The bathroom, lit like a celebrity's dressing room. Plush paper hand towels, a tree a piece, monogrammed. Rich soap and creamy lotion, faintly scented. Next to me, at the sink, a woman whose hands had never needed lotion a day in her life, but most surely had always had plenty of it. A woman who tossed me a look meant to sear, intended to teach: She belonged here. Most others, me included, did not.

She breezed out; I shuddered in the cold of her perfumed wake.

Then, in the corner, a gift: A thick, ugly, spiderweb, riddled with juicy bugs.

Just like at my house. And yours.

Two days ago, I dove headfirst back into blogging, the whole unfathomably large, salty, mysterious, oceanic thing, the feed readers and the stats and ads and designs and community. I jackknifed from the high dive and felt that mind-numbing rush upon impact, fresh and startling, heart-stopping. I have yet to decide if it's a baptism or a drowning.

I don't know why I have such a fear of this place. The thing I didn't say in that Stepping Off post, the thing only a few people know, is that I got scared. There's a reason I live in the country, twenty miles from the nearest gas station. Sure, it's scenic, but it's also private. Very, very private. When the Okay, Fine, Dammit house became a more popular place to be, I was absolutely thrilled. All a writer wants is to be read and heard and trusted and followed, you all know that. But it also felt like there were suddenly all these faces peeking in the windows, and I'd never even thought to buy blinds. Please don't misunderstand: I invited you, you're all welcome, I just have to get used to wearing pants, you know?

More than that, though, is the fear of being hated, of being talked about, of being judged. I've had only a handful of inconsequential trolls since starting this blog, and though they were mostly drive-by, inane posters, they affected me all the same. And for those other Big Bloggers, the ones who have really made it, the ones who supposedly have what we all want, things are so much worse.

Last night I spent two hours glued to a hate blog, the kind of thing I didn't know existed until I accidentally stumbled upon it and couldn't look away. Imagine, an entire blog devoted to bashing Dooce and Pioneer Woman, and others like them. The blog author spewed some of the most rancid vitriol I've ever tasted in my life, and it struck me, hard, like a slap: Is this the ultimate goal?

Is that how you're rewarded when you've finally "made it" as a blogger? To get to a place where so many people read you that there are bound to be several who hate you, and dedicate their entire lives to ripping you to shreds bit by bit? Are we all just wishing for traffic and comments and recognition without thinking about the consequences? I know it's insane, but if I couldn't tear my eyes away from that blog, how on earth could I possibly ignore any bad things that could be written about me? It doesn't matter how big or small or in between this blog is, even one sharp sentence will slice me. I know it. And I'm terrified.

But look at me, I'm doing it anyway -- and I guess that's the difference between me today and me two days ago.

Like any good parent, I often wonder if I permanently damaged Gretta that day in the pool. I can still see her face, wet, shiny, open to me, open to the world, plastered with a smile that threatened to split her face apart. The subtle ways it morphed from joy to terror and back to joy again, over and over as we tossed her into the air. The weightless nanoseconds before she came back down, time suspended. How she looked when I betrayed her trust.

She was sitting in one of those flotation devices for babies, shaped like a turtle or a dragon or something, and there were two of us, two adults, a friend and I, one on each side, protective, fun, and it was a game, and she was safe, we're here, don't worry! We kept shouting, laughing along with her, until one throw was too high, and out she slipped, and down she plunged, and for several terrifying seconds I waded through molasses to get to her, to pull my baby from the three-foot depths. We climbed out of the pool and clung to its edge, shaken, changed, maybe forever, maybe for a minute, I don't know. We sunk into each other, into the pavement, the grainy poolside putty leaving a pocked impression upon the backs of my thighs, the experience itself leaving one more nebulous. I wanted to wrap her in a towel and get her out of there, run till my legs gave out, but something bigger than me told me what I had to do, even if it was on auto-pilot. That if we hid from this fear, any fear -- hers more primal, mine laden with knowledge and worry and experience -- it might be crippling.

