in case you were wondering

Say you found my blog by googling my name. Say you heard my name through a mutual acquaintance. Say you were curious about me and thought you would check me out online. Say you read some of my poems, saw my students' comments on Ratemyprofessor, went to my department's website, saw my public Facebook listing, and read my postings as a guest blogger on the Best American Poetry blog.

And say you were still curious. Who is this Amy Lemmon person I've heard about who lives in New York? you wonder. So here you are on my blog, trying to read between the lines of my cheerleading, kvetching, and kvelling, clicking on my photo, looking for any clues to what makes me tick.

First of all, thanks for reading. I'm flattered that anyone would spend time with my maunderings, since I know how busy you are. Now let me make your sleuthing a little easier with a few facts that aren't in my "About Me" profile.

-I grew up in Ohio and led a relatively sheltered life until my twenties, when I moved to the east coast then back to Ohio for graduate school, where my "liberal education" was completed. Or so I thought until I moved to NYC.
-I was raised in a politically and religiously conservative environment. The political I've diverged from significantly. The religious--well, I have diverged, but I still have respect for the faith of my fathers (and mothers). I'm working on my own version. Stay tuned.
-I grew up feeling like my family were the only people with our particular brand of beliefs. This dovetailed nicely into my already well-established sense of alienation from my peers stemming from hyper-sensitivity and an inability to discern "kids being kids" making fun and teasing from kids really hating me, which finally began to dissipate when I went to college and discovered beer.
-I once had ambitions to be a musician. I started piano lessons at six, played violin at ten, picked up oboe and trumpet in high school, was voted "Most Musical" in my senior class. Then, in college, after one term as a music education major, I switched to English because the music department building was just too far a walk from the main campus. That, and practicing so much made my neck hurt.
-Instead of being a musician, Reader, I married one. I moved to NYC in 1996 as a newlywed because my husband played jazz and got a full scholarship to grad school. I was finishing my PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati at the time.
-Twelve years later, I still live (with my kids) in the same two-bedroom apartment in Queens that I moved into less than a month after my wedding.
-I am in the middle of a divorce. Not a "messy" divorce, and not an "amicable" divorce, but just a plain old emotionally draining, heart-wrenching, soul-search-inspiring, therapy-requiring, do-what's-best-for-the-children intoning, financially discouraging, thoroughly depressing yet apparently necessary divorce.
-I did not expect to be getting divorced less than a dozen years after saying "I do." This does not mean I thought my marriage was perfect. It's just that throwing in the towel wasn't my idea. Although I'm starting to warm up to it.
-The whole divorce experience has thrown me for a loop. It has painstakingly laid a crunchy layer of chaos over my baseline neuroses and occasional hysterical tendencies that is quite astonishing in its power to thwart any plans, goals, or good intentions I might have.
-No matter how sideswiped I've been by the crunchy chaos, I have never for a minute considered keeping my kids from their father, or doing anything to damage their relationship with him. I know how much that would hurt them. (Okay, so one time I said "Daddy is an a*****e" in front of my son. But it was raining and there were no cabs and I had been late picking him up from after-school chess and felt like a total failure as a mother. And the kid had asked why I was upset.)
-I am grateful that my kids' father is still around a lot, even though it makes separating from him excruciating at times. It's good for the kids, who adore him, and heck, I can use the free childcare.
-Here's a secret: I have come to believe that maybe, just maybe, all this is part of a Plan, and that Somebody is in charge of the blueprints. I just have no idea what the deal is, where I fit in or what I am supposed to do. I am trying to be okay with not knowing, and just trust and have faith. You can imagine how hard this is for me.
-I am ambivalent about the public nature of my presence here. I want to blab to the world but feel anxious when strangers (such as you, dear reader) find me, especially when it has something to do with someone I am dating.
-Oh--did I tell you that I have been dating? No? Sorry. Forgot to mention that. (Actually, I haven't mentioned it on purpose. It's private, and as you know this is a public forum.)
-I find "dating" to be an odd and antiquated term, a bit "dated" if you will, because the experience post-divorce has felt for me more like hearing a carousel and letting the captivating music and smell of peanuts and popcorn lead me off the paved path only to get sucked into a wind tunnel while simultaneously trying to squeeze into a wetsuit in anticipation of being dropped into a deep, dark, cold ocean when the tunnel abruptly ends. But sometimes, sometimes, I catch that carousel and let it spin me 'round and 'round, intoxicated. (Maybe my memory is going, but I do not recall it being quite this way the last time I was single, in my twenties.)
-I have a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen. Let's just say I have a close relationship with my inner Eloise.
-I find music to be incredibly healing. For a broken heart, or a broken home, I highly recommend Ron Sexsmith. Or K D Lang. Or practically anyone Canadian.
-I do not wish to spend the rest of my life without a partner. Conversely, I do not want to be with someone just so I can have a partner. I want the (or a) right person. I want it all!
-I feel guilty for not blogging enough about my kids lately, especially about the T21 community and special needs advocacy. I wonder if I seem completely narcissistic to the casual reader.
-My extended family (I am the eldest of six children) is precious to me, but I don't always feel as if I fit in.
-My friends are invaluable. Simply put: I would not be here without them.
-My relationships with most of my friends are complicated. This is probably because I have the most satisfying and intimate friendships with people who are as complicated as I am.
-Sometimes I need a break from my friends, and my friends need a break from me. I am trying to teach myself that this is Okay and does not mean that I should not be friends with anyone. (I'm starting to realize that the same principle might just apply to romantic relationships, too.)
-I am, quite often, my own worst enemy.
-I love, I love, I love. It's my nature. Sometimes it hurts and it ain't pretty. But I can't seem to live any other way.
-I'm procrastinating right now. Papers, papers, papers. I have a tendency to hype up the negative aspects of my life when I am overwhelmed with work, as I am now. (In this economy, people who are employed should not complain. So I'm not. About work, anyway.)

