c l i m b i n g i v o r y
A little blog of Catholic wifehood, motherhood & dreams
Today . . . October 13th, 2021. Wednesday. Anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun; St. Edward; Adrian's 17-month milestone.
Under the sky . . . Nighttime. The rhythmic cacophony of crickets. The occasional barking of neighbor dogs. Under our roof . . . Near-silence, only possible with the sleeping version of Adrian. Husband is out for the evening (Fraternus). Air conditioning humming. I'm wearing . . . A light and thin gray hooded sweatshirt with white drawstrings, pink pj shorts I once bought from Costco (butter soft), hair in a messy bun. Dinner starred as . . . leftover chili, tortilla chips, strawberries, and a fig bar shared between the little man and myself. Husband had already left. Wednesday nights are my break from cooking! A mood of three words . . . tired, emotional, introspective. A favorite . . . the smell of Jergen's citrus lotion on the rare nights when I (remember to) use some after putting on pjs. The scent is so calming and pampering. Hidden thoughts . . . Today, oh today. So many emotions. I'm not sure what triggered it. Too little sleep last night. (Adrian: teething? Nightmares? Sleep regression? All three? Something else? You never really know until afterwards, do you . . .) A whole boatload of stuff going on in my family's life with the fast-approaching birth of my sister's first baby all the way in Wyoming. One cross or anxiety after another. I've been on the direct end of not very much of it but I think I still internalized the stress of it all. It's really as if a slow hurricane descended on my closest relations and now has ramped up speed the closer we get to this sweet baby. Sanctification and God's Will and, accordingly, pretty hard. I've cried a lot today. Mom is leaving tomorrow for a month to go take care of my sister - while driving back home from having gone to hug her goodbye, Jon McLaughlin's "You & I" came on my shuffle and I burst into tears because the song was unexpectedly tender and his voice carried the right sort of pathos and everything bubbling and boiling in me today swelled into a rainstorm over my steaming ground and poured. The birth of my precious nephew, I suspect, will bring a little new life and healing into specific wounds I carry from this past year, in my motherhood especially. But right now the scab is getting peeled off again and it hurts and it's making me weep and turn to the Divine Physician. The wife in me . . . sometimes realizes that even after nearly 2.5 years of marriage (which admittedly is not at all a long time) I can still be a goose at communication. And that it's never too late to learn, to have an honest talk about something, ask "what do you really hear when I say such-and-such" and then strive to mend wrong assumptions and pick out new words to use in the future and better understand your husband's heart, what was making you communicate in the goosey way you did to begin with, and consequently better understand your own heart in the process and figure out the ways you need to grow. Yeah . . . The mother in me . . . is in a tiny crucible right now. There's the little things, like it being a fairly draining week with something going on almost every night, Adrian being so clingy and cranky, not sleeping as well (although he was a week late for his chiro adjustment so perhaps this morning's visit will help) and just getting smarter and more willful by the moment, and husband and I having to revisit and semi-argue about all our discipline tactics over what was supposed to be a homey and cozy Sunday dinner while he throws his food on the floor (Adrian, that is, not husband) . . . And then there's the bigger things. There are two particular wounds I struggle with that have been cropping up over the past few days. One is obvious and, in my mind, eminently understandable: the loss of our Stephen-Mary and still grieving him in the strange and unpredictable ways that grief will manifest itself. It was a hard few months, August and September: pregnancy; exhaustion, constant struggles to get bloodwork and medicine and self-administered shots and emailing with nurses; husband getting sick for almost two weeks; finding out our baby had died; miscarrying on my husband's birthday; Adrian getting sick; not getting to Mass or seeing our family and not being able to get to Confession for almost 6 weeks and just feeling so drained sometimes . . . Anyway, so after all of that taking place, one's sister having her baby is a very unsurprising "trigger" (I don't love that word but I'm too tired to think of another) for a miscarriage mama. You were pregnant together. (You were also pregnant with several close friends who are now still pregnant and you're not.) The emotions surrounding all of this don't really need to be explained, do they? But the other wound is more complicated and I honestly