That is why, after some cuddling and hushing and sweet, slow rocking, without knowing exactly what we were doing or what would come of it, we slipped back into the water.

*****

This post was inspired by my dear friend Katie's post today, about getting back on the horse (literally). I started to write a book in her comment section and then decided to come over here, instead. I'd forgotten about this experience until I read her words.

So we go. And we're sitting in this booth and the nice waitress approaches our table. She looks to be in her teens, and she has a cleft palate. You know how it goes. Your mind quickly registers the information, processes it, and then you promptly move on like you haven't seen anything out of the ordinary.

My children, however, act like they have just seen a waitress with a cleft palate. Gretta immediately freezes up and stares hard. She clearly cannot look away. Still, her behavior is vastly superior to Emma's.

Emma stands up in the booth, points like a springer spaniel, and screams, "She tawks funny!"

Awesome.

The only thing that could possibly have been more mortifying was if she had repeated it again and again and again. Which she then did, of course.

"She tawks funny. She tawks funny. Mom, maaaaahm, maaaaahm, she tawks funny!"

The waitress, bless her heart, never skipped a beat. She continued to suffer through our order and I swear I could see steam bursting from Dave's very red ears. I don't know how a better parent would have handled it. I finally pulled Emma down hard in her seat, covered her mouth, and hissed threats of physical violence in her ear. It was all I could think to do. I needed to make it stop.

After the waitress left, we scolded the girls for their behavior. Through clenched teeth I explained to Emma that we do not point at people and say things that hurt their feelings. The girls looked appropriately chagrined.

Until the waitress came back.

Just as loudly as before, Emma screamed, "She tawks funny!" Several. more. times. When the waitress left again I was beside myself with frustration and anger, and all Emma could say was, "I dinnit point. I dinnit point though."

Over the next 32 minutes things only got worse. Emma managed to shoot a straw wrapper in the face of the unsuspecting 127-year-old man at the next table, spill her lemonade, and squeal multiple times at dog-worthy decibels while writhing on the floor beneath the booth. Yeah. We were that family. I was so torn between forcing her to learn How We Behave in Public and a desperate desire to set fire to the place and run, that I barely touched my food. Finally, I scooped Emma up and walked out, leaving Dave with instructions to leave the biggest tip known to waitresskind.

It was a superfun night. I hate everything. My head hurts.

On the way home, I calmed down enough to find the words that had escaped me earlier. I explained to the girls what a cleft palate was, how the scars had gotten there, why the girl spoke the way she did. I asked them to put themselves in her shoes, to imagine what it was like to look or sound different, to understand how it would hurt her feelings to be stared at or pointed at or talked about. I explained that the world is full of people who look and talk and act and think differently than us, but that doesn't make us better than those people.

The speech was brilliant, really. Emma listened wide-eyed, curls bouncing with each empathetic nod. I really felt good. I felt like I was getting through to them. I felt like a good mom. I felt confident it wouldn't happen again.

"So," I finished. "We don't point and say things about people, right?"

Emma just sits there blinking silently. Huge drippy brown-eyed blinks.

"Emma?"

Blink. Blink.

"But she tawked funny."

And then I drove the minivan into a brick wall.

(Well, not really, because that would be WRONG. Plus I wasn't driving.)

I don't normally ask for parenting advice, because I don't want to hear it from well-meaning people who don't know my situation (yeah, I said it, sorry, I'm feisty tonight - have I mentioned my head hurts?) but this time I really want to know -- what would you have done? Have you ever been in this situation? Is it asking too much of a three-year-old to act differently, or am I being overly-politically correct?

Seriously. What should I have done?

I caught a glimpse of Emma through the convex bubble window, just before the older boy shoved her from behind. My mom saw it, too, made a startled sound as we watched his brother follow suit. Emma's face froze in an expression of terror as the second boy shoved her again, harder, deliberately. They pushed her again, this time out of sight of the window. They were gone.

