I Resolve

When we say "resolve" on the last day of the year, we are using Merriam Webster's fifth definition of the term: "to reach a firm decision about."

But resolve is so much more: "to break up, separate; dissolve, melt; to make clear or understandable; to make (as voice parts) progress from dissonance to consonance; to work out the resolution of."

Then there is also re-solve. In this age of Sherlock Holmes as action figure star, there is no room for the backward momentum of re-solve. There is only punch and thrust and shoot and jab--unstoppable forward motion.

But re-solve is what you are obsessed with now. To bring the rattle to your mouth once is not enough; each sound, each hand-eye coordination puzzle must be done over and over again. Fist rubbing eye, fingers stroking the creases of my shirt, squeal sliding over your tongue. Again and again. To solve and re-solve your place in the world.

This year I will take up the fourth definition, the movement from dissonance to consonance, especially with my voice parts. You are watching everything now. Never judging us, but absorbing everything we do. When you give all this back to us--in words and gestures, syntax and shouts--this will be the greatest judgment of all.

So: less swearing, less shouting at your father, less making up lewd lyrics to fit into your baby songs. This I resolve.

Well, maybe the lewd lyrics are OK for another month or two.

Zoology

First tapir. First sloth. First gibbon tail dangling from on high. First tortoise. First mash of lettuce and red warming light. Komodo dragon. Pink webbed foot on human-fashioned rock.

First tunnel giving way to blue aquarium light. First otter writhe and rub. First rose monkey butt amongst heaps of ash and white.

First fossil. First youth. Ridged gum giving way to tooth. Sleek fish scent. Wooden cluck of a bamboo curtain shaking shut.

Your eyes darted like the fish did. The pregnant dolphin nosed at the underwater gate.

Tropical Trail. Discovery Bay. On the way home, snow swirling across the road. A white van rolled onto its side, red eyes bright, puffing fumes.

You slept heavy. Wooden bars. Knuckles brushing the whiskers of Mr. Meow.

A Length of Green Neon

Dear Thisbe,
Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of the passwords.

From a poem by Katy Didden entitled "String Theory: Pyramus and Thisbe":

In the beauty of their bodies

you can see the resemblance of Thisbe, who, in the plot's alt-tale,
never feared the blood-jawed lion, already fed,

but waited clear-eyed, clean-veiled, until the lion left,
and in real fields beyond the wall met Pyramus

at the tomb of Ninus, under the moonlit branches
of the white mulberry, where he sat brewing tea...

The real story of your last week included a string of white-lighted firsts: first Christmas, first sitting on Grandma's lap while she plunks out a tune on the piano, first sleep in a foreign house, first sleep in a cow-themed room, first grab at a bulge-eyed frog, first gaze at Chicago-from-above, first whiff of beef wellington, first ride on Auntie Kaarn's shoulders, first tummy to back roll on an old pastel baby blanket, first nap protest, first 11 hour sleep (after the nap protest), first photo attempts with cousin Nora, first fondle of Mommy's necklace while you nurse, first donning of Santa hat at airport security.

In the alt-story of the last week, Mommy got a lot more sleep and a jacuzzi tub in her room. Conversation blossomed further away and there were sleigh rides and warm animal skin rugs without the animal scent. In the alt-version I had lighter bones and less bulge around my middle, the air quickened and slurred and smelled like holly. In the alt-version, no plane, no car, no plastic bathroom changing stations, just a smooth sail down a length of green neon, Daddy and I cradling you between us and your eyes raised hotly to the glow.

PISR Moms

During the spring of my senior year of college I was on a panel. I can't recall the nature of the panel exactly, just that I was in front of twenty or thirty people and I was supposed to be a representative of social justice groups on campus. My friend and co-leader, Rachel, was on the panel too. As was the chaplain of my small Lutheran college.

On the day of the panel in question, I was wearing a tye-dyed sheet that my then-boyfriend had sewed into a haphazard dress. I spoke passionately (though probably not eloquently) about living simply, about buying organic, about closing the School for the Americas. Rachel ticked off on her fingers the things our group, PISR (People Instigating Social Reform), had accomplished that year, accomplishments that now I can't even remember. Free trade coffee in the cafeteria? Sweatshop-free T-shirts in the Bookstore? Two hundred signatures on a petition banning landmines?

Then the chaplain (two years away from retirement and considerably ornery) stood up and proclaimed that in 10 years we'd both be driving SUVs and living in the suburbs. We were idealistic now, he claimed, but at heart we were just upper middle class white girls. We would return to our natural habits and habitat soon enough.

We, of course, were outraged. Indignant. What did he know, after all, about who we WERE???

And now, it is ten years later. Today, Rachel and Jessica (another friend from the PISR movement) came over to my Northfield town home. Jessica lives in a suburb of Denver and Rachel lives in Bloomington. They carpooled down in Jessica's mother's Lexus, Lu and Adelaide (two and one, respectively) chattering in the back seat.

We ate Christmas cookies and Brie. We drank coffee with too much cream and sugar. We talked and while we talked we took care of our girls. We changed poopy diapers and retrieved markers from Zip-lock bags; we mopped up drool and cleaned up puddles of yogurt; we turned our gazes toward the ceiling and listened for chortles and kicks and squeals. And we talked about the things we talk about now: sleep schedules, communicating with husbands, sex, lack of sex, cloth diapers vs. disposable, failure to thrive, failure to introduce solid foods at the right time, winter boots, Baby Gap, daycare, and how parenting never ends.

I love these women. Now more than ever.

As I washed the dishes and licked leftover frosting off a plate, I thought about the chaplain's prediction ten years ago. To a certain extent, he was right. Our house is covered with baby stuff that we don't truly need (swing, chair, Bumbo seat, play mat, highchair, Pack N Play, etc. etc.) and yesterday I spent $140 on a pair of boots that I could have done without. I don't always buy organic and I often drive the 15 minute walk to work. I don't remember the last time I sent a letter to a congressperson or attended a rally in support of a cause. I certainly haven't been arrested lately.

And yet. Jessica is in medical school. Rach is a stay-at-home mom in the process of adopting orphans from Uganda. I am a part time professor and part time writer. We all have daughters whom we adore. We are all still living through and in our passions. Sometimes growing bored, sometimes spending too much money on footwear, but still asking questions, still thinking, still reading.

So have we sold out? Maybe a little. But I prefer to think that we've "bought in" to a different kind of life. And we are trying to live this new life with the same kind of passion and integrity as those co-eds who sang protest songs and fasted for justice so many years ago.

Yours Drooly

Have I mentioned that you drool a lot? Let me mention it now. You drool ALL THE TIME. On good days, I remember to put a bib around your lovely neck to soak up the excess saliva. On bad days, the front of your shirt is soaked from neck to belly button.

Today you are wearing a button down Hawaiian print shirt over some green overalls. We spent some time on the living room rug, working on the whole rolling over thing. I mostly do it for you, though every once in awhile, you shove yourself from tummy to back, all on your own, and then look up at me, a bit startled, with more drool running down your chin.

