seem better than I am, more than I am.

It’s funny, you know, the way when we’re kids we’re just SURE we’re gonna be something incredible – something special. Change the world. Be president.

And then we find we’re just one more human, trudging along, dodging life’s bullets, passing whole days sometimes, staring at nothin’ but the ground.

And I have a feeling some of you, maybe, sometimes, can’t quite find the sky either. [Even though it’s right above our damn heads.]

And maybe that’s why we’re all here, crazy as hell, laughing our asses off, looking for it somewhere.

1. For obvious reasons, Mondays aren’t generally my favorite day. But this morning, Ava was lying on my bed reading a book (no school) and I was in my bathroom getting ready. For some reason I asked her “Hey Ava, does your school ever talk about what you’re supposed to do if somebody tries to kidnap you?” She responds “not really.” So I ask “Well, do you know what to do?” And then, people, she nonchalantly looks up from her book for a second, says “Yeah, you kick ‘em in the balls,” then looks back down.
2. So clearly, today is a better-than-average Monday.
3. I suppose a better mother than me would be slightly alarmed that her ten-year-old just used the word “balls,” but given the context, I’m alright with it.
4. On Friday night Mac and I went to the San Francisco Bay Area (I spelled it out because I realize many of you aren’t from here, and I often talk about “the city” or “the Bay” as if that means something to everybody on the planet, so I’m trying to be more contentious.) to see Florence and the Machine with my bestie. It was ridiculously fun.
5. I hate it when I say “bestie.” I really should not say “bestie” again.
6. Then, on Saturday, we went to the Hoes Down Festival in the Capay Valley, where we go every year, because it’s one of my favorite events ever. However, this year they opened up online sales so it was like 12 times larger than prior years and there were all these yuppies there (also from the San Francisco Bay Area), doing their obligatory “farm day” with their children, wearing the obligatory “country clothing,” (e.g. $200 jeans with a country feel and $400 cowboy boots without a scratch on them). Needless to say, the vibe had changed.
7. The “new vibe” apparently involved me receiving sharp comments from 3 or 4 strangers on the topic of my parenting choices, which apparently include a blatant disregard for toddler footwear and the horrendous choice that my two-year-old doesn’t have to hold my hand EVERY FUCKING MOMENT OF EVERY FUCKING DAY. More on that later.
8. No but really, why do people trip out so much about a toddler walking a few feet in front of her parents? I don’t get it people. I don’t. This one broad was like “Where is this child’s mother? WHERE?” And I was like “um, right here.” And she was all scowling and full of disdain: “Oh, wow. I thought she was alone.” I was 5 feet behind her. Five feet.
9. And then, because two giant events in two days isn’t quite enough (because we’re 23 years old and just never ever get tired!), we went to an amazing shrimp boil/oyster feed at my friend’s house on Sunday. It was wonderful. I’m 90% sure fresh oysters are the best food in the entire world.
10. As you know, my neighborhood leaves something to be desired. As in, it sucks ass. It’s ugly, unsafe, and uninteresting. Except our neighbors behind us. They’re amazing. Every couple months, these people party like hell all day long – booze, yelling, music, about 12,000 squealing kids – and they’re loud, like really loud. But then, at precisely 8:45pm, they shut the whole thing down. I mean it’s like silent. They turn off the music, send people home, and go inside. Blows my mind. It’s as if they respect others and consider their neighbors. Can you imagine? They must be from some other planet, but they renew my faith.

Speaking of renewed faith, in the parking lot of the Florence show, some dude gave me a “Don’t be a dick” sticker, which I promptly put on my car, feeling like my life was FINALLY complete. But then, I got home and Ava says “Mama, you do realize you pick me up from school in this car, right? I don’t really want to be the kid whose parents drive around with a swear word on their car.” So I took it off. Because she’s probably right.

But I had it on for 24 hours.

And it was fucking glorious.

At least I have this, to remember…

You know what’s scary? Now that I have a kid who’s almost 11, I somehow consider the baby/toddler time the “easy” portion of parenting.

Yes, I know. “Easy” is perhaps not the most appropriate word. Being 20 in college is “easy” (though at the time, we are somehow just so overwhelmed with it all). Sitting on a beach with a beverage and an open schedule is “easy.” Somebody said Sunday mornings are “easy,” but I beg to fucking differ. Sunday morning is when I realize all the things I didn’t do on Saturday now must happen today.

How is that easy?

Anyhoo, the thing is, when you have a baby, you just respond to his or her needs. And yes, they have a remarkably large number of needs. But I don’t believe a baby manipulates or gets crafty with the parents. I know there are parents out there who believe a baby exits the womb with a parental-unit attack plan, but I don’t buy it. I think a baby cries when it needs something and so my job is clear: do something when my baby cries. Meet needs. Love. Play. Repeat.

But then, all the sudden (not that this happened 8 years ago in Sacramento with Ava or anything) your 2-year-old starts banging forks on a table in a Chinese restaurant and throwing her body across the bench seat, totally ignoring you as you realize “redirection” is not going to work in this particular situation and suddenly you’re like “Oh, damn. We better start disciplining this creature right now.”

And it’s all downhill from there.

