People often ask me what my boundaries are, when it comes to the blog. Generally, I adhere to sort of a two-drink rule: is it information I’d offer up at a dinner party to an acquaintance after two glasses of Pinot Grigio?
If it’s something that wouldn’t come out until three or four glasses, I tend to steer clear. One to two glasses, though, yeah— chances are good it might find its way to the blog.
Despite the name, I’ve never thought of this as a mama blog, not really. With the girls getting older all the darn time, and their privacy as nifty people more and more important, well, this blog’s focus will definitely evolve. It’s already evolving, though I’d be hard-pressed to articulate its evolution in any sort of intelligent fashion.
Brain stroganoff, overcooked. With so much going on, my gray matter has liquefied. Stand back, I might leak on your shoes.
This morning, I took the girls to school and forgot the way home. (Don’t worry, I remembered eventually. There are only two major roads where I live; I was bound to figure it out sooner or later.)
I happen to believe in some sort of God. I’m not a church-goer (or a synagogue-goer, anymore), but God and I, we chat. We do. This reassures my mother. I keep asking the Big Holy Whatever to clue me in, point me in the right direction, make His/Her road signs more readable. He/She has terrible handwriting. No offense, God, but you do. Or I need new glasses.
With all that’s going on, I think a lot about heart stuff these days: how relationships go awry, how hearts break and mend and break and mend over and over, how love appears in the strangest guises and places and can disappear just as quickly, and whether love and infatuation are buddies who go to the movies together, or enemies who scrawl mean things about each other on the bathroom stalls at the mall. I think it’s funny that God gave us hearts that are all about quality, not quantity—and then gave us a gigantic lifespan of 80-some years to ponder that. If that’s not divine mystery, I don’t know what is.
I think about my girls and their sweet little hearts. I wonder whom they will love, who will break their hearts first, whom I will find seated at my Thanksgiving dinner table in 20 years. I think about Thanksgiving dinner a lot. The holiday is why I was pretty darn sure I wanted kids, just to make life interesting on Thanksgiving. I like watching the Macy’s Parade and the Purina One Dog Show, but it’s more fun with other folks around. I like the thought of the girls tromping home with various people in tow, maybe a few babies or kids and a Porta-Crib. I don’t cook well, but the thought of future Thanksgivings motivates me.
But now I don’t know what “home” looks like. I can’t picture it, how it will look in 20 years. I’m just hoping I can find my way there.
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I hope you’ll forgive me for being trite, but home is where your heart is. Your heart is clearly with those two nifty little people. So wherever your future Thanksgiving dinners take place, your heart and your home will be there too.
I can’t tell you what a hot cup o’ soup your blog is to my heart right now. I’m going through a separation too, and hearing your thoughts helps me articulate my own a tiny bit more.
You don’t have to know what you’re going to say, for us to listen.
Awesome, lovely, witty, well-written post.
And I guess no one knows what their Thanksgiving table will look like in 20 years. Anything can happen. Even if you think you have a grasp on it, I don’t think you actually do.
Amen, Diane.
Jenn, I love reading this blog, no matter what you write about.
So beautiful. I see lots of pumpkin pie in your future.
ditto adither. absolutely. i think when we’re in a place that feels like THE PLACE we fool ourselves into thinking it will be THE PLACE forever. but it’s not. not for any one of us. you just have to think about it more than other people right now, so it feels a little sketchy.
I don’t think you have to worry about finding your way to your 20 years hence home. I think 20 years is too far away to contemplate, and frankly a little crazy-making. I concentrate on making it through the week the month the year by looking down at the path in front of me instead of off at that distant horizon. ‘Cause the path is what leads you home, right?
(Or maybe I just read that somewhere.)
Don’t move.
Seriously. Not, like, from your seat or anything. You can move that much. Just not out of your house. Because if you really want to find it in 20 years you’d better not re-locate somewhere with more than two main roads. Because your girls will be waiting on the front porch, kicking at the cranberry storm door, each maid with a respectable man in tow, wondering where in the hell their mother is and what those odd, canine sounds are that seem to be emanating from inside. Can you imagine a place with four major roads or more?? The potential to get lost is simply staggering.
Yeah… stay put.
Unless you end up in Iceland. I just betcha there are a whole slew of nice small towns to live that have no more than one main road. But I don’t think they have Thanksgiving. So you’ll have to weigh your priorities on that one.
I can’t really picture what ‘home’ will look like 20 years from now either; I’m not set on exactly where I want to be in two decades, geographically or personally. But I can clearly picture my kids and their own progeny sitting around my table, wherever it may be.
