Take Me to the River, Part I: 19 Nervous Breakdowns

dry run, carport, June 5

Tell people you're taking your 10-month old baby and almost-three-year-old toddler whitewater rafting down a remote desert river for a week, and most of them will cock their heads and look at you like you're a little nuts. But no one was more skeptical in the weeks leading up to our San Juan river trip than the shrewish, spoilsport voice in my own head. As our adventure approach, my inner Debbie Downer got louder and harder to ignore. “What?" she'd fairly scream at me. "You’re taking a 10 month old rafting? What are you thinking?” In the face of her grating scorn, I couldn't come up with a good answer, so I asked my closest friends, my mother, my sister, anyone who would listen, in an apologetic, disbelieving tone, like I half-expected myself to cancel at the last minute.

You might think that since not one person told me to pull the plug, I would have taken that as a vote of confidence and quit worrying, but deep down I thought they were too polite or nervous to say so, and I knew that the one—and only—person I had to convince was myself, and no one could do that but me. The night before we were supposed to leave, after I’d spent all day sorting an absurd amount of non-perishable kiddy snacks—more Pirate’s Booty and whole-wheat organic fig bars than a small army of kids could consume in six months—I gave up and went outside. Even if this wasn’t the most deranged and irresponsible idea ever hatched, there was absolutely no way it could ever be worth the epic preparations and logistical toil that had been required of us.

Bleary-eyed from a zillion what-ifs, I collapsed in the fading butterfly chair beside my dad’s peach tree and, feeling like the most reckless and wussiest mother on the planet, proceeded to sob out all my insecurities and doubts. What if the kids drowned? The river is as muddy as chocolate milk—anything accidentally dropped in would disappear forever. How would we keep them in the boat? What if Maisy got stung by a bee and her head blew up like a weather balloon? 

Dad’s tree just swayed a bit in the breeze, and sight of its leaves, finally unfurling now that summer had decided to stay, like hands waving back at me—calmed me a bit. At some point I realized I wasn’t talking to the tree anymore, but directly to Dad, and it seemed not unreasonable to think he might be able to hear me, and then it was not a stretch to sort of discern what he was saying back. In his deep, reassuring voice: You’re doing the right thing. You're doing a good thing. Mildly amused but never mocking. Unflappable. 100% understanding. 

packing the most important staple of all: beer

On my last visit with Dad before he died, we sat outside together in the weak, slanting November sundown. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I had decided to stay on with Dad a few extra days so I could go with him to see a new doctor. His oncologist had just told him he was no longer a candidate for chemotherapy and it was time to call Hospice. This seemed like a major fork in the road—perhaps the biggest and last decision he’d ever make—and I’d urged him to get a second opinion. 


That day as we watched Steve and Pippa and my sister drive down the long driveway, Dad turned to me and said, “You and Steve are really doing a good job with the girls.” He didn’t seem to have the strength or desire to talk much, but contained in this one comment, I knew, was unspoken admiration for our efforts to expose the girls to as much adventure and fresh-air as possible. We’d had conversations about this in the past, and it seemed enormously important to him, a validation of his own philosophy of parenthood, when as a younger father, he’d take us camping in a musty mustard tent on the Delaware River, snow-hiking on Skyline Drive, clamming in Maine, and amateur-spelunking in ticky-tacky Luray Caverns over the hump of the Shenandoah Mountains.

Two years ago, when we decided to do the same San Juan rafting trip with 10-month old Pippa, Dad had grilled me for every detail and then boasted of our bravery to his friends. Sitting there next to his peach tree, I could hear him, reminding me in his low, calming Dad voice how important it is to let kids explore and be wild and play outside and get dirty and not have every minute scheduled with Stuff and Things to Do. 

So there I sat beside the tree, blubbering to the evening breeze and to Dad wherever he was, in the midst of it all. When it seemed like I’d said my peace and he’d said his, I went back inside and finished packing the snacks. That’s when it hit me: We had done our homework and our legwork. We’d done this before and knew what we were getting into. We weren’t winging it or being reckless. We were Prepared. And all that preparation had to count for something. 

