Terrified
I was a complete wreck last night. We put Bean in his new bike trailer for the first time and took him on the bike path down by the waterfront. He fit snugly into it, and even fell asleep, but every bump, every stop, had me gulping. My heart, up in mouth. I kept imagining throwing myself off my bike in front of oncoming cars to protect the trailer. We all survived however, and will be trying it again. Soon, if not tonight.
The Sun Magazine, Sy Safransky-Editor
This magazine is responsible for making me want to keep writing. Each month I get this magazine and within hours, I've read it nearly cover to cover. I've met Sy, and several authors including Sparrow and Alison Leuterman. Both the magazine and the people who write for it convey a commitment to mindfulness in daily life, and a dedication to using words to affect change. I hit the "Reader's Write" section first--a self-explanatory section where readers write on a given theme each month--and then dive into the poems, and short stories, saving the longer nonfiction interviews about current events for last. Good through and through, this is as close to a "must read" as I'll ever come, I imagine.
Is there no market for joy?
Word has it, parent blogging is dead. This might be a good thing for me because I not sarcastic, ironic, or depressed enough to be a big-hitting, angst-driven, new-mommy blogger. I have, on occasion irritated people with my good nature and exuberance for life. Which is not to say that I'm a total Pollyanna. I've had my share of harsh and difficult times, where I felt derailed and anxious and depressed. There were dark, dark moments during the first weeks after Bean was born. Times where his crying shredded my nerves, and made me write in my notebook, "I want to just put him out on the back porch for a while so I can sleep" in February, when it was snowing. And before him, choices out of urgent necessity, that linger with me, hungry for acknowledgment and full of emotion I cannot name. And I lost my father to cancer; spent weeks before he died sitting with him, watching him become emaciated and ghostly. But even from inside those dark times, I feel a part of me reaching upwards, like a bean plant in a box, growing towards the light at the top.
There isn't quite the same market for exuberance as there is for sarcasm. Especially coming from a first-time mom. It's almost assumed my experience should be a miserable one, or that at the very least, I should dwell on those times. Except for a graceful few, most parent bloggers seem propel themselves through the day with one agitated post after the next. And, like the rest of the world, I'm somewhat enthralled by the daily trials and disasters of other parents bold and depressed enough to smear the messiness of their lives across the Internet. If I'm not mindful, I notice myself using a writing style that mimics the tone of the blogs I'm reading. Taking the things that irritate and spewing them out as in the form of a humorous caricature of my life. Twisted circus balloon, full of hot air.
Which isn't to say that there isn't a vitally important place for this. There is great comedy in these small tragedies, and I have certainly had my share of glycerin suppositories, sticky poop everywhere, and intolerable screams in crowded restaurants. But most days it isn't the bitter fragments that matter to me in the end. Rather, it is the small morsels of joy: rain falling fast and hard and then clearing to blue skies, the wild Queen Anne's lace growing along the railroad tracks, the cool of the lake after a run, that I gather up carry with me like a bag full of bright river stones.
Maybe this optimism for life is because I think of pain and sorrow as sacred things. I understand that I grow in response to change, and to grief. Yet it seems of late, sarcasm and bitterness are overdone just a bit, at least in realm of blogs. Our culture seem to be obsessed with the misery of others. The rubberneck factor on the highway, the headlines always announcing the latest deaths, famines, insurgencies. This is our world, for sure. And I am not suggesting we shy away from the messiness of it, or sink less deeply into our many moments of collective anguish. But lest I lose touch all together with the things that keep us whole, joy will continue to have it's place here.
Giggling weasel
Picture a wet weasel. Small, furry, hot, wet. Now picture it wrapped around your neck on a day with 90 %humidity. Then picture the weasel clawing you. That's what it felt like to carry Bean about yesterday, post a dip in the lake. But his giggles were worth it. It was our first adventure into the lake---and he thought I was so funny when I'd swim up to him blowing bubbles. He has laughed before, in response to being tickled, but nothing like this spontaneous laughter. From his secure perch in DH's arms he'd look out into the water, scanning back and forth until he'd see my face and then bust out into full-fledged giggles as I swam closer making helicopter noises with my lips.
