My Life is a List

I'm wondering if others feel similarly, but blogging is fitting my life less these days. In its earlier days, the novelty kept me going. Checking for comments provided a charge, and those constant emails to my inbox from readers--people who now have become friends, boosted my day.

I also liked the way that blogging takes our lives and helps us make a story out of each day, each episode. When I was in super-blogging mode, I'd walk through the hours of my day seeking the story. I started experiencing ordinary events as part of a broader narrative, as the question "How might I blog about this?" became intuitive. One of the wonders of blogging, as we do it, is the turning of daily life into an essay, with a start-middle-and-finish, with meaning.

For the past few months, though, blogging has not worked its usual magic, and I think I've finally figured out why. I do struggle with the issue of privacy: protecting my husband's identity, and figuring out how to write about our family life--of which he is such an active part--while writing him out of the story. I am conscious of not telling tales of Samira's life in ways that would later embarrass her. But the privacy issue isn't the full explanation,  since despite it I find what to blog about, and in fact, having some limits on writing about my family ensures that I keep my mind on the world outside our four walls, even on cold wintry days, like yesterday where I literally never leave the coziness of my home.

This, I've realized, is the problem. My life these days is not a story. It's not an essay, and I don't have the mother-of-a-13-month-old energy to change that. My life, you see, is a list. Understanding this, I will blog in list form, with no attempt to forge a beginning-middle-end to life events. You know the classic complaint "I start to write and I end of composing a to-do list"? Well I'm giving in. Three cheers for the list.

1. The services coordinator for our city's Childlink forged bitter cold and snow flurries to come to our home and meet with us. That was Thursday. The baby was sleeping, which was fine since this, it turned out, was an initial home visit. He needed to ask me questions, and will return, he promises, on February 10, with a physical therapist and an occupational therapist, to evaluate the baby.

In the meantime, Amelia thinks the funnest thing on earth is to lift her arms to mid-height, thus indicating that what she wants is for someone to hold her hands while she walks up and down our main hallway.

It may turn it that she walks on her own and the doctor has jumped the gun on any real delay. Let's hope. My dream is that she starts walking, I call the doctor, who says she's fine, and cancel the request for intervention.

2. Samira is now playing basketball, which cracks me up because she is so short, and like everyone in our family has a long torso and short legs. I know nothing about basketball except a little tiny bit about college teams. I did my graduate work at Duke, as did my husband, so every March the TV in our house gets turned on to watch the NCAA finals. I will be learning more about basketball, and I'm looking in to getting tickets to see the Temple women's team play.

Here's the funniest, most wonderful part of it all: Samira's really good. She's short, but apparently there's a position called "point guard" (you can see my total ignorance now) where you don't need to be tall, you just need to be able to get the ball away from the other team, which Samira does with her twists and bobs, and by getting down around everyone's knees and pulling that ball into her hands. It's excellent fun to watch her. I'm of that generation of girls that just missed out on team sports. Complications and limits aside, girls sports are one of feminism's successes, and I'm glad that Samira is reaping the benefit. And having a damn good time.



Long live the list, and have a great day.

ps and no. 4:  My friend Michelle is writing about her current bout with cancer at her blog, Various Ramblings. Let's all head over and leave some comments and show our support.