I shoved the last of the zillion packs of pureed fruit baby food into the dry bag and, heaving that mountain of snacks onto my back, felt suddenly and unexpectedly unburdened. Even better, a tingly goosebumpy anticipation began to creep over me, reminding me exactly of the way I used to feel when it was just Steve and me heading out into the unknown, when there was less at stake, and no one to plan for but ourselves. The feeling was so familiar and dear, I couldn’t remember ever not feeling it—that old rush of freedom and anticipation and possibility, the precursor to everything good to come and one of the very best reasons we go. 

And so began our adventure....

At the put-in, finally, June 7

Casual Riding

This morning I went mountain biking to try to reclaim my balance and sanity. It has been the craziest time of changes lately, and I needed to feel like my old self, spinning my wheels over familiar ground, rooted to the same, twisting, sun-baked summer trails I’ve known and loved since I was 23 and to the same girl I used to be.

I only had an hour, so I rode one of my usual loops. The scenery was familiar—winding singletrack through the pinon-juniper foothills, the blobby peak of Atalaya to the east, the unbearably hot and dry desert to the south—but the way I rode was different. I wasn't slower, exactly, just more relaxed, more deliberate. I didn’t start out this way, with the intention of being intentional. I was just riding, not rushing, which is strange and noteworthy because I am always rushing lately, even (and especially) when I ride. I was vaguely aware, as I rode, that a choice was materializing: I could spend an hour on my bike lamenting the headaches and heartaches at home, reliving them and trying to solve them, or I could just turn the pedals and watch the summer morning slide by. Very casually, it seemed, I chose the latter.

I rode the road to the trails, already sensing this weird but not unwelcome relaxation, and even when I came upon three guys on mountain bikes near the trailhead, I didn’t speed up like I normally would, trying to claim my space on the trail and put enough distance between us. I just riding very casually, as though I had all the time in the world, even stopping after I flubbed a technical section to pick up a raven’s feather in the dust by the side of the trail and stick it in my pocket for Pippa. The guys must have taken a shortcut because a little ways later, I came across them again at the bottom of a steep hill. One guy let me pass, and the other dropped me. I kept pedaling, waiting for my usual competitive fire to kick in—that antsy, frenetic compulsion to get out in front and stay out in front. Nope. Just riding. 

Farther up the trail, after I’d sweated up that steep rubbly pitch and hopped down little limestone ledges and started ascending again to the next high point, I stopped again. Not only in mid-ride, but mid-climb, which is an unspoken no-no, a major psyche-out for this mountain biker. Whatever you do, don’t stop ‘til you get to the top (but if you must stop, get back on and try to keep riding again ASAP, even if it’s too steep and futile). Somebody had built a small bench out of a slab of limestone in the meager shade of a withered piñon. I’ve always admired this spot; there’s something just-so about the way the trail levels off and hugs the edge of a small overhang that feels both sheltered and expansive. The person who made the bench must have thought so, too. I’ve thought about stopping there many times before, but always crank right on by. Not this time. I propped my bike against the gnarled little tree and sat down on the bench and listened to the far-off hum of someone’s garden machinery, and the crickets whirring, and the otherwise silent foothills around me. I thought about things all the things I could think and worry about, but decided against it, and just tried to breathe and feel the air whoosh out of my nose and the sun cook my ankles. 

Eventually I glanced at my watch and saw that it was time to be getting home, but this didn’t annoy me like it usually might, or make me antsy or ungrateful with if-onlys. I got up and continued on my way. It all felt strangely casual. The climbs were just as steep and long and I flubbed the sections I usually do and my legs were no less tired than normal, but I was casual about it—that’s the only word I can think of to explain this surreal phenomena. 

Casual riding. Maybe that’s what they mean by lowering the bar? Whatev.