Anyway, when you were on your tummy today, propped on your Hawaiian print forearms, you had a lot to say, and all of it very gutteral. It was very odd, as though Barry White had taken over your body and was doing some intense "bearing down" (if you know what I mean). I don't know why this position in particular lowers the register of your voice so dramatically, but I find it vaguely fascinating.

Is this your "in bed" voice? Do you feel, on your belly, closer to your masculine side? Shall I call you my little Drag King? Or does the effort of keeping your chin from stabbing a hole in the carpet require a more intense level of concentration and thus the grunts of a tennis star?

Daddy is singing "Wade in the Water" and "Pooping Machine" while he changes you upstairs. I am drinking merlot and surfing the internet for the perfect pair of slip-on ankle-high snow clogs. Out east, a blizzard has wrapped her furry white arms around Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania. For dinner we ate BBQ chicken (frozen since June), peas and broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes from a box. We leave for Maryland in two days so we are making use of what is left in the cabinets and cupboards. I am anxious about the trip. But more about that later...

It was a lovely Sunday.

Moses, Isaac, Mary, and You

At night, at the end of each feeding, I roll you gently into the crook of my arm and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. As I rise, the boppy pillow falls on the floor and Luxy, curled below the bed, stirs slightly in her sleep. I walk past the Pack N Play at the end of our bed, out into the hallway where light from a lamp at the bottom of the stairs casts a slightly blue glow over everything. I pause in the hallway, always, to look at you asleep. Your neck unhinged and slack, showing more of your soft throat than I ever see during the day, your lashes dark and fanned out in the tiny shallows below your eyes. I want to kiss you but I don't because I want even more not to disturb you. Instead I creep into the nursery, past the bassinet and the bookshelf, and I lay you in your crib and zip the lime green sleeper up over your swaddled body. Then I pull a blanket half way up your body, to just below your chest, and I tuck it gently under your sides. Usually you begin to stir, just a little, nosing the air with closed eyes, and so I go quickly, pulling the door mostly-closed behind me.

I retrace my steps--down the hall and back into bed. And then usually my prayer is simple: that God grant you breath until the morning.

In the morning, Daddy and I will pick up the slack, watching your tiny chest rise and fall but also checking your nostrils for snot, clipping your nails, sticking a finger inside your rubber pants to see if the cloth inside is wet. We will let you stand on our thighs or raise you up until your back almost touches the ceiling. We will turn your head gently toward the nipple and we will read "Snuggle Puppy" and "Time for Bed" over and over again.

But night is the time of great faith. You are God's all of the time, of course, but night is when I have to give you over, fully and completely. It is not the same, of course, as putting your baby in a basket and then putting the basket in the Nile. It is not the same as putting your son on the altar as sacrifice. It is not the same as having to trust an angel instead of Clearblue Easy. But putting you into a separate room where I cannot hear each and every breath, it is an act of faith.

It is a practice. It is preparation for all that will follow.

Mocha Day

Today is a mocha day. By that I mean a day on which, by the time I reach the coffee shop, I believe I deserve a shitload of extra calories and some whipped cream. Also, I deserve to be able to swear, guilt-free. Which means you probably won't get to read any of this until you are at least 48.

I spent last night in the Cities. I did so for a joyful reason: Supergroup. Supergroup is Mommy's writing group comprised of lovely people from the Loft. During Supergroup we drink wine and eat soft cheese and squares of chocolate and then sometimes we talk about writing. This is all quite wonderful. But now that I have you--lovely you--hosting Supergroup also consists of lots of schlepping. Schlepping you into your coat, schlepping you into your car seat, schlepping the car seat into the car. Then there is the schlepping of the bags: pump bag, diaper bag, computer bag, clothing bag, and food bag (pineapple, cranberry swirled cheese, trail mix and a box of red wine). Also my purse. There is the schlepping of the purse.

And so, by the time I get home from one of these 24 hour ventures, I am tired. I am sick of schlepping. And so when I was leaving the Cities today, I called your father to say "we are leaving" so that when we arrived home I would not have to schlep alone.

But he was in the shower. So again I schlepped. And then I bounced you and read to you and changed you and meanwhile I said to your father: "At 2pm I am leaving. I am taking my break." So I fed you and then it came time to leave. It was 1:45. And your father said: "You will be back at 3:45, right? Because we should be consistent. If you say you're leaving for two hours, it should be two hours."

And I lost my marbles. I lost them and they rolled all over the floor and made a very loud racket. The sound of my marbles rolling on the floor--and the look of it--is me hopping and shrieking and wringing my hands and screaming obscenities at your father. In the middle of the obscenities I kept saying "you had 24 hours! you had 24 hours! I have not had 24 hours to myself since September!" Then I kicked my pink fuzzy slippers against the door. Hard.

Meanwhile, you gurgled on the changing table.

Today is a mocha day.

And because it is a mocha day I will tell you another truth. A horrible truth. A Post Secret kind of truth.

Sometimes I look at you and feel that you do not belong to me at all. That you are not of me. I see only traces of your father in your face and I wonder where I am. If there is going to be this fading and battering of my identity, don't I deserve to see myself appear, just a little, in your visage? Shouldn't the slivers of myself that have disappeared, shouldn't they reappear elsewhere, in you?

It is a mocha day. And now I am crying a little in the library. In front of me is a painting entitled "Jubilate" by John Maakestad.

Jubilate. Yu-be-la-ta. A joyous song or outburst or the third Sunday after Easter.

The third Sunday after. When the newness of resurrection has worn off a little. When you have heard the story repeated one too many times. When it is clear that life will no longer be the same. On the third Sunday after Easter there is a tiny part of you that wants to go back to the way things were. When death was the end. When the end meant no more.

All the rules in my world have changed, Thisbe. But there are moments where I wish I could go back. 24 hours all my own. Your face not locked behind the cage of my ribs.

Waiting for the Manger

It is -5 outside but, with the windchill, feels like -20. Luxy peed as quickly as she could, haunches shaking, and then skittered back inside.

Today you will be portraying Jesus in the St. Olaf Christmas pageant, but for now you are sleeping. Daddy and I decided that the most appropriate outfit for your theatrical debut is a peace sign sleeper. This decision was made, of course, after asking WWJD?

It is advent. A time of waiting and anticipation. A time decked out in blue lights and empty mangers and toasted nuts. I often feel this sense of waiting, this sense of being "on the verge" of what comes next, but it is an anticipation of all the wrong things. Waiting for the semester to end, waiting for the Christmas list to be completed, waiting to descend with you into airport security, into Gail and Michael's home, into repeated syllables and grasping and sitting. I am waiting for your nap to end, for the cold to slither away. I am waiting for the pageant to start, for the coffee to brew; I am waiting for job security, for a house with rooms we can paint. I am waiting for my breast to refill with milk, for the car to shudder to life; I am waiting for your father's hand stroking my hair while he grades and for the plastic pump parts to dry.

