OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Nobody Too

October 23rd, 2008

I swear by My life! Nothing save that which profiteth them can befall My loved ones. To this testifieth the Pen of God, the Most Powerful, the All-Glorious, the Best-Beloved.” — Bahá’u'lláh

The fragment is on my lips at six a.m. when I wake from a nightmare of trying to defend my children from these enormous, ferocious bears that have snuck into our house. I repeat it until I am calm, then run around checking doors, run out to the studio to turn off heaters I realized must have been left on after a violin lesson yesterday, just in case my subconscious was sending me a nightmare to alert me to something actually wrong in the real world.

Then I lie back down, my heart racing, and the empty spot where my husband isn’t is taking up too much of the bed. I am wrestling the knowledge that if I go back to sleep, I’ll have to go through the painful process of waking up again in just another hour against the fact that I’ve only had five hours sleep and will be barely functional today as it is.

Nothing save that which profiteth them… Slowly I inventory of the last twenty-four hours, trying to assess if I really am okay. The violin and viola lessons yesterday afternoon were disjointed, uncomfortable, the boys not responding to our violin teacher. He showed up twenty minutes late and was obviously a little frustrated with them, and I am powerless to smooth it, fix it. Some days are like that. Mostly, the lessons are still really good, I think. I try not to go into spirals of judging my own judgment.

Also, yesterday was the Back Fence PDX event — my amazing friend Timothea came and watched the kids so I could go, even though it was a huge disruption for her kids, a four-year-old and almost two-year-old who are normally at home in bed in their own beds at seven — they were still awake at eleven when I got home. I feel such guilt, it is so difficult sometimes, to accept even lovingly offered help, and to know that I probably pushed it staying until the end of the event, later than I thought I was going to be. And I was so glad to go and sit next to my friend Sarah, who told her story with this lovely combination of poise and conviction and vulnerability.

In the minutes before I saw Sarah, there was a moment of panic, a weirdness of being in a room crowded full of people I recognized from Twitter, but feeling so like a nobody, people looking past and through me, that vertiginous feeling of everybody but me belonging safely in a group while I stand bewildered, outside. And, honestly, there are lots of groups where I am fine being a nobody, I quite happily accept having done nothing to attract anyone’s notice (um, that’s not me trying not be noticed at the PTA meeting, uh-uh.) But Tweeps? who I confidently banter with all day long on-line, bare my soul to by blog? I shouldn’t feel like a nobody with them.

Oh, writing this now I distract myself, make the phone calls I had put off making, answer emails, do anything but face how melodramatic I can make five minutes of discomfort sound. It was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t bad.

Maybe I was armored, a little. Squirming during the violin lesson that hadn’t gone well, I’d found on the desk in the studio a stack of old papers I’d written for a seminar where the professor would return them with notes with lines like “I turned to your essay and found myself thrilled, just thrilled by your clarity, by the precision, the rich economy of your language” or “This is exceptional. It radiates with intelligence, kindness, and the courage to adventure. What a delight to read!” “This is as wonderful a ramble as I’ve ever read in the General Honors Program! What a joy!”"Thank you for making my morning so much fun” all of which it probably wouldn’t be healthy for me to pick up and look at more than every few years. And I find it doesn’t matter that he might have been, must have been writing such enthusiastic responses to all of his students, he made me feel like my own glow mattered.

I read Charlotte’s Web with the boys and wonder at the way her final web extolls Wilbur as “humble.” That’s not a virtue you hear so much about, what kind of self promotion is it? Don’t we need to worry for Wilbur’s, um, self-esteem.

Nothing save that which proftiteth them can befall My loved ones. You can go into these situations where you are a nobody, nobody recognizes you, nobody lines up to talk to you, you didn’t come with anyone to keep you safe and insulated, and you can whisper to yourself “they just don’t know who I am yet, but, someday! they’re going to kick themselves for not having taken advantage of the opportunity to talk to me.” Or you can flail about, who am I, anyway? Raven’s wife, Sarah’s friend, writer of a blog that takes itself far too seriously. But there’s a middle path, too, you can be okay with the feeling of being nobody because you suspect that most people feel that way from time to time in various situations and that it actually has nothing to do with your, ahem, value or worth.

I am a homebody. I am most comfortable at home. I liked going out dancing before I married a non-dancer, and I love the immersion of the movie theater, but mostly, my house has the comforts I like most, and being here, in conversation with a couple of interesting people or laughing with people I love, are my best experiences. Still, I know that the kids need more stimulation sometimes, and I push myself to go zoos and science museums, and playdates. I challenge myself to go to other events that may be less comfortable because there is so often a pay-off in terms of confidence and being glad I got out. But when I say “I’m nobody” I come dangerously close to the aggrandizing invocation of the ultimate goddess of homebodies.

Being a nobody doesn’t change how lovely each of my boys is, taken in turn, perhaps examining the still profile as he sleeps. It doesn’t change the lovely balance they provide to each other, or the sweetness of the moments when I realize they take care of each other, each in his own way.

Nothing save that which profiteth them… Bear dreams bring up this post of the unreliable narrator’s where a dreamt bear is the maternal instinct, but also Aodán’s recurring dream years ago as he tried to adjust to kindergarten, a dream that he was a bear cub in a class full of kids who were frightened of him, and he was trying to disguise himself as just another kid. The dream made perfect sense with his feeling just so different from the other kids, and having to tame his own little boy nature in order to make it through the long days of sitting still, controlling himself, following all new rules. In my bear dream I am confronted with how I hate being solely responsible for all the locking up and checking smoke alarms, and making sure there’s nobody hiding in the basement before I can go to sleep, irrational, sitting bolt upright as the house creaks and settles in the night. I feel like a wall of one trying to look outward and guard against external threats while simultaneously looking inward to comfort, reassure and encourage my children, the world is safe, you are safe, sleep sweetly.

But I am doing okay, even exhausted and semi-functional (twenty-eight hours until Raven’s plane lands). I find that I get to the middle point, neither independent and aloof, nor hopelessly, helplessly dependent, but interdependent — grateful at the friends that reach out generously when I am struggling. I reach that middle road with nobody-ness. I don’t need to write to get people’s attention, nor to prove that I am somebody, but I know that it’s possible somebody else will struggle with the feeling of being nobody and remember this and it might be a small consolation.

And then, my somebody-ness doesn’t come from the ancient notes on papers written from another life, doesn’t come from recognition or friendship, or even from my kids. Jenny and I on the phone talk about how there’s a secret perverse thrill at the idea of a society-wide economic collapse and having to discard materialism and live by deeper values, even though it’s not like you’d really wish for it to happen. In the five minutes of discomfort of being nobody, feeling a little disgraced in fortune and men’s eyes and beweeping outcast states, there was, maybe, a parallel thrill, that I could be nobody, humble and glorious, and be okay. That nothing, save that which profiteth them can befall the loved ones of God, that is, any one of us of His creation.

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