Wet Heat
The humidity was unbearable today. Dark billowing clouds hinted at thunderstorms in the stratosphere but no rain came to rinse the water out of the air. I felt like I had bathed in apple juice. Made me wish for impossibly cool things: iced tea in a limo, an arctic cruise, the chill of an Imax theater watching Shackleton's arctic adventures. Anything but the limp, raggedy, wet-crotch feeling of walking around in the heat. We took a walk a Bosnian deli near the waterfront. They sell homemade tiramisu cake and smoked beef paninis and all kinds of packaged European goodies. The proprietor was a gregarious lady with a curly mop of hair, bug eyes and an accent who spent the entire time she was preparing our food, ogling at Bean.
We brought our sandwiches down to the waterfront, where we sat on the lawn in the shade and pretended to enjoy ourselves. Only Bean, rolling around on his blanket in the buff, was comfortable in the heat. DH and I could talk of nothing but our discomfort: about the inevitable chaffing that comes with walking long distances on days with 90% humidity; about my hair sticking to my neck like a woolen shawl; about the prickly heat rashes on our legs from sitting on the grass. We had plans to go running and for a swim in the lake, but came home instead, and sank gratefully onto the futon couch where we watched yesterday's Tour De France results and fell into a heat-stupor induced nap.
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer
A collection of short stories that captures the scope of lives on the periphery of things. Often painful, poignant and well worded, most of the stories left me staring off out the window, imagining more. I was impressed with Packer's breadth of character's and her deftness at making them believable. Often short story collections make for a lurching ride on the reader's part, but DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE, has a certain consistency between pieces that makes it a fluid read. Packer explores risk, sexuality, loneliness and anger in many of these pieces, and several pack a gut-slugging punch of reality. Packer conveys that life is raw, ripe, and dangerous. Something we all feel, I believe, though few of us know how to fit words around it.
20 Weeks Old
Dear Bean,You are a 20 week old bean today. That means you're five months old. Where did the time go? Holding you tonight, in the big white armchair in the livingroom, with your face against mine, I could hardly imagine you as the little grunty thing you were, newborn.
Today you went for your first nap in the running stroller. I ran all the way to the park by the water, three miles from home--and back. You slept the whole time, and then woke up when we were in our driveway, and gave me this sweet, sweaty grin.
You know how to do so many things now--like roll over from your tummy to your back. You look funny when you do this--you crane your head high and sort of rock back and forth like a drunk before flopping over. I imagine you must feel triumphant when you find yourself on your back all of your own volition. A little like a sea lion must feel upon galumphing his way back into the surf. Rolling over from your back to your tummy proves to be a bit trickier--though you're working on it. You can roll side to side, but it's still hard for you to get up enough momentum to roll ALL THE WAY OVER. But when you do, you grin and grin, even when your arms are stuck under your belly and you're doing face plants into the carpet.
You also know how to grab ahold of your feet now--and put them in your mouth. This has become an obsessive pastime of yours. You LOVE your toes.
And you've discovered how to WHIMPER. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this discovery--but you certainly are. You love the feeling of power you get when I put you down and you make these little huffy fussy noises and I COME BACK AND SMILE DOWN AT YOU and put your pacifier in your mouth...or...pick you up! I am sure there are millions of people out there who will say I am spoiling you, but I don't believe it. I think our way of being together feels right and intuitive. And I think spoiling a baby is a bunch of crock. You are begining to communicate with your world, and I think that is exciting. Even when, like today at nap time, you just wanted to be with us so much that every time I put you down you'd fuss and look around frantically until I came and held you. But once I finally sat down with you and we rocked together in the quiet, cool bedroom, you fell asleep. And you took a lovely two hour nap and woke up smiling.
