Time Like the Present by Stephanie Anderson Witmer

Tracy Heyman Photography

My house is quiet. Blessedly, gloriously quiet.

It’s four days after Christmas, and I am still in the throes of the four-week winter break (sometimes it’s very good to be a professor). My husband has taken the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, and this morning, he got up with our 19-month-old son and let me sleep the sleep of my former, childless self, unmarred by a to-do list or thoughts of what Benjamin will wear to daycare or the alarm clock of my son’s early-morning calls for me from the confines of his crib.

When I finally do wake up at a luxurious 9:25 a.m., I find the house utterly still. I pad from the bedroom in my new red Christmas slippers, past my son’s closed bedroom door, past the closed guest-room door, and descend the stairs. More quiet. Benjamin had likely just gone down for his morning nap, and my husband and our dog likely did the same in the guest bedroom, so as not to wake me.

In the kitchen, I piece together the clues of the morning I have missed: A container of cinnamon on the counter and an orange bowl on the kitchen table, empty except for the edges, rimed with sticky flecks of oatmeal. A discarded spoon next to it. A sippy cup with a splash of milk still in the bottom. I glance into the living room and see books and trucks strewn across the floor and couch. More toys lined up on the TV stand like a motley train.

There are things I know I should do while I have the chance during Benjamin’s morning nap, like wash the breakfast dishes so that the oatmeal doesn’t form a permanent crust in the bowl or vacuum the rug or put away more of the Christmas gifts. On many days, I would do those things, or I’d decide to grade some papers instead.

But I don’t do any of those things today. Today I pour myself a cup of coffee in the biggest mug I can find, I make myself a bowl of oatmeal with vanilla, maple syrup, raisins and a liberal sprinkling of the cinnamon left on the counter. Mug in one hand and bowl in the other, I make a beeline to my office, and I write.

Sure, today is an example of a day in which I have absolutely nothing planned and can just sort of trot through it without a care. Lunch at our favorite little neighborhood cafe sounds nice … Perhaps I’ll make a cake later … Or soup … I should go for a walk and shoot some photographs with my new camera … Or to the library …

Thoughts like these on days like these warrant the use of the ellipses. But most days aren’t like today, and are punctuated far differently. They are crazy, harried, ultra-planned sorts of days. They are exclamation-point days, and not the good, surprise-party or you’ve-won-the-lottery kind of exclamation points. They are days that are often terse and demanding, like a drill sergeant.

When you’re pregnant and then have a newborn, everyone always talks about sleep: How much sleep are you getting? How is the little one sleeping? Are you sleeping when the baby sleeps? Don’t you miss sleep? Isn’t sleep great? Most definitely, the lack of sleep was a rude awakening for both my husband and me, but it wasn’t that we never slept again—we just didn’t sleep all at one time as long as we wanted to.

But all that talk about sleep somewhat prepared me for the eventual time when I stopped getting it. It was the lack of time that really threw me. I’ve always been one to have lots of projects and ideas living in my head, and some of them would even make their way out of there into actual, physical incarnations of themselves. Now most don’t, and probably won’t.

I have found that after I had a child, I have become much more selfish with my time. First, because I teach three days a week, on the days when I am home with my son, I want to fill every moment with books and walks and adventures and the potential for memory-making, which is my own way of overcompensating for the days he spends with his grandparents or in daycare.  

During the times I have to myself, like right now, I want to fill that space by doing what I want to do. I feared when I first had Benjamin that I’d never read a book or write a sentence for pleasure ever again, but I’ve actually written more regularly since he’s been born than I have since graduate school. I began taking photographs. I started a blog. I don’t cook as much as I’d like, but it’s not uncommon for me to bake muffins or bread on a random Tuesday morning just because I feel like baking. Time has become the most valuable currency in my life.

