Woman in the Mucus

So humor me for a moment while I bore you with some Japanese New Wave Cinema references. See, I told you I went to film school once long, long ago. You didn't believe me, did you? Well, that's OK. It is sometimes hard for me to believe too now that I spend all day keeping a toddler from eating the dog food or choking on water bottle caps. But I did. And I happened to like the really boring esoteric stuff. I even made boring esoteric films. Yeah, I was one of those kind of art school nerds. But this is really getting off the subject.

I wanted to talk about what I've been thinking about a lot lately. The book/movie Woman in the Dunes. Have you read/seen it? Well, to Twittersynopsis it, it is about a woman who lives in these remote dunes and has to sweep the sand back every day all day to keep from being drowned in it. There is more to the story--an entomologist dude wondering the dunes finds her and hangs out there (or maybe she finds him? can't remember) and they fight and have sex. But that part isn't really what I am thinking about. I am thinking about the woman in the dunes sweeping up all day just to do it over again the next to keep from drowning in it. Lately, with Bug's seemingly constant colds, I consider myself The Woman in the Mucus. I carry a snot rag to wipe the slime away lest we drown in it. I keep a humidifier going. I boil water on the stove. I Little Noses her nostrils. I syringe out the goobers. Every day.

Motherhood is like that. Isn't it? You get to do the same things every single day. Some days are better than others. Some days you want to hide under the covers. Some days you zen out and do it. Some days you just love the routine and the surprises within the routine. Some days are tantrums and breakdowns. Other days are joy and breakthroughs. Or a little bit of everything. There is a basic routine each day and yet each day is so different from the next. It's the mothering paradox.

To use a more Western image, I suppose it would be to imagine Sisyphus happy. To imagine Sisyphus content as he rolls his boulder up the hill each and every day. In my current situation, it would be a large booger that I roll up the hill every day. Or maybe it is a giant ball of laundry? Or an enormous pile of dishes? What is yours? And can you imagine yourself happy? Or do you want to drop everything and run for the hills?