You can reach out with both hands and grab anything and everything that's in front of you--and put it in your mouth. You've tried watermelon (you LOOOVE IT) and banana and plums. Your eye's get huge when you taste something new, just like they get when you experience anything else for the first time. Like taking a shower with Daddy today, or seeing the grunting pigs at the farm last weekend.
You have also started to giggle, especially when I kiss your tummy or when Daddy puts you up his head and calls you "super bean." You're such a goof ball, such a ham--with your big, wet, gummy grin. It's amazing to watch you grow, despite the moments where I feel worn out and totally sick of lugging your little hair-pulling self around.
Love, Mommy
Procrastinate, write, repeat.
When I sit down to write, I immediately procrastinate. I start thinking about lists. I put my hair in a pony tail. I take my watch off. If I'm even the slightest bit hungry, like tonight, I'll peruse the cabinets and the fridge, nibbling on bittersweet chocolate, fresh blueberries, lemonade. I'll read the paper, circling workshops I'd like to attend (on writing, of course!), bluegrass concerts in the park, mommy-and-me yoga classes, and rock climbing refresher clinics. I'll watch my marmalade and cream cat slink through her kitty door and sip water from her bowl, flicking at the water's surface with a paw before drinking. I'll talk to my husband about the Tour results, about my girlfriend, who's breaking up with her boyfriend, and about plans for tomorrow. And soon, 10, 15, 20 minutes have passed. Usually during this time I'll think of at least eight things I should google; I'll upload pictures to my family's web page; I'll instant message with my sister. When did I become this internally fragmented chatterbox? Running along the waterfront today with Bean in his stroller, I got to thinking about how self discipline and practice are the vital ingredients to success as a writer and an athlete, both. Like doing sit ups (which are ALWAYS easier to think about than to do) writing well requires tremendous self-discipline. Yet if I write daily, it gets easier, until I've acquired a certain amount of momentum, like good karma, that keeps me moving forward faster and more accurately towards my goal. That's partly why I started this blog. Good karma in the writing department. I need all I can get because I have some stories I need to write. Words haunt me, and I keep coming back to them over and over again like an addict. I realize I have put a great deal of passion and hope into the promise of words. Reading a well-crafted story makes me acknowledge that words author our perception of the world. Stories, the stories we all have to tell, shape our culture, and in turn our future.
So it is with some urgency and anxiety that I buck up against myself nightly---wanting to write, yet feeling incapable of doing so for a lack of internal discipline. I resent the babble of my mind:the easy slope of distractions. Yet, each day I must begin again. Sit down. Write. Keep writing. Until something happens. Until I reach the well water I'm looking for and the words show up: the right words, to tell some of the stories I've been needing to tell.
One hard piece I've been working on is about my father dying from pancreatic cancer three July's ago. But each time I sink my teeth into it I'm totally overwhelmed.
My life is full. Since he died, I've bought a house, gotten married, had a baby, quit my job and moved to a new city. Each day feels full with small details: dishes, bread, newspaper, basil plants, cats, hugs, phone calls. Three years ago, in July after my father died I took long walks on the little beach by my tiny house and thought about how I wanted to put down roots and really settle into the present. Then, my notebooks were full of substance and pigment and ideal. I wrote poetry daily. Yet I felt somehow ripped away from myself: as though I were the skin of an apple peeled from it's core.
So I bought a house with my then-boyfriend, now husband, and started planting tomatoes and sunflowers. Together my husband and I laid new floors and re-tiled the counter tops. We re-wired ever outlet, and took down a wall. And during that time I felt connected to a different aspect of my father---the side of him that was practical and grounded. I've spent countless hours of my life with him on projects. I learned how to use a chain saw and a table saw from him. I did my only stint with a jackhammer under his supervision, rewire outlets, plaster drywall, cut grass, kill rattlesnakes.
