Each morning I drag my butt out of bed at 6:15 (a younger version of me would scoff at how late this is, but it's the best I can do these days) and hike my dog, Steve, up and down the hills of Kettering, Ohio. Sometimes he pulls me to the point of running, and I can almost do this without looking ridiculous.
Nearly every day, I sit "pretzel" style. I just sit there and breathe, enjoying this new-found freedom. Sometimes on my break at work, I walk to the art institute and climb the big hill there, and when I get to the top I sit pretzel style in the grass, looking over Dayton, marveling at such an underdog city.
It's humbling that no one in the world knows the depth of your struggles. No one knows the pain I endured. No one knows the pain you endure, not completely anyway. It's just a part of life that we swallow down and hope we can handle it, and we always do because we have no choice, but we always end up the better for having gone through it. Those are the sort of thoughts that wash over my brain when I sit pretzel style.
In writing news: I'll be a guest columnist for the Dayton Daily News again here soon. I haven't written a piece since the election, so I'm overdue. I think this column will be about nature and kids. It's brewing in my head, but I need to see where it goes yet. I was just published in Morehead State University's literary journal. It's an essay about how really horribly I handled going back to work when Cece was born. I was a hot mess. It's 20 pages long, so I'll attach a portion of it here. I'm working on my second book, and this will be included in it. What's that saying? I can't give you the milk for free...or something about you'll never ask for milk if I give you the cow? Who knows. I'm notorious for never remembering common sayings. I once told a lady, "Thanks for letting me pick your ear" when I meant to say "pick your brain". Don't worry, this hair-brained conversation will not be in my next book. My point is, I'll attach a portion of the essay, and I hope when the book is published, you'll buy it or borrow it to read the rest of the essay, not because you owe me that, but because you're hooked and you can't wait to see how it ends.
I’d Like to Thank My Colon
I’m in a closet at an investment
firm. It’s been converted to a
“mothering room,” but really, it’s still a closet that reeks of garlic from the
salad dressing in the mini-fridge that’s meant to hold breast milk working mothers
pump to take home to their babies. It’s
disconcerting to see my bottle of freshly pumped milk neighboring a bottle of
Hidden Valley Ranch, but I refuse to let them—the creamy- dressing-eating
stock-market zombies—take over my mothering room, so I defiantly put my milk
next to the dressing as if it were a soldier, standing unapologetically proud
to rightfully claim its territory in the mini-fridge. If it could talk, in my mind it looks around
the fridge and defensively says, “Yeah, so what? I came out of her boob. What are YOU lookin’ at?” The cool-kid crowd
of dressing and Bennigans leftovers look at my breast milk and he’s forced to
fend for himself as they stare him up and down with a snarl. A more polite employee might put a label on
her milk warning others not to drink it, but not me. I like the idea of a six-figure-earning
employee thinking he’s going to sneak just a little free milk to put in his
coffee, never to realize the difference.
Besides, this is supposed to be MY room and MY room alone since I’m the
only breastfeeding mother in the firm. In
fact, I’m tempted to drive the point totally home by squirting milk everywhere
like a dog marking her territory, turning the room into a lactose Pollock
painting.
The room also carries the stench of
burnt hair and drool—burnt hair because employees curl their hair in here
before work—employees who definitely are not mothers, but are simply women who
are trying to stay on top of the tall command to look fabulous demanded by those
in charge—and it smells like drool because stoner employees nap in here and use
the same blanket over and over that’s now rolled up into a ball and shoved into
a cupboard, the smell of sleep lingering in the stale air. The combination of garlic, burnt hair, and
drool is not my first choice of ideal conditions in which to prepare my
daughter’s food.
This room has become such a non-mothering
room, in fact, that it’s occupied nearly every time I come to use it. When my breasts become swollen water balloons
ready to burst , I feverishly knock on the door as if out of an episode of The Brady Bunch where 6 kids are
fighting over one bathroom, only it’s not my bladder that’s full. I stay at my desk as long as possible simply
because it’s not feasible to stop working if I want to work only a 9-hour
day. I see my baby for only an hour a
day as it is, so I must make sure I don’t have to stay any later. So I work until the feeling of hot knives
scraping along my skin becomes unbearable as my breasts reach the full mark.
I’ve got two suction cups attached to my
bare milk-suppliers; my Ann Taylor shirt is pulled up and lassoing my
neck. It doesn’t exactly fit into my
everyday style of clothing that consists of tank tops and thrift-store t-shirts
that advertise Manischewitz or the Rolling Stones.
I
kick off my high-heeled shoes which make me feel like I’m a sixth-grader
playing dress-up, trying to mimic someone professional instead of actually
being someone professional. Being
barefoot and shirtless in a closet is the most comfortable I am for my whole
day at work.