Because then, all the sudden, you’re responsible for instructing and guiding and doing the real parenting work, which will either mold the kid into a well-adjusted human or break her soul.

No pressure though.

And you can read all the books and ask all your friends, subscribe to some “school” of parenting that tells you exactly how to talk to your kids, how to handle each situation, how to not break souls, or, you can be like me (though I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it), and just go into important parenting moments (the crossroads, the high-stakes shit, the deal-breakers) totally unprepared, vastly confused, and slightly terrified, hoping your gut will pull through with something, cause fuck me I have no ideas.

Sounds like a winning combination, right?

Sometimes when these real stumpers come up, when I’m looking at my kid and they’ve just behaved really badly, or the kids at school are mean to them, or something profound has come up in their young lives that must be addressed in one profound way or another – I get this pang of anger toward motherhood, for making me the one responsible for this shit, but providing me no actual tools to do so.

Recently we were at my mother-in-law’s house. After dinner, we were all upstairs in her office when I realized it was nearing 8pm and we needed to get home. So I started the “let’s go” broken-record routine (you know, where you repeat the same words 6 thousand times and not one single kid acknowledges you until you start yelling and barking empty threats?)…ten minutes later, Georgia was removing the contents of a box she found, Rocket was engaging in some nonsense involving headphones and a fork, and Ava wanted to look at a pile of photographs she found in a box on the floor. She asked me if she could look. I said “No,” and then continued my efforts toward departure.

Five minutes later, when I was nearing my breaking point, I turned around and saw Ava sitting on the floor, looking at the pile of photographs.

And for some reason, I got really, really mad. So mad, in fact, that it took every shred of my restraint to just say (okay, fine, maybe yell): “Ava! What are you doing? I just asked you not to do that! LET’S GO!!!”

When we got in the car, I was fuming. Something about the blatant disregard for my direction infuriated me. It was the way she just said nothing, indicated nothing, but sat down and just DISOBEYED, right in my face.

Now, if it were Rocket, a special gentleman who blatantly disobeys me approximately 4 thousand times a day, I wouldn’t have been trippin’ so much. But it was Ava. Ava doesn’t do that. It was like WAY out of character.

And as I was talking to her in these angry exasperated tones, trying to decipher what the hell just happened, trying to be The Effective Disciplining Mother, I looked at her sitting next to me with her frizzy little head and dusty jeans, and I saw a look on her face that leveled me. It was a new look. It was a look of apathy. It was a look of boredom. It was a look that announced in no uncertain terms, “Mom, you’re talking to me, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you’re saying.”

And in that moment my voice fell silent. I looked out the window at the barely decipherable mountaintops against the rising moonlight. I saw the gorgeous order of the farmland rows, the perfect symmetry of the dirt, the impeccable lines of green, and its harmony seemed to mock my own chaos. My eyes filled with tears as the thought crept in, so clearly, so brightly, so plainly: “she’s turning into a teenager.” A couple of them poured down my cheeks. I looked out at the land, silent, turned my head away.

I felt like a stranger in this car, sitting next to this kid. My feet were on no ground, my heart yearned for an indication of my role in this new story, my task in this moment, my spot next to this person, who I barely knew and yet knew completely, with all my soul.

I felt the truth like a dagger: she’s becoming her own person for real now. She’s walking a path that doesn’t involve me the way it did 5 years ago, or last month, or maybe even yesterday.

I felt disarmed, fumbling to find myself in this new place, this place that just showed itself, this very moment, in the form of a kid with a hint of adult, bubbling just beneath the surface.

I wanted to reach out and grab her and beg her not to go. I wanted to scream with all my might “Don’t ever disobey me! Don’t you dare walk away! YOU MAY NOT GO!” I wanted to whisper against her petal soft cheek “Please, baby girl, stick by my side. Tell me how to make this all right.” Tell me how to get through these next few years.

Tell me how to let you go, little by little, as you need it, even though I can’t.

I just can’t.

And yet, I could.

I’m doing it right now.

I knew my place was not to scold her. My place was to hear her, see it from her side. I found myself asking “Ava, did you look at those pictures because you couldn’t see what my reason was for saying ‘no?’ Did it seem to you I had no purpose, like I was just telling you no for no reason?”

She answered with a barely perceptible sigh of relief, emphatically, “Yes. That is why.”

Then something came out of my mouth that I really I didn’t expect. I grabbed her hand and said “Ava, if I ask you to do something and you don’t know why, please ask me. Question what I’m saying and I promise you, I’ll explain it. If I’m wrong, if I don’t have a valid reason, I will say ‘yes.’ But please, baby, don’t just ignore me. Don’t just walk your path behind my back. I will always do my best to be reasonable with you, but you’ve got to trust me, and I’ll trust you.”

She smiled and said “okay, mama,” and I told her I loved her and we cruised into the moonlight, on this new ground I never asked for.

Me and my little girl, who’s moving right along just fine, into the fringes of adulthood, dragging me behind, kicking and screaming and confused, wondering how we got here and where we’re going now, thinking of the toddler banging on the table just a few years ago, wanting to hold her and put her on a damn “time out,” but instead settling for a spot beside her.

Right here, beside her.

In awe, in love.

In that strange place of motherhood, where only your gut can guide you.

us, then.