tuckova

diamond scattering in the park

How going out at night made me feel like being a teenager again, though I did not have to crawl out the window but just walked down the hall, quietly closed the front door on the sleeping family inside, gently turned the key in the lock and then skipped down the stairs. How the night sparkled, with frost on the grass, and how beautiful it is to walk with headphones, so that everything seems faintly unreal, like a film or more likely a music video. So many people are asleep and the streets deserted, and then inside it is so alive that the walk through the silent park now seems impossible. How you kissed me in the taxi and it was sweet and I skipped back to the door just like I did 25 years ago, as if I would never be tired.

frosty wind made moan

I dreamed I had lost the ability to read. The words were on the page but my eyes couldn't focus, or my brain couldn't sort it. I tried to Google to find out what was wrong: had I had a stroke? But I couldn't read any of the information. Absolutely terrible. My dreams lately have been this very literal and tedious expression of my basic fears. Thanks brain. Can't a person get a train ride with a good looking somebody wearing Chanel up in this bed? Torrid>terror.

I am having the same damn parenting struggle I have in other relationships, which is "when should I do something for someone's own good vs. when should I let them learn from their own mistakes". I'll dole out advice at the drop of a question mark, but keeping my mouth shut otherwise is an endless battle. My general feeling is that my job as a parent is to be a safety net while he does all the highwire action; the funambulism of adolescence in particular is best conducted independently. But lately I've found myself up at the anchor point, nudging nudging nudging him just to take a damn step out on the wire. GAH! DO IT! It is not good for me, because I feel less human doing it - having for example learned for myself the lesson that the teenage lesson learned alone is the one learned most thoroughly, it irks me to feel like I'm robbing someone's independence by telling them what they should learn for themselves. On the other hand I was a teacher once, and I know sometimes a steadying presence is needed. So I'm up on the anchor, cajoling, motivating, etc., and then it's like I wake from a dream in which I have become the very person I didn't want to be, the over-controller, and I scootch back down into safety net mode, where I feel better, but then I see my tiny boy way up there on the wire, a little fearful, and does he need to learn for himself that he is brave or shouldn't I just whisper it to him etc.

I'm glad I only had one kid. I frankly don't have the guts for more. Hats off to anybody who does; that's tightrope walking while juggling.

I have plans for pretty much every day from the 25th to January 1st, but I don't feel particularly festive. We decorated some. I'm mostly excited about midnight tonight, when the days officially start getting longer and I can stop worrying that I won't make it through a Czech winter. I'm not saying it's OVER, but every minute more of sunshine counts.

YEAR IN REVIEW

The theme for 2010 was THIS SUCKS. I started freelancing, which was okay by November but was tense and hard for a long while. I had a cancer scare, my oldest friend died suddenly, my marriage ended, and two friends ended their friendships with me (for different reasons, and respect and love to them because all my friends are awesome, even the former ones, but still, it was hard for me). My goal for 2011 was PLEASE SUCK LESS and I have to say it has been very successful. Work is not yet sufficient in quantity but it is much better & I still love what I do, health is okay, I've managed to regain friendship with the ex, strengthened some older friendships, and made some new friends besides, and I only lost one whole friend. Collective win! We went to Costa Rica and California, which means I got almost enough sunshine to carry me through a bleak winter. I would summarize the things that went badly in 2011 as "Yes, but it's not my fault, because I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not going to feel bad about it" which is a refreshing change from the open-throated agony of "What did I do to cause this?" or the even more waily "What did I do to deserve this?" Thumbs up for therapy, y'all. And assuming the world doesn't end in 2012, I have really high -yet reasonable- hopes. I might, for example, start going to the gym regularly again. IT COULD HAPPEN. 

December will be magic again

Squire drew a picture of me. It is probably true although I think my eyes are less clear. My eyes are my feature (my one feature) but I don't think they actually glow in the dark. The wrinkles coming up now are mostly the result of gravity, which is interesting. When I was younger the hollows under my eyes were caused by sleeplessness and a hunger that had nothing to do with food; now they are small sacks in which I can carry a pint of tears, the memories of things I've seen, and possibly a small loaf of bread. Poor eye sacks, so laden they will burst at some point.

Also I have jowls, but let's not think about that right now, as there is nothing poetic about the gravity plus weight of that.

I've been quite social lately, which is interesting to me. I've had a bottle of wine in the fridge for about two weeks and haven't had any of it after the first glass, which at first struck me as odd as I was once incapable of keeping an open bottle of anything for more than a day or two. But I've been out out out, dinner party quiz night game night coffee date tour guide whatever. I'm a butterfly is what, a social butterfly. According to Wikipedia I will be dead in a week or maybe a year. 

As is my wont in winter I have been looking at places warmer and varying distances away. Somewhere better than this place, with its promise of snow that never comes true, just bitter cold and wind that freezes my tears to my face. California for Christmas is more expensive than in the summer, ridiculous, so out of the question. Egypt is temptingly hot and reasonably priced, as is Turkey, but being sensible I decided to save the money for the summer and stay inside for the holidays instead. Stacking up the Christmas movies, starting with Die Hard. And I want to work on being still for a minute, and on resolve, and Squire needs to study for the high school entrance exams in January, which promise to be horrifically difficult. 

Sometimes I feel like I would be better cut off from people altogether, but then we are on the leather couch in the corner of the bar, talking about the transformative powers of ballet, and I think: nowhere better than this place, right now. 

Propinquity

I had nightmares on Saturday from which I have not yet recovered. The feeling of being trapped inside of a need I fear to articulate, and then, having spoken it aloud not having it met, or not merely not met but not even acknowledged. Please help me carry this or I will drop it, please call me when you get there so I'll know you are safe, please look at me when I talk to you and I'll believe you're listening, please please please. And then the vase shattered, flowers strewn, water soaking into the carpet; or the phone unrung, deciding when to call the police and admit how afraid you are; or the sentences unspooled from a broken mouth, unheard.

Sometimes the level of fierce independence that I claim to practice runs up against my frank need with such force that everything is broken for a while. 

I've worked at a job calling people for an English survey for the last two weeks. It is universally acknowledged that I have a very pleasing speaking voice, especially when my mouth is filled with other people's words and not my own blather (that is to say: you may not like what words my own brain puts in my mouth, but you very much want me to read to you). So I made a tidy just-in-time-for-Christmas sum calling people and getting them to give me their time, their honesty, and in some cases full life vignettes, just because I asked. Talking to a man in Ireland who was telling me about riding horses on Catalina, and I wondered why it was easy to ask him for things and how I knew I would get them. Later my mouth covered with my hands so that I wouldn't ask you for anything, for nothing at all. It's fine; I'm just noting it. Silently, just to myself.

I want to tell people when they're nice to me, too. I mean my desire for post-game analysis is equally strong after a win or a loss. I want to say, here is where you delight me. Here is where you are special. But when the game is lost it seems somehow nobler to just walk away, even while my pointy head arranges short time travel trips back to fix it where it went wrong. It is the worst form of staircase wit, the wagging finger of but-if-you'd-listen-you'd-know-I-was-right, the same thing that will wake me up in a week with regrets that don't matter because they are over. 

What else?