It seems like advent asks another kind of waiting from us. Not the kind where we shift side to side, crossing and re-crossing our arms, coughing politely in the hopes that the woman ahead of us in line buying 17 cans of cream of mushroom soup will hurry up already. Usually waiting is filled with impatience--or at least my kind of waiting is. Advent seems to ask for patient waiting, the kind of waiting that is not filled with wanting the next thing but with preparing to receive whatever comes next with grace.

Your mother, Thisbe, is not a particularly graceful person. But for you, I will try. From upstairs, I hear the tiny smacking sound of your lips. Here in the living room, the sun lays an arm across the back of the purple armchair. The space heater is whirring, the couch is still filled with yesterday's debris (board books, the boppy pillow, burp cloths, an oven mitt). And our Christmas stockings are hung from the black Target bookshelf with care. The next thing will happen soon enough.

Babel / Babble

Today is Monday. On Saturday night, in the deep depths of sleep, you swam forward into language. Yesterday morning, you couldn't stop talking.

Now let me be clear: you have cooed and gurgled and chortled before, mostly on your changing table and generally for short periods of time. But yesterday the sounds came as you sat with me at the kitchen counter, watching Ricki make pancakes, and as you bounced on the exercise ball with Peter and as you lay on the spare bed alone, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to descend.

And your mouth! Your lips opening wider and stretching further to allow bigger sounds. And your tongue! Twisting into corkscrew shapes, testing the edges of your gums and the sides of your cheeks to see what sounds might be found there.

Last night, home from Ricki and Peter's and the gingerbread extravaganza (which you slept through entirely!), having finished your bottle and having received a clean diaper, Daddy snuggled you into your crib and came back into our bedroom to sit beside me on our great, comfortable mattress. Usually, you fall asleep within 10 minutes, but last night you talked and talked, unable to settle down. We laughed and laughed, happy for the chirps and coos and murmurs.

45 minutes later you were still talking, keeping yourself awake I suppose, testing the air with your new sounds and hearing them return to nest inside the pink curves of your ears.

Gingerb

Today is gingerbread house decorating day! Hurrah hooray! Decorating the gingerbread house has always been my favorite holiday tradition, I think because it's a creative endeavor that involves sugar. Also, it's consistently been the one moment of the year when I get to hear your grandmother, my mother, swear like a sailor, and this shattering of the linguistic covenant of parenthood has always been its own special reward. Even now.

Preparation for the decorating party begins, for your grandmother, days in advance, when she takes out the worn manila envelope that has the piece patterns inside of it. On the outside of the envelope, a child tried to write the word "Gingerbread" but miscalculated the size of her letters so it says "Gingerb" instead, the "b" trailing down the side of the envelope and ending in a blob of ink. After the pieces are baked, they sit out on cookie sheets for three days to harden. Because there is a limited amount of counter space in the kitchen, Grandma Ricki usually puts the cookie sheets on top of the dresser in the patchwork bedroom upstairs. After the house is decorated, it will sit on a special silver platter in front of the windows in the sun room.

We are not allowed to start breaking candy bits off the house until after Christmas. Then there is a week during which the house changes from a Hansel and Gretel vacation cottage to an abandoned shack in the frosting ghetto. One year, candy pieces started disappearing two days before Christmas. Ricki was furious. "This isn't funny," she would remind all of us, repeatedly. Then later, more desperately, "I would just like it to look nice for Christmas day, you guys. Please stop. Please." We all denied the crime but Ricki continued to shake her head in exasperation every time she looked at the house, finally resorting to angling it so that the side that had sustained the most damage faced the neighbors. Then, early Christmas morning, Ricki caught Sunshine, the dog, with her paws on the side of the silver tray, delicately removing a single green gumdrop from the roof. And so we were forgiven.

Yesterday, you had a play date with Leo and Anna and Owen. Leo and Anna are older than you are by a few months. They kicked and flailed and chortled, gummed rattles and heaved globs of white spit up onto their bibs. You, on the other hand, tend to go quiet and extremely watchful when there are other babies around. I laid you on your back on the jungle animal blanket (made for you by Carolyn) and you folded your hands on your chest and turned your head to the side and watched.

We made, as a Christmas gift, a calendar filled with pictures of your first three months. In only three photos (out of two dozen at least) are you smiling. This is partly because you become stoic as soon as I take the camera out. You refuse to participate in posed joy. But it is also because you are often intense. Last night, you refused to nurse for many minutes because you were so fixated on the upper corner of the bedroom. No light there, no bright object. I think you are seeing spirits, ghosts, a presence beyond my recognition. I think at those moments of Bethany, of John Steven Paul and Grandma Dythe and baby Payton, and I wonder if they are hovering near.

Mommy Meets Regret

Yesterday we woke up to snow, snow whipped by the wind into egg white peaks, into basins and plateaus, into crests and valleys, into slopes and plains and smooth white pastures.

Today we woke up to cold: squeaking below your boots cold, ice caking around your nose hairs cold. Cold from the right lung of the wind, cold without compassion, cold that crushes the felt magenta hat. No borders cold, no remorse cold, cold with no knowledge of braille, with no sympathy for the belly of the rabbit.

And though the temperature in the house is still the same, I feel instinctively that I should bundle you tighter, wrap a sweater around your yellow, terry-cloth sleeper. But you seem not to notice.

Yesterday, in addition to battling the snow, I also made my first huge mistake as a mother. Just a simple forgetting really, but a forgetting that could have had horrific consequences.

After Daddy's office hours, we bundled you up in your car seat (hat, blanket, zip-up car seat cover) and zoomed off to the Burnsville Barnes and Noble. Just to get out of the house. Just to sit somewhere else besides our living room. When we got there, Daddy settled down with his Classic Toy Train magazines at the cafe and I popped you into the Baby Bjorn and tried to pique your interest in People. For at least ten minutes you gurgled at the advertisements for Hot Pockets and the image of Tiger Woods' supposed lover, but then you got antsy, started to press your feet against my legs and arch your back in frustration. So we took a little tour of the store: picked out some novels for Christmas presents and admired the stuffed animals in the children's area (especially the ones with sparkly bellies or tentacles or claws or fins). Then I nursed you, then Daddy changed you (on the Koala Kare changing table in a stall in the men's bathroom), and then we decided it was time to walk across the parking lot to Chipotle for dinner. It seemed easiest (SEEMED easiest) to put you back in your car seat for the walk to the restaurant; you would be warmer and if you fell asleep while we ate (which you did) then we could simply transfer you directly into the car when it was time to go. But as I put you in your car seat, you started to fuss and fuss big and since we were just walking across the parking lot, I decided not to exacerbate your frustration by tightening all the safety belts--I just put the blanket over you and zipped up the cover.

At Chipotle you started to fuss again. I almost choked on my fajita burrito because I was eating so quickly. The music was piped in so loudly that Daddy and I couldn't here one another. There was no one else in the restaurant, just a roomful of trendy silver chairs and blond wood tables and your parents in their down coats and hats, your mother peeling back the silver foil on her burrito like a squirrel while your father stood beside her in the aisle, swinging your car seat like a metronome so that you would quiet. And you did. And you finally fell asleep, just as I was shoveling the last few kernels of chili-corn salsa into my mouth. I was tired. And I was full. I was self-conscious about your noise. I was thinking of how it was bath night and Glee night. I was thinking of warm water and Burt's Bees soap and a glass of white wine.

