Fitting In

This summer I have spent Monday mornings hanging out with this little lady:


Harper Lain Schoon Tanis…soon to become one of the World’s Greatest Women.

Last week I was heading to the park to meet my friend Elizabeth for a “play date.” In the six short blocks to the park I managed to have a bit of an identity crisis. It started as I pushed the stroller across the street in front a cute guy in a car and realized, “he thinks I’m a mom.” Which then turned into, “I’m meeting a friend my age (who really is a mom) for a play date. This could be my life….a mom.” As I neared the park and saw a Mom Pack (similar to a Wolf Pack, but slightly less vicious) standing watch over their children playing I developed sudden anxiety because I hadn’t yet put sunscreen on Harper. I imagined the Mom Pack watching me and thinking, “what kind of mother is she?!?” Wait. I’m not a mother. I’m a baby-sitter. A 31-year-old baby-sitter. It wasn’t quite noon but I was definitely ready for a drink.

I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite books lately and just finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I first read it when I went to Africa. As I read it again I became even more convinced that we could (should) be great friends. She eloquently explains part of the reasoning for the quick onset of my identity crisis (which, to be quite frank, happens more often than I’d like to admit as a single woman in her thirties in this lovely Midwestern town).

“To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in America (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother’s family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent—at every stage you know who you are, you know that your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety-year-olds in the shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem—you’re the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and moreover, it’s universally recognized. How many people have I heard claim their children as their greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It’s the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy—If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.

But what if, either by chose or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time’s passage without the fear that you’ve just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant? You’ll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I love children, but what if I don’t have any? What kind of person does that make me?” (Eat, Pray, Love, 95).

Before you get too concerned: I am not really having a crisis over whether I want to have children right now or not (I don't); nor am I about to take any drastic measures to fit more comfortably in this culture as a 31-year-old woman. But I have been giving a lot of thought lately to where I “fit” here as most of my contemporaries are in the Mom Pack or at least not having to give thought to whether they should or should not take a date with them to a wedding. Granted, I have been trying to find where I "fit" ever since I moved back from the Dominican Republic 4 years ago…and though there have been moments where I’ve thought that I had found my niche, life keeps on keeping on and I am forced to find new niche.

Thankfully, I have good people in my life to encourage me and remind me that I am indeed a normal person and that I am not (despite my mind’s best attempts to convince myself at times) going to end up a crazy woman with lots of cats and almost-completed-cross-word-puzzles lying around my apartment.

Though...at least then people (myself included) would know then where I fit: in the Crazy Aunt category. Again, as my should-be-friend puts it:

"Last summer, my five-year-old niece had a little friend over to my sister’s house to play. I asked the child when her birthday was. She told me it was January 25.

"Uh-oh!" I said. “You’re an Aquarius! I’ve dated enough Aquarians to know that they are trouble.”

Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I’m not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorceé in the muumuu with dyed orange hair who doesn’t eat dairy but smokes menthols, who’s always just coming back form her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, “Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I’ll let you wear my mood ring…” (Eat, Pray, Love,96).

Ahhh...that's funny to me. And, I have always wanted a mood ring...

Spring Cleaning Season is Finally Over

For some reason this year Spring Cleaning seemed like a good idea. Not exactly sure why (as my mother pointed out, "I have no idea where you learned that"). And, after spending 4 hours on the first (and smallest) room turns out that Spring Cleaning was more fun to think about doing than to actually do. It sounded like a really good idea in my head the last few weeks of the school year when all I wanted to do was something that made me feel like I actually accomplished something. I would sit at my desk and dream up a plan for cleaning...would it be smarter to take it room by room? Or should I wipe/dust all the baseboards at once?

In the end I went with the room by room strategy. There was a moment of Spring Cleaning Truth early on in the venture when I looked down into a vent. You should understand that I live in an older home so the vent is really a large hole in the floor with a wooden slatted cover. While it isn't an endless abyss, it easily could be a hiding place for a small child. As I looked down and saw a cat toy (there hasn't been a cat in the apartment for 2 years) and some other random objects I realized I had a choice: to really Spring Clean or not. I seriously paused for a good bit staring at the vent and then, somewhat proud and annoyed with myself at the same time, took the time to take off the slats and clean out the vent.

