12:45 PM Sun 8 Nov 81
This AM Toss told me that putting my name on his accounts makes him 50% poorer in the eyes of those who read his financial statements. I cold say the same, except that I am worth nothing right now. I want this marriage to work. Men contribute money and women contribute the bodies of children which are both everything and nothing under their ancient laws.
Everything outside God is imperfect. All my life I’ve been battling this undertow – a sense of being pulled in a direction I don’t want to go. If I quit fighting I’ll be sucked away. Would like to reduce my sense of confusion & division. I will negotiate & re-negotiate.
4:20 PM – Fri difficult therapy day. Dr Jones trying to get me to see similarity between my lack of acceptance in writing and my lack of acceptance by parents – I can write about it now but was shaken at the time. I think it cannot compute. After all, you have a good chance of being loved by parents but always a small chance of acceptance you’re your original ideas in a buyers’ marketplace. But what would happen if I believed her and translated my search for an income into an effort to be loved? Surely that way madness lies. Is it the goal of therapists to make clients crazier (maybe so they can help them more?) Feel naïve that I expected her to “cure” me. But very attracted to her intellectual world.
T’s brother Dom is coming to dinner. He’s only staying an hour and a half but I hate my solitude being broken. I want to write an essay on Muriel Spark, work out my ideas.
Hoped to have the baby tonight. Thumpings and soundings on my pelvic floor. Braxton-Hicks contractions – reputed to be ‘nothing” – are actually rather painful. Housework hangs heavily over me – Toss does nothing, won’t even pick up his towels off the floor – when I speak to him he apologizes profusely and pledges to change. Doesn’t. I’m boggled by this. I told him I don’t believe in his “as soon as I finish x-y-z” any more I want cleaning person NOW. He purposely arranges his life so he can’t meet his deadlines.
He usually does housework once a week – scrubs kitchen & bathrooms and sweeps breakfast room but he missed this week. I wonder if one of the privileges of motherhood will be my increasing sense of my own power. I hope so. Been difficult up till now.
2:30 PM Mon 9 Nov 81
This world just too crazy for me. Silhouette says my love scenes “lack fire.” Really the funniest part of this is how undiscourageable I am. Better off with a flat turndown than a false carrot. Lavallee writes to say Pinch turned down by Coward & St Martins.
The thing I really hate is how this looks to others – I am sick of being a deadbeat non-person. One needs talent, persistence, application & breaks. I got the first 3!
Managed to find a cleaning woman! I hope this will make it easier to turn to my desk with a sigh of relief. I think freedom is the key to great writing and I’ve been constrained by these petty editors. Miracles occur! T. very nice about my rejections, no “Maybe you should just try harder to please them” thank God. Plan to go on working endlessly without pay, support or recognition – to please myself, while the mystical brass ring floats alluringly by.
Last night Dom said he hopes Sutton is leaving us some money in his will. Toss said when their dad dies we’ll be so wealthy we won’t care! I regard such prognostications with the utmost cynicism. I suppose I’m technically better off than in my working dancer days when I owned a paid off car, an unpaid for house and $300 in bills but it doesn’t feel like it.
9;30 Am Tues 10 Nov 81
Cleaning lady half hour late. So she is probably lost. Yesterday I drove my car out and drove ahead of them to show them the house but she speaks barely any English. On the phone her son says she left to come here “a long time ago.”
Last night read Phantom Prince about Ted Bundy written by his girlfriend. One of the best crime books I’ve ever read! Bundy was like Lizzie Borden in that he ran counter to police theories on crime. They kept letting him go because he “couldn’t” be the guy they were looking for. If he’d known how to STOP he would never have been caught, but he got addicted. Intrigued by the atmosphere of pizza joints & rafting as counterpoint to this couple’s lives. Reminded me of old boyfriend Kyro!
This is a really a whole book about female helplessness and dependency. Women have been trained to act like this to provoke protectiveness in their menfolk – but it often has the exact opposite result! He needed her to protect him from the knowledge of his own monstrousness.
Granma woke me from a nap – still tormenting us about a palace oriental the Schulz Foundation is giving us for reasons that are obscure. Why the principals can’t deal with each other I can’t comprehend. Nap & then try Mrs. Rozo the Lost Cleaning Woman again.
“Memory is our private literature” – Aldous Huxley
11:30 PM Sun 15 Nov 81
Getting lots of sleep hoping a beautiful angel will be born tonight. I’d like to have the house clean. First cleaner doesn’t want to do it, found a new cleaner Margaret who’s coming tomorrow. Washed the white dog in the bathtub and it was really too much for me, can’t bend over at all. Read Lynne Wiley’s Abigail Adams with interest. I enjoy the sweep of a life.
I wasn’t to review Spark’s Loitering With Intent but it’s too thin. Enjoyed the first 7/8 but when it’s over, impossible to say why it was written. She really writes too many books. The transplantation to Rome has not agreed with her.
Yesterday Toss & I drove to Wyomissing to get used (family) crib & car seat. New relationship combustion. I am very emotional right now – told him I don’t want to be solely responsible for harmony in the relationship. In a marriage, there has to be some way to disagree without slipping the rug of love out from under the relationship.
Had Toss to myself all day – an ideal day – reading NY Times in bed.
6;25 PM We 18 Nov 81
Good visit with midwife. She assured me baby will be on time and I will have it at birthing center. Relief. Blood pressure nicely down.
Finally talked Toss into open a housekeeping money market acct with $3500 (and hopefully writing money). Margaret worked hard all day, house looks great. Sat down to write – to my surprise got 8 pages.
4:30 PM – 27 Nov 81
Well it’s all over – my 8 ½ pound baby boy sleeps beside me. Labor was both more and less bad than I expected – I had dysfunctional labor – 2 days’ worth – exhausting & discouraging but I was only able to get to 3 cm dilation myself by noon Wed after having contractions since Mon. The actual contractions were not hard to deal with although they could be painful lying down. Adair transferred me to the hospital after 13 hrs at the birthing center where my contractions finally spaced out to 10-15 mins apart. At the hospital they gave me Demerol – heavenly – enough for 5 hrs sleep then I was ready again. Jane my labor coach showed up and I was refreshed enough for Pitocin at 6.
We were lucky to be in a birthing room with a borning bed – as I discovered later when I got back labor. (Baby high & posterior.) I did all right for 2 hrs then the back labor became so intense I couldn’t tell when I was having a contraction any more. It was torture to be touched. Finally, I asked for more Demerol – Adair didn’t want me to have it because she feared it would increase the need for Pitocin but the Demerol relaxed me between contractions – my eyes became blurry and couldn’t focus. Toss said contractions continued as usual.
The pushing stage I remember well – I enjoyed it – the baby didn’t feel too big & I could feel him moving along. Crowning was a little painful and I got annoyed at everyone shouting “Push! Push” when I wanted the doctor to stretch my perineum a little more. Thankful for the tiny episiotomy they gave me.
Alysse Aallyn 
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