Clean your gutters!

With a gigantic old deciduous oak tree shading the roof of our home, I've been busy all autumn cleaning the fallen leaves from our gutters. Otherwise, the rain overflows out the side of the gutter and makes a mess. The system works best when it's clean.

Sometimes, I think our human brains are not much different than these gutters.

Take the holiday gift shopping example. My dad takes some flack for saving his Christmas shopping until Christmas eve, but really, I think he has a lesson -- shopping is simple and just fine when you only have a few hours and limited choices. I typically spend about a week in consumer chaos -- I become consumed by trying to buy the perfect gifts at the best deals!

The satisfaction of feeling like you're smart, as when reading the DaVinci code or solving a sudoku puzzle, has its merits when you're a student trying to make the grade or an engineer trying to fix some mechanical disaster. Sometimes, though, do we take it too far? No offense, women, but we're the worst at ruminating (check out the parody by Harvard Sailing Team). Men are guilty too, though. In 1961, Henry Littlefield suddenly made the "discovery" that Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was actually written to be an allegory for a political debate in the 1890's, and unfortunately, historians jumped on board and added this revelation to textbooks (a quick glance on snopes and wikipedia disproves this theory). Similarly, J. Allen Varasdi contrived the idea in 1989 that the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie" is about the bubonic plague, but fortunately, this has been disproved as well.

Although I've been guilty of it myself, I'm rather bothered, as an artist, by this mentality, that everything has to mean something. Imagine what emotion we could experience if we allowed ourselves to just experience -- no uncovering secrets, metaphors, and allegories. Brains are good, but let's use them on more important things than addictive deal shopping. When your boyfriend says "no" instead of "nope" or "nah," don't overanalyze it.. When reading juvenile fiction, giggle about the nonsense. And practice a little zen when standing before a painting or sculpture -- simply be.

my limerick about postpartum depression

I'm not trying to bring anyone down, but I'm home alone right now, need an outlet, & am proud to have just come up with this clever & accurate rhyme while I was nursing the babe to sleep:

A dire, tired mom I inquired,

God, why don't my life I desire?

My light has been snuffed, every smile I bluff

Enough! Will this roughness please expire?!

It's been 6 months and a couple days since our little boy entered this world, and to say my life has changed would be an understatement. Actually, even though I'm tending to this child's constant needs 24/7 and am walking around dizzyingly exhausted, I feel like our day to day life has changed less than I personally have. I am still the same me, with many of the same dreams and desires, but have been humbled like never before....

Last spring, while we were trying to be patient in the wait for our son's 12-day-late arrival, we planted some new grass seed. Our yard desperately needed it. We watered until the seedlings sprouted, and it was a rewarding practice. After the baby arrived and our new grass was looking pretty, we kind of quit the watering. We then had a drought on top of that. The freshly planted grass that had been so lovingly cared for earlier dried up and withered to a lifeless brown. We were sure our work had just been waste of time and would have to be repeated. Not long ago, though, we finally received rain -- 6 full days of incessant downpour. It was a rough week for me, being trapped indoors, alone with my infant. I may have lost my sanity and logged onto this blog to type some words I then had to remove the next morning.

But here's the thing: I had a drought in my life, too. That depressing downpour really served as a wake up call to me, and thankfully, God can be pretty forgiving. Without any work on our part, the grass has re-sprouted and is looking alright again.

I'm not sure that all the details are worth noting, but I'll say of my "drought" that motherhood is not all that I hoped it would be. Honestly, I feel like I've been running a race for the past 6 months but there is no finish line and few water breaks. I've struggled at times to find much-needed humor, friendship, contentedness, and love in my heart. Balancing my child's needs with my husband's and my own has been more of a challenge than I could have ever in a million years anticipated. Balancing this reality with what I think the world expects of me and other young mothers -- that is, to be overjoyed with the perfect little bundles given to us -- is yet another struggle. These are all things I'm still struggling with, but I'm trying to add the right amount of sunshine and water to keep growing and being the person I need to be. There's a lot of compromise, trial and error, frustration, and prayer involved, and if anyone reading this wants to help, we could certainly use more of that last item mentioned.

I live in a brick home with a scalloped white picket fence, a friendly golden retriever, a darling husband and a 6 month old with the biggest, cutest toothless grin you've ever seen, but just in case anyone covets my life, you should know that the grass is for sure always going to be greener on the other side.