At Rest in the Nest

Trying something new over here. Resting. Yesterday morning after Maisy went down for her nap, I got back into bed with my big fat novel Freedom, and gave myself over to Patty's delicious suburban Midwestern malaise for a few pages, then dozed a few minutes, read a few pages, dozed, and so on. Outside, the magpies were cackling to each other on the roof and I could hear the neighbor kids, newly on the loose for summer, playing at the bottom of the driveway. Someone’s mother was calling, Maisy’s noise machine purred its reassuring, staticky hum, and I just rested, suspended for a few fleeting moments between relaxation and inspiration.  

Last week I found out I have perinatal mood disorder, otherwise known as postpartum depression. Now I finally have a name for this weird surging anxiety that comes and goes like storm clouds rolling in from the West, the listless blahs, the screeching impatience with a certain two-year-old, the occasional overwhelming urge to run away. I feel like I’ve spent the past few months Jell-O wrestling the giant elephant in the room, trying to pin his slippery elephantine wrinkled hugeness down but somehow always just missing. Now I know. Now I can do something. 

What I’m doing is resting. Or at least trying to. The doctor gave me strict marching orders: 9 hours of sleep a night. Stick in the earplugs, put on the eye pillow, lock the cat out of the room—do whatever it takes to get more sleep. Easier said than done with writing deadlines and two tiny girls in the house, one of who has finally figured out how to climb out of her crib and pitter-patter into our bedroom at the ungodly hour of 6 A.M. But still, it does seem more doable than the doctor’s other demand: Lower the bar. 

Lower the bar? I’m the kind of person who when someone says Jump, I ask how high. I was raised that way, hardwired to strive. My sister, six feet tall, ran the hurdles in high school. I just tried to keep up. In our house, the best antidote to every affliction was action. “Just get busy and do something,” my mother always used to say. I feel like I’ve been busy forever. Lowering the bar is going to take some work, which is of course part of the problem. 

Somewhere there’s a sweet spot between endless striving and aimless laziness. Finding this balance strikes me as the toughest nut to crack. How can I slow down enough to let the natural flow back into my life without feeling like I’m lying around on the couch watching daytime TV on the nicest day of the year? 

It’s not just me, and it’s not just PPD. Everyone’s too busy all the time. On our hike this morning, my friend, who’s also a writer, lamented about not having enough quiet time to finish her next book. The book wants to be written; it’s ready to come out. She’s not lacking inspiration or ideas, but clear, empty space and time and stillness. She’s single and doesn’t have kids, but we both feel the relentless tug of other obligations, distractions—people and responsibilities in our lives that we love and couldn’t bear to give up but still take us from ourselves. So one question is, How can we hold onto our true selves in the midst of the chaos?

A few weeks ago, in a hotel room in Vermont, Steve and I played bleary-eyed predawn referees to our daughters’ impromptu boxing match on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor while trying desperately not to wake the neighbors through the 200-hundred-year-old floral wallpapered walls. As the two-year-old won and the 10-month-old wailed, I turned to Steve and said, “Someday we’ll laugh about this.” And he, in a pitch-perfect tone of weary acceptance and cheery resilience—in a display of perfect, lovable Steve-ness—replied, “Might as well be today.”

I don’t really have an answer to our conundrum, just a faint flicker of hope that came to me this morning while I was changing Maisy’s diaper. She was kicking her pudgy legs in the air and trying to logroll off the table while I fumbled with the wipes. She wasn’t in a rush or perturbed or sad or impatient or distracted or exhausted. She was just there, grinning madly at her mother, doing her best to wiggle and squirm and strive while I did my best to hold on. For a split second, my mind emptied of everything but these two words:

I wrote them down to remind me that someday I’ll look back and remember this time as crazy and wonderful and maddening and possibly even, dare-I-hope magical. As Steve would say, might as well be today.

Breathing Exercises for Stressed-Out Mamas (and Anyone Else, Too)

Lots of changes at our house lately. Pippa has finally figured out how to climb out of her crib. I guess I should be grateful—we had almost three years of blissful containment—but gratitude was eclipsed by exhaustion/frustration at 6 A.M. this morning when I heard the telltale click of her door opening, small feet padding along carpet, and felt her raggedy excited breath on my cheek. It’s hard to right a sinking ship, especially when you’re still half-asleep and grumpy, and I’ll spare you the gory details, but the morning got only more challenging. We were all too tired. 