But her screams continued. My body rose without my brain telling it to, my heart beat uncontrollably. She was crying now, real sobs, and I yelled, "HEY!" All of the parents stopped munching in unison, their faces expressionless as they assessed the situation. Some parent freaking out about a couple of kids being too rough with her baby. But they hadn't seen what I had seen.

I confronted the parents without thinking. It's so unlike me, I'm so rarely rattled like this. And it's so unlike her, she's such a tough kid and she plays rough all the time, she can take it. But I could hear her wailing and I couldn't get to her and she wasn't answering me and she wasn't letting up. A parent knows her kids' cries, and something was very, very wrong here. I told the brothers' parents about the shoving as I squeezed my own body into the technicolor maze in search of Emma. They did what they were supposed to do, sprung into action and called their boys down, forced them to make apologies while the other parents in the room stared hard at their own lunches. I finally reached Emma, shaking, her face a snotty mess. She kept saying, "my neck, my neck, my neck" as I rocked her cries away, pressing her hard against my body, praying the scent and solidity of her would steady me.

She recovered far quicker than I did, because I still haven't and this happened an hour ago. The family, very well dressed, conservative, the mother's hair clipped back carefully with girlish barrettes, cleaned up their mess and climbed into an expensive minivan with out-of-state plates. I put Emma's coat on as they pulled out of the lot, and that's when I saw the angry red mark on her neck. I asked her what had happened, if the boys had stepped on it as they trampled her or something like that. That's when she showed me, using her own hands and her limited vocabulary, how they had choked her. Choked her. Wrung her soft little 3-year-old neck.

Even as I write this, my hands are trembling. I feel shaken to the core by the entire experience, by what I saw, by my uncharacteristic confrontation with the parents, by the realization afterward of just how bad it had been. Mostly I'm shaken by the glimpse of real violence I saw today in two very young boys. They couldn't have been more than four or five years old.

I know what you're thinking. "Boys will be boys," right? They were just playing a little rough? Believe me, what I saw was more than that. I saw boys who know violence very intimately. I saw boys who would shove a little girl down repeatedly, and then choke her when they think no one is watching.

Emma is looking and acting like nothing happened, and perhaps that's unnerved me more than anything else. What if I hadn't been there? What if I hadn't seen? How many other times has she been -- and will she be -- a victim of violence? At what age does it begin to scar, to shape us into adults who feel panicky in stairwells, who flinch a little too much at sudden movements and aren't sure why? Where is this culture of violence breeding itself? How the hell will I ever keep her safe for the next several decades? How do we know what secrets lie within our own battered souls? What does the body remember that the brain doesn't?

It's times like this the burden of this kind of love feels too heavy. Like the weight of it will crush me before I learn to carry from the core.

I'm overcome by fatigue, by sadness. I'm shuffling through my disappointments like tattered confetti on the floor, like his ashes, spread from an airplane flown low over our town on Friday night. I can't escape the haunting and sorrow and bitterness in the air all around me. Worse, I'm trapped in the bell jar with all of this, stuck suffocating in some kind of sick snow globe.

I don't understand people who live in small towns and think their actions are not witnessed, their lies not recorded. I don't understand how so many people can snap their marriages apart with the effortless ease of stepping on twigs. I don't understand why I'm feeling so used. I don't understand incessant racial slurs in front of children. I don't understand drunken name-calling over the phone. I only understand this: Given enough time, nearly everyone will disappoint you.

Most of the time I appreciate it all so very much, this world in all its painful, breathtaking glory. I swear I do. But sometimes I'm paralyzed, wounded, petty. Sometimes I can't stop feeling sorry for myself, can't stop ranting in my head at those I feel have wronged me. And those who haven't, those who never do -- these three beautiful creatures I'm incredibly blessed to share a home with -- can't do a thing to make it better. Not for all the sticky kisses, the breathy mother's day wishes, the grubby fisted dandelion bouquets in the world -- and that is what hurts the most.