Part of this is time, but part of it is my fear of losing myself entirely to motherhood and my job. I love both, but they are not the only parts of me. I find myself staying up later than is smart or healthy at night to write, simply because I’d rather forego a bit more sleep than a bit more of myself and my own creative needs. Both of my primary jobs—being a parent and being a professor—require a lot of my time and energy, and both require me to fulfill the needs of others. My son needs me (and his dad) to feed him, dress him, give him a bath, put him to bed, to love him and keep him safe. My students need me to teach them how to write and report accurately and ethically, to grade their work, to give them feedback, and prepare them for the great beyond that is their post-college working life.

Most importantly, both my son and my students need me to show up and be present. So does my husband. So does the rest of my family. So do my friends. And so do I need that of myself. 

Stephanie Anderson Witmer is a freelance writer and an assistant professor in the Communication/Journalism Department at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in national and regional magazines, including Better Homes & Gardens and Susquehanna Style. She has an M.F.A. in creative-nonfiction writing from Penn State University and blogs about parenting and cooking at www.smittenblog.com. She lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with her husband, son and their dog.

Rat-a-tat-tat by E. Victoria Flynn

(Find Victoria at http://www.pennyjars.blogspot.com/ and
http://www.mamasxinitiative.blogspot.com/)

A regular man ordered a regular coffee. He watched my arm as I collected his money and returned the change. “I've always wanted a tattoo,” he said. I flushed, my arm band was talking again. I asked why he hadn't gotten one. “I've always thought a person's body is like a map,” he said. “ All its scars, and marks, and tattoos show where you've been. I haven't found the right one yet.”

I think about his comment and consider my body—a thing that heals, lets me walk around, feel, taste, see, experience—a thing I take for granted. He was talking about skin, what we see after we see shape, and the marks we wear whether by chance or intent.

Some of us, either through long, drawn-out deliberation or a sudden gasp of instant life, remove our inhibitions, plant our feet on the white hot coals of disregard and take a breath. Then we bleed.

We give to get—blood for ink.

It's impossible to know why any one person chooses to map themselves—an act of rebellion, self-possession, a need to scream-out, to cover or uncover, a dream, a commitment, a loss, a birth. It's a human moment if nothing else, a desire to be one's own self.

My tattoos are faded after 14 years in the sun. They never had any color and are now the dark weather-worn gray of time distilled. I hold no regrets. My daughters, still very young, trace the lines around my arm and the raised knotwork on my neck where the artist went too deep. They know what a tattoo is and wear their own mock ink up and down their little bodies.

Unlike my daughters' arrivals brimming with hope and softness, my tattoos were born with a coarse need to speak my youth and independence. Both ink stained spots of skin are a marked point in a personal history, a weighted stand against what I believed to be a mundane crash into adulthood as much as a marriage to the creative spirit.

At the age of 35 I am again being pulled to the buzz and draw of the tattoo gun, to another moment marked. There are no saviors in the ink, but the resounding hum melding with the intensity of physical sensation creates a euphoric reality that will not be dismissed. Some say there is an addiction in tattooing.

Maybe there is.

I can't remember the name of the man in the coffee shop, but his thoughts poured into my mind a unique perspective on body art, that of a living map, a visual memory, one moment made physical.

Are you a proponent of body art or do you prefer the body be left unmarred by physical decoration? Do you find yourself guarding against or drawn to certain people in regard to their tattoos? What is your perspective on body mapping?

The Lemonade Stand: A Guest Blog by Nancy Hinchliff

Nancy Hinchliff is the Innkeeper of the Aleksander House. After teaching in Chicago's inner-city highschools for twenty years, she returned to the university to work on her PH.D. in Education in 1995, where she taught Highschool Teaching Methods and Curriculum and Instruction. Upon retirement, she moved to Louisville and bought a lovely 1882 Victorian home in historical "Old Louisville".  Nancy writes primarily journalistic pieces, creative non-fiction, and poetry.  She has four blogs, so you could also say she's a blogger and has recently turned her attention to memoir. Please help me welcome Nancy Hinchliff...as usual, if you leave comments, I will make sure Nancy gets them. 