And this is how your mother forgot to strap you into your car seat on the iciest day of the year.

As I got into the car, I reminded your father about how, when securing the car seat into its base, it's important to make sure both the front and the back of the seat have latched securely. "it's easy to forget," I said pointedly, "even I have forgotten a few times." (My implication being, of course, that if I could forget once, then your father was probably forgetting every single time)

Meanwhile, I had not buckled your seat belt.

And thank God we did not hit a patch of ice. Thank God the car in front of us did not brake suddenly. Because, when we got home and I saw what I had done, I realized that if something, anything had happened to you, then rest of my life would have been gone, shut off and closed in a way that I had never considered could happen until that precise moment.

When we got home I lifted you out of the mess of unbuckled straps and put you in your swing. I got the lights and music going and then I went and stood in the doorway of the kitchen where your father was unlacing his winter boots. I put my hands over my face and peered at him through cracks between my fingers and I told him what I'd done.

"It's OK," he said, "she's fine."

And then he took off his coat.

And that is one of the many reasons why I love your father. Because in a moment where he could have made me feel very small and very incompetent, he chose to simply let the incident slide and then move forward to the next thing.

So I ran the water for your bath and then got into the tub with you. Daddy soaped your arms and hands and I held your slick skin between my knees. Then I gave you to your father, who wrapped you in a yellow towel.

Then I ran more hot water into the tub and lay there, listening to you scream as the cold air enveloped your body and listening to your father sing, his invented tune drowning out your howls.

The Secret Underground of the Sky

A Postcard From Belle

Dear Thisbe,

Not to worry, no bruises here! The sky is swimmy and we hang out on rooftops all day. Down below, adults continue with their goopy-goop lives. There goes a woman in a plaid skirt, her cockapoo wearing a matching plaid collar. There a man sells yams from a cart, his corduroy hat pulled low on his brow. But up here our only duty is to linger. Each rooftop is its own palace of new. The one on which I sit as I write is filled with salt and pepper shakers, ripe for the tipping. That's what the children here do, tip and right, tip and right, white and black freckles scattering over the smooth black surface of this rooftop. Once an hour a broom descends from cloud #9 to brush it all away and they begin again.

The rooftop beside me is a wading pool filled with red sugar water. Children float in inner tubes and hummingbirds dive and dip around them, trembling the water. One boy has filled his navel with the sweet red punch and now his belly is covered with an emerald blur of plume.

None of the adults looks up from below, mostly they look down further, as though the ground were transparent instead of cold gray stone. A few of the children forget to linger in delight and linger in longing instead, trailing their fingers against the edges of the rooftops or laying on their bellies with their heads hung out over the abyss. This is a sign that the transition is almost upon them. And I bet you can guess what that means!

I send the widest hello and the most saccharine hug,
Belle

It Cometh

It cometh. The snow. Pinprick flakes flicking at necks and cuffs, threads of cold air at the nostril and the upper lip below the moustache. It cometh. Cookies and baskets wrapped in stiff saran, holiday specials chalked onto boards, pumpkin spice syrup swirled into warm milk, Christmas carols like a lingering ocean of sound suspended above. Then more snow and thicker and the tires not finding the dirty ground fast enough so tracks are barely there, slight as snail trail on a jungle leaf.

In the mornings after I shower, I stand in front of the mirror. I brush my teeth, take my small green pill, massage lotion into my face, then a little blush and a little mascara, then deodorant. All the while, I watch you in the mirror. Behind me, Daddy lies in the bed, his knees a mountain of comforter and you on top. Usually Daddy holds you upright so that you can stand, stiffening and then relaxing your legs, stirring little whirlpools in the air with your hands. It must be odd to see two versions of your mother at the same time, one facing you and the other turned away.

Cometh the Christmas cards to sign, cometh the address labels and the extra block of cheese, cometh the fishtail and the 180, cometh the live Nativity and the empty cradle, filling with snow. Cometh milk and honey, water and wine, cometh the wassail and rum, the rooms at the inn and the rose-scent of the florist buttressing the purified smell of snow-crested outdoors.

Your head held higher, stronger, longer. Your mind beginning to learn control of your hands. At the base of your skull, your fine dark hair is thickest, fanning out along the collars of your sleepers.

I am thinking of Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" today as I often do at this time of year. Here is the last stanza:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
and I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death;
But had thought they were different; this birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

I love this passage for the way it keeps turning, cannot quite decide what it thinks of birth and death. And there is birth and death AND Birth and Death, the story of Jesus's life linked to ours but also different somehow. A proper noun. The Christian calendar tries to keep these events, Christmas and Easter, far apart from one another but in the poem they happen at the same time.
Simultaneously, the ending contained in the beginning.

After Christmas Fest, your father complained about the theology of the hymns. I tuned him out at the time, I think because on Law and Order they were matching two bullet fragments, side by side, under a microscope, which seemed a more crucial thing to observe--but what he meant was that the Fest was too happy, all about glory and victory and light. No edge, no hardness. "The light shines in the darkness," yes, but we would not be able to recognize the light without the darkness that surrounds us.

I think about death much more since your birth, Thisbe. I feel in myself a subtle turn. My job now is to support, uphold, prolong your life as much as I can, by own life is secondary. Your small body deep in the heart of the light and mine moving imperceptibly closer to the shadowed edge. It cometh.

December 7, 2009

Sweet girl, I haven't written for a week and now my head is swimming with things to tell you. I will try to be precise.

1. Last Thursday. Winter Walk. Three blocks of Division Street closed to traffic, white Christmas lights framing the storefronts, the first dusting of snow over everything. It felt like a different time, dear Thiz, everyone out, and walking arm in arm or pushing strollers. Inside one store, lefse making, in the library, model trains (zooming through graham cracker castles and through fields of puffy cotton). On Bridge Square they were burning pine branches, flames illuminating Northface jackets and hoods pulled up over knitted hats, and the scent drifting both ways down Division street. Grandma Ricki made us stop so she could show you the enormous black draft horses, snorting puffs of breath in the cold, pulling wagon-loads of children and parents up and down the pavement. I wore you in the Bjorn, under Daddy's lime green down coat, so only your tiny face poked out into the cold. As we walked down the street people pointed at you and squealed, "oh, a baby!" or "she's so tiny!" or "look at those eyes!" As we walked into the Reub for dinner a woman sighed "oh, seeing her just made my night." The adoration became a little ridiculous, a little over-the-top. I think it is the season of looking for hope in a baby's face and I think this doubled the insanity. I was bursting with pride and then mellowed by shame that I was bursting with pride.