still don't understand it but it has to do with Adrian's birth and, I guess, some sort of emotional suffering I still experience from it a year and a half later. It often comes out as bitterness and anxiety . . . I think deep down it's injured pride, insecurity, and just a craving to be affirmed and understood. Golly, I could write a whole post full of incoherent thoughts on birth and what bothers me sometimes but I don't think it would have much of a point. It's just that Adrian's unmedicated birth was perfectly safe but perfectly agonizing and probably a little emotionally traumatizing. I did a lot of prep, read the books and articles, took the classes, focused on relaxation, had an amazing husband do 15 hours of counterpressure and essential oils etc. and it was still intense suffering in every way imaginable. Now, when I hear first-time expecting moms doing the same prep work, hearing about my story (as if - and this is my pride talking and not at all what they're inferring - it's a freak case of nature and I just wasn't prepared enough) and saying how sorry they are that my birth was so bad etc. and how they're learning about how natural and beautiful birth is and how the body was made for it, the festering wound in me just wants to bitterly snark, Just wait until you know what contractions are really like. Just wait. Birth is sacred but it's intense suffering and you're broken open and you're not in control. Just wait, just wait. I'm so ashamed of those internal reactions but they still live, 17 months after giving birth to my sweet baby and being willing to do it all over again for as many children as God sends husband and me. We hope for a better experience(s) in the future (along with a doula), and I know labor isn't the same for every woman. There are vastly polarized experiences of birth, even just limited to the unmedicated sphere. But at the same time, I just have this deep-down bottled-up vulnerability, anger, defensiveness, bitterness about my experience vs. others' anticipated experiences that I don't like. But whatever my own issues may be, I do believe that, while the birth of a baby is natural and sacred and that God most certainly designed women for it in His perfect wisdom . . . He also permitted the pain of it as punishment for Original Sin, and if it happens to be agonizing for a particular woman, it doesn't mean she "did it wrong," didn't prepare enough, didn't relax enough, didn't imitate birthing animals enough. (No one has ever directly told me those things, by the way . . . I'm just arguing with phantom voices and emotions.) I don't think it's wrong to try to have a good birth experience. But in our Holy Faith, we are taught to embrace suffering as redemptive in a small imitation of Our Savior. Birth is, or at least can be, a splinter of His agony on the Cross, even as it brings forth something beautiful. But it is a cross. Not "hard work." It is intense suffering, anguish. In pain will she bring forth children. A woman, when she is in labour, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world The thing is, I don't specifically remember the anguish of it any more. It's a very dim memory and I'm perfectly willing to try the unmedicated route again. But the emotional scar tissue of how it all went, I guess, has lived on. Maybe I'm just envious if other people have better, easier, shorter, more cathartic natural births and I feel like I did something wrong or missed the boat and the happy birth moms are meanwhile pitying me in my little corner of misery. Anyways. I went into unmedicated birth for multiple reasons . . . I wasn't closed off to getting an epidural but in the thick of things I didn't even have the energy to start a discussion about one . . . before it all started, I did want to offer up the pain for my son and special intentions for him. And it dawned on me today while I was crying during Adrian's nap (yeah, a lot of crying today) that I can offer up the suffering I'm still experiencing from his birth for those same intentions and use them for good. I try not to dwell in those emotions and to give myself grace and to be humble, but it is hard sometimes. I think I just need to offer up the suffering and pray for God to heal that wound of irrational bitterness in my heart if it's pleasing to His Will. He may want me to have it, like a thorn in my side. He may want to heal me through the birth of the next baby (God willing). We'll see. And I don't know if anyone else can/could understand this spaghetti bowl of tangled emotions and pain I'm describing but at least I've put it down on (digital) paper and maybe I'll sleep easier tonight. Now let's finish the daybook and await the birth of precious little nephew, hopefully tomorrow! My magnum opus . . . I've been too drained to work on it this week. Hopefully next week. Sigh. Gratitude . . . for my amazing, gentle, loving mom. I'll miss her being here!!!
