But I must report...

On a happier note, I must report that Nahanni just read her first words. She got a set of letter stamps from Playdoh at a birthday party today and I began to put together little words I've been showing her in books. There is a line in 'Red Fish Blue Fish' (Dr. Seuss) "little words like IF and IT" that she has lately been reciting so I put together I and T and without hesitation she sounded them out and read them - IF, IT, FIT, AT and CAT.

I'm damned impressed and she was very excited and did a little victory dance. It was a wonderful thing to see this beautiful moment in my daughter's life when she really grasped the concept of reading. Oh, the world that awaits her in books!

PS. I'll be okay.

Trials of Bad Wife/Mother/Actress

Oh, here it comes - the middle-of-the-night blog, the bellyaching I'm bad at everything blog (granted, it is almost 5:00 am and I've been up for hours). It's all the stuff I'm feeling but not supposed to say blog.

It's not been a time of shining moments for me. Part of the never-ending pendulum swing of life, this is definitely a down cycle. I can't remember a time when I have felt so stuck, so miserably failed, so out-of-touch with my own self and my former goals and dreams and desires. I feel utterly tossed away, I feel as though I am accomplishing nothing and am grasping at the threads of my own identity.

I find myself gazing wistfully at women with small babies in carriers, in buggies, in arms. I look at them and remember that at the most fulfilling and wonderful time - when I didn't care about anything else but being a mother. It was a simpler time, so much simpler that my voracious quest to conquer a world which I am no longer sure I even want to be a part of. I spend my days now spinning my wheels, feeling unsuccessful in every realm of my life, not knowing what to try to get out of it. I do keep trying, but it still feels like I can hear those wheels a-spinnin', feel the grit of the gravel as it spits up from the spinning tires that don't seem to be driving me anywhere lately.

I'm feeling like a bad mother.

It was easy to be a wonderful mother of a baby, new and pink and vanilla-scented. But now I have this little person who wants my attention most of the day, who demands and deserves hours of my time - and I feel like I don't know how to give it to her. Where before my days centred around her and her amusement, her edification, now I often feel myself wandering away from things with her, intent on finishing cleaning the kitchen, trying to get to yoga or to do some writing or bills, or cooking or cleaning or dragging myself back from the precipice of my own slide into...what? I don't even know what I'm sliding towards.

I watch how Ez plays with her and I am amazed by it. He thinks of the most creative little games to play with her, they play dress-up and house and hockey and games full of imagination...and patience. I hear them roaring with laughter and often, when I go upstairs and try to join them Nahanni is the quick to shout at me to get out and I feel a wave of inadequacy pour over me. I never make her laugh like that...Why don't I think of those games?..Why doesn't she want me here?

I struggle nowadays to find ways to entertain her, especially since I am simaultaneously trying to figure out my own return to life, my own return to myself. And I am really struggling with my own identity - just who the hell am I anymore? I feel like I used to have very specific identifiers for myself and my life - I am a successful actress, I am a doting mother, I am a fiery, roaring fabulous woman...

Well, was.

Now I really feel...doused. Yes, I am still an actress, but not what I was. I am still a doting mother, but not...what I was. I am still a fabulous, fiery woman -- somewhere. But those identifier cards don't seem to be there like they were. Now I'm 'just another woman with a kid' as one friend aptly put it. I no longer have a newborn at which to coo, I'm not pregnant or nursing, I'm not working on camera, I'm not even really writing lately. I had a flurry of motivated activity that has all fallen to the side and I feel stuck right back in the hinterland of non-me that I was in a while back. Granted, I had that brief respite when I booked onto that show (that show which will never be mentioned and I hope goes down in a burning wreckage of bad reviews and low viewership - yes, it's spite, but still, I'm bitter). I'm not going to try and sugarcoat it - this period has been really, really hard.

I adore my little daughter and I am proud of her beyond measure. Of course, I see where all the work I put in is visible in her incredible language skills (Mommy, look! I'm being ambidextrous!) and her excellent manners and her sweet, gentle disposition. I try to take her out and do fun things with her still, but I just...feel at a loss in general. I wonder what kind of example I am right now, what she feels from me in this gritty time in which I am trying to reclaim my lost self. Does she wonder where her real mom went?

I sure do.

It's some fun and games

These days fall upon my skin like a rash, slightly nagging, but not altogether unmanageable. I think fear of the impending unknown weighs most heavily, although it is not as though we haven't faced that before. Uncertainty comes with the territory we have chosen.

As usual, motherhood is the constant(k) that stays with me and keeps me grounded. This child, still so wondrous with her lashes and curls and gravely voice. She teaches me something everyday and I feel genuinely sorry for people who are to busy to notice all that there is to learn from these marvelous little people. She picks up things, words, expressions like a magnet picks up metal filings. Little scraps here and there, spouted back at me for approval. Her latest thing is declaring herself to be 'ambidextrous' - something I explained to her a week or so ago and which she pulled out of her hat the other day as we were painting our holiday wrapping paper. Plonking away with her paints, she said 'Mommy, look - today I'm using me right hand. That means I'm ambidextrous' - and again, I am amazed. Not quite as funny as 'Look! These are my boobies, they're from China!' (don't know where she got that one). The other night, apropos of nothing she suddenly looked at me very seriously and exclaimed 'Boobs!', which naturally cracked me up and caused her to repeat it for about 20 minutes. Funnier still is that it took that long for it to actually stop being hilarious.