2. Yesterday, at church, during adult education time, I was on a panel about vocation. The moderator, Bruce, sent out questions for us to consider in advance, but I forgot to consider them. There were around 20 people in the audience, you and Daddy among them, the sleeves of your white knit sweater and the cuffs of your pink flowered pants hanging over the edges of the Bjorn. I ended up talking about the writing and mothering parts of my vocation. How, as a writer, I struggle with the oftentimes cynical/ironic take on religion in the writerly world and the sentimental/affirmation-centered version of poetry preferred in the Christian church. I am still not sure how to navigate the two worlds and I often feel distinctly "apart" in each--but this is probably best, probably what God prefers anyway, maybe we are meant to always feel a little off balance but full of trust in the net that is cast deep and wide below us.

Then I talked a little bit about motherhood, motherhood as vocation. I have some friends who are mothers who love their children but who are depressed without another job, separate, away, an independent identity in an "other" space. I also have a friend who, though in possession of a Master's degree and some academic ambition, chose instead to devote herself whole-heartedly to this whole mothering thing. She transformed one room of the house into a homework room/library. A sturdy, rectangular wooden table sits in the middle of the room; on top of the table, a vase with child-made tissue paper flowers. Bookshelves line the wall, toys are stored neatly in the closet. This lovely woman bakes bread from scratch and raises chickens and grows produce in a garden; when I mentioned our love of swaddling you, she bought and neatly hemmed an extra-large square of soft fabric to wrap you in. This woman seems to have chosen motherhood as her vocation in a way that some of my other friends have not. Meanwhile I find myself torn between these two extremes; I do not long to go back to work in the way I thought I would but I also think I would wilt and curl in upon myself without some sort of outside intellectual stimulation.

3. Lasagna with fresh mozzarella and goat cheese, mulled wine with with lemon and clementine slices floating on top, greens with pear and craisins, red wine from a Bota box, Nutella poundcake, coffee with cream, coffee with milk, apple crisp, apple crisp in oatmeal, chicken with wild rice, more wine, more coffee.

4. Lines of new fat are curving into your beautiful thighs. You kick your legs higher and higher, love raspberries blown on your bare belly. You are getting better at going down for naps; you only fuss for a minute or two before drifting off to sleep. On the back of your head, there is a tiny patch that grows steadily more hairless, steadily more worn from your sleeping and resting there day after day.

5. A blizzard may or may not arrive tomorrow. But today is sunny. Later I will stuff your legs into a white, fleece-lined suit, and we will walk the five blocks to the Ole Cafe. If you are asleep by the time we arrive, I will read my book. If you are awake we will walk around the store, looking at the tiny cakes in the dessert case, at the jars of apple butter, at the ornaments and lights on the Christmas tree, at the tiny gingerbread house with green gumdrops already falling off.

December 1, 2009

It is the first year since 1963 that we've had no snow in November.

The day after Thanksgiving, your father pulled out the Christmas decorations: a tiny tree with flickering lights embedded in the tips of the branches, felt snowmen with sand-weighted bottoms, a pine cone candle, a blue bowl filled with colored ornament balls that wouldn't fit on the tree. We unpacked, for the first time, the Peruvian creche that Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Mark gave us for Christmas last year. I wrapped your fingers around the tiny baby Jesus and you promptly dropped him on the floor. But the decorations look odd in our living room because the windows hold a snow-less scene: dull green grass, a pine tree, the maroon boards of our porch, the dun colored town homes on the other side of the lawn. Christmas seems impossible right now.

Last night I brought dinner to Katie and Nate (cream of tomato soup and Cougar Gold cheddar cheese and Triscuits and Dole salad mix and baby carrots and cherry tomatoes and warm brownies and two Oktoberfest beers). I held beautiful baby Owen, 2 1/2 weeks old, eyes almond-shaped and slightly hooded like his father's, and thought about how much your body has already changed. You don't weigh much more that Owen, but your limbs are considerably stronger. His have the rubbery flexibility of one fresh from the womb; you are learning how to stiffen. You can bear your weight on your legs though you can't yet balance. You are developing the tendency to arch your back when we put you in the car seat or the Bumbo seat if we do so at a time not quite to your liking.

Last night, when I changed you, I caught you holding on to the wicker of the Moses basket with your hands and pressing up against the bottom of the basket with your bare feet. In the last two nights, you have become suddenly ravenous. You had consistently been sleeping from 8 to 8 with one feeding at 4 or 5. But last night you woke at 12, 4, and 7. After the 7am feeding I re-swaddled you and zipped you into your sleep sack (where, armless, you resemble a little glow worm). I placed you in your crib below your mobile. Then I showered, dressed, fed Luxy, packed my computer, and put on my coat. You father slept on; when I left, you were talking quietly to yourself. You are 12 1/2 weeks old so I assume this must be your 3 month growth spurt.

Yesterday, we bounced below the stained glass windows of Boe Chapel while Martha gave a reflection about LVC. Afterward, Jennifer Koenig asked if you would be willing to portray Jesus in the St. Olaf Christmas pageant. We accepted on your behalf.

November 30, 2009

So much to tell you, dear Thiz. Yesterday was your baptism. At the church, Grandma Ricki and I dressed you in a christening gown made by your great-great grandmother. The under slip had two tiny buttons on the left shoulder. The over skirt has capped sleeves and two white ribbon rosettes just below the collarbone. At the bottom (which stretched 8 inches below the ends of your feet), four rows of lace, each the width of a dime, fabric between the rows.

We sang "Shall We Gather At the River" while we walked to the baptismal font, a shallow, wide bowl beaten out of brass. Pastor Charlie poured water from a golden pitcher. Children from the congregation came up to watch, lots of winter-velvet dresses, french braids coming loose, braid-ends in mouths, that sort of thing. Your father and I held you while Charlie scooped handfuls of water and dribbled it over your scalp. And while he dribbled and said the words, you started working up a scream, and by the time he had finished, you'd let it loose, screaming and screaming until finally Charlie held you up for the congregation to see and they applauded and you quieted.

You suck on your hands constantly now so most of the pictures show only half your face: your eyes peering out over a pair of hands pressed between your chin and nose.

And so many people there to love you: John and Martha, your godparents, laying hands on you, stuttering their first few lines and everyone laughing; David and Radhika and Karu and Ben, not singing, clearly uncomfortable standing before a large Christian audience, but there for you in spite of this discomfort; Peter, shifting side to side and smiling, Ricki, beaming and beaming; Paul and his current girlfriend Jen; Dorothy, dressed in soft gray wool and Mark, gold Valpo pin glinting on his lapel, Anna snapping pictures from the front row--and everyone there out of love for you, dear Thisbe.

Afterward, at the Ole Cafe, a cake frosted white with butter colored script: Thisbe Agnes, Called By Name. Square black tables pushed together into one long rectangle and everyone around it. Dorothy standing up and bouncing you, Ricki looking at Bible stories with Karu ("do the people in this picture look excited or upset? Really? Look again. Do you really think they look excited?"); John and Anna bent over an omelet; Jen asking Martha about LVC; Radhika nodding at Ben while he straightens in his chair, realigns his posture; David leaning back, legs crossed, pulling Karu up onto his lap without looking.