.

A young man dies unexpectedly, tragically. The funeral home is packed with mourners, the vast majority of them friends, because his family has been disintegrating for years... his parents are long divorced, his father suddenly disabled. There was abuse, abandonment, alcoholism; a cornucopia of woes to feast upon his entire truncated life. Everyone is devastated. He was gentle and fiercely loyal to his devoted circle of friends.

After the service, after the mourners have gone back to their cozy homes and functional families, officials take his remains and deliver them back to the morgue. And that's where he lies now, a body in hock.

His family can't afford to bury him. His friends are planning a fundraiser for next week.

I am choking on sadness right now. Are you?

If you are, let me ask you this:

Does it change anything for you to know it's this kid?

.

It's sickening, the sheer numbers of beer cans strewn about the ditches of the country road I live on. A whole hell of a lot of people must drive around slurping the foam from newly cracked cans, careful not to make the steering wheel sticky; squeeze half-full cans between their thighs while shifting; throw the empties out the window with one hand as they grab for a fresh can with the other. They must blow daily past my driveway while my girls circle their bicycles in the gravel, or jump blissfully toward space on our trampoline. There are new cans every day.

I used to take a garbage bag with me on our walks, stuffed in the bottom tray of the stroller. I thought I might be able to teach first Gretta, then Emma, about recycling, about cleaning up our own special patch of mother nature's quilt. After a while I gave up, though. Gretta started understanding what the cans were, what they meant, started asking questions, and I didn't have the heart for the answers.

This morning as I headed out for my run, I counted them like I always do. It's kind of a throw-back to my days spent counting ceiling tiles in the nurse's office, and it's also a way to pass the time, to keep my mind occupied. That, and they're hard to miss, there are so many of them. This morning I lost count by mile three, but the beer of choice was crystal clear: the assholes who make a sport of drinking and driving prefer Busch Light, at least around here.

Today I left my driveway headed south, taking every left turn I could until I returned to my driveway from the north five miles later -- it's the closest thing we've got to a "block" out here in the boonies. Because I'm a terribly slow runner, I had a lot of time to think.

Wisconsin is a beautiful state. We don't have a whole lot of cities here; the population of our capital, Madison, is only around 250,000. For the most part, the state is a chain maille suit of smaller, independent communities like my hometown. The air is pure, the lakes are plentiful, the people are down to earth and the cultural opportunities are surprisingly solid. I have never wanted to live anywhere else.

But we do drink. What I'm about to say will not make me popular with my local readers, but I'm so fucking pissed tonight I don't even care about the potential for angry anonymous comments: Wisconsin breeds a culture of drinking and driving, particularly among its small town inhabitants. It's the plain and simple truth. My whole life it's been normal. I know people around here who brag about it on MySpace, whose profile pictures regularly feature beer cans with straws posed next to the steering wheel. My alma mater, UW Madison, is one of the top public education institutions in the country; it also regularly ranks among the top binge drinking universities, more than once taking first place. We're known for our beer and cheese in this state, but it's more than that -- it is perfectly acceptable in Wisconsin culture to drive to the bar, drink all night, and then drive yourself home. And that's just those of us who bother to go to the bar -- many, many others, would rather hop in the car with friends and drive all night through the breathtaking countryside. It's called "road-tripping", and everyone knows what it means. Everyone knows it means something different when they say it in other states.

And we lose people. It's a numbers game, right? Only a matter of time? The first one I remember was ten, almost eleven years ago now. Three of my classmates drove drunk off an on-ramp and one of them died, though they didn't find him until the next morning. I went home for the funeral and after the service, everyone headed up to the bar. To toast him, give him a proper send-off.

