Noa: Insatiable

Checking in.

I didn't let the dough rise. It is dense and pasty, resembling pizza but tasting more like cardboard. The girls didn't seem to mind - they are watching Stuart Little and I am sitting in the kitchen eating my cardboard pizza, decorated with avocado and broccoli and pineapple and mushrooms.

Makes me wonder what else I don't allow to rise in my life. What it is I suppress, or simply flash by, without paying attention or letting enough time lapse for something to take its rightful shape.

Things have been such a blur. I feel cliche writing this, the all-important "I'm so busy, crazy busy, blah blah busy crazy" mindset. I don't want to be this, to be a busy cliche. It makes me self-conscious but more so makes me sad, kind of nostalgic for my own self, with a nagging, quiet, tugging sense of what might be missing.

I went to an astrologer today, someone I have seen before and am settling into a nice barter relationship with. I trust her. She looked at Wren's chart and it was fascinating. Mars is right there at the tippy-top, announcing himself. Her willfulness and her sweetness, her need to be of service and also right, her connection to dreams and the imagination, her relationship with Red and Ariel and even our dog - it is all there in her chart. Fascinating. I asked Laura, the astrologer, whether we are "handling" her gender development in a way that would be supported by her chart - does that make sense? But even as I asked the question, I knew that her development, around gender and in general, is not something for us to "handle" at all, simply to support, witness, hold, nurture, and love.

Makes it sound so easy. And then I have to wonder if maybe it is, or could be if I let go or my Saturnian need for control, stability and structure. What if it were that easy, to let them go, just see that our kids are so complete, completely encoded, predisposed and predetermined, like a flower that will bloom, reveal itself as the only kind of flower it could be, and the only impact I can have as her mama is whether I water that flower or neglect it.

And believe me, I have done both. Killed more houseplants that I care to recall. Careless.

There was one night a few weeks ago when I was kind of out of my mind. Red was at the office late and I was fried. The girls were in the bathtub upstairs and I got sucked into Facebook downstairs. I could hear them splashing and laughing, rationalized to myself that this was ok. And at the same time saw myself, saw that I was checked out, saw that I was moving too fast.

Today, after I dropped them off but had a little window before my first client downtown, I walked slowly with my coffee towards Red's office where I've been spending more and more of my working hours. Firetrucks roared by, people in cars and on foot and on bikes, music blaring, everyone moving so quickly. I imagined that I had just emerged from a silent retreat, or months alone in the mountains, somewhere unplugged, slow. I felt the shock of it, the disconnect, not even disdain, just unfamiliar, blinking, like "this is what the world is?"

What am I missing? What are we missing in these days packed with movie nights and bedtimes and drop-offs and sweeping the kitchen again and again?

And then the answer comes, for now at least: nothing. Missing nothing, if I slow down enough to be awake. Not sure I believe this answer. Not sure I trust it. Not sure if it's bullshit or leaving something really important out and if so, what that really important thing would be? What I do know is that I have been positively craving attention in a way that I am not getting. It's not from Red - he is actually quite attentive. I see his efforts to recognize me, my work, my efforts, my presence, my needs. It's something else. Pampering? Sounds so superficial. Maybe some cross between ultra-super-amazing pampering and undivided attention. Someone's, but not just anyone's. Whose? Mine?

This check in is not exactly wrapping itself up nicely. But there's two minutes left on the movie timer, and then I turn into a pumpkin, I mean a mama.

I love you all. So grateful, always, for your undivided attention, the best pampering I get these days. And always, I feel greedy, hungry, dreaming of more, more, more. Insatiable.