Hot cup o’ soup, indeed.
Without children, or the prospect of children, I have no clear path to what my future Thanksgivings will look like, but I have found that with or without expected partners, our families, both both blood and not, are under constant reconstruction. The love will be there, whether you can imagine what it will look like or not.
Maybe it’s because I live in crunchy-granola, yoga-blissed-out, New-Agey, hot-tubby Marin, but all we have is the moment, so it’s best to be in it.
We have memories, too, and ideas of the future, but a middle-aged brain pretty much takes care of that! I can’t remember what it was that I wanted, but I seem to be making it up along the way.
I just stumbled upon your blog, and I wish you the best in your journey, as painful as it may be. Don’t want to sound flip that it gets better; it often does, however. And sometimes, it gets great.
As for Thanksgiving in 20 years, good god, I hope my kid will be cooking for me by then!
Oops, my URL got messed up: it’s http://blogs.marinij.com/katwilder, if anyone’s interested.
Ah, Thanksgiving … 20 years past. 1987. Senior year in high school and both grandmoms were gone so the holidays were bittersweet that year. 1988. You were a freshman in college and just beginning to bring home the boys in your life, the boys who would play such a big part in your journey. I think you’ve done well, Jenn. Even the guy with the Mohawk could cook a terrific spaghetti dinner.
Wonder if I’ll be at your table in 20 years? I hope so.
I cried when I read this…There is so much that you write that I feel connected to–your words sometimes describe my feelings (or past feelings so well.) On my blog, I tend to stick to the humorous things that happen on a day to day basis, because I do find a lot of humor in things ( I think I have to or I’d turn and run sometimes!) but there is a very serious, contemplative side of me. I think by finding and reading your blog, I may eventually find my way to share that part of me someday too.
Tongue tied, as always, when I read eloquence such as yours, Jenn.
I’ll have to go with, “what Diane said”…that’s what my heart says each time I visit you here.
i find trying to visualize my future so terrifying right now. there is no certainty anymore, save for the kids. even that though, what if thanksgiving is at their dads house…
Home is where you wrap your arms around your girls. It is the flood of love that becomes the lump in your throat, the swelling of your heart, and the mist in your eyes. So hang on to that, and then anyplace you hang your Viking helmet is home.
We seem to have the same God. Mr. Big Holy Whatever please tell me how to raise my son right. What am I going to do when I’m trying to support this family on no income instead of one income?
And unfortunately, I have those same glasses.
Thanks Jenn. For helping me understand a little about what goes on inside my head.
hey, you know, i just wanted to tell you that there’s a startlingly white Prius that drives around town here (of course it’s driving itself because knowing who’s driving it would ruin the whole thing for me) and it has one of those oval euro sticker thingamabobs on the back and all it says is “I”. every time i see it i think of you and Iceland. been meaning to mention that forever.
I love this. And your last paragraph really captures the poignancy of divorce. You’ll find your way to home, wherever it might be.
look at all these posts, my love! LOOK! i think you’re there…i think you’re home. pie anyone?
I just hope that in 20 years, I’m NOT the one who is cooking!
My code is BONO — so maybe you and Bono will be hooking up for thanksgiving in 20 years!!
I love reading what you don’t know what to say.
Okay, my GOD we’re seperated twins. It’s actually gotten eerie.
ME TOO. I love Thanksgiving better than any other holiday, because it’s all about food and friends and family, and the year that Chrissy was born was the first year I ever hosted Thanksgiving on my own and I’ve never stopped since.
Some faces are there that I couldn’t have imagined (Lula’s, for example); some are not there that I always thought would be, and the table has moved halfway around the world and back again, but it’s still Thanksgiving because the second I became a mom I took it in my hands and I made it mine, for my family.
And you know, your family endures! It more than endures, it’s there, right there! Home, as someone said up above, is where you are, because you are the Mama now, girly. YOU are home.
Wow! I was going to confess to an obsession with advice columns in my search for road signs, but really, I got nothin’.
Just go with what Leigh said. Right on, Leigh!!!
You will. Don’t worry.
I can relate to the holiday thing. I really thought about life like that…how many kids did I want returning home as adults for the holidays. I have 3 of my own. Plus one step-which should make life real interested when that time comes…
It is certain that you *will* get there.
I love your description of Internet-sharing boundaries – the 2 drink rule, I have often used a similar rule. Would I say this at a dinner party in front of people I’ve only just met, if not, don’t post it. Problem is I will say a lot at a dinner party in front of people I’ve only just met. Still, I’m consistent.