Yes! Yes! Says She Who Means No

Readers. Wait, no. Friends. Sisters-- in Crisis and Anxiety. Ever find yourself in a similar situation?

Fellow Parent at Child's School: "Would you be able to help chaperone the museum trip?"

slight pause * opportunity to galvanize myriad reasons why not

Fellow Parent: "Because we're really short and I'm running out of options."

Matron: "Of course I can help with that!"

Or at work . . . .

Not Supervisor but Superior: "We really could use someone with your expertise and skills on this committee."

Matron: "Well . . . if you put it that way . . . sure."

The encounter can also be indirect. A sign up sheet! Stealth volunteer coercion! Sign up for cookies, potluck, volunteer opportunity, donate to gift pool, bring a neighbor a meal, shovel the elderly's sidewalks in January, pledge for the cancer walk, buy stale cookies from a child.

No one is there to force thy hand. No. Instead, thy hand moves on its own!

Yes, yes, yes! Sign her up!

Nearly nine months ago, the Matron experienced Complete Psychological Collapse. She didn't blog about this because, well, breakdowns (unless you're Heather Armstrong) are sort of un-bloggable. Ordinary. She's of the opinion that every single life on the planet can be summarized and assessed in terms of its collapses and repairs.

Among the many things that renewed the Matron was her willingness to learn a new language.

No.

She also learned a key characteristic of that word.

Just because it is a short word, 'no' does not need accompanying information. No stands on its own. It is self-sufficient! This linguistic lesson was nothing short of miraculous for the Matron.

No. It's not only enough, sometimes it's perfect.

But the staggering data that the Matron has collected? ! She is astounded -- astounded -- by what she is sometimes asked to do. Now that some of these requests are bundled tight in the "No" pile, she has a better view of them.

Let's just examine a couple. Two, because they're so eye-opening, from a distance.

Recently, the volunteer coordinator of an organization for which the Matron volunteers A LOT called the Matron (she gives money too which shouldn't matter in this equation but does to her anyway). Not unusual, but instead of asking the Matron to volunteer for the organization, the coordinator asked yours truly to volunteer for HER personally. Would the Matron meet with the coordinator's husband, whom the Matron had never met -- for a couple of hours -- to help him 'through the hump' of a long overdue college paper. These people are in their fifties.

Coordinator: "and he just needs a couple of hours. A morning maybe to get over the hump of that overdue paper."

Matron: "How overdue?"

Coordinator: "Three years."

Matron: "What kind of hump?"

Coordinator: "He hasn't started."

No! No! No! said the Matron.

2. Actual Student Email

Dear Dr. Matron,

You were my favorite professor at College XX. Now that I've graduated and am in University YY, I'm wondering if you would mind editing a few of my papers? It's been recommended to me that I find someone to edit and thought you would be perfect! The first two are due on Monday so I would need the editing done by Friday since I have to work this weekend. I think you'll enjoy my papers!

Readers, Friends, Sisters: the Matron actually received a longer version of this EXACT EMAIL from a former student TODAY. She is only capable of capitalization here. Because she mostly wanted to scream.

"Enjoy my papers?"

No, no, no!

The gift of the "No" pile is not in rejection, per se. It is the instruction that the "No" offers. Because if she didn't say 'no,' she would be helping the husband over his hump and editing those student papers. She would be organizing a fifteenth technology training for colleagues who had the opportunity to take the first fourteen she offered. Instead of watching her son's school choir concert, she would be ushering other parents to their pleasant seats or monitoring infants somewhere else.

Is this a uniquely female characteristic? In an essay, Joyce Carol Oates says that she can't understand why women drink at the well of masochism. Self-sacrifice and denial. The Matron can't speak for you, dear reader, but the Matron will acknowledge that she is familiar with that well.

The final beautiful quality of "no"?

Sometimes it frees up the "yes" in search of dream and desire. Yes.

Reflection on a Sunday

Defining Demographics of the Matron's Household

Control Freaks Living in the Moment

Matron John

He Who Cannot Be Named

(HWCBN) Merrick (aka Meatloaf Head)

Scarlett (Diva)

Above would be the blueprint of the Matronly life.

Yours truly doesn't wake in the morning and wonder what the day will offer: what bounty, what trial, what unexpected surprise? No.

