Glenda Goes Tribal

Today I awaken with optimism: Today is a new day. Today I will begin anew.

Opening River’s bedroom door, I am Glenda. This is OZ. I spread my arms wide and declare, “Good Morning, baby!” She throws her frog pillow on the floor, scowls and looks at me: Who are you?!

I don’t give up so easily. In the shower I hear her Dora kitchen taking a beating; blocks fly into the happy landscape poster above the stove. Out and dripping, I say, “That’s ok, Riv, look at what I found!” Winding her favorite music box I lean to hand it to her. But she is already stomping feet and flapping wings. She grabs the music box and throws it down on the tile. I am still Glenda. “River, please, we don’t throw toys.” With a sure gust of bravado, she takes the music box, hurls it over her shoulder; lilty tunes tumble and echo into the hall, landing on top of my father’s antique desk.

As fast as Dorothy can click her shoes, I fly with dangling limbs behind me, and plop her into her crib. “Fine!”

I talk to myself, pacing. Why can’t it just be a nice day. I need it to be a nice day! Following my husband around from bedroom to bathroom, I rant some more. What am I supposed to do?

For three hours in the afternoon, I try to put her down to nap. We drive all the blocks in our neighborhood, up and down, back and forth. Wind tunnels hold leaves hostage at four-way stops, and they swirl like water down a drain. I realize, suddenly, that I have not revised my manuscript at all. It’s been six months since I finished the book, and I haven’t edited. Shock settles into my lower back. Thinking about it every day gave me the false sense that I had actually accomplished something real.

I carry around three hundred pages with me wherever I go, but I can’t seem to sit down and start over.

She wakes as I transfer her from car to stroller, so we walk the same streets, up and down, back and forth. On three surrounding blocks, tractors catapult into driveways. Construction. Down the only open block, a lawn mower starts right as we pass. She sings. She babbles. My back slips block by block. But I breathe, and by breathing, I see the light, and I see the way it falls on the plants: gigantic grey cactus, spears jutting out, succulent great white. Carry us, help me, I pray as we pass under its wake.

I can’t walk so well by late afternoon and she hasn’t slept yet. I lay on the couch waiting for Steve to come home and take her for an hour. River watches Bob the Builder and I dream of the other cactus we passed – desert lotus flower, petals of lime-green heal the pulsating throb above my brow.

And I wonder: how do women in Africa and India, Chile and Moscow, get their babies to sleep? In the fields, across the arid plains, around the murky swamps of village life – what do they know, how did they learn it?

Do babies in an Indonesian fishing village throw themselves on the ground when they don’t get their favorite toy? How many times do they awaken in the night when a family of ten sleeps in the same yurt in Nepal?

Moving away from the fatigue, spinal nerves relax, and I call to them, all of these women in my vision, and ask for their blessing. Show me what is natural, teach me what is simple, help me to remember what all the women before me knew.

Once alone, since my chiropractor doesn’t have an opening today, I waddle back to Peet’s. You know how I feel about Peet’s.

Back for dinner, I look to my shiny set of Al-Clad pans, hoping they will inspire. I don’t cook (per se). “Do you want to go out or stay here and have spaghetti?” Good-hearted soul that he is, Steve consoles, “It’s ok, let’s stay here.”

Deep dinner conversation keeps us at the table - by the end of the meal, River knows how to say, No way, dude! She becomes a perfect rendition of Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. All this before her second birthday - Imagine!

If anyone has words of wisdom about how to approach editing, please enlighten.

I'm off tomorrow to San Francisco for a workshop with a performance artist, about how to take your writing to the podium (for us introverted souls). It's become a recent past time to find what I am afraid of and go in that direction. I'll let you know how it shakes out. Ready with my bag full of anti-panic remedies, I shall go forth.