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Today . . . October 7, 2021, Monday. Feast of Our Lady of Victory / Our Lady of the Rosary. Under the sky . . . Overcast but, at last, not raining after days and days! We had a total deluge yesterday, starting two seconds after husband pulled out of the driveway for the evening until he got home and afterwards . . . three emergency alert flash flood warnings while he was gone . . . I did not like it, no I did not . . . So for today, everything's soaked, gray, browning trees - but someone came by yesterday and removed all the tree branches from our yard! Must have been a local service as far as we can tell . . . although we joked that the rain must have just washed the pile away . . . both cases seem equally likely . . . Under our roof . . . Waiting on husband to come up for lunch - that last half-hour of anticipation and keeping Adrian entertained until his other favorite person appears. Currently Adrian is eating (smearing) a juice popsicle at the table in his increasingly stained pajamas while I sit here and type in merciful peace. I'm wearing . . . Light-wash knee-length jean skirt, a turquoise blouse with bell sleeves, no shoes, sunglasses in my MUCH SHORTER, POSITIVELY DELIGHTFUL hair. (Thank you, Mom!) Dinner starring as . . . Beef stew, rolls, apple muffins (we're hosting game night tonight!) A mood in three words . . . Inspired, sentimental, grateful A favorite . . . Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's Harvest Home album. I've been playing it every day since fall started this year and Adrian, genetically of course, adores it. It's a seasonal favorite I once discovered as a teen on a random radio station (yes, back when we listened to radio). They successfully captured every autumn emotion of nostalgia, homecoming, wistfulness, discovery, changing seasons, values, memory, beginnings and endings, community, family, aging, dying, departing, mystery, gratitude into one audibly gorgeous album. I can say no more. Hidden thoughts . . . What's that quote from The Fellowship of the Ring? “He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” Yes. That's it. I need to read The Lord of the Rings again. And so many other rich books. One more for good measure: “So the days slipped away, as each morning dawned bright and fair, and each evening followed cool and clear. But autumn was waning fast; slowly the golden light faded to pale silver, and the lingering leaves fell from the naked trees. A wind began to blow chill from the Misty Mountains to the east. The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.” The wife in me . . . enjoys drinking rosé in the evenings with the hubby, watching old gems like Fiddler on the Roof, cozy and together. We did that two nights ago and it was the best thing ever. I was taken aback at how husband suddenly appreciated and was touched by Motel's character so much more now as a husband and father than he did when we were courting - it was so precious! We're imperfect people and our marriage is an imperceptible daily kind of process of climbing but then you occasionally pause and realize you're standing under an unusually beautiful branch or in an especially pleasant patch of shade that wasn't part of your tree before, or was smaller once and now more matured, and you can see how your tree is growing and how you know and love one another more than you did before, in a quietly stronger kind of way, not perfect but there's a richness, a slow richness that you notice every once in a while and thank God for. The mother in me . . . is getting extra cuddles with Adrian today . . . this morning he woke up with circles under his eyes, his fingers in his mouth (yet more teething I anticipate) and a generally sad or sober countenance. Wanting to be held twice as much as normal. He's having his happy moments but today overall is a pjs kind of day for little man. So be it! The child in me . . . wistfully misses my childhood home and especially the backyard with the big hickory trees, the circle of mimosas, the trees towards the back which I childishly secretly hoped I could somehow walk through and enter into Narnia . . . I never was outdoorsy but I most certainly do have the capacity to miss our old backyard! Gratitude . . . my haircut, and a huge answered prayer . . . Today . . . October 4th, 2021, Monday. Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
