You've got a family to run

Since I last wrote - three months or, as we pandemic sufferers experience it, an eternity has passed. In that time, countless women have conceived, grown, or lost babies. I say this because for me the idea of 'three months' doesn't signal a quarter. Three months is a trimester. Perhaps it is like this for other mothers. The other measure is the school year. Once children are in school, the calendar year feels very unreal. New Year's Eve should rightly fall on whatever moment marks the end of the longest school holidays. 

There is the time of the clock, and the time of the body. I spent so much time out on the land and under the sun during my childhood that the need for a wristwatch disappeared for a while. I have not smoked since Christmas Eve 2006, and I still know when six minutes has passed - the time from flame to filter. 

Time oozes so strangely nowadays. And I have much that I would like to report from my little corner! 

           

As for any caregiver of children who faces additional stresses - in our house attention deficits are a relentless pressure - homeschooling and lockdown extract all my resources, my patience, creativity, time, everything. I stay close by phone to my friends with special needs kids, my single mom friends, to anyone in my circle dealing with serious risks. The comfort from the school guidance counsellor - "It's not just kids in difficulty, many kids are having a lot of trouble with motivation. It's really bad." - helps drown out the unintentionally cutting words of the lucky few with independent children and the physical and material resources available to keep life going relatively normally. I just cannot bear it. I am genuinely happy for them - in my case Misery does not want to increase its company - but I cannot listen right now. Casual remarks like, "I expect my son to be independent. I don't look at what homework the school has sent home." Or, "We like her to get the homework done quickly so that the rest of the day is free." As if it were a choice. When all it is, is pure fortune. Now, I know that I am mostly lucky, I have never not known how lucky I am. But the ways in which I am not lucky are a major test at the moment, which I am only just passing.

So, having been worn down by this Lockdown-coupled-with-homeschooling to the point that my every failing and few virtues are in high relief, I am glad, regardless, to have suffered January. I learned a lot about myself, but far more about my kids. I don't blog about my kids in detail much, as I worry I could invade their privacy, but these few weeks have truly increased my respect for them. I am glad that we had this time. I understand them much better, the little jerks, and I really feel for them. And I wish they were going back to school on Monday. 

I pray and pray for strength, as, I imagine, do we all! 

But the good news is that I have won a small grant for expenses for a comics project (unrelated to my book). Since I do not yet have the official paperwork, I won't say more just in case I jinx it. (I make up for my atheism with superstition.) I am just so happy about this! 

Although -- typical for me, don't roll your eyes too much, they might fall out -- I have also been VERY nervous about whether I could do justice to the project that I proposed. Some sleepless nights, over-reliance on my husband's listening skills, etc. 

Being older is nice. I've had so very many occasions over the years to think poorly of myself and to doubt myself, and yet continue to survive at least somewhat intact. It is easier to ignore my own internal nonsense and just keep going. The project involves a great deal of research, so I have just sort of gotten down to it. I have two mental states: the self-doubting, jealous state that I feel when I am not producing creatively, and the mentally healthy, humble and methodical state I feel when I am. I love state number two. I'd like to apply for citizenship to it. Nothing can touch me in state number two. (Why aren't I calling it state number one?) Not jealousy, not mistakes, not awareness of my own totally mediocre skills. I'm just doing. I love it. 

So anyway. Hopefully I can manage the project despite the duties of home-schooling. If not, I will beg the project funder to let me delay for a few weeks. If they resist I will attempt to cajole them with news articles about the disproportionate effect of lockdown measures on women. But I doubt I would need to do that. They seem like really kind folks.

Next subject. My health is a lifelong problem, as some of you know, and I hurt my knees again. I finally managed to run five kilometres, a paltry amount by most runner's standards. This was the first 5K since my insides were injured during the birth of my son in 2012. Carefully cross-training, carefully increasing my distances, I have run without injury since starting again last August. I'd tried the year before, but injured the knees early on from running without orthotics. 

This time, all I appear to have done was to make the for-me stupid mistake of doing some difficult load-bearing exercises the day after the run. My knees immediately started complaining, and I've had swelling on and off for three weeks. The irony is that these exercises were test exercises to determine weaknesses in my body (from the book Runner's Anatomy). 

I was just trying to identify problems. Like a good girl. Why I chose to do these exercises the day after my most difficult run in a decade or so probably falls into the category of stupid things humans do because they evaluate risk badly. So, back to the beginning am I.    

 This post is not wholly art-related. By way of apology, I post here the pre-final line art for Chapter Five from The Engineeress, in various states of progress. I prepared an excerpt of my book based on Chapter four and am sending it out to publications now. If no one picks it up, I might make a zine instead. 

My very first comic publication, my memoir about miscarriage, was recently accepted for publication by Driftwood Press. It comes out later this year. My blessings, like I mentioned, are many. 

But "school" opens again Monday. Please wish me luck!