And there are animosities here too. There are cracks through this misshapen vessel of family you have been born into.

But miraculously, somehow, it holds water.

November 27, 2009

1. Your grandmother's hands, sliding you back and forth in the bath water, her naked legs outstretched on either side of you, each breast a smile line across her chest. Your round belly that narrows to a tiny waist, your kicking legs, your glee. White enamel tub, white octagonal floor tiles rimmed in black, double white enamel sinks, silver faucets that pull on too easily. On the floor a beige Target bathmat covered in a few pieces of torn Kleenex (left by Xena who was locked in the bathroom a few minutes too long). Also the shower running and steam filling the bathroom. Rubbing the wet darkness out of your hair until it is frayed into a halo.

2. At the front of the church, a coffin the size of a child's wagon, light gray with a marbled sheen of pink swirled through. Beside and behind the coffin, a few flower arrangements, fans of gladiolas and carnations, the condolence cards on their plastic prongs rising a bit higher than the tallest flower. And behind the flowers the Thanksgiving display, pushed together, closer to the alter to make room for the flowers: pumpkins, chrysanthemums, red flowers with yellow faces, corn stalks, blue ears of corn, squash, and in the midst of it all, the curving tail of the cornucopia, looking very much like a flacid penis. Nevada, the mother, lays her body across the coffin to say good-bye. Only two pallbearers are needed; when they lift the coffin their faces say it was lighter than even they expected.

3. Ricki and Peter's house, the house of my childhood, is filled with windows. The dining room and sun room especially, windows the width of doors running ceiling to nearly the ground. The windows face the lake and the Jarbo's yard. Yesterday, everyone gone, I stand in the middle of the sun room and feel empty in all that light. Down at the lake, I can see a matchbox-sized Ricki showing you the ducks.

4. An hour later, the house is suddenly full. The windows are steamed from the oven's heat, the smell of turkey is everywhere. The football players have returned; Agnes bounces you on the blue exercise ball, Christopher and Tom watch the Packers game, Paul peels back the aluminum foil on his glass casserole dish and Ricki's face tightens. They look back and forth at the clock and the oven and then back at one another. Susan sits on the couch, counting off foods low in potassium on her fingers. Arthur, Agnes's friend, is listening, nodding politely. Later he will do the dishes, inquire about my job, sip black tea with cream, participate good-naturedly in a game of Wise and Otherwise. Your father is in the shower and I have locked Luxy in the bathroom with him. You start to fuss and I take you upstairs to Michael's bedroom. I don't turn on the lights. I nurse you on two uncovered pillows, the sounds sifting up the stairs and down the blue-carpeted hall. The bedroom is spartan: on the bookshelf a collection of elephant figurines and "500 Japanese Verbs." On one wall an 8 by 5 paper certificate that proclaims Michael's captain status on the Kalamazoo College Track team. On another wall, another paper certificate proclaims him a member of the Japanese honor society. The desk has been taken over by diaper changing materials. On the low dresser is a plastic picture frame that shows Michael, Agnes, and Peter with the Travel Lodge bear. They smile the smiles of those who know it is ridiculous to pose with people dressed in bear suits. So ridiculous that it is almost cool. That's often the way fads go. The cliche turns in on itself so far that, with tail in its mouth, it becomes fashionable.

5. Your father holds you horizontally beside the cooked, golden turkey and I snap the picture.

6. The pallbearers fold the white satin into the coffin and put the lid on top.

7. When asked what he would do if he knew the world was ending, Martin Luther replied: "Plant a tree."

November 24, 2009

You are learning how to laugh. You open your mouth wide into a smile and then make sounds through your wide open mouth, your gums a thin white-pink ridge.

Yesterday, while your father met with Kyle at the Cage, I walked you through the halls of St. Olaf. In your yellow sleeper, back curled against my chest, tiny fist inside your mouth, you watched and watched and watched. You liked especially a series of paintings: splatters of bright color with black telephone poles painted across the top.

For dinner, your father made steaks in the cast iron skillet. When I tried to make mashed potatoes I found that the milk had soured; it came out of the gallon jug in chugs of lumpy curdled yuckiness. "Huh," said your father, "maybe that's why my breakfast cereal tasted odd this morning."

Nothing seems to stay good for long in our refrigerator these days. Mostly, we have a large selection of condiments: maple syrup, salad olives, mango chutney, bottles of two-year-old salad dressing, steak sauce, boysenberry jam, mayo, yellow mustard, dijon mustard, ketchup, relish, pickles, a jar of unopened tahini sauce, soy sauce, sour cream, etc. Also featured, in various states of disrepair: whole wheat tortillas, chicken noodle soup with dime sized growths of gray mold floating on the surface, wilted cilantro, yogurt, and deli slices of turkey.

I feel in a state of disrepair too. The gray weather has returned, no amount of sleep ever leaves me feeling fully rested, and Jon's daughter is still dead. Yesterday, driving back from the grocery store with pumpkin beer and canned corn and butter and corn meal, I listened to Kent Gustufson's "Stolen Shack" CD. He has a haunting version of "Green Pastures" that made me weep as I stared at red turn signals blinking in the mist and rain:

Going up home to live in green pastures
Where we shall live and die never more
Even The Lord will be in that number
When we shall reach that Heavenly Shore

Sweet Thisbe, thank you for keeping me here, alive and present. There is no avoiding joy when you smile. I am helpless against it. And now your laugh. And your small sleeper suits, mostly in various shades of pink and lavender, little collars and animal faces stitched onto the feet (bunny ears or ladybug anntenae), all folded up by the changing table awaiting your warm form. You love to be naked on your changing table. Your nipples are the exact same color as your chest. You bat the cold air with your arms, you raise your legs as if trying to touch your toes to the ceiling, your body fills with living--and my love for you is complete and profound.

November 22, 2009

I am 31 years old today. You are 11 weeks and 3 days. Your father and I went out to dinner last night at a restaurant called Ginger Hop. Our booth was its own little room, with a mirror on the wall and a chandelier overhead. A red velvet curtain was roped off to the side of the doorway, ready to be unhooked and spread across the doorway if we desired further privacy. We ate duck wontons and braised pork curry; we dipped sweet potato fries into wasabi mayonaise and demolished a piece of key lime pie. I drank two glasses of pinot grigio but it was your father who teared up when we began to talk about parenting and unconditional love. By 8pm we were back at Ricki and Peter's, snuggled up in front of a fire, eating chocolate cake.

At 4:30am this morning you gave me my first birthday smile.

Today I found out that my friend Jon's daughter died yesterday. She was five months old. There is a website called caringbridge where people can go and sign a "guestbook" to offer support. I scrolled through entry after entry of the same thing: "you are in our prayers," "there are no words," "so sorry," "what a terrible loss," "your beautiful daughter." What small and flimsy and paltry things these seem to be in the face of death. But I added the same words. And now I feel in a gray goop of sadness, embarrassing because mostly it is not empathy for Jon sadness, it is fear and terror of the same thing happening to you sadness.

