I like reading other people's blogs. I do. In fact, reading Catherine's blog is what got me started blogging in the first place. I get caught up in other people's happenings. Everyday, I go check on Devan to see if that wee babe is there. I go to Tessie's expecting to laugh. I have to know about Lucy and Bud and wonder what Swistle has cooked up next with her flock of children and husband that sounds so much like mine. But, I can't help but feel a bit puzzled sometimes when I go visit Catherine. Even though I have read her book about a gazillion times and it never ceases to make me laugh and read her blog every Tuesday morning, religiously, I wonder...
Who really gets to have philosophical discussions about predation AND compassion while lazily lounging in bed on dewy weekday spring mornings? Not that I begrudge her the fantastic world view she has. Or the poetry of her life. There is just a not-quite-but-almost mystical realism, think Like Water for Chocolate, to their family.
Ok, maybe I am a bit jealous when I think of my own bed conversations with my children and husband. Which are more like me screaming, "Catch the baby! He is going to commit infanticide!" As Jelly Bean is in some sort of happy convulsing seizure while standing on the bed and I can't quite catch him because I am running to the bathroom as I have the barfing flu. And then in the midst of my most undesirable moments after the expulsion of grossness from my body, Brother comes in and wants to have a conversation with me about Pokemon, right at bedtime, which is the only time he ever wants to talk to me. I am a stalling tactic. Sigh. I am laying there, and I use the term laying lightly because I seem to be worse than just laying there. Like crumpled, drained, catatonic, something. Anyway, he wants to talk to me about Pokemon and I can't even understand anything he is saying on a good day. (Pikachu, Raichu, Battles, Lightning? What?) And Jelly is confiscating my half-drunk cup of scummy warm water and I wonder what will be worse...if he drinks it or dumps in on the floor.
Ah. Floor it is.
Like I said, I don't begrudge someone a poetic life with lots of friends in idyllic New England. But I am a bit jealous in that I would like such a thing for myself. Or maybe just the gift as being able to perceive the banal as magical.
3 comments:
Oh you make me laugh so hard. I wonder these things too, as Lucy tumbles on the bed sure to someday smash her face in to my dresser.
And Bud also wants to talk to me, only at bedtime, and about inane crapoloa as a part of some torturistic stall-tactic.
Truth be told, if all of us were lying in bed, there would be more annoyances than dreamy conversations. We just don't work that way.
Ah Misty, I actually started blog reading thanks to Catherine's journal at Wondertime as well. She has such a way of writing. A way that often makes my harried life seem so plain. But I think you are right, she just has a gift for seeing the "banal as magical" as you so eloquently state.
I also think it has something to do with the fact that she is exactly where she wants to be in all aspects of her life. Which allows her to live the moment easier. I find often that the moments I cherish are often tainted by my thoughts of "why can't I have this more often, if only I was a SAHM, if only I had one more child, one more chance". From reading your blog I think you might be in the same situation I am.
I think you channeled her in this post, it has her poetic dancing sound to it :)
I think we all feel that "if only..." feeling a lot more with kids. And remember, her Ben is old enough now to have conversations that run a little deeper than Pokemon. With my Ben, the thing that drives me around the bend are the disconnected questions. You know - the ones where he obviously knows exactly what he's talking about, but gets mad at me because I have absolutely no idea that he's refering to "THAT BOOK WE READ" (two months ago? last year?)
*sigh*
I bet Catherine could tell us about far more annoyances in her life if she (or the Wt. editors) thought that's what we really wanted.
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