Judgment

"I'm going to kill myself. It's my fault. It's my creation." These are my thoughts as I lie in the dark, imprisoned by the perfect sweetness, the hot weight of my daughter's need, helping her cross the threshold from awakeness to sleep, when all I want to do is rise from this nest and put my fingers to the keys, say something I need to say, be me. Nanny 911 shrills in my head, "you're raising an insecure child!" barked at the dad who insisted his daughter needed him beside her. Who is right? My daughter is afraid of the dark, clings to me, and I am right, she needs me, but she is also a taskmaster. At three and a half she demands, while waiting for the sandman and also the monster under the bed, for me to rub her back, her tummy, her legs, and, tonight, her arms, until she can slip off to dreamland.

I cannot express the sweetness and gift that is the smell of my dauther wrapped against me, cuddling with all her might. And yet I have moments on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Before I had Kaikea, two women spoke deeply to the reality of it all. One had lived on the edge but had great successes, including producing, had a grown son in her 40s and two children at 43 and 45 with a wealthy man. Her advice? "Don't do it! Be yourself, play the guitar, write movies, do what you do, be you, who wouldn't want to be you?" Another, "The women who have the hardest time are older women with masters degrees and other accomplishments, the women who are used to being themselves."

It's not like I was unaware of this argument. In my estimation, which lasted a couple of decades, a woman who wanted a career and motherhood needed to have the career first. I knew that, and I didn't quite have a career, though I had a life. But when people said to me, "your time is over," I honestly though they meant my time for massages, mani/pedis and long indulgences in movies with subtitles. I didn't know they meant in every part of my expression. And I didn't know it would go on and on. I thought I would lose a few month's sleep, not a few years'. And I didn't know that the moments I shared with my beloved daughter would be so excruciatingly precious that I could simultaneously drink in the sweetest moments of my life and want to kill myself so I could write about it, write about life, write about me, sing a song, express...I don't know what it is, I just know that I miss it.

A long time ago a friend asked me why I write. I struggled for answers (uh, to connect to humanity?) until she suggested it was because I couldn't help it. I was living in Austin, home of the aspiring songwriter, married to a songwriter. I saw a lot of songwriters--good, great, awful, mediocre--each as driven as the next, shamelessly, hopelessly. It humbled me greatly, and took off a good deal of pressure, to acknowledge that I just couldn't help it. In my 20s, when I realized I so badly wanted to write, I was wounded and discouraged by the lack of demand from my peers that I MUST put my thoughts down on paper. In my 30s, I worked tenaciously on a novel, short stories, anything, with no result, but a few gentle accolades and some promise. In my 40s, I am so grateful for a moment to put fingers to the keys, I am easier on myself. And yet, impossibly, implausibly, I lie with what I know is the most precious gift on any plane, a child who smells like heaven and who will one day roll her eyes at me and keep all her secrets within her and not know how to say what she means, and I squander this sweet precious moment of complete acceptance and need, with the desire to rise from the sheets and type on this computer these thoughts.

It makes no sense. And yet sometimes my love--for her, especially--and for life, for the ridiculous beauty around me that the judges on American Idol might make into a trite backrop, "The whale are nice, but do you always have to use them as a backdrop?" the turtles, the dolphins, the turquoise ocean, the snowcapped mountains, the spirit of Pele, even before I had all these eruptive forces to inspire me--somehow it really is this love that drives me to the computer because I am bursting with the need to "share." And then I arrive, and I am still too tired to say much of anything, but only know that I have crossed some threshold myself, even without someone rubbing my back, my arms, and my tummy, just for being here. Perhaps that is something I can hope my daughter finds for her own.