The Lemonade Stand: The Joys of Being a Positive Thinker
by Nancy Hinchliff (visit her at http://www.businesswomensforum.blogspot.)

To begin with, I must say that my life has not always been easy. I've had lots of disappointments, losses and medical problems. I would list them, so that you could understand a little better where I'm coming from, but I really hate dwelling on negative things, which is the whole purpose of this piece. Just let me say that the list includes everything from suicide to cancer.

I am one of those people who has been blessed with a very positive outlook on life. Don't know if I was born with it or if I picked it up along the way, but it has gotten me through some of the darkest moments of my life. I am not unrealistic, in fact I don't like Sci Fi, the comics, or sitcoms for that very reason. Strangely enough, dyed in the wool realist that I am, I have a very well developed sense of humor, which also has helped me through rough times.

On reflection, I think I would have to attribute my positive attitude and sense of humor to my family. I had a grandmother who was absolutely hilarious! She should have been a stand up comic. Many are the times she had me rolling on the floor or peeing my pants with laughter. She has always been my idol and I chose to identify with her. We even look somewhat alike (I think I'll use her picture for my avatar for a while). She had a pretty positive attitude, but it was my mother who developed the most positive attitude in the family.

I find myself thinking like my mother all the time and working out problems the way she did, coming from a positive and upbeat place. It's amazing to me that she could remain so positive, because she had a lot of adversity in her life to deal with. For one thing, she was crippled from the time she was a very young child. What a curse to have to deal with, and yet, she dealt with it quite well.

She met my father, a handsome young musician, when he came into her hair salon for a manicure. She was only 22 and she and her family had moved north from a small town in North Carolina, so that her father could make more money. He was a carpenter and a plumber. She managed to finish beauty school and open up a shop on the lower level of the Detroit hotel where my father was booked to play for a couple of weeks. They fell in love and married a few months later.

Life with my father wasn't always easy. He was very handsome (Tyrone Power handsome) and talented. On stage all the time with an orchestra in the 30s and 40s, he definitely attracted beautiful women. Now that I think about it, it must have been very hard for my mother to cope with. After all she was just a little southern girl from North Carolina, who happened to be crippled. I know my father loved her and she loved him, but I'm sure jealousy raised its ugly head from time to time.

Anyhow, she managed to stay positive and grow emotionally strong, with a few setbacks along the way. I never realized what effect that strength and positive outlook had on me, until I was faced with some serious problems myself. I can't say I sailed right through, but I was and still am a fighter and a problem solver. I have even amazed myself from time to time at how that positive image of my mother keeps reaffirming my actions.

To clarify something, neither my mother nor my grandmother ever set about to teach me anything about life. I was left pretty much to my own devices. However, by watching and living with them, I learned the rewards of a positive attitude and a sense of humor. I saw how it got you through some of the worst times and how refusing to lapse into a negative mode has saved me many times over. As simplistic and corny as it may sound, I truIy believe that if life hands you a lemon, your best option is to make lemonade.

My mother and me..

I haven't taken the time to honor my mother lately, so I thought I would stop thinking about myself for a few minutes and think about her. A few years ago, my mother came to live in Massachusetts to help me take care of my daughter and to help me take care of me. My husband didn't mind a little care-taking either. We lived in a beautiful house between a pond and the woods, with a majestic waterfall just steps outside our door. My mother would come over for coffee, play time, movies, great food (which she usually brought), and a lot of laughter. She is a wonderful woman, my mother. And she's stuck in Massachusetts for the time being because jobs in St. Louis--or anywhere--aren't that easy to come by for a sixty-plus woman with a beautiful, talented heart. I know...why not? We ask ourselves this question a lot these days, even though we all know it could be a lot worse. But here's the thing: when we were in Massachusetts together, my mom and I became friends. Real friends. And now I miss her two ways instead of just the one.

I love that photograph of us because we look so happy. We were so happy.

I feel like making a bumper sticker that says, "I love my mom!"

That's it --- I'm going to.