Just last year, Dave and I were at the wedding of another of my classmates. Yet another classmate left the reception after 12 or 15 pitchers of beer and proceeded to mow down and kill a pedestrian. They didn't catch him at first, though, because he left the young man to die in the weedy ditch while he hid his truck in the woods across town. These are just two examples off the top of my head, but I thought of them both on my run today, as I counted those cans.

At four o'clock this afternoon I got word that another one died last night, at 9:42pm. He was a sweet kid, one I've known the better part of my life, a regular fixture at the bars. He was miles from home, and "alcohol was a factor." He was "partially ejected and pinned" beneath his car, and died at the scene. He was a friend of my brother's; my dad remembers a night they sneaked out his bedroom window because his own father had come home drunk and was threatening to beat him to a pulp. Like many kids in my hometown, I wonder sometimes if he ever had a chance. He was 29.

He was one of the best friends of the girl whose MySpace picture regularly celebrates her road trips. She changed that picture today to one of the two of them inside a bar. He is flexing a muscled arm, a pool cue leaned haphazardly against the other. She is laughing at whatever funny thing he has just said. They are safe inside the bar forever. No one has left yet.

And you know what? I bet they're all at the bar toasting him right now. Later tonight, if I'm still out here on my front porch with my laptop, the Wisconsin air musky with the sweet smoke of the spring prairie burns, perhaps I'll be able to wave to them as they drive by.

**Update, April 21: The kid who died received his third drunk driving ticket just last month. Had he lived, Saturday night would have been his fourth. So those of you who mentioned stricter laws? Apparently it wouldn't have made a difference in this case. Three drunk driving tickets and he's still getting behind the wheel, his buddies are still climbing in next to him (there was an uninjured passenger in this accident) and his friends are still joking about it on MySpace. Guess he won't be making his April court date for that third offense, huh?

I was just sitting here thinking about how I have nothing to say. Like so many of my bloggy friends lately, I'm suffering a bad case of milieu. Or is it ennui? Perhaps malaise. Whatever it is, it's exhausting. In fact, hang on -- I'm gonna go get a beer and muster up the energy for the next paragraph.

OK I'm back. Part of my milennuiase stems from the article I'm working on right now. It's a highly emotionally-charged, controversial, incredibly polarizing subject, and it has a ridiculously long word count -- that there is a right powerful combination. I've been spending my days in kind of a dark place, and it takes a lot for me to come over here and try to type out something I think you might be interested in reading. It just isn't there.

Unfortunately, another side effect of my malaisical ennuimilloo is the piling up of my Google Reader. I'm simply not keeping up on your blogs the way I usually do. About thirty minutes ago, I told myself I'd take a break and click on just one blog -- my pal Miss Britt.

Wow.

Today's post is about sex offenders. She calls it "In Defense of Sex Offenders", but I know she really means "In Defense of Thinking." I know she put a lot of thought and effort into it, too, because she contacted me last week to talk about it, she was asking questions about researching articles - my impression was she wanted to get it right, and in my opinion she did. The end result, the post itself? Not that controversial. Not at all.

The response to her post?

Wow.

When I question my writing skills, my editor tells me that's a sign of talent; I'd like to think the same applies to parenting, and really to being an adult in general. I question my parenting skills daily, it's no secret. I also ask myself what I think about Stuff, and then I ask myself why I think it. If there's anything I'm feeling really crazy-strongly about, I've learned by now that's a huge red flag. It usually means I don't know as much as I think I do. Yes, this tendency to over-analyze makes me mildly neurotic at times (shut up.) It also makes me, I like to think, a balanced individual.

There's only so much you can protect your kids from the harsh realities of a sometimes cruel world -- eventually they're gonna learn the truth, and the real test comes in whether or not you've prepared them well. There's only so much you can tell your kids about what's right and wrong and how things work and why things don't -- in the end you can only model. My kids may go to school with holes in their jeans and dried oatmeal on their cheeks, but they are bright and full of energy and kind to their friends. They think for themselves. I like to believe a quiet, confident, kind person is the best sort of leader. I don't have a very high opinion of people acting like lemmings, nor wolves.