After dropping Pippa off at nursery school, I sat in the car in the driveway, not quite ready to go back into the house and face Maisy’s pinkeye, to nurse her and put her down for nap and get on with my day. That’s when I remembered the breathing exercises that my somatics coach Sylvie has been teaching me and trying to get me to remember to do during stressful situations. They’re really simple and you can do them anytime and anywhere, and they instantly ground you and help you find your breath. Problem is, I always get so caught up in the heat of the moment that I forget to take a minute to do them. So this is as much a reminder for me as it is a cheat sheet for stressed-out, anxious mamas everywhere. 

Turn your head slowly

Start by turning your head look over your left shoulder. Very gradually and slowly, keep turning your head until your eyes are forward and continue on until your chin is pointing to your right shoulder. Then go back the way you came. The key is to do this as calmly as possible. If you’re like me, you’ll start swiveling slowly but then may accidentally speed up because you’re curious to see what’s over your right shoulder. Don’t. Slow down. Pretend like you’re doing this in your sleep, and that your head is floating lightly on your neck. Can you feel your breath deepen and quiet and slow down?

Yawn

Seriously. Let your mouth hang open and your chin go slack. Tuck your chin slightly in toward your neck—this will trigger the familiar yawning sensation. Then just go with it. Open your mouth wide, close your eyes, and let the yawn come. If you’re really feeling it, stretch your arms above your head. Make whatever weird face you make when you yawn, whether it’s scrunching up your eyes or hunching your shoulders. It’s best to try this alone at first until you get the hang of yawning on command because it can be kind of embarrassing to let your mouth flap open in front of someone else (I still can’t yawn when Sylvie tells me to). We’ve been conditioned to think that yawning is the height of rudeness and should be hidden or suppressed, but it’s actually one of our body’s best ways of releasing stressful energy. Repeat as often as necessary.

Press your hands together

Hold your arms out in front of your body as though you are cradling a baby or carrying a bag of groceries. Press your palms together so that the fingers of your right hand pointing up and the fingers on your left hand are pointing down. Keep your back as straight as possible and push your palms together with as much force as you can muster. Don’t hold your breath, but feel it deepen and slow. Keep pressing until you’ve taken five or six long, deep breaths in a row. 

Press your feet together

You can do this sitting or standing, but make sure your back is straight and your feet are flat on the ground. Press your feet hard into the ground; you’ll feel the muscles in your calves engage, but don’t hold your breath. Be aware of the balls of your feet making contact with the surface below you; then focus on your heels. Feel every part of your foot pressing into the ground. As you do, your breath will naturally slow down and become deeper. 

Inhale, hold. Exhale, hold. 

This one’s as simple as it sounds. Take a long, deep breath in and hold it at the top. Then exhale the same way and hold it briefly at the bottom. Repeat the series three times, or as many times as you need. I use this one when I wake up at 5 AM and my mind is racing and it seems impossible that I will ever go back to sleep. Some time later I wake up and realize that I did. 

I sat in the car and pressed my hands together and remembered what Steve had said only 20 minutes earlier, when I was strapping Pippa into her car seat and still fuming from the scratch of her small fingers on my cheek. “Nothing’s so bad,” he said. “Nothing’s really so bad.” I don’t know why, but it made me feel better. They were simple, his words, just like these exercises. Try them and tell me what you think. 

Recipe of the Week: Finally-Summer Caprese Pasta

Like everywhere else in the country, we’ve had the weirdest weather this spring. A few days ago we woke to grey skies, which is quite frankly pretty bizarre but nonetheless sort of welcome in New Mexico in May, especially this May, when we’ve had approximately zero significant precipitation since almost the start of the year. Later that morning, it hailed, and then rained sideways, and blew a couple of Steve’s big, potted trees over in the driveway, and I lit a fire in the woodstove and kept it going all day, feeling sorry for myself. The moisture I didn’t mind. I just wanted warm. I wanted summer. 