If you want to know more about me, ask our mutual acquaintance for my email and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you again for your time. Have a good day.

anniversaire

Halloween is not a happy time for me this year. There is no other way to say this. A year ago tonight Bob told me he wanted to separate. I had taken the kids out trick-or-treating by myself while he was working, and then when he came home, long after they were asleep, it happened. Life as I knew it started to creak and crack and crumble around me.

Today I am being gentle with myself. Although I acknowledge the feelings that come up, I am trying not to "dwell on it," as my mom used to say. I am focusing on getting some of my mountains of work done. I am focusing on having fun with the kids--this year we are teaming up with another family for trick-or-treat. I am going for a run. I am remembering to breathe. I am looking forward to tomorrow.

I am also reading Psalm 27. Yesterday I got a card from my Aunt Jan, my godmother, suggesting that I read the following verses:

1
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?
The LORD is the refuge of my life; of whom then should I go in dread?

7
Hear, O LORD, when I call aloud; show me favour and answer me.

14
Wait for the LORD; be strong, take courage, and wait for the LORD.

Because I cannot for the life of me find the white leather-bound Revised Standard Version my grandparents gave me as a kid (probably around the age I would have been confirmed if my family had stayed with a church), I have been using The New English Bible (Oxford Study Edition) I bought for Tony York's "History of the English Bible" course in grad school. Anglophile that I am, it's the very thing, except that I often miss the familiar cadences I recall.

Yes, Dear Reader, Saint Nobody has just put Bible verses on her blog. No, she has not gone off the deep end. Well, maybe she has, but she is starting to believe that a Presence, a Power is there to rescue her from the depths and buoy her to the surface. She's bobbing in the waves, getting some air, just enough to keep going, and sometimes more.

not so fast....

Well, I suppose it was inevitable. No sooner had I written this post about how calm and cool and copacetic I was about my divorce, than the skies clouded up and darkened, and the waves gathered to crash on the sandy (rocky?) shore of my psyche. Or something along those lines.

Divorce, my friends, is hell. Plain and simple. It is exponentially more hellish when children are involved. It takes a long, long time to "move on" in any meaningful way, and even when you think you've started to do that, something can happen to trigger all the yucko feelings you thought you'd started to leave behind.

I think I am experiencing the anniversary effect--meaning, since it was Halloween night when my marriage was handed to me on a platter, the crisping air (which MacGregor refers to as "that first chilly scent of Canada") and signs of orange-and-black faux-ghoulishness start to remind me of the real horror of grief, shock, abandonment, guilt, failure, fear, etc. etc. etc.