So I held you against my chest, your pajamaed feet pushing against my thighs, your cheek against my cheek, and I pressed my lips against the curl of your ear and whispered "I love you." And I wondered, if you did die now, if you would know that you are loved. Would that be the kind of understanding you would carry with you into death? Across a black ocean in a gray canoe? Do babies grow older in heaven? What, of earth, would you remember? What, I suppose, will any of us remember? Is there a Lethe where we are all washed clean? And afterward, are we simply naked souls, our hearts sounding against our chests like bells?

The angels make the most beautiful music from us, picking us up in their white gloved hands, striking us against the air, silencing our reverberations with a blue velvet cushion. "Silent Night" is playing. Jon's baby is ringing and ringing her one true note home.

November 20, 2009

10:06am. Blue Monday Coffee Shop. A male and female college student stand, he with two mugs, she with two plates, scanning the coffee shop for a place to sit. He wears a Norwegian ski hat--although it is 45 degrees outside--and the little pom-poms at the end of each tie sway sadly below his chin. He has the exact same build as his girlfriend who wears a light cardigan that drifts around her nonexistent hips. She has pale skin and no real chin to speak of and this makes their simultaneous scanning even sadder somehow.

You slept 8 hours again last night, then woke at 4am to feed, then slept another three. But I couldn't get back to sleep after feeding you. Just lay in the dark and tried to distinguish between the three sets of breath sounds in the room: yours, your father's, and Luxy's. Snores and licks and sniffles.

When I got up at 8am you were already awake, shifting a little side to side in your Moses basket, blinking your eyes, sniffing impatiently. At night we swaddle you in a special wrap with little velcro tabs designed to help keep you thoroughly contained. Over the swaddle goes a blue fleece sleep sack that zips from chin to toe rather than toe to chin. The sleep sack has arm holes on the side but, because of the swaddle, you have no arms, so you always look a little pathetic, wriggling side to side, not quite awake yet, but mewing your way into the quiet of our dreams.

When I hear you I get out of bed and strip off my gray sweatpants and yellow Quad Cities Marathon shirt. I take off my watch and lay it beside the sink. I turn on the shower and peel back the blue bathmat and set the white scale on the white linoleum floor. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the number that rises there. Sometimes 123.6, sometimes 122.4 and once 121.8. I'm still 5 pounds above where I was before I got pregnant and it seems appropriate that perhaps I will never make it back to that weight, the way that I will never make it back to that old self.

Today my breasts began to leak as soon as I stood up, both nipples at once, and so as I stood, waiting for the shower to heat up, I watched the drops fall onto my hips and belly. Little butter-colored tears.

Then I got into the shower and washed them away.

November 19, 2009

6:58 pm. Squeaking of the rocker upstairs, just above me. Your father's voice floating down, just your name sung over and over again, lilting up and down, with "we love you" added to the end.

I have had a glass and a half of wine and am feeling a little unfriendly. You have not slept except in fits and starts today and so you are unfriendly too.

Rachel and I walked through the Galleria today, you in the Baby Bjorn and Adelaide in the stroller. Addie has her two front top and two front bottom teeth in. She said "puff" and Rach would hand her a piece of green Veggie Pirate Booty. We spent the afternoon strolling through stores with merchandise we can't afford: toddler sized, hippo-shaped chairs, little dresses with tutu-style skirts, tiny pink $43 bunny slippers.

You are screaming upstairs and your father is trying to pacify you with the bottle. We don't know what's wrong except perhaps that you are overtired. When we let you "cry it out" in the crib you scream and scream until I pad up the stairs with drooping shoulders and pull you to my chest.

Rach suggests perfume and a negligee. Not for him--for you. It's like getting into a separate role. You have to have the right costume. You have to take off the mom shirt and mom sweatpants.

Now I hear the TV too. Probably something from the history channel. Like a British woman describing how to maneuver a special robot around the remains of the Titanic. Or a poorly acted reenactment of King Tut's last days.

When Rach leaves, Grandma Ricki arrives. She sits on the floor of the family bathroom while I nurse you. Asks what kind of writing I plan to do now.

Last night on the channel 9 news at 9:00 there was a special on "Mommy Blogs." As you sucked on my nipple at the Galleria I thought about writing about how you sucked on my nipple and some man reading those lines and wanting to find me and you and do us harm. This is what keeps me from making my blog public.

Well, that and the fear that even if I did invite readers to read no one would want to.

You just have to figure out your shtick, your father told me as we walked home from the Ole Cafe yesterday. You need a shtick.

Now I can only hear the TV. No rocking. No singing. No crying.

It seems to me that great writers don't have a shtick. Their shtick is great writing.

This whole thing started, Thisbe, because your grandmother kept a journal during my first year of life. Here's an entry from my 11th week:

Emergence of a will. She actively resisted nap time by arching her back and screaming. It was pretty funny. Needless to say, she took her nap.

We are cut from the same cloth I suppose, Ms. Thiz. Still, I am feeling unfriendly. You have begun to cry again upstairs, perhaps because your father has paused to burp or swaddle you. Half of me wants to go to you. The other half wants to go to Walgreens in search of earplugs. Both halves want more wine and a long bath.

November 18, 2009

Another day of sunshine. All the branches are bare now though so it's impossible to pretend the warm weather is anything but a gift.

I call you smile bug because every day you are cheerier, bigger grins and more of them. Chortles that almost sound like laughter.

Last night at the New Moms group we talk about our relationship with our partner. One woman talked about how she and her husband are like ships crossing in the night. Five minutes at a time together and the entire conversation revolving around when the baby had his last nap, how often he's been pooping, how much formula he should get in his bottle that night. Another woman touched her temple, explained how even if she wants sex up here, her body won't comply down there. The group leader made S'More bars (Golden Graham cereal with melted marshmallow and chocolate poured over it) and as we talked we ate the bars, most of us picking them apart, popping a square of cereal or marshmallow into our mouths between nods and smiles.

I have always been a very sexual being, Thisbe. Maybe this will be too much information for you by the time you read this. Maybe you are covering up your eyes and shrieking or wrinkling your nose in disgust, but this is the truth. Sex with my first lover was tender, but also painful and awkward. With the next lover I blossomed, for months could think of nothing else, made love in tents and meadows, on scratchy green shag carpet, the sofa, the dining room table, the kitchen counter top. With your father, too, especially at the beginning of our relationship, whole weekends in bed, sex and bad movies and pizza ordered in between. I love the intimacy of sex but also how it permits the animal self to emerge. I like sex that is slow and soft, fingers trailed lightly down the spine or the thigh, but I also love sex that is rough and raw, bites on the neck and earlobe, pinching, nails raked through hair. Sex in four o'clock sunlight, sex lit by candles, sex in the dark where I can close my eyes and pretend your father is an anonymous stranger, unknown territory, and I am crawling, clawing into him.