But sometime after our house was finished, I stopped feeling close to my father in that grounded way. And except for the occasional time when a pipe would burst in our basement, or an appliance would break, and I'd find myself talking to my dad in my head, asking for problem solving advice, my life has been so full of other things that I've been somewhat terrified and hesitant to go back to the story of his dying that I've been writing over and over again. It's time now though, I know it in my bones. This move signifies a huge psychological shift for me: its all new terrain from here on out. And it's up to me to learn to back stitch. To retrace the thread to where I left off and pick it up; to carry my memories of him into the present, so I can start finding my voice again. So I can start discovering what other stories I have to tell.
Talking to High Monks in the Snow, Linda Minatoya
This is the memoir of Japanese-American woman exploring where she "fits" within her two cultures. It is subtly written, with distilled, accurate observations about people's behaviors and cultural differences. The story deals with developing a sense of "home" and belonging, based on a definition of self, and how selfhood changes based on geographical location, culture, etc. The themes interest me personally, as I've been quite obsessed with how language shapes our sense of self, and in turn the role that culture plays in this process.
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
Ripe with the vernacular of honey, and the underlying issues of racial and gender equality, this is one of the best books I've read in a while, and now ranks among my favorites. The imagery is stunning, the characters vivid and the language fluid. I couldn't put this book down. The beauty in each sentence, and the grace with which Monk Kind describes the emotional turbulence of a teenage girl who is seeking connections to her dead mother carried me urgently from one chapter to the next.
Wide awake
Last night Bean woke up around 2 a.m. I scooped him from his co-sleeper and snuggled him up against me, proffering a boob and assuming we'd all be back to sleep in no time. But five minutes later discovered he was WIDE AWAKE and blowing raspberries on my breast. I thought perhaps putting him in his crib--which is located on the other side of our tiny bedroom (i.e. a whole 1.5 feet away from our bed)---might make him settle down and realize that it was 2 a.m., but nooo, his chortling just got louder. It's amazing how during the day these noises evoke nothing but delight in me, but in the middle of the night, all I wanted to do was bury my head and sleep. Finally we decided to put the co-sleeper out in the living room; only to awaken twenty minutes later to a very sorrowful wail. Once again, I scooped him up and curled around him in bed, and this time he was ready for sleep. His sobs quickly subsiding; turning deep sighs of slumber,
Is he teething? I'm not sure, but the day after a night where sleep has been tattered like this one, seems fragile and tenuous. The sun was bright this morning, pouring in through the windows, and gathering in puddles on the floor. But as I write, I daydream of napping, knowing the minute I drift to sleep he will awaken from his nap to want mama, and to tug on fistfuls of my long brown hair.
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Dry, sarcastic humor, sometimes overdone (especially the part about drug use and 'art as life'). This is a memoir that deals with cultural and sexual labels. Written in a series of vignettes about different groups of people & ideas in different geographical locations, Sedaris celebrates people who dare to be themselves (such as his wacky sister who is always dressing up as someone else, or his father who hoards old food). This is a book that left me smiling, though I felt it was slightly alien to the fabric of my life.
Our place here
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs itsorbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification. By August 27, Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the East at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m.That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.
I have a distinct memory of seeing my first lunar eclipse. I must have been three or four, when my family still lived in a cabin in the rocky mountains. It was summer, I think, and the middle of the night. My parents woke me up, and I remember snuggling into my dad's arms while watching the moon slowly get swallowed in shadow.
A friend of mine sent me this reminder today. Bean will be too young to remember it, but I think DH and I will make a point of going somewhere in late August away from city lights, out in nature, perhaps on a mountain top, where we can watch that little firey spot glow its brightest. And I'm certain we'll marvel at our smallness, little specks in this huge galaxy. And yet, watching Bean grow, I marvel also at our greatness--each and every one of us humans, unique and bright and different in so many myriad ways.