It arrived the next day: no wind, cornflower sky, only a few wispy clouds. Santa Fe in all its late-spring glory. That evening after we put the kids to bed, I went mountain biking, the way I used to do almost every night before I had two girls to bathe and feed, when I could ride the trails until dark. Now, those sweet evening rides are a rarity, and all the more precious because of how seldom I can escape on my bike. In the old days, I’d come home and forage through the fridge for dinner rations or let Steve fix something for us as darkness settled on the house, but now that I’m a mom and a fledgling cook, I’m trying to have more of a conscience when it comes to actually preparing the food I put in my mouth. 

Mostly as I rode, I was marveling at the lovely apricot light on the mountains and worrying about how dry the trails are and feeling gratitude in every cell in my body for being out in that flawless, magical evening, but I guess somewhere in my brain, without realizing it, I was also thinking about making dinner. 

Because as soon as I skirted the fence line at our house and threaded through the narrow gap between the cholla cacti and rounded the bend by the raised garden beds getting all perky with sprouting greens, I knew what I was going to make, and what I wanted to eat, with what we had in the house: early summer pasta.

I didn’t have a recipe—I just made it up as I went, while Steve hunched over the laptop in his office, pretending to do bills for his clients but really watching ski videos on Youtube instead. I was blown away by how quick and easy it is to make and, conversely, how hard it is to screw up and how pretty it looked on plate. Essential for rookies like me!

Here's the deal:

8 ounces ziti pasta

half a container of cherry tomatoes, sliced or quartered depending on size (I happened to have a colorful mix of organic heirlooms from Trader Joe’s on hand)

1 container of fresh whole-milk mozzarella buttons (not the big chunks), halved

balsamic vinegar, olive oil, oregano, basil, salt and pepper to taste

handful of fresh arugula

While the water was boiling for the pasta, I prepped the tomatoes and mozzarella and put them into a big bowl. Then I cooked the pasta for 10 minutes with a dash of salt and drained it, tossing it in with the mozzarella and tomatoes. Steve arrived in time to work his magic with the spices, oil, and balsamic vinegar—he didn't measure but just poured them in with some innate and genius sense of proportion. We haven’t planted our herbs yet, so he used dried basil and a bit of oregano from the spice cupboard, then seasoned generously with salt and pepper. It was still missing something fresh and green, so Steve went out back with the scissors and harvested our first mini-crop of arugula, which we threw into the mix and tossed. Voila!

We ate outside as it was getting dark, and the pasta tasted clean and fresh, just like a perfect summer evening on your fork. I'm definitely going to make this ahead of time and bring it along on our San Juan River trip next month. 

Landscape of Happiness

I just got back from Vermont and central New York, where it is ridiculously green and lush and bucolic from a season of non-stop rain. It’s been so long since I’ve been back there in anything but the dead of winter that I’d forgotten how much I miss fields and huge trees and meadows everywhere you look. Lilacs in full bloom and lawns speckled with dandelions. Trees taller than single-story buildings, grass that carpets every square inch of non-paved ground. What a concept! I couldn’t get enough of the silos—old-fashioned dirty-grey silos that tilt recklessly out of cow paddocks and shiny new sapphire blue metal silos that loom up from family dairy farms, large operations that nonetheless seem to belong to the land just as the sugar maples and humpy green hills they call mountains. 

Plus there is water everywhere. I’m a sucker for water of any kind—ponds, rivers, creeks, lakes, oceans—and there is so much water that it is almost embarrassing. It’s positively show-offy with water. In Middlebury, where I’d gone to college 18 years ago, the raging torrent that roars through town is called Otter “Creek.” Here in New Mexico a body of water that size would get full-blown river status, no question. But there, where New England modesty rules the day, it’s just a creek. While I was there, I went for a trail run on Chipman Hill, the little bump out downtown’s back door where Middlebury locals used to ski during the 40s when it was too expensive to drive up to the Snow Bowl, and ran through little rivulets springing up out of nowhere. Ah, to have wet feet! Now I know why the 20-something kid buying beer at 10:30 at night in the convenience store was shellacked, sneakers to knees, in mud.  