My high-end breast milk pump sets on the
counter, tubes connecting the machine to the suction cups to my body. I splurged on the more expensive pump,
rationalizing that I needed to pump milk as fast as possible at a job where taking
a lunch break was seen as not being a team player. I turn on the machine and you’d think since
it’s the Cadillac of breast pumps, it would hum smoothly, but instead it hisses
and jolts like an angry cat working something up out of its stomach. On the lowest speed it regurgitates a k-yoo…k-yoo…k-yoo…kkkkk-heeee sound; on
the highest speed, a k-yookkkk-heeek-yookkkkk-heeee
sound. The sound is always alarming to
me, especially when it comes in a closet at an investment firm and I’m nearly
naked and employees who can’t live without their salad dressing or afternoon
siestas are knocking on the door. It
seems so surreal and out of context, like when I have one of my recurring dreams
where I’m going to the bathroom in the stacks of encyclopedias at the
library. I keep my eyes locked on the
door handle the entire time, knowing that I locked it, but convincing myself
that staring at it will make it be extra, extra locked. I fear being walked in on and trying to
explain the scene. It looks much sexier
than it actually is with my shoes and bra haphazardly thrown onto the floor as
if someone were in the throes of passion.
Nope, I am just a mad, half-naked scientist amidst suction cups and tubes,
simply trying to make lunch for her baby in a closet in an investment firm.
Through the door I can hear the muffled
voices of men and women in suits, discussing investment terms that I don’t
understand, but I give a knowing nod and solid eye contact to convey
understanding in any discussion I have, when in reality I’m constantly
wondering which part of my daughter’s life I’m missing out on. I pretend to take notes in meetings, but the
notes are always to-do lists that inevitably have some variation of the command
“Get out of here” as one of my chores to cross off my list. At the end of stock market-update meetings,
the facilitator often asks, “Are there any questions?” and I’m often tempted to
raise my hand and ask, “So what IS the stock market?” because I’m still not
even clear on that yet after two and a half years of being immersed in it. So to
say I am a fish out of water would be an understatement. I am a fish who’s on the sand, flopping
around, convulsing in the blinding sun, screaming and kicking trying to get her
ridiculous rump-raising heels off and swim home to her baby. I am, in fact, a bottle of warm breast milk
amidst a cool-kid crowd of Bennigans leftovers and dressing.
My goals in life are simple: go for
long walks with my family; teach my daughter the importance of nature, music, homemade
meals, and gardening; go camping; go for bike rides; play guitar; volunteer; be
grateful and kind—not exactly characteristics that would qualify me to work at
one of the world’s fanciest investment firms where the word “money” alone sends
employees into orgasmic delirium. But
the Executive Vice President liked me in my interview. I was myself, which is a little sassy and
silly. I didn’t try to impress her
because I don’t think I wanted to. She
asked me why I wasn’t wearing a suit—all the other candidates she had seen that
day were wearing them. I told her
honestly I don’t have enough money to buy a suit nor do I feel comfortable in
suits and I was banking on the fact that she would like my personality and see my
strong work ethic without the guise of a suit.
She hired me on the spot.
I should’ve listened to my gut back then
when it warned me I cannot pull off this charade of fitting into Corporate
America. There are plenty of fantastic,
responsible people who find it a great environment in which to thrive—I am not
one of those people. But I wanted it to
work. I was Cinderella’s ugly stepsister
shaving away the corns on my feet, cursing when the glass slipper of a
stressful, stuffy, well-paying job wouldn’t fit. I wanted to enjoy the long work hours and
pour my heart into what I was doing instead of getting caught up in the fact
that I was using none of my talents or knowledge or degrees I’ve worked hard to
obtain because those things don’t pay the bills as easily. I wanted to wake up one morning and put on my
heels only to realize I didn’t feel like I was merely mimicking a professional,
but I had actually morphed into one and I could stop my juvenile resisting. That never came close to coming to
fruition.
I compare my being in Corporate America to
Elton John being forced to be a hockey player—it just doesn’t look or feel
right or natural. At work, I would often
stare out the windows of the office kitchen into the adjacent building while my
brown-bag lunch was warming up in the microwave, hoping to see other workers
who didn’t want to be there to remind me that, yes, this is what adults do and
I am one of those adults. It’s simply
what…we… do, so stop over-analyzing
it so much. We stuff ourselves into
suits and put on our play-well-with-others
faces and we use corporate phrases created to mask our true emotions like,
“Who’s going to drive the bus on this project?” and “That was a real teachable
moment.”
Everyone else seemed to be so good at
fitting into this world, but it literally made me nauseous each morning when
the elevator doors opened and I knew I’d have 9 hours ahead of me of pretending
to be something I just wasn’t. I felt
embarrassed and sensitive that I just couldn’t buck up and handle the situation. I kept scolding myself for being so hell-bent
on finding a job I’d like. Why can’t
money be what leads me? Don’t I owe that
to my daughter? Am I being selfish?
In the closet, I look down at a photo of
my little Cece Lou. A photo of your baby
is meant to induce milk flow while you’re pumping as if your body will be
tricked into thinking your baby is actually in the room with you and in need of
food, thereby producing more milk. It’s
an unnatural gimmick humans have created to rationalize juggling too much in
life and for each of the three times I pump at work each day and I see the
picture, my heart seriously revolts and pouts at the whole situation. She’s 4 months old in the picture and she’s
wearing a sunhat while sitting on a swing.
Her chubby cheeks nearly engulf her face and the rolls of fat on her
arms and legs are waves of doughy goodness.
I was kneeling on the ground when I took the photo looking up at her and
she’s looking down at me with a gummy grin and a line of happy drool is caught
mid-drip in the photo slipping from her mouth.
The money I’m earning cannot
replace time, the money I’m earning cannot replace time, the money I’m earning
cannot replace time is a thought that nestled in and picked away at my
brain like rust on a bicycle chain or a vulture on a carcass.