I'm in the throes of the whole Christmas thing - which is quite funny when you consider that I have been a hater for many years. Suddenly I am combing stores and doing research and have finished all my shopping - and it's only mid-November. All my fears and cries of consumerism seem to have been set aside and I am looking forward to Christmas is a way I haven't since I was 10 years old. I cannot wait to look at that child's face when she comes downstairs and sees the bounty before her. Who knows how the future will provide for us? But for this year, there will be more than enough for her and I know it will be wonderful.

The thumbsucking is improving, although I may be giving her a complex (why not, I have many to spare!). I heard her telling her monkey the other day that his teeth were crooked and I cringed. I have changed tacks and am working with the 'nasty germs' angle instead, in an effort to spare her worrying about orthodontics at such a young age. And I am trying to make peace with my imperfect teeth and not make that my first official crappy thing I pass onto my emotionally absorbent daughter. Whatever works.
Besides, natural teeth are beautiful too, right? (Please say yes, my complex is not fixed yet...)

All in all, even as we are in the midst of the next big who-knows-what, we feel pretty good. Some days I wonder where all my drive and ambition and relentless forward pace has gone, and some days, I just don't care. Some days I don't do any particular homework and I don't try to claw my way up to anywhere and I just live in the now.

It's not too bad.

The Long Slow Leaping of Things

This is the slowest leap off ever.

There are so many questions and very few answers. This is a difficult time for us - we are breaking new ground. Trying valiantly to figure out which way to turn next, where to look for our joy. Now it may seem obvious where joy lies, but I don't think it really is. Or you might see it, but the path is thorny and often perilous, mentally and physically. And there's all that damned real life to worry about.

I hear my friend, my old, often disappeared friend sermonizing that real life things mean very little next to joy, and while I agree, there are still realities to contend with. And questions. Yes, I know there is always more - but when?

I am struggling - though not unhappily - with what's next. Baby? No baby? Travel? Move? Leave the business? What then? What's next? How and how and how?

I have let far too many no's block me in my path, and while I certainly have no intention of letting that continue, I still feel as though I am fumbling around in the dark. The road less traveled comes with no convenient map (or GPS) and I wander around trying not to get lost. Not that being lost doesn't have its own aura of adventure, but after a while in the woods, you just want to find the inn and have a shower, you know?

I have been handling the latest round of cruel fate with more aplomb than even I knew I could muster. Some of it is simply the maturity that comes with age and motherhood, some of it is simply acquiescence. Somedays I just get tired of fighting the unfightable and I just surrender to where it is now.

Currently now is stuck at home, since Ez's truck has taken this unbelievably inopportune time to die. With no car and lamentable public transit (the other day it took me over an hour to go to family place - a 7-minute drive) Nahanni and I are plodding through tasks at home, tearing apart closets, wintering the garden. Today we raked sodden leaves and pulled the dahlia bulbs in fat wads from the dirt. When it finally got too cold we came in and I made hot chocolate with marshmallows which she got in her halloween bag. We sat at the table and I watched her pluck each tiny blob of marshmallow from its frothy chocolate bed and slurp spoon after spoon of the milky brew with a look of utter contentedness on her face. We chatted, we ate pizza left over from last night (not part of my new 'what-would-Dierdre-do' eating plan) and we laughed and had a lovely time which would we would not have otherwise had were we not stranded at home.

You could have worse days.

Like a Baby...

Today, as every day, we read books. Hundreds of words tumbling past her, everyday. She catches a lot.

She's lying in her bed, her pale skin warmed by the light of the yellow curtains, sunflowered by its rays. Her ponytails are high up, askew, tiny pea-shoot tendrils of her wispy little girl hair writhe in every direction. She is gorgeous.

She still sucks her thumb, no matter how much I inveigle her to stop. It makes little squishing noises and is like a little song she sings while she sleeps. I watch her for some time, her eyes quiver in dream. I kiss the finger that remains pressed to my lip where it last fell in her dreamy descent and I try to slip out. She awakens, her eyes flutter open, her lashes two swift butterflies. "Stay here" she says.

And I do.

Thanksgiving 2009

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Have many thoughts...too tired for now... ;)

If only bubble gum did this for us all...

There was good news, but it didn't even last long enough for me to manage to talk about it. The only good news is that there isn't anything lethal around....gotta thank what stars you can.

I need some grown up bubble gum.

At least I looked smashing for the red carpet parties and had a ball at Brightlights' party at Cin Cin.

a little slide show

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