Greetings from the Land of Spare Oom

When I was in fourth grade, I was in this "enrichment" program taught by the elementary music teacher.  Our elementary school was so small that we didn't really have different tracks - you all got lumped into class together, and the teacher usually taught to the lowest common denominator.  If you finished early, you got to read a book.  I was usually happy with this situation, as I loved to read.  I still love to read, actually.  Even Fox in Socks, 84 times in a row.  Although these days, I've had to start trying out different accents to keep it real.  But I digress.

Our little enrichment group took a field trip to a book warehouse somewhere in Omaha.  We all got to pick out a boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia.  We were supposed to read the books and then discuss them together.  I read every single one of them, but my favorite was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  And yes, I saw the movie.  I have seen every version of that movie ever made.  Love the book, love the story.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if it isn't true.  At what point will I walk back through some door and find this whole adulthood, marriage and motherhood thing was just a lovely dream?  I remember sitting in my room at home wondering how my life would turn out, where I'd be in my thirties.  I wanted to be famous.  I wanted to write books.  I wanted to get married.  I didn't want any kids, because I thought they would interfere with being famous and writing books. I wanted to travel the world.  But I also had this hollow place in my psyche - I didn't really know who I was. 

I'm an existentialist.  I do believe we die alone.  All of our relationships can be helpful, but in the end, it's you and your choices, your decisions, your path.  To some extent, all of us are from the Land of Spare Oom, that place where only we exist.  The place where we don't put others first - where we store our hopes and dreams.  The last time I really lived there was shortly before I met my beloved, when I lived alone with Sybil the Cat in a one-bedroom apartment on Warwick Boulevard, just down from a crack house and an abandoned building.  It was the last time I had hours alone with my dreams.  I would lie in bed on Saturday mornings trying to figure out how to reach them, what to do that day, with no one to demand anything else from me.  It was lonely, but it was also the last time I focused completely on me.  Then I walked into the wardrobe one day and got engaged.

My life since then has been a happy whirlwind.  I achieved some of my goals and have others taunting me even now.  I've done things unheard of to the girl from Spare Oom, married on a beach, went to graduate school with no pushing or aid from anyone, got pregnant and gave birth to the little angel. We bought a house, then another, and we're getting ready to move into our latest castle.  Often times I feel like Queen Dorothy, hunting the white stag.  There's a part of me that worries I'll follow it past a familiar light post and stumble, breathless, back into the apartment on Warwick five minutes after I left it nine years ago.  Sybil will look up, still only nine years old, and go back to her sunbath. 

Today I've been asked to talk about what makes me a mother.  The obvious answer is a child.  Sometimes I feel like I've been a mother all along, that life didn't really happen until the little angel was born.  This morning when I heard a strange, squeaky sound at the side of my bed, I opened my eyes to find the little angel standing there in her pajamas and Cinderella glass slippers.  "I have to go potty," she said.  It was five a.m. She didn't comment on her footwear, and neither did I. We just went potty, then went downstairs to pass out on the couch until seven. These events no longer suprise me.

Sometimes I look at her and think this can't be happening.  What do I know about being a mother?  Because sometimes, in my head, I'm still sitting on my bed in high school, wondering how my life will turn out, staring at my begonia plant and listening to U2 Bad on repeat.

Now I wonder what it will be like when the little angel leaves for her own life, what it will be like when I am old, very old, and perhaps alone once again.  It may happen, and if it does, I guess I'll buy a begonia and some U2, and perhaps a new copy of my old book.  I'll go back through the wardrobe to the person I was before I became a queen, but I'll always remember these sunlit days I'm in now, the days when I was a wife and a mother, and I was happy.

And I'll always believe it was real.