She wakes to the tune of the Master List. The goals! The tasks! The small pleasures! Everything tucked up tight into a timeline and made Reality just because she wrote it down and said it should be so.

Have a conversation with the Matron? A need, desire, query? Why that's easy because the Matron KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY. And if you don't say it as she anticipates, she'll pretend you did anyway so it just doesn't matter.

So the Matron has the world by its tail, tucked in and ordered. Welcome to it.

The only problem is . . . so do Scarlett and HWCBN.

Let's just say that when you have three taut, immovable parallel universes spinning in a single family home there is bound to be collisions.

Here goes the Matron running her ship. Here comes Scarlett steering hers. HWCBN navigates down the middle. Take any topic! It's fun! Really -- it's very, very exciting when any everything in the universe is subject to consternation and contention.

What's for dinner?
Who's running for city council?

Why can't the Green Party ever win.

Time for laundry.

Satan's Familiar needs a hefty cloven hoof clipping

Time to vacuum

Where's the pizza cutter?

"Mom, why is your shirt untucked?"

"I like my fork slightly to the right of my plate and not the left."

"This cup has a little smudge on it."

"Where's my yellow shirt? That's the only one I'm wearing on Mondays."

"Can we move the shade up a quarter inch?"

"There's a thin film of grease on this piece of chicken. Who made it?"

"Is this a new kind of water? From the faucet? It tastes funny."

Matron to John: "This is making me crazy! Why can't they be more like me?"

John: "You said that on purpose, right?"

Matron: "What do you mean? Of course I said it on 'purpose.' Of my own volition."

John: "I mean, you crafted the sentence for ridicule, right?"

Matron: "Hmmm."

John: "Because they are exactly like you."

So three in the household barrel through each day Agenda and Idea writ large, battling for command of the universe. All of the universes, that is.

While the other two?

Living life from their psychological hammocks. Well, well outside of Matronly Control.

(Un) Grateful

Yours truly woke up: off.

Not on the wrong side of the bed. No, she was all cozy in her proper little corner, Satan's Familiar at her feet and Merrick (He Who Climbs Into the Parental Bed at 5 AM Daily) at her side.

Mind you, these three bodies were on 1/8th of the king-size bed. John somehow requires the rest.

She digresses. The message? The poor path was established early on. The Matron was grumpy.

The outfit she had carefully mapped out the night before? Entirely untenable in the daylight. Ugh. After some closet ransacking, just ONE skirt and shirt out of a closet of dozens would do. Clothes didn't fit, purse was wrong, earrings blah-blah. It was like PMS without the actual time in the cycle.

Still.

She felt smug with her eventual wardrobe success. There's nothing liking looking good when you don't feel good. It's a narcotic. Until she was walking into her classroom and noticed the Grand Canyon-size hole in her purple wool tights, a convenient inch above her knee and well below her skirt. No amount of tight scrunching would do.

And one of her braids had come out.

The Matron spent quite some mental energy on Mood Arrangement. She reached into her little Self Help Toolbox for the big guns: gratitude practice, living in the moment, calming breath, guerrilla meditation.

Until she started preparing her Women's Studies lecture with its statistics on female life expectancy and childbirth rates. Let's just sum up the day's lesson: live in one of many African and Asian countries and you have approximately 6.8 children and die at 43.

Ah, but the Matron was not to be deterred by reality! She recalled a theory that the psyche follows the face. Smile, and if the world doesn't smile with you, at least your mood will improve. Alas, smiling while reporting said statistics to Women Studies students is bad pedagogy. Instead of feeling better, everybody (including the Matron) was just confused.

But the Matron was determined to be in a good mood. Goddamn it.

Pushing through to the positive is exhausting but yours truly persevered. Not to be beaten, rise up, think happy -- even as Utter Futility made itself clear, she continued. Red lights, dropped purse, forgotten lunch, lost keys? Be in the moment, Matron : -).

Sitting through a loooooong middle-school choir concert (but Scarlett had an amazing solo!! certainly everyone else loved it too?) and later tedious parent meeting about a mishandled school crisis ? Radiate loving kindness. Good practice opportunity, right?!

But.

Wiped out from all that feigned happiness, she was trudging toward her house when. .. . really: she was attacked by a dog.

