Kaze no Kizu

I am grieving. Last week DH and I watched the last episode of the Japanese Anime series Inuyasha. Before I started watching Inuyasha I would not have considered myself an anime fan. But for some reason I really enjoyed it. Maybe because I identified with the main female character Kagome. She starts out the series as a fish out of water, not quite sure what to do or how to do it. But by then end of the series she is a strong powerful presence, kicking ass along with her friends. Her one constant is that she is drawn to Inuyasha, loving him most of the time while occasionally wanting to beat him up for being such a jerk. Luckily for Kagome, she has the power to tell Inuyasha to SIT. He is half dog after all.

The series has been over for some time in Japan, but we only just got around to watching the end of it now. A fourth movie is out, but only in Japanese still. We have to wait for the fan sub.

It is odd in a way to say goodbye to Inuyasha because I have been watching it since before C was born. DH and I actually watched it off his computer in the hospital the night after C was born. The nurse thought we were nuts watching cartoons. And saying goodbye to the Inuyasha series got me thinking about saying goodbye to other things, other chapters in my life that are now over or situations that have drastically changed.

I have to admit that I have been seeing babies lately and feeling a familiar pull. Yikes, did I just put that down on paper! Okay, yes I did and yes I feel a little tug when I see a newborn baby. Something about them seems so full of possibilities and hope. When you hold your baby in your arms that first time, it is like meeting the future, purified and very cute. (Of course your baby probably isn't that cute. Newborns hardly ever are. But as a parent you always think that they're the cutest thing you ever saw.) I remember those first moments with my babies very clearly and it was magical. Kind of like falling in love. And when you fall in love, it is incredible. And then the rush fades, as it must, and you find new things to love, and new ways to enjoy things. Hopefully you keep that love alive. But it is never as intoxicating as that first sensation of falling in love. And so, you start to feel that pull to experience that sensation again.

DH and I decided a while ago that we weren't going to have any more children (and we took steps to make that a reality). I still think that was a very wise decision. Q's autism makes it hard to figure out how I would have time for another baby or how we would afford one, for that matter (therapy is not cheap). Another baby could also be on the autism spectrum and I am not interested in going that route again. I also have things I would like to do once the children start school full time. Having another child would mean a few more years of intensive child care on my part. I am not interested in that. I have my babies. My family feels complete. And I think a 1:1 ratio is a good thing.

But that means that a certain chapter of my life is complete. I will never again be pregnant. I will never again feel that incredible fluttering in my uterus as my baby moves. I will never nurse a child again. (C weaned at 14 months.) I will never gaze at a newborn, at that newborn possibility, and see a piece of me and yet so much more. It is bittersweet to acknowledge that. But I still think we made the right decision. There are, after all, other ways to see new possibility and feel the rush of falling in love with something new.

So I await the new Inyuasha movie, and look forward to seeing what the characters have been up to, but I should probably start to watch some of the other anime series people have recommended to me. Inyuasha, the series, is over, for now. I just hope that by the time we get to the movie Inuyasha will have finally gotten over Kikyou. Kagome is so much better.

I dream of Hawaii

A week ago I was enjoying my beautiful view of the Pacific from the balcony of my hotel room on Waikiki beach. The weather was amazing. Later on in the day I could be found enjoying drinks (ok, without alcohol, I am taking care of two small children after all) in the open air bar at the bottom of our tower. Now I am sitting in my family room close to the heater vent trying to stay warm. God, I wish I was back in Hawaii.

Q spent the first few days we were back asking if we could go back to his hotel room. Since the weather in DC this week has been nothing but cold and miserable, I totally agree.

Hawaii was absolutely beautiful. I'd say it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. (Other nominations for the most beautiful places in the world are welcome. I'll be sure to attend any conferences there too.) Somehow the combination of incredible blue ocean next to lush green mountains and cliffs seemed almost too much. I grew up near the beach, Long Island, NY, to be exact. When we cut school we went to the beach. I spent most of my childhood summers on a boat. I love the water. But our landscape was very flat. In my mind beaches just don't go with mountains. Mountains were in places like the Poconos where my aunt had a house and we'd spend winter weekends skiing. (No my family is not as well off as this description might make you think.)

But put mountains together with beaches, add lush foliage and warm temperatures, and you get something almost too good to be true. An old neighbor of ours, a year or two younger than I am, moved to Hawaii a few years ago. I thought a lot about if I could live in a place like that. I am not sure I could. It would almost be like looking at the sun too long. Beautiful but too bright.

But the reality is that life in Hawaii, much like life anywhere else, has its dirty and depressing side. Driving to the airport you see plenty of run down apartment buildings, garbage, and poverty. It is disconcerting to look at one side of the street and see tall, beautiful hotels with incredible grounds and beaches and see a run down shabby apartment complex on the other. Of course when you are on vacation, mostly what you see is the incredible beauty you are supposed to see. What produces that beauty, the people who make sure your food is cooked and your room is clean and the grounds are tended, we aren't supposed to think about that and how they might live.

