My Comeback

For five years, I was fine without theatre. I was a mommy. I didn't see how I could do both. Yes, I was obsessive, overzealous, and intense, but if I was just going to be a mommy, I was going to be a great one. I compared myself to only the best and judged those who (kind of like me, but I was in denial) couldn't compete with the crafty, creative, decorating, foodie, bread-baking, tomato-growing, homeschooling moms of the year; you know, the moms who had their ass hanging out most of the time (like, well, me.) I intended to be that woman who feels most alive at the sewing machine or in the garden or by the stove. Of course I don't know how you make yourself feel alive, or anything else for that matter.

I have a friend from Bosnia who has three children and the most spare, precise, peaceful, orderly home you've ever seen unless maybe you're from Bosnia. You can't imagine how mortifying it was to have her babies crawl on my floor and come up with dirty knees be-furred with dog hair. She would never live with a dog. (For one thing, she has an idea that ingesting animal hair is potentially fatal. I need to find out more about that.) Then there's my BabyWise neatfreak gym-rat girlfriend, on top of her life, everything in its place. And here I come driving up in a car with half a foot of detritus on all the floor boards. She would never. Never. Then there is my friend who seems perfectly at ease as a mom. She never takes a break. She doesn't seem to want to be or do anything else, thriving on Picture People photo shoots, shopping for the next size up in shoes, and planning her kids birthday parties. These were my ideal mothers, and you can imagine how I measured up. I convinced myself everything was going swimmingly, but I had my misgivings.

Now, I'm a good cook. I like the idea of growing some of our own food. I probably will homeschool with the help of a co-op of some kind. But do I feel most alive in the kitchen? I feel happy. I feel God's pleasure (and my family's.) I like making good food. But I do not find my ultimate creative fulfillment at the stove. At the sewing machine? Definitely not, though I know how to operate it when I need to. (Though, honestly, when do you actually need to operate a sewing machine?) Having and holding babies? I do feel very alive doing that. There is great joy in the constant daily grind - it is formative, like daily prayers, like saying the rosary. And this womb of home is where I have found love and meaning in a deeper, more fulfilling, more nourishing way than anywhere in my life before. I wouldn't negate any of it, or abandon it, or diminish it. But is there more to me? Yeah, I think there is. Why would I even try to deny it?

Steven started going to our church two years ago, and I feel like maybe he was sent just to fetch me. Steven's a bona fide professional theater actor. After services, we would get to talking, and I started to feel that old, stirred-up feeling. I could hardly cope with it. So I went to see a play he was in, but I felt even more stirred up. So I went to see another play and took Shep. Then we saw a few more. Afterwards, Shep would stand back a little, watching me talk with the actors. He saw the way I was: stoked, like he hasn't seen me in awhile.

Shep's the one who said, in one of these post-show conversations, to one of my actor friends, "I think she's going to have to do this again." I heard that as the tremendously generous gift it was; we do have three children, you know, ages five, three, and one, and someone was going to have to pick up the slack. He was smiling when he said it. Maybe he's missed seeing my glory. It must be hard to love an artist; their hearts don't stay in their bounds. I was trying to. But maybe I was trying to rewrite my bounds instead of filling the ones I was given.

On August 23, I went back to the theater after a five-year absence. Seven days ago, we closed the show, and I haven't yet quite come back down to earth. Oh theater....I love you. There, I said it. I can't denigrate your part in my life anymore. I've always had a conflict between my good girl self and my wild parts. Maybe because it feels so dangerous to be so alive. But after being gone and coming back, I know more than ever, whether I'm great at it or just good, I was made to do it, and I don't think I can walk away again.

20

20 weeks into my third pregnancy, and already 20 pounds in the hole. That doesn't bode well. I have Thanksgiving and Christmas to thank, but also this constant ravenous feeling. I don't know if I'm really hungry or not. But an hour after eating, I'm already thinking about what I'll eat next. I think about eating all day long. I wake up feeling grateful that ah! I get to eat again! I definitely overdid it over the holidays. I ate past the feeling of being full at pretty much every meal every day for two weeks total. I'd say Thanksgiving and Christmas chalked up five pounds apiece that I might not have otherwise gained.

I've always loved eating junk food while watching The Biggest Loser, because it's so comforting to think I'll never be that fat, even if every night for the rest of my life I eat two servings of Chocolate Trinity ice cream after I put the kids to bed. I know I'm not what anyone would call fat right now, but it's this feeling of being out of control, this fear that I may never see 138 again, or at least not for a very long time. And I just don't like what I see when I look at my ass. Ugh. I usually don't like to use that word, but right now it is definitely an ass.

Was it like this with my other pregnancies? Did I gain this much this fast? I'll have to ask my midwife to check my chart. Tonight I tried to remember where I might have written down that information, because I really really really wanted a bowl of Chocolate Trinity ice cream, and if I knew that I've been here before and came out of it just fine, I would enjoy eating it so much more. I couldn't find it in my old journals. Actually, I gave up before I even opened one. I just looked at them all lined up on the shelf and, where before I would have been able to find the exact spot in less than thirty minutes, I knew that I could not kid myself into thinking my brain is currently operating at that level. (Case in point: on Sunday, Grace and Emma had the most killer cute little outfits to wear to church. I got them at Old Navy: white fluffy sweaters over pink ruffled tutus and furry tassled boots. But five minutes after setting aside Emma's sweater so she could eat breakfast, I couldn't find it. We were half an hour late because of looking for it and still not finding it, and I was trying not to be in a terrible mood, because really dressing them up like that was solely for my own benefit. Later I discovered that I had put Emma's sweater on her older sister. Grace's sweater was still in her dresser drawer.)

The other reason I gave up on the journals was that it wasn't worth five post-bedtime minutes, let alone thirty. I just had to enjoy my ice cream in spite of it. I enjoyed a bowl and a half. Some might call it two. Of course, I use a teacup, not an actual bowl. It is amazing, though, how much ice cream you can squeeze into a teacup.

What's even more amazing is that I'm writing about my weight right now. This isn't how I meant to start my blog. My blog is supposed to be soul-searching and inspiring. It's supposed to be about being an artist while in the middle of raising young children, about letting all parts of me live, even if it's just by not suppressing my longing for artistic expression, even when I'm not actually getting to do it very much.

Also, though, I have a story I've been wanting to tell, for almost a decade. Of course, it hasn't been ripe until recently, and now that I'm pregnant with it, I'm also quite literally pregnant, with my third child in four years (which I'm magnificently excited about, more so even than with both of my first pregnancies, probably because now I'm not quite so afraid.) Needless to say, I don't really have the time right now to sit down and write a book. So that's what this blog is for, to get the story out, and maybe through the process of blogging it, I can get it into some kind of organized form that I'll be happy with. And this really goes along with the theme of being a mother and artist simultaneously; it's an enactment of it. Some mothers seem to do this easily. They are mothers, but they're still themselves, creating things, selling things on etsy, blogging, even working outside the home. But I've always had the idea, probably because I had an extremely dedicated mother who gave up everything including some of her own God-given rights to be the best mother she could possibly be to us, that once you're a mother, you stop being anything else, for the sake of your children. I think I've taken it a little far. So, this blog can also be my therapy.

Now, to the story. I will give you a taste of it right now. I know what it's about. I just don't fully know how to go about telling it. Hopefully, I'll discover how as I tell it. It's about how I went from being hungry for love to being nurtured by love. It's about how I came out of a bad depression. But mostly it's just about me. No good way to sum it up, so I might as well just tell it.