Tag: summer

(Willing To Share) a Room of My Own (Most of the Time)

Merri Ukraincik

wukkuans

In Paterson, New Jersey with one of my favorite poets.

 

In summer, the song sings itself.

I want to talk about space.

I’ve been thinking about it for a long while, but what got me writing about it today was a video someone posted of a Ma husky padding into a dog house in search of some quiet time. Her adorable pups crowd in with her. She turns around and walks back out as they jump playfully around her, a cycle that continues over and over to our amusement, but likely not hers.

Of course, any parent who has ever tried to go to the bathroom – or shower or nap or talk on the phone – when their children were small will relate to that poor mama husky. Even now that my boys are older, at the age of hanging out with their friends, not traipsing around after their mom, I still hear an occasional knock on the bathroom door.

But we have reached that moment of summer when we time travel back to their boyhood – when they were needier, more dependent, more aware of my presence, and all I wanted was the tiniest room of my own. Their summer plans have come to an end, school is still weeks away, and we have yet to leave for vacation. In short, they are bored, eager to fill the empty space where structure usually reigns. Suddenly, they are so aware of me, seeking me out in the places I’ve carved out for myself – to buy them new clothes, to ask me questions, so many questions, to make them dinner, and to talk about everything or nothing at all, just sitting quietly on their phones while I do my own thing nearby.

I’m so used to the emptiness that marks the rest of the year I’m not sure what to do with the noise and attention. I have to unlearn everything I’ve taught myself about independence – theirs and mine – and letting them go. I have to lose the peace I make each September with their daily disappearance and acclimate again to their constant thrum and the shadows their height and strength cast wherever they go. But also, I need to remember how to share the space I’ve found for myself while they were gone.

How quickly it spoils me, though, to have them around so much during this brief window. It tricks me into believing that this frustrating-beautiful-ridiculous chaos will last, that it won’t end when the school bus stops to pick them up after Labor Day, that they’ll always be nearby, that they’re still small. You see, my adjustment to the silence that fills the house without them has never come easily to me. On the other hand, once I find my peace again, once I reclaim my own territory in September, I’ll be hesitant to let it go when this season rolls around again.

I seem to be full of contradictions, but it’s deeper than that, more complicated. I’m trying to give the boys the room they need to find their way, while at the same time, clearing the time and space to discover my own. But I know this one thing. As summer draws to an end and these last warm weeks slip through my hands, I’m grateful that they still – sometimes – find their way back to me.

 

 

 

 

A Clear View onto a Summer’s Day

Merri Ukraincik

IMG_3451 (2)

My friend once had charming but drafty old windows above the bookcases in her living room. She set the same goal every summer for more years than she could count: to etch a pretty pattern onto the glass in order to conceal some of the cosmetic wear and tear. But real life always took over and she eventually replaced the windows instead. The etching idea never stood a chance.

My summer agenda tends to vary from year to year, though it’s constant in its length and ambition. And while most – or all – of the contents will go the way of my friend’s windows, I still approach the enterprise with the naivité of a rookie who thinks she might actually get it all done.

This summer, however, I decided to scale back expectations to one major project (making headway on my book) and a handful of smaller, manageable tasks (cleaning out the bathroom vanity and other earth-moving experiences).

First, I wrote “Make a list” at the top of my list. I got this tip from my writer friend Esther, whom I’ve never met, but know through Facebook. Her mom z”l would begin all of her own lists this way, enabling her to leave the starting gate with a sense of accomplishment. It’s a brilliant, empowering idea, and I was delighted to have one thing already crossed off before summer even got underway.

Alas, within days, the rug was pulled out from under me. I flayed the skin off two fingers on my right hand while cooking for Shabbos. The bandage wrapped over my second-degree burns left me to peck like a slow-moving chicken at the laptop keys. All of my writing plans and work obligations were put on hold for weeks, as did the making of dinner. I quickly sank into a funk from my general lack of productivity.

That is, until I started to pay attention.

While I was getting nothing done, plenty was happening. I witnessed a stunner of a double rainbow after a storm, caught a firefly, made a new friend, and took a leisurely stroll with my husband for Slurpees. I discovered that tall stems of yellow-crowned dill – grown from the seeds my hairdresser’s mother brought me from Romania – are now flourishing in my garden. I also met a charming duck in the park the other morning, who escorted me back to my car. And I’ve already found two four-leaf clover, with six weeks still to go before Labor Day.

By now, my fingers have more or less healed, though my hand-modelling career is over before it started. As for my list, I have no idea where it even is, not that it matters, really. The only things I’ve managed to cross off are “Make a list” and “Clear out the bathroom vanity.”

Meanwhile, all of this musing leads me back to thoughts of my friend, who never got to etch her windows. She has no regrets, by the way. Only a clear view onto a summer’s day.