This was not Toto on a rampage, folks, but an enormous German Shepherd breaking free from a semi-shut door to maul the intruder (this would be the Matron) on HIS sidewalk. Maul, he did. The Matron oversize dense wool sweater saved her but not her shirt underneath, which was ripped to shreds --oh, and the bleeding bruised meatball bites on her arm.

The Matron? NOT HAPPY.

Sometimes you just get to be pissed off. And she realized that's just where she belongs, in the bleeping moment. Throwing off that serenity mask felt wonderful.

And the canine menace next door? Work in progress . . . rabies vaccine documentation en route (supposedly up to date) and big promises of more secure home fortress. Animal Control has been queried (they're useless). The Matron's arm is bandaged and soaked in antibiotics. She sees the doctor tomorrow. Still. As far as she's concerned, the Devil Lives Next Door.

Next to Merrick. And yes, she's in a Bad Mood.

Stage Mother

Stage Mother has taken quite the hiatus. She believes it is time to indulge in the Diva. For a brief history of Time (meaning Scarlett's entire childhood), settle in and start here.

Scarlett has been busy.

She returned to her favorite theatre, Youth Performance Company -- the best thing going for young actors in Minnesota (maybe the U.S.) -- when they reprised this stellar show, with Scarlett in it.

The show was about bullying. The actors who perform it? All about love.

Love, community service, social justice through art, incredible theatre, = Youth Performance Company. It's like Buddha-God-Oprah-Allah-Universe spread the Magic Carpet and Scarlett strolled right on it.

Over the holiday season, Scarlett returned as the little match girl in The Match Girl's Gift. The show -- and the diva -- earned a nice review. Plus, another amazing group of people.

But forget nice. Scarlett's favorite roles appear to involve illness, trauma (Scarlett played young Clara), and onstage death.

The Matron's brother was coincidentally in St. Paul during The Match Girl's run. Naturally, he and Grandma Mary took in the show. Despite-- or perhaps because of -- Scarlett's dramatic collapse toward death, Grandma fell asleep. Twice.

Matron's Brother afterward: "How can you stand to see her suffer onstage like that?"

Matron: "That's nothing. You should see her at home with a head cold."

This fall, the family discovered that one of their own could shake and shimmy. Loves to dance on national TV.

One guess how the Matron's only daughter spent this very evening? At rehearsal for this upcoming show, followed by seeing a friend's play --as an audience member.

Weekly Conversation in the Matronly Home

Scarlett: "Here's the list of plays I need to see this week."

Matron: "Is there some kind of natural selection we can fall back on? Like budgeting?"

Scarlett: "But my friends are in these!"

John: "Is there a single play in the Twin Cities that doesn't have one of your friends in it?"

Scarlett: "Actually, no."

Ah, the wild thrills and prestige of Stage Mothering. These perks take place behind the wheel of a minivan and are: listening to All Things Considered on NPR, coffee and cookie while driving, slowing down when being tail-gated and fielding frantic calls from children left behind at home.

Merrick: "Is dinnew befowe ow aftew weheawsal tonight?"

Don't hate her for her glamorous life. It's actually very exciting to map out the daily driving. What ramp is closed?!! Who will cut her off!? Where is the traffic lighter! The Matron could probably mobilize and move a small army with her well-honed transportation skills.

But Scarlett? Ah, she's moving the world -- and her own beautiful, independent spirit. The Matron is happy to provide the ride. For the time being.

Opportunity, Knocking her Over and Out and Uncertain

Recently, Opportunity presented itself to the Matron in the form of a possible new job: Dean.

That's right folks. The Matron has been lost a little in a gridlock, a schemata, a spreadsheet of possibility.

Dean Matron. Dr. Dean Matron. Maybe someday PRESIDENT Dr. Dean Matron (she will never let go of a title).

These all have a lovely, nearly poetic ring. Makes her misty, just considering. And consider she has been, knowing not only that she has a real shot at this particular fiefdom.

But.

As she drifted through her future, Reality -- a fast runner -- quickly caught up with Opportunity.

Yes, she'd make more money. She would converse, hourly, with like-minded people who also hold many academic degrees and know how to construct complex sentences, as opposed to teaching students HOW to construct sentences. And not complex ones.

