Love the one you’re with/the one you are

Last week on our walk I told Chrysanthemum all about Penelope Trunk’s complicated love life. I also told her about my favorite of Penelope’s posts ever — it has “language” but may be the truest elegy to motherhood ever written. If you don’t recognize yourself in her post, I envy you, but I also think you’re in denial. Or maybe perfect. I suppose that’s possible.

Then I told her all about Penelope’s discussion of The Pioneer Woman, because we both love The Pioneer Woman. (Who doesn’t?) Poor Chrysanthemum probably gets a little tired of my telling her stuff during our walks. But the juxtaposition of Pioneer Woman and Penelope Trunk is absolutely fascinating. Pioneer Woman lives on a ranch, has kids, writes a popular (understatement) blog. Penelope Trunk lives now on a farm, has kids, writes a popular blog. They’re similar in age and superficial candor and charm in their writing. Penelope writes about more hard things, more sad things, than Pioneer Woman, or maybe she just writes about them more darkly.

Penelope’s post about the Pioneer Woman pointed out several things that Pioneer Woman does on her blog that make her so likeable (presumably in contrast to Penelope’s more abrasive, though equally appealing persona). Pioneer Woman never “disrespects her guy” and she’s optimistic. The difference between the two blogs boils down to this: “that [Penelope is] drawn to writing about the fights, and the Pioneer Woman is drawn to writing about pies, and feeding the Marlboro Man.”

The women differ in other areas: Penelope works more than full-time at her fancy career and Pioneer Woman homeschools her four children (though surely she also has a lot of household help, and spends plenty of time working on her blog and recipe book business). But the thing I think they differ in most is that Penelope is so unhappy much of the time and Pioneer Woman is not only happy but content and satisfied (though never smug, which would be unforgivable). If I thought their blogs were mirror images of themselves and their lives, I’d want to talk to Penelope every day, but I’d want to be Pioneer Woman.

(I’m really not a blog stalker. I just take my fictional characters very seriously. If I could choose anyone to be, it’d be Anne, or Valancy, or maybe even Emily, though she was monumentally too proud. Probably Valancy. Because of all that money.)

Reading Penelope I always think of how I want to do this little or big thing differently. Even though, like her, I am drawn to writing about the hard things. Of course I love and appreciate my husband. Since he doesn’t wear chaps and I don’t know how to work my camera, and because of course I love and appreciate him, what interests me is the things he does that make my otherwise-fairytale life frustrating in the extreme. Like, he won’t take a class to learn how to finish our basement even though our fourth kid will be squished in our current 1600 square feet.

But I want to be happy, like Pioneer Woman. Somehow I want to retain my critical, curious thinking like Penelope but gain a joie de vivre over every little thing like PW. Because what I like about Pioneer Woman most, maybe, is that even though she’s obviously rich and lucky (and talented), I still don’t hate her. Somehow she has me convinced that even if she were stuck in a dingy tenement with four rickets babies, she’d still be making a beautiful life.

So I have a goal to disrespect my guy less. Beginning with three things recently that made me glad to be once again bearing his child. (Here, if I were Pioneer Woman, I’d say something about my ovaries singing, or something.)

His touch: I have been less-than-not-interested in anything relating to connubial bliss for the past month. He brushes against me in the hall and my tummy quivers, and not in the good way. Then last week, as we lay in bed, him on the laptop, me reading a book, I reached for his hand and just felt his palm. His skin was warm and pleasantly dry. A little rough from work, but smooth and tingly. I rubbed it for a couple minutes and then turned back to my book. He laughed: “That’s enough holding hands, huh?”

His little women: Of course we want a boy this time around. Of course. But now that I know how different each child is, that we won’t be repeating ourselves with another little girl, I am eager either way. Tom said last Sunday morning that he’d had a dream we had our baby, and she was old enough to be crawling around, and she was so cute. When we think of names, at the dinner table, he says silly things like Zeus and Wolf, and then he says he really likes Mia too.

His devotion: Lucy had croup Saturday night, and Tom was up with her several times, wrapping her in a blanket and sticking her head in the freezer. She breathed easier downstairs (where it’s always cooler), and he wanted to be sure he heard her if she needed him, so they slept on the living room couch. Then he got up early and took the other kids to church.

(These are old pictures, but there’s something about snow that makes my camera not work.)