Under the sky . . . Our drastically trimmed crape myrtle (thank you husband!), our browning yard, the limbs of said crape myrtle piled up neatly by the street. Patchy sunlight coming and going. The unknown plants/flowers around our other tree are dying and waiting for me to dig them out so I can start over in the spring with flora of my own choosing. Mud, shredded leaves and wet concrete from last night's torrential rain. Under our roof . . . A relatively clean and orderly Monday. Vacuumed, swept, meat already thawed for dinner. I've fallen into a groove with housekeeping/homemaking over the last few weeks (a mercy!) and I can only thank scented candles but I'll come back to that later. I'm looking forward to a few boxes, currently en route to our house, that'll help me finish up the decor in our full bathroom, along with a rug for Adrian's room, a new clock for the living room, and a large statue of the Blessed Mother for our yard. I've also ordered what will eventually be transformed into Advent ornaments for our tree . . . a project I will hopefully document here . . . I'm wearing . . . Dark jeans, tan Keds, an old blue fraternity tee from hubby's community college and a navy sweater, unbuttoned. There is no reason or need for the sweater apart from my need to aesthetically participate in fall. Hair is in a messy bun awaiting a haircut. Toddler on lap, moody because the laptop isn't his. Dinner starring as . . . I'm running with a version of seared chicken breasts, sausage dirty rice, corn and salad A mood in three words . . . Edgy, sentimental, pensive (or: I need haircut / or: I need sleep) A favorite . . . Now I return to scented candles. My sister gifted me a big "mahogany and amber" one for my birthday and when Adrian got sick with hand foot and mouth a few weeks ago I burned it constantly to keep my sanity and have something right in my life. It was transformative! Now that normalcy has been reinstated in the Jimenez dwelling, anything pumpkin or spiced at the moment to fill me with autumnal inspiration will do. Burning a scented candle on the kitchen table will make we want to keep the whole house clean, orderly, attractive . . . Hidden thoughts . . . Wanting to be pregnant again. We lost our little baby, Stephen-Mary, and found out in early September. I tried writing about the experience but the words felt cliched so I will leave it for now to the sacredness of being unspoken yet understood. I am healing and grieving but something about the coming of autumn makes me want to be cozy and pregnant, cherishing a tiny little one, but I'm not and just endeavoring every day to accept God's will for my life, to be grateful and content. The wife in me . . . Was moody at lunchtime, popped the "happy shiny marriage" balloon a little, but thankfully got it back on the road for poor husband. Tis Monday. The mother in me . . . Is perpetually tired and needing a shower and simultaneously thoroughly enjoying this stage of Adrian's development. Incredibly smart, strong-willed, funny, curious, explorative. Talking, running, climbing, cackling, pitching fits, still nursing some. I was devouring Leila Lawler's parenting/discipline blog posts on Like Mother, Like Daughter yesterday and what she describes is pretty much everything my husband and I hope to implement in our home. On another note, earlier today I started stressing about buckling down and training him for his naps (his almost 17 months and still contact naps although he's mostly sleep trained at night, *although* we're having to retrain some after he lost a lot of sleep while being sick and our house became the Twilight Zone . . . but I digress) until I remembered that I still genuinely enjoy having that time to rest and snuggle with him usually only once a day now and if I'm still enjoying it and it isn't throwing our home into disorder or doing him damage, why get myself worked up? I know there will be vastly varying opinions on this approach but for today it was good. So I cuddled him. The child in me . . . wants Chick-fil-A for dinner. My magnum opus . . . beginning the process of outlining revisions and hoping to have everything done with the first book of the trilogy by the end of the year. Hoping to get some good work done tonight while the husband has a side hustle meeting. Gratitude . . . For our sweet, imperfect, heartfelt life together as our little family. There was a week in June when I stumbled, like a sharp crack of a broken ankle, into the worst mental and emotional pain of my life and I thought I would lose him. Sobbing into my friend's shoulder in the church basement during Mass. Barely able to sleep. The situation was complicated, the details and reasons now faded and healed beyond mattering. But during that week, the hurt was a throbbing open welt in my gut impossible to ease.