How things were
I wrote this about a month after Bean was born. I can hardly recall that feeling of newness and fragility. Now we are so absorbed in the immediacy and robustness of this little person who smiles, and rolls, and just today for the first time started babbling. Of course, his first babbling sounds were "da da." No coincidence, I'm sure! After thirty minutes on the ellipse machine in DH's office, bright red blood flowed from my womb, a reminder of the remarkable thing I did four weeks ago. It surprised me. I felt vibrant and alive while moving rhythmically back and forth following the machine's elliptical pattern with my feet and arms, but now later my body feels fragile again, like I want to curl, cocoon like, in upon myself, or be held.
Each day looks more and more like spring. The light falls differently, and the sun, like a disc of lemon, hangs above the horizon longer in the evening, making the quaking aspen bark outside my window paler on the westward side, and bright.
Last night DH and I had one of those difficult couple conversations about roles. Thankfully we are able to have such conversations, thankfully we don't just give up, run off, implement plan b, self destruct. We sat in the nursery eating mochi, maple syrup and butter with our fingers while Bean slept on the slope of my folded knees. We're both caught off guard by this role switching. Both of us need time, need space, need to feel like individuals.
I find myself carrying a strange dual standard. I feel, for the first time in my life to be deeply maternal, and yet, I also do not want to be limited by that. I do not want DH to suddenly see me as "mommy" rather than as the woman, the girlfriend, the lover, the partner he has always seen me has. I've watched too many relationships diminish because of that--- the gradual taking for granted of simple things, the shift in roles, towards only family, away from partnership and independence.
It felt good to talk, to try to organize our feelings so that we could be productive. DH is trying today. I love that about him: how he has always, since we first met, been able to start showing with actions that he has internalized what we talk about. His biggest frustration about me comes from a lack of understanding for how I can get so little done in a day. Mine about him is that he has not yet reached the point where he is voluntarily interested in Bean's in his little noises, development, snuggly moments, half smiles.
This is the fundamental gap all couples I think experience as they move from being a couple into being parents and caregivers. Suddenly everything shifts, and there are little eruptions everywhere, after quakes until the earth settles in around them again, defining the new territory of family. I am not sure if it is knowable for a man to understand all that takes place in a day of caring for a baby. It's not practical, logical or conceivable to a man that so much time could be spent simply staring at the tiny person you are holding. How can it be described, the mesmerizing effect of scent and little gestures, like some fairy tale spell. And thus whole hours pass, as the sunlight shifts from the east facing windows to the west.
Yet this is not a wasted time. All the moments of gazing and holding and doing little more, amount to the writing of a primordial code: this is bonding at its best. It is these moments of inhaling the sweet scent at the back of Bean's neck, nuzzling his silky hair, listening to his seal pup grunts, these are moments of imprinting--the beginning of a lifetime of love as vast and fragile as the body's capillary network: pulsing, alive, bringing vital energy to the relationship.
DH doesn't know this yet, because he hasn't shared these moments with Bean. Like many men, his approach is much more practical: how can the crying be stopped, the diaper changed, the needs be met, he wonders. Becoming a father has less to do with the intimate and the intuitive. It is more of an abstract process that grows over time, once the reciprocation of affection is more obvious, once there is a reason, in the logical sense, to stare, he will. Until then the two of us have to try our best to tightrope walk out over the gap of differing experience that's widening between us. And we try. We both listen. We have learned how to start a dialogue, how to attempt, though it's often awkward, to describe what we feel.
That's what we did last night, in the flickering light of the large paraffin candle in the nursery, our sun breathing with quick rhythmic breaths on my knees, and our dog licking his paws at our feet.
Halflives, Brooke Williams
This is a passionate book that spoke to my soul about finding work that is symbiotic with a life that is whole--connected to nature and in balance. The book shared many small excerpts about nature that I found amazing: about the Shell Trail in Mexico, whale babies, cave art, and water freezing. Brooke's passion and urgency spoke to where I am in my life. It made me want to try harder to be more in tune with my life: to do yoga, run, be outdoors, work in nature. It also made me want to write. The non-sequential style of the book, spiraling forwards and backwards within events, time and ideas was simple and powerful.
