Renewing

I always feel like something that needs a makeover when June ends. Or, rather, I feel like someone who needs renewal at the end of June.

My work does not end, but simply resumes its normal semi-frantic pace. This means that the house will again be cleaned piecemeal instead of not-at-all, there is time during the day for trips to the library and the park, and somehow I will make time to grocery shop, fold laundry and clear out brush from behind the house before the end of the weekend.

Oh, and work at least 4 hours tomorrow.

So I gave myself a facial yesterday. It didn't seem to make much of a difference, so yesterday in the late afternoon I started face-lifting another facade in my life. I hope you like it! (There was a purple background version up for about a day, but I think I've decided this is better.)

Other aspects of my life need renewal as June closes, too. Chris certainly needed ... well, he's needed lots of things. He's needed me in the corner. He's needed me cuffed to the footboard of the bed, bent over it naked, blindfolded and with sound-proofed headphones over my ears. He's needed me naked on the floor, and over his knee and going to bed with him instead of staying up late in a desperate effort to conquer some very long odds.

He's needed me to talk to, to share his joys and burdens and responsibilities, to partner him.

It's a companionship I often miss deeply in June. This year, I took him and the princess with me on my ten days away, and saw them while they were sleeping for most of those days. But it still helped me. Chris, on the other hand, was solely responsible for the care, entertainment, education and amusement of the princess. It's a role he can obviously manage, but ten days of it was an awfully long time.

It was good for them. You know, they seem to get along better now than they did before. In my absence, some of the kinks of their relationship have been resolved. But still, once he returned to work, she has clung to me with both hands. At times, even her feet have literally been wrapped about me. I don't mind, really.

Except... except that it's not just Daddy and the princess. Or Mama and the princess. Or Mama and Daddy. Therein lies the rub.

It may be a rub exacerbated by existing as an only child, but the princess said to me recently, "Mama, I feel left out when I'm with you and Daddy."

(Watch Daddy's shoulders tense and his sigh come as he reads that!)

I can see what she means. We're beside each other, in the front seat, while she sits alone in the back. Or holding hands while she walks in front of or behind us. Or darts between us. Or holds hands on one of our other sides. We have conversations she can't be expected to understand, often about current events or history, so she interjects irrelevant comments or asks questions she already can answer to get our attention. We go outside to cut back trees and bushes and pull weeds and she helps for awhile, but her arms are not as strong and she is not as tall, and eventually she goes inside, alone, and plays in her room (the window open so we can hear her). I can see where she might be lonely.

Because, you know, when Chris is home I do think about him. I pay attention to his needs and to his moods and to his emotions and to his expectations, and I defer to him in many ways that are not explicitly stated. My natural state of attention shifts to him when we're together, and though I'm aware of and conscious of the little girl at my side, I do think that perhaps she is not in those moments the center of my attention.

Half of me realizes that she cannot always be the center of attention and she needs to understand that my life does not revolve around her. Half of me understands her complaint about feeling left out.

And here we are, at the end of Chris's 34th birthday, and it's story time. Chris had a great day, he said. The princess thought it was nothing like a birthday, and yet she bought new clothes, ate ice cream and played arcade games with Daddy, who took the day off work to spend it with us.

Goodnight!