crossing Otter Creek

All of this is making think more about what makes a good, liveable town, a question that keeps cropping up as I contemplate how to raise two environmentally conscious, socially responsible girls in our increasingly distracted world. Certainly a sympathetic hometown is a good place to start, and Middlebury flaunts its niceness. From most places in town, you can walk to a grocery store and a movie theater and a creaky-floored Ben Franklin hardware shop and a natural food co-op, coffeehouses, restaurants, and the old-fashioned Vermont Book Store that somehow miraculously still exists. What does it say about America in 2011 that a town like this—with basic necessities and niceties within walking distance of many residents—seems anachronistic? It says something pretty sad.

green roofs are a perk, too

I used to write stories about liveable adventure towns for Outside magazine, and I’d comb the map looking for the elusive Best Place and zeroing in on its best attributes. Silos and the smell of manure carried in on the breeze are optional. Basic services reachable by bike or foot are not. A river—or even a creek—flowing through downtown is nice. A liberal arts college with a serious commitment to sustainability is a plus. Trails and mountains out back? A must. Good schools—definitely. Friendly neighbors who stop to talk outside the corner bakery, yup. Of course there’s more: Affordable housing, childcare, cultural diversity, family and friends and a deep-rooted sense of community. Jobs! 

Some of these are subjective, others more measurable, but the most essential and elusive ingredient of all might be memory: a sense of belonging, of continuity—stretching backwards or looking forward. Once upon a time, I was 17 years old in this town, with shoulder-length hair and cut-off chinos. Now I have two daughters of my own, and I want them to know what it feels like to ride their bikes to the market and walk to school and feel safe on their streets. What will be their landscape of memory and happiness? What kind of places will they be homesick for?

nostalgia = freshman dorm, 21 years later

Newborn Bliss

So I am emerging, even if brief, from my newborn cocoon to post. He, our fourth, was worth the wait! The extra twelve days of waiting post guess date--that is really what they are, even if you are sure of your conception date like I was and am. He was worth the extra 2 hours and 45 minutes of pushing, and the amazing release I felt once he emerged gracefully in water and much to everyone's relief and wonder. He was worth losing all my hair this pregnancy and still waiting it's slow regrowth, which since giving birth 2.5 weeks ago has sped up substantially. I managed to avoid induction! An induced labor is way harder than waiting a baby out! I know I have been there with my first. No matter the angst in waiting it is well worth avoiding the devil's spit, also known as Pitocin, at least in my humble opinion.

S. is a calm baby, a little love, who eats and sleeps and eats and sleeps and poops and poops and poops. His big brothers LOVE him, and say it to him daily..."I love the new baby," is a phrase that melts my heart at least three times a day! I am stockpiling these utterances because in nine months when he is mobile and attacking lego shrines I know it will be replaced with shrieks of "Mooooooommmmm, HELP!"

It's taken a while to name cuatro. I thought we were settled and then out he came and Peter said I think he is not a James. What? Not a James? That is the way I thought of him almost every day since six months when intuitively I felt yep, another boy! So to not have it be James threw me. Threw me to the point of we need to wait to announce his name. This throws everyone else by the way...to the point of no more "baby yet?" texts, but instead they are replaced with "name yet?" texts. Finally, we have decided...but I have yet to officially post it. Call me gun shy, or just soaking up my little time with him, but I know I need to go public and soon.

And then what every woman needs postpartum is a visit from a good girlfriend! And I got that in spades when Katie came with her daughter, M. Truly. It makes you feel capable again. I felt energetic and daring enough to walk around lakes, hit the mall, walk the neighborhood, lug home bags of wipes (did I mention we are going through a lot of poop again?!), and drink glasses of wine and chat and laugh. 

I hear my little calling through the monitor. This is all I have time for now, but be assured more to follow! And with that I hope next time to post a picture or two!

PS Just read your post "Be the Trout," and you make me feel like I could climb a mountain!