For close to nine days, after months and months of closeness and daily communication, we didn't talk or see one another. An enormous heavy silence. The potential separation clenched my shoulders - an emaciated gray figure breathing into my face - and I truly didn't know how I could move on without him. Later, I would write a song, trying to piece together and process the horrible pain and unknowing. The question, the brink Stands beside them at night Watching them sink, watching them sink The question, the wait Holding their breath Will it break? Will they break? "I can't do this again," I trembled and whispered, face a wrench of tears, outside alone because that was the only place I could bear to be. "O Lord, please, I can't do this again." I had already been through one ending before. I'd done it. I'd poured myself into another person for two years across two thousand miles until a bare ceiling bulb ignited over the codependency and emotional sickness - the inseparable magnets suddenly polarized - and I had to walk away and pray I didn't shatter the other person forever in the process. I still don't know if I did and probably never will. That had been the hardest thing. Barely twenty years old, curled up weeping in my dad's lap, the phone ringing with what I knew would be a pain-filled plea to give it one more chance. I never picked up the phone. But then had come slow peace, healing, order in my life. And then - him. The oldest brother of friends. Five years older than me. The quiet swing dance partner with strong hands. The one who took the seat beside me at a lunch. The one who drove me and my sister home from Theology on Tap. The one who brought us a Frank Sinatra CD. And we slowly, gently, happily fell in love. I'm noisy, flushed, a childish breeze. You are Quiet brown eyes and mysteries. We had been together for nine beautiful and happy months, closer and closer to getting engaged, and then the bomb had ruptured and we were left huddling in our own corners smoking with shrapnel of misunderstandings and pain and I wrestled with what would happen if I lost him. I've got you under my skin I've got you deep in the heart of me So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me. Is it worth it? the gray emaciated figure breathed into my face. When will I wake up? I prayed a novena. We actually prayed it together across that week, yet alone - a novena to the Sacred Heart. I prayed it on my knees. It was the climax of my every day. Weeping, hands folded, sobbing the words every single time. From whom shall I ask, O sweet Jesus, if not from Thee, whose Heart is an inexhaustible source of all graces and merits? Where shall I seek, if not in the Treasure which contains all the riches of Thy clemency and bounty? Where shall I knock, if it be not at the door of Thy Sacred Heart, through which God Himself comes to us and through which we go to God? The days, in a way, were years in that they threw up all my life in front of me and no matter which way I shoved and manipulated the pieces, they would not fit back together and make sense without him. We hadn't even held hands, let alone kissed. This was not the work of chemical bonding. It was something more. So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me. Each afternoon I would cry and writhe inside myself on the gazebo swing and desperately wonder what it had all been for if we weren't going to make it. When did you really know that you loved him? my youngest sister asked one day not long ago. That it wasn't just infatuation but that you deeply loved him? That week. That week was when I knew. Pain ... pain, in the beginning and middle and end of it all, always comes out to a gift. That dreadful yet inexplicably vital week ended and the Sacred Heart gently stooped to answer my prayers - in which, despite all my turmoil and emotional exhaustion, I'd asked for His Will and not mine. He bestowed grace and mercy and strength. He gave clarity, rectified misunderstanding, showed us both a softly sloping path forward. On the one-year anniversary of the first day we met, we went to Mass together in tired quiet but peace. Later that day we went swimming and slowly started to heal. It would take time - but then, not a long time. A year later, we were married. So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me. Two nights ago, I put our baby to bed and then tiptoed back down the stairs to lounge next to him on our couch. We snacked off the pan of rice crispy treats balanced over our knees and silent-laughed at an old favorite episode of The Office. We're older, tireder, the glow of youth giving way to a quieter but more enduring glow of parenthood and seasoned, rather than brand-new, marriage. Our lives are ordinary and happy and I am an imperfect wife. Sometimes I forget what I have in him. Which is why, from time to time, I make myself remember that week in June. I run my hands over the memories and let myself breathe in that cloggy scent of old pain. And then I blink and come back. I look into his quiet brown eyes and mysteries, I smile a little deeper, put my lips to his a little harder, and marvel at the great gift of having him for my husband and our child as our own, when it all might not have been that way. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us. |
MaryWife to my best friend. Mama to a gregarious 3yo boy, a determined 18mo daughter, a darling baby boy due in late July, and a miscarried child we gave back to God. (photos are from Unsplash unless I note they're mine :)
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