Love is not always enough. The best of intentions falter. Resolutions wither and die. Things change. Leaves, like plans and hopes and dreams, turn and fall and crumble to dust.

But yes, there is always the promise of far-off spring, that cliche of cliches for new beginnings--but no less apt an analogy for that. There is hope. There is faith (more about that, soon). There are grace and forgiveness. There are, thank goodness, lots and lots of kleenex. (No one really thinks you're crazy for crying on the subway, right?) There is tomorrow--and tomorrow, as Scarlett O said, is another day and, as Annie reminded us, only a day away.

the "d" word

It's been almost a year now. It wasn't my idea. On Halloween night, 2007, my partner of over 14 years and husband of more than 12 informed me that he wanted to separate. I knew we had our problems, that neither of us was what anyone could call "happy," that our difficulties had increased markedly in the past few years. But I just didn't consider divorce to be an option. My parents have remained married, happily from all accounts, for better or for worse, since June 9, 1962. I expected the same from my marriage. Bob and I had always said we would stay together no matter what. We had two kids we both adored, one with special needs. We needed each other to get through the days and weeks, sharing parenting so we could both work and scrape together a living in New York City. During those moments when things got particularly tense and the subject of splitting came up, we quickly dismissed the idea, mainly because of the kids.

So now it was on the table, and I had no choice. He wanted to separate for "at least six months," then revisit the marriage. Meanwhile, we would work with a mediator on a separation agreement. He slept on the couch or stayed at a relative's until December, after Bobby's birthday party, when he moved into a shared apartment a few blocks away. It wasn't until January that I realized that he didn't really want a trial separation and faced the fact that my marriage was over.

The past year has been one of the more difficult of my life so far. The hurt and confusion behind this post from last November was only the beginning. I've weathered countless emotional storms and found myself blindsided again and again by feelings I thought I had already been through, dealt with, put behind me. I've learned that grief, as so many of you must know, is not a linear process. You don't progress through Kubler-Ross's stages steadily and in an orderly fashion--anger, guilt, even denial cycle back often when you least expect it.

Now, though, nearly a year later, I can honestly say that it is very likely our lives--all of our lives, the kids' included--may very well be better for this decision. In the intervening months I have had many opportunities to mull over our relationship and see the signs that I had ignored all along, the issues I thought I was willing to compromise on but deep down allowed to fester into anger, bad humor, ultimately contributing to depression and other stresses in my life.

What I feel best about now is the fact that, no matter how stormy or venomous or uncontrollable my emotions seemed, I never allowed them to push me into decisions that would be less than ideal for my children. As the title of this blog implies, I am no saint, and I made mistakes, acting out, venting within earshot of the kids when I felt I couldn't avoid it. There were times that I actually hated their father, I couldn't stand the sight of him in the cramped two-bedroom apartment that had been "ours" but was now mine, where for logistical reasons he took care of the kids most of the time. The boundaries were blurred, and I wanted clarity.

I couldn't imagine parenting these wonderful and challenging little people on my own, but working with their dad now that we were no longer life partners seemed equally impossible. Friends suggested I give up on mediation and get a lawyer who would help me get what I "deserved." Family members urged me to get full custody, even move away from New York. But I knew how much that would hurt our children, and although I wanted nothing to do with him anymore, I got through it and somehow put up with it (albeit often kicking and screaming) for their sake. I honestly don't know how, since I'm not exactly the martyr type, but it has gradually gotten easier, and now things seem much less fraught.

Now that we are within striking distance of closing the marriage chapter of our lives, I can appreciate the good things about the man I married. Bob is a wonderful father. The kids adore him. He is also a good friend, and now that I have started to recover from the heartbreak his choice has caused, I can see the possibility of a future that includes my children, a parenting partner, and perhaps even new relationships that are happier and more functional. The marriage is broken, but the family goes on and--I think, I hope--thrives.

in a dark time

When Bob and I first met fourteen years ago, he was reading Roethke (one of the things that really impressed me about him), and found this poem particularly moving. It is sadly appropriate now. Bob has decided he needs to live apart, at least for the short term. He is moving into an apartment nearby and will be with the kids nearly as much as before, but I am having a very hard time with it all.

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.


--Theodore Roethke