But now I am empty of all sexual desire. I don't think of it, don't want it, don't even want to think about wanting it. I know this is physiological, a hormonal shift beyond my control, but it is also a loss of a part of myself, and among so many losses, one that I had not thought to grieve until today.

It comes back, assured one of the moms last night, it does, I promise. But, another mom-of-two chimed in, it's never quite the same. It will never be the same.

So today I rejoice in your smiles even as I grieve the temporary loss of my own desire. I pray that when it returns, when your father and I resume old patterns and routines, that the difference we feel is not just a loss but a deepening too. It seems obvious enough, but it is profound to realize that the act of sex created you, that in the space where I've played with sparks for so long there is also the potential for fire.

November 16, 2009

Blue skies today. Frost sheening the windshield so that for the first time this year I drive down Second Street hunched over, peering through the small portion of defrosted window, too impatient to wait for it to all come clean.

Last night we ate soup with Grete and Greg and Carsten. Carste is a tornado of boy energy. He dumped out Playmobil figures (a Roman soldier, two cats the size of dimes, an alligator from the Ark) from a drawstring pouch onto the carpet, he lined up all of Peder's wooden boats along the coffee table, he pulled at Luxy's ears, he ate the vanilla ice cream and then pouted at the apple pie. We love him very much.

You slept in your crib through all of dinner. Although we swaddle you before sleep, you always manage to worm your way down underneath whatever blanket we place on top of you. In the morning, your skin was cool, milk crust below your lower lip. You awoke alert and ready to smile. You like to be carried outward now, your back pressed against my chest, my arm around your waist, hand holding you at the diapered place between your legs.

You are in a stage where your growth is what I would call "the same, but more." Same smile, but many more of them. Head still lifted off the ground during tummy time, but higher and for longer periods of time. Same coos and gurgles, but with more frequency and greater variety. Same wide blue eyes, but more knowledge and love behind them. That sounds cliche, I know, but I swear that when you smile at me lately you are actually trying to communicate affection for me. Something about the glimmer and dash of your pupils. It's there, I swear.

November 14, 2009

Bomb and Belle Concoct a Bedtime Cake

The flour is soft as leopard's skin
(said Belle as she began to grin)
and white as summer sun.

The cream is cool as lizard's lungs
(said Bomb as he began to hum)
and sweet as paisley gum.

Then Bomb took up his tambourine
and Belle her primrose snow machine
and they began to bake.

Between a rabbit's silken ears
Belle sifted sugar, lime, and tears
then cracked a small earthquake.

Bomb simmered lemon, rose, and snail
then used a rabid lion's tail
to baste Belle's battered bun.

Into an oven twelve feet wide
Belle placed the cake and then she cried:
Our task is nearly done!

What will we do when baking's through
And mother sings the bedtime tune
cajoling us to sleep?

Bomb smirked at Belle and stroked his chin
Our bedtime cake deserves a twin
so wipe your tears, begin again:
the flour is soft and deep...

November 12, 2009

Letters are taken one at a time. A door blows open and we pass through. Darling, we have been counted. Where you live they take the hoses off the roofs. There are always some places the fire does not reach.

I wrote those lines before you were born, in the summer of 2004, right after I'd moved into the farmhouse in Iowa City, when fires threatened Railroad Creek Valley and I prayed every night that Holden wouldn't burn. That was when everything at Iowa was new. Nam poured little glasses of Johnny Walker Black and we threw darts at the dartboard and laughed if they hit the wall instead. The wall was so scarred it didn't matter anyway. Then came a storm that knocked the swing off the porch. That night, Anjali and Nam and Zach ran out into the yard, into the grass and corn and mud, probably drunk, and I remember very vividly looking down at them from my second story bedroom window--they were calling for me to come out to join them--and laughing.

Yesterday you took four naps in your crib! Then you slept from 8pm to 7am with only one feeding in between. Hurrah! This morning I put you on your belly and you flipped over and then smiled proudly at me.

For such a long time you napped only in the Bjorn or Moby or while held close to someone's chest. Now that you can sleep in the crib I feel overwhelmingly thankful but also sad, there is a new chasm of distance between us. You are discovering how to comfort yourself and I realize each day, for the rest of your life, you will need me a little bit less, the way that still, every day, I need my own mother a little bit less. I have to believe this, at least, because otherwise her death, which I know will be devastating, would also be insurmountable. It is incredibly painful to realize that the main job of a parent is helping the child, little by little, to let go.

But I feel the distance acutely, Thisbe, from your body to mine, wherever I am and wherever you are, and I think I will feel this distance for the rest of my life. And maybe beyond.

November 11, 2009

You are a sniffling, sneezing mess. We squirt saline drops up your nose and they dribble out and you wail. You've been spitting up more than usual too, so there are splotches of crusted milk on your sleeper and white lines of dry saline and snot below your nostrils.

I showered while alone in the house with you--for the very first time--today. You sat in the Sesame Street patterned reclining seat and stared at the shower curtain. Then you gurgled and smiled while I stood in pants and bra, green towel wrapped around my head, and explained how to put in contacts and how to apply blush. Then I took off the towel and let the wet ends of my hair tickle your cheeks. (The photo above is a few weeks old--but you get the picture)

The New Moms group is saving my life a little. Last night we sat around a conference table at the hospital and ate mini Kit-Kats and Reeces left over from Halloween and talked about emotions. Emily passed around a tuperware container filled with warm pumpkin bars and Jody talked about how her right breast is dry and empty and Audra talked about her teenage cousin holding Andrew, how she couldn't bear the sight, had to go into the kitchen and cry. And some of the moms hold their babies while they talk and some of the moms (like me) fold their arms over still-soft bellies because they have not brought a baby to hold on their laps, no baby to sit between them and the world.

November 10, 2009

I am having a tough time with you today, Thisbe. I had a tough time with you yesterday too. The tough time is made tougher by your absolute love for your papa. That is, tears at the sight of me and smiles at the sight of him. You cooed to one another while I showered this morning and as soon as I took you back into my arms you began to wail. You quieted while I made coffee and quieted further as I unwrapped a can of nutritionally useless cinnamon rolls and greased a silver pan with Crisco.

I dressed you in a white sleeper with a pink collar which one-upon-a-time was fuzzy but now just feels worn and a little rough. When you got sleepy I tied a mirror to the side of your crib and turned on a Marty Haugen CD. You screamed and screamed, staring directly at yourself screaming while in the background flutes and happy people sang "Rejoice and Be Glad." I treated myself to another cinnamon roll and an extra dose of Caramel Vanilla fake flavoring in my coffee.

Your father and I are trying to decide who to choose as the sponsors for your baptism. This is odd because most love relationships just are. You don't ask someone to be your mom or your sister, you just sigh and roll your eyes at the cards you've been dealt. So it seems weird to get to make a choice about this.

But the truth is that I have half an hour left before I have to return home and I don't want to write any more about choices or crying or bouncing to sleep. I want to dissolve into "Catching Fire" where I can worry about 16-year-olds getting killed for rebelling against a ruthless dictatorship.

I dreamt last night of maggots swarