Why I Hate Poland

My best friend, Carrie, moved to Poland just before my son was born one year ago. At that time, my life was radically changing: I was expecting my firstborn child, I was finishing up my Master's Degree, I had started a new job and left an old boyfriend. Her leaving, while sad, was overshadowed by the excitement of becoming a mother and the adjustment to life with a baby, and I didn't really have time to notice how much I missed her.

I have never loved someone like I love Carrie. The day we met felt like a reunion of souls that had been apart for a while. What I remember feeling when I shook her hand was the comfort and relief of familiarity, like the smell of the house you grew up in. We were instantly and fiercely friends. One person we met told us that we were "twin souls..." I don't know what that means, but it sounds right.

I know that the term "best friend" is usually reserved for fourth grade girls and charm bracelets, but Carrie really is my best friend. In fact, my admiration and love for her was problematic with my ex boyfriend. He got mad at how often I compared him to her, with him always on the short end of the comparison. He suggested I just marry her, something she and I had considered before we remembered that we aren't lesbian.

When she left, I didn't realize how hard it would be for us to stay connected. We've been separated before- like when I moved to Orange County to become a foster parent and when she moved to Virginia to mend a broken heart- and we've always been able to maintain an almost surreal closeness. However, over the past year, the time difference and Jack's need for my attention made conversation almost impossible. Not that I had much to say: Jack isn't sleeping, I'm going crazy, he rolled over today, he's got diarrhea, he gained two ounces, I've gained 15 pounds. New mom talk is only interesting to other new moms. Really.

And she's in Poland, for chrissakes, living through culture shock, blizzards, and bad, pickled food. When she would talk about it, I would try to imagine her life but my only reference for cold weather is San Diego at night. And not knowing what the town she lives in looks like, only that it is "a small, country town," I am embarrassed to admit that I imagined her in Main Street, USA at Disneyland.

I'm so used to getting my support from her, but for the first time in our life together as friends we had to go to separate support groups for our individual traumas. I'm so used to calling her when I need to laugh or to bitch about my job or my tummy fat or the price of cigarettes. Our parallel lives made this easy, but our lives look really, really different now. I have a baby that I love so intensely that it hurts while at the same time want to auction off to the highest bidder on Ebay. She is living in a country where people are not friendly and do not smile, and where Taco Bell does not exist.

She sent me an email today, a rare commodity since she does not have a computer. As I wrote my reply, which is posted below, I felt the sting of her absence in my life, a hollow, empty pain that I had not realized was there. I will see her in July, at the wedding of a mutual friend, and I look forward to that sweet reunion, once again.

I miss sharing my life with you. I miss having you to call. I like having you as a witness to my life, someone who shares in the beauty and the mess of it all, someone to rejoice with me and be awed with me and devastated with me. My life is devastatingly beautiful, Carrie, and I want you to see it. I want you to witness it with me. Without you here, events in my life bounce around like an echo, unabsorbed by anyone but me. And they're such great events: Jack's smile in the morning, the way a Cheerio sticks to his cheek when he eats, how his chubby baby legs just seem to get fatter and fatter, the sound of his voice when he sings as he plays with a straw.

Maybe it's just loneliness, period. Maybe it is that I am ready to invite someone into my life to bear witness to what I am creating, what I am, who I am. I'm just used to that person being you, Carrie, and I like it when it's you. I like standing with you in the rooms of my life.

I don't want you to come home for me, and I don't want you to stop creating your own life. I support you, and always will, in your journey and in your life wherever that leads you and I want you to experience the hell out of yourself! I just miss you, am incredibly lonely without you, and I feel like you are missing out on me. And I, you.

I love you.

Amber.

Does God Talk to You?

If so, could you ask him this question?

Why does everything I want have to be bad for me? Like, ice cream. Or really buttery popcorn. Or cigarettes. Or 3 Long Island Iced teas in a row.

I mean, why couldn't ice cream be just as nutritious as broccoli? Didn't he know when he created it that we would like it and not be able to stop ourselves (ice cream, I mean. Not the broccoli. I find it quite easy to stop eating broccoli).

Mom of the Year Award

I have been awarded the very prestigious and sought-after title of Mom of the Year! This award came after a very inspiring day of wonderfully maternal and nurturing activities, including:


a) accidentally locking my son in the car while he was holding the keys resulting in his being stuck inside for over 45 minutes

~and~

b) walking into my friend's kitchen to find my baby eating dog food.


I am so proud.

Dear Diary...

More from my beloved junior high diaries...

1/3/1990 (age 14)

I didn't write on Christmas mainly cuz I didn't have my diary. I left it at Carrie's and I spent the night at G-ma Kay's cuz I was sick.

Well, anyways, I got lots (underlined) of stuff: roller skates, LA Gear shoes, Colors perfume, new night gown, robe, slippers, nutcracker (Grandma gave me that plus book stands), new shirts, potpourri burner, gloves, socks and undies, Michael W. Smith tape, Amy Grant tape, and a pretty cow shirt.

February 5, 1990

On Friday, the 3rd, Ruth Obregon invited me and Amber Rady and Rachelle Smith and Shay Nelson and Marlena Jones to go to a Bible study at her house. Amber couldn't go, but everyone else did.

I went home with Ruthie after school, and we stayed at school after school and we watched the games and hung around.

The Bible study was really good. Ruth talked on secular rock-music. It was a lot of fun and the praying was real emotional. Shay is having some problems with Bethany Anderson, but I'm not sure what they are. She started crying when we prayed for her.

After the Bible study we went to Josh Floro's house and Jeremy Clookie was there. We played games and did the Jane Fonda workout. We wrestled, although Josh's dad told us not to. I can't believe how much fun I had. I had a BLAST (underlined). We stayed there until 11:00pm, and then they took us home.

I spent the night at Ruth's and then in the morning she had to get tutored in history by Mrs. Campbell for history. I had to go with her, but it was actually kinda fun.

Well, nothing really happened today. We had communion in church today. I wish Nathan, Corey, and I got along a little better. I hate the fights, hard feelings, tears, etc., that goes on. I try, but it never works. I just wish we were all a little more Christian-like.

Ewww....

My son loves two things: pacifiers and water. Here is one example of how combining these things can be dangerous.

I was in my room when I heard a little "splash splash" so I turned around to find Jack, digging his pacifier out of the toilet. Awesome.

Can't See The Forest for the Zzzzzz's

I tend to overthink things, sometimes. I mean ridiculously, neurotically overthink things. Like the time my ex-boyfriend was watching a TV commercial for orange juice and said, "Man, a glass of orange juice sounds good right now," and I immediately thought that he was disappointed in me for not having our refrigerator stocked with orange juice. Maybe this is more of an example of how pathetically insecure I am, but I think it could also point to my overthinking as well.

Symantics aside, this little trait of mine roared its ugly little head recently when I called my good friend, Donovan, in the middle of the night in a state of total despair. See, my son, who I love more than anything, even the TV show LOST, is apparently allergic to sleep. He has never slept more than a few hours at a time since the day he was born which was ten months ago. A typical night looks like this:

go down at 8:30
wake up at 10:00 - rock for 15 minutes
wake up 11:45 - nurse and rock for 25 minutes
wake up at 12:30 - needs pacifier
wake up at 1:15 - pat butt for 10 minutes
wake up at 2:30 - nurses for 15 minutes
wake up at 3:45 - wants to play; makes "bob, bob, bob" sounds; needs to be re-swaddled and rocked and nursed back to sleepy mode - 45 minutes
wake up at 5:30 - more butt patting
wake up at 6:30 - butt pat, pacifier
wake up at 7:30 - up for the day.

So, when I made the call to my friend, Donovan, I unloaded onto him about how much resentment was brewing in my body toward Jack, how little I was enjoying him lately, and how frustrated I was becoming with him during the night. I was worried, real worried, about what this all meant, about how I might be making all of the wrong choices in raising him, how maybe subconsciously I wanted him to wake up or that maybe we were too enmeshed. I started doubting myself as a parent, as a good person, and began to wonder if I had been abused as a child and the rage I was experiencing was a result of buried, subconscious and unresolved trauma. I worried about how this would all affect him someday, and envisioned him as a brooding, black-eyeliner-wearing teenager who listens to the Dead Kennedy's and refuses to open his bedroom door. I cried and cried and cried on the phone, my life looking bleak and utterly complicated, and then Donovan said to me:

"Amber, I think you just need some sleep."

Internet, I swear that this had not occurred to me. These words hit me like the proverbial fry pan to the head. Could it really be that simple?

He went on. "I could sit here and process all of this stuff with you, Amber, but I really think that you're just sleep deprived."

Sometimes I need people to just point out the obvious to me, to show me the forest amongst the trees, to give me a big helping of some good ol' fashioned common sense. Maybe I do just need sleep.

He was right, of course, and I got some (thanks to Mirna, Janna, and my Mom).

Now I need to go get some orange juice.

"The Hardest Part" by Coldplay