I won't bore you with the rest of my Spring Cleaning adventure that spanned about a month and at one point caused a friend to ask me, "Kate, do I need to do an intervention?" Throughout the month, however, I kept thinking about staring down into that vent (especially when I was at similar breaking points: do I clean behind the stove too??) and wondering what it was that compelled me in that moment with the vent to truly Spring Clean. Because, truth be told, there were other moments along the way that I chose the alternative (i.e., while I did move the stove, I didn't even bother with the top of the kitchen cabinets and I am well over thinking it would be a good idea to clean my screens).

In one of my new Favorite Books of All Time it says: "true religion is radical; it cuts to the root (radix is Latin for root). It moves us beyond our "private I" and into reality. Jesus seems to be saying in the Sermon on the Mount that our inner attitudes and states are the real sources of our problems. We need to root out the problems at that level. He says not only that you must not kill but that you must not even harbor hateful anger. He begins with the necessity of a pure heart (Matthew 5:8) and knows that the outer will follow. Too often we force the outer and the inner remains like a cancer" (Richard Rohr,Everything Belongs).

I want to be radical. And I want to want to do the work it takes do so. I think that one of the things that can be so discouraging about it is that there is always something to be rooted out. I am someone who wants to get things done (quickly if possible) and cross it off the list (for good). What I am learning, however, is to be patient with myself...patient with others...to remember that while my screens may still be filthy, I did clean the dang vents and perhaps next spring (please tell me there isn't such a thing as Fall Cleaning??) I will do the opposite.

Welcome to My Brain

I truly did have intentions on starting to blog more regularly…apparently, however, I haven’t been able to muster up the discipline to do so. I think I also got a bit discouraged when I read in some article somewhere that some woman somewhere makes more money than me annually simply from blogging. Normally I am one who is up for any type of friendly competition, but for some reason rather than light a fire under my butt it just made me think, “really???” And that “really???” thought turned into “damn, she must have some super insightful/witty/intelligent things to say in order to make that much money,” which turned into, “damn, I wish I had more insightful/witty/intelligent things to say in order to make that much money from blogging,” which probably led me to drink a beer or eat a cookie cookies to try to muster up some more insightful/witty/intelligent things to say.

I think I thought of some. But the work of trying get those thoughts into printed form seemed like a bit too much work. Like I said, what I really need to muster up is some discipline.

Besides the lack of discipline is the fact that I have a fast brain. Now I’m not trying to toot my own horn (though I did kick butt in 3rd grade ‘speed math’ competitions, which made up for being picked last for most PE events…well, almost made up for), it simply is a fact: the only thing my body manages to do quickly is think. Again, these thoughts aren’t necessarily all insightful/witty/intelligent. For example, the other night I was sitting at an outdoor concert under this h-u-g-e white tent and at one point my thoughts drifted from wondering why the tent was so huge, to wondering what on earth I would ever want embroidered, to wondering why I always think of that Rick Moran movie Honey I Shrunk the Kids! when I stare at the grass, to wondering if I ever really want kids, to wondering if my now divorced parents ended up buying burial plots next each other and if so what happens with that now, to wondering what kind of chemicals were in the treats that Joel bought at the party store, to thinking that the concert was much more enjoyable now because of said treats. And this was probably all within 15 seconds.

See, I don’t necessarily stay on one thought too long. Wellll, that’s not entirely true. There do seem to be some thoughts in my life that—despite all my best efforts—have outstayed there welcome. The point is, however, that I have had many thoughts of relatively insightful/witty/intelligent things to write since my last post but before I get a chance to write them I am on to something else.

But I am determined to become more disciplined. And to realize that not every blog needs to be super insightful/witty/intelligent (I once simply posted a picture from a menu for crying out loud!) because the reality is that I am never going to become a self-employed blogger.

So here’s to yet another attempt to become more disciplined…which I’ll get to it as soon as I bake some more cookies.