She would be In Charge! A person of authority. The job? A stepping stone to higher administration . . .you see, she may very well enjoy being President or Queen of a College.

But.

Instead of working 190 days a year, per current faculty contract, she'd be working year-round. All summer with two weeks of vacation like everybody else.

She'd be gone from 8-6, minimum.

There would be limited time for writing.

She would spend most of her intellectual energy working to benefit an institution.

Most of all -- she who goes to campus just two mornings a week - -would lose the hourly freedom that currently defines her life. She can log into her online class and teach until midnight, and spend the afternoon at the dog park if she chooses.

Okay, mostly she drives kids in the afternoons. But the dog park thing sounded a little more daring. But she volunteers in Merrick's classroom, tests new recipes in peace, strolls around the house ALONE for more than twenty minutes and can clean four closest in under an hour in the middle of the day. And read. Yes -- she often does work until midnight. But so far, she's been liking this groove of life.

So.

The Matron made up her mind: she was not applying.

Until . . . a colleague or two called and urged her on. Go forward! Deanship be thine! Then, the competition began. So and So was applying?! Surely, the Matron had her beat! What! Colleague Q considering? A crisis, indeed.

Matron to John: "I should do it. X and B think I'd be great at it. I should."

John: "You have super soft skin and a great body. Will you get naked right now if I ask you?"

Between 9 am and 3 pm? Dream on, darling.

John: "Point made. Just because someone asks you to do something and you'd be good at it, doesn't mean you have to do it."

Oh.

The Matron pondered that bit of wisdom. John asked again, just in case his theory could be disproved. Sorry again, honey.

Later, Merrick asked his mother what was on her mind.

Merrick: "Mom? Why awe you so sewious?"

Matron: "I'm thinking about applying for a new job. Dean. Dean of the college."

Merrick: "The king?"

Matron: "Sort of."

Merrick (overjoyed): "DO IT DO IT!"

Matron: "But I'd leave in the morning when you go to school and I wouldn't come home until dinner or maybe later."

Merrick: "Weally?"

Matron: "Yup. I'd make more money but the trade off is that I'll be gone."

Merrick: "Will they make you do it?"

Matron: "Nobody will make me. I could choose."

Merrick: "To be gone all day just to be boss of a whole bunch of people?"

When you put it that way, darling. . . . those men in her life? Pretty darn smart. But still. Opportunity has a way of seducing . . .

Sigh.

Monday, Meditation

Saturday morning, the Matron startled awake at 4:18 am, half an hour before her alarm.

Because in a fit of insanity, she signed up for a half day sesshin at her local Zen Center -- silent meditation from 6 am to noon.

At 4:25 she decided not to even attempt those extra 20 minutes of sleep. She was AWAKE. At 4:50 am, slurping down coffee and a muffin, she realized that she must immediately return to her warm, cozy bed and abandon this ridiculous idea of SIX hours of meditation. That whole 'awake' thing last just about long enough for food and coffee.

Friday, this conversation had ensued.

He Who Cannot Be Named (16 year old son HWCBN for new readers): "Mom? You're going to meditate for six hours?"

Matron: "Yup!"

HWCBN: "How long have you meditated at one shot before?"

Matron: "Forty minutes."

Pause.

HWCBN: "Good luck with that."

This conversation replayed itself that bleak, black morning. Indeed, only pride propelled her forward. She had signed up, rallied the children, promised herself -- committed. The day was arranged around her absence. Merrick had hugged her good-night, all pluck and encouragement for her interior journey.

Merrick: "Mom? If you fall asleep and dwop over, twy not to get huwt."

Thanks, sweetheart.

And so from 6 am to noon, the Matron sat on a pillow. There was a small ceremony, a silent meditative breakfast, a highly anticipated bathroom break or two (bathroom! Like a party!). In sum, she sat just over four hours total.

That time--four hours, which would be 240 minutes?

Flew by.

Shockingly, for much of that time her mind held only a mantra -- a brief phrase and breath truly took hold. But for another slice of that time, her past -- images, scenes, conversations, bright lights of life frozen -- scrolled unbidden and uncontrolled across her defenseless psyche.

What a show!

It was . . . humbling.