What's happening over on Britt's blog as I type this is the epitome of human beings at their worst. It's all mommy followers blindly following and then a well-meaning pack turning frothily on its own. And all she did? God forgive her? Is ask people to think.

[sigh]

I'm so glad I never ask you to do that here.

Time for a second beer to get back to work.

I swear to you I'm not trying to be cryptic, though I have no energy to argue the point. I'm simply allowing my fingers to burst from their dam, to flow. To escape their holding pen, these fingers like wild caged dogs. My heart yearning to connect here. So many things I cannot say.

No one used to read this blog.

Make no mistake: I like it better with you here. I rely on you in completely unhealthy ways. You are each an injection of confidence personified. I refresh the comment section like a hospital patient with a morphine clicker. Please do not take offense to my muzzled silence.

It's just that sometimes there's a conundrum so complex I know no other way out of it than to write and write and write. But I cannot write this.

"Congratulations!" he said. "By Wisconsin law you are now part owner of a karate studio!"

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!

Are you excited for me, dear reader? My husband finally realized his lifelong, er.. yearlong, er... week-long dream of owning a karate studio!

What's that dear reader? You didn't know we were thinking about owning a karate studio?

Me neither!!

My gosh, you say? That's a big step, you say? You two must have put a tremendous amount of time and thought and discussion into a big decision like this, you say?

Nope! This is the first I've heard of it!

Say, Maggie, didn't your husband just take up karate lessons a mere month ago?

You're right, smart reader! Spot on!

It is Friday, and it is after noon. It is perfectly acceptable by Wisconsin law, you fucker! to have a drink right now.

So please, a toast! To my husband. My dear, dear, husband.

We tore the house apart yesterday to prepare for new carpet. All the furniture and junk had to go before we could rip up the stained, matted, threadbare crap we'd been living on for years. It's been a long time coming, and it felt like a party at first.

Now our entire upstairs is upturned, the kitchen packed with couches and bookcases, the bedroom buried in electronics and toys. No big deal, right? So we can't get to the refrigerator, or the bathroom. So we have to go without TV for a few hours (which, by the way, we didn't disconnect and move until the last possible moment this morning, the solemn mood akin to that of a family removing life support.) What did it matter? We weren't going to be around anyway.

But then they had to go and cancel school. Again. As you may have gleaned from previous entries, my mothering skills go out the window on unexpected snow days, particularly when they fall on Mondays. Mondays, when the interview sources I've been obsessing over all weekend finally become available, when I have a clear morning to myself to tackle my mounting work pile. Then, adding insult to grievous injury, the carpet company called to say their installer couldn't make it out of his driveway. Poor guy's snowed in, so no carpet today. Did I mention I'm on a triple deadline?

As I watched Dave brushing snow and scraping ice from his truck through the kitchen window, the paralytic dread began its slow creep through my body, knowing he would soon make his escape and I would be left in a gigantic barren living room with two maniacs, no place to sit, no toys, no books, no way to get to the refrigerator, and no television. All day. Sure, we could play in the snowbank. Again. But what about for the other eight hours? I began to see my life flash before my eyes.

So we left. Packed ourselves into the minivan and began the thirty mile trek to Madison, creeping down the ice rink of a highway with Dave following behind in the plow truck. We're now holed up at the Quality Inn and Suites, in a room directly across from the pool. The kids immediately settled in front of the foreign TV like patients at the methadone clinic, and I imagine I looked a bit similar struggling to connect my laptop to the Internet. We plan to jump on the beds and eat from the vending machine all day long, and there's not a gaddamn thing Social Services can do about it.

As for you, Wisconsin, you bitch? At least we broke the 1978 snowfall record so I can back up my ranting with data in a few years. When I'm ready to talk about it.