This is why we should never confuse vacation with real life. If I actually lived in Hawaii I would have a house that would still need cleaning, kids that needed tending, food that needed cooking, laundry that needed to be washed. I would still struggle to pay the bills. I would see other people struggling far more than I do, just like I do here at home. Just moving to paradise doesn't solve all your problems.

Then again, I wouldn't need to be hovering by the heater if i lived in paradise. And so I dream of Hawaii. Only in my dreams I look a lot better in a bathing suit.

Pictures on the wall

I hate jet lag. Your body doesn't know whether to be asleep or awake. You can't figure out when to eat or what you should be eating. You feel a bit like the walking dead, or at least like you're sleep walking. I owe this present particular bout of jet lag to a trip to Hawaii. DH had a conference there this past week and the kids and I tagged along. A very interesting and fun week, but exhausting for sure.

I've never gone along with DH to a conference before. Even before we had kids (we were married for 5 years before Q arrived), it never really seemed to be a possibility. I guess part of that was due to lack of money. DH never has much money for travel and he would share a room with a bunch of other conference attendees, thereby decreasing the cost. And when I was working in the public schools, you get the vacation they give you, you can't just take off for a vacation when school is in session. But this time it was different, mostly because this conference was in Hawaii. I simply could not contemplate being stuck at home with the kids by myself for a week while he got to go to Hawaii. I know, I'm selfish but it was far better to go than to just stay home and seethe.

But to be honest that wasn't the only reason. DH and I have started to realize that for our marriage to work, we just can't carry on mostly separate lives that intersect just occasionally. There are all these people he knows and admires, and loves to hang out with on the conference circuit and I only knew them by name. That meant that to a certain extent they didn't seem like real people to me. I got a bit jealous knowing that he was having all these wonderful and interesting conversations with people that I have never even met. It was like a whole separate life that he had that I had no knowledge of. Similarly I felt like to most of these people I was simply a name or a picture on the wall, easily forgotten or tucked away. Worse yet as a stay at home mom I don't have a cool interesting job that helps define who I am. Sure my job does define me but what exactly do people think about when they hear "stay at home mom"? We're talking about intellectuals and academics here. I'm sure to many I look somewhat like a trophy wife, which I am most certainly not. So I wanted these people to know me. Or at least see that there is someone interesting there to get to know. I wanted to be more than just the picture on the wall. And I wanted to start to get to know them. I wanted to know how they figure into DH's life. I wanted to be involved in interesting conversations with them and experience a little of what DH is so drawn to. So off to the conference I went.

But of course I did have two kids in tow which makes life so much more messy and interesting. And just possibly, taking two kids across multiple time zones might not have been the best idea. Q never got used to the time change and is still up at night even though we're home now. C did better but regularly woke up there at 5:30am. I must admit that by 6:30 I was up and raring to go as well. Not the norm for me. Then Q got sick and that made life much more difficult. For starters it greatly limited what we could do. A child with a runny nose and fever doesn't want to do much at all. Luckily our hotel grounds were amazing and we could just walk around and be entertained which helped. Also luckily we stayed at the conference hotel meaning that DH was much more accessible and occasionally I could actually meet up with him when he was meeting with other conference goers. Because of Q's illness this was far harder than I would have liked but it was possible a few times. I got to meet a whole bunch of people I only knew by name and even got to have some conversations with people. It felt really good to be part of that instead of looking in from the outside. Of course it wasn't my conference. I didn't attend any panels and didn't expect people to be able to talk shop with me. But it still felt good. I know it restricted DH some. I tried to be as sensitive to that as I could. With Q sick this was harder than I would have liked but I tried to remember that above all this was a working trip and not a vacation. When DH had to work, we tried not to get in the way. And occasionally we had some time together as a family. What we did not get was alone couple time, also due to Q's illness. Imagine being in Hawaii and no moonlit walks on the beach! Very frustrating!

I don't expect we'll always travel with DH. There were a number of conference goers who also had family with them but I think Hawaii was a special case. DH has said that family members generally don't come along to these things. But really good friends of ours were also there as a family and so it was easier for us moms to go out together. Maybe even in the future we could leave the kids with grandparents and go alone. (Ah, the impossible dream!!) And DH goes away quite a few times during the year so it would hard to always go with him. But if the conference was in a good place I really wanted to visit (warm temperatures would help) I can see us going again. Hopefully no one would be ill and life would be a bit easier. This trip did show me that it can be done and we all still love each other in the end, even if we are so tired we can't see straight. I feel much better having met some of the people that are such a big part of DH's intellectual life. And maybe they got to see just a little bit more than a picture on the wall.

Now if anyone has any ideas on how to get over jet lag, I'd love to hear them.