Past humiliations arose. Moments of guilt. Vignettes of wrong-doing, mistakes made. A luminous moment or two, but mostly pain and sorrow finding a path they'd missed and making the most of it. The stories presenting themselves weren't the familiar crew, but a brand new bunch.

A little girl in plaid and braids, the adorable-as-all-get-out kind you see in picture books and movies -- already afraid.

Oddly, inexplicably, she didn't feel sad during this onslaught of imagery -- just a spectator. Inquisitive and open, as a forgotten past -- one largely constructed of minutiae, little things that don't seem to carry much weight -- moved toward her.

Oh -- and she's pretty sure she did doze off here and there. No worries, Merrick honey. She didn't drop over.

Today, she can't even remember exactly what happened or what secrets shook themselves out. Really. Four hours of this and she can barely remember what happened.

But she feels . . . better. Different. Something shifted during those quiet hours. She is not of the belief that life experience can be exorcised from the body or that catharsis is a cure. There is no remedy for what we take in because it is who we are. Consider just how much one person incorporates in a single day! From the moment we wake until sleep -- and maybe even then -- the brain never stops synthesizing detail after detail after drama and sight, sound and smell.

She imagines the brain packaging and storing the onslaught of input -- categorizing each second like a file to be plucked out again when needed. Imagine the expanse of this input! Wake, pull back covers, feel cool air, dog snout on leg, clock humming, cool wooden floor, crisp window -- this is just the first five seconds! Who among us can notice the crack and spit of every second?! Most of this we never even retrieve or when we do, it's like breath -- we don't even notice it.

But Saturday, she noticed her breath--and the shock of senses that came with it.

The funny thing is? All she feels is: better. And she didn't even know she felt bad.

She's Just a Girl Who Can't Say No (to Blogging)

Surprise!

No. Your senses have not taken leave. Here they are: words. The Matron's.

She actually didn't intend to take an extended hiatus. One day evolved into another, and then another. Christmas revealed its true nature as a month-long festival of financial over-indulgence topped off by cleaning, cooking, entertaining and debate: what does one give to the postal carrier? Especially one with whom you have a special relationship.

John: "Do you really have to give the recycling guy a holiday book, bake cookies for the teacher, and leave tea and chocolate for the garbage man?"

Matron: "Why? Do you think a bottle of wine is better?"

John: "Only if it's for me, at this very minute."

Then there was the veil of suffering. The Matron was grounded in the reality of the body's demise. Her friend continues the battle. Her stepmother -- a saga about which the Matron didn't blog -- scraped by a staggering health crisis with her life intact but changed.

But . . in an odd way these things didn't bother the Matron. She experienced, but did not rail against them. Long ago, she had the singular momentary wisdom to learn something from her mother-in-law.

Mother-in-Law: "Why, I go to a funeral a week. That's your social life when your friends all start dying."

And-- like that-- the Matron understood that one day, she too would step to the precipice of age.

However, understanding that something is simply the 'natural order of things' doesn't make it easy.

Then there was The Play. The Matron wrote one. Did she mention she wrote a play? Wrapped it up in the last six weeks? For an actual theatre company, a play that might see the stage -- and there's another one in the works that is a certainty.

Writing a play also provided the Matron with a fun little fantasy. She loves living in her head that way. Fantasy:

Cashier at grocery store: "And what do you do for a living?"

Matron: "Me? Oh, I'm a playwright."

Chills!

Of course, the fantasy omitted the teaching job and also centered around the fact that the Matron was AT the grocery store in the first place to buy a LOTTERY ticket, which she of course WON (this is a fantasy after all) -- which immediately required detailed dissection of how she would distribute, spend and indulge in her $389 million payout. The Matron is pretty generous in fantasyland, so she needed a lot. 3 - 8 - 9 million. That's a forty minute fantasy, folks.

Anyway, that lottery thing didn't work out in real life.

At least, real life has been rich and nuanced, replete with rewards that have nothing to do with money but much with relationships and self-reflection (not knowledge - that would be a stretch - it's all still a great big query). So the Matron guesses that's where her piggy bank is -- in people. And that sucker is stuffed. The children, the dogs, the friends, students, family -- why, the Matron could write a novel.

Instead she shall return to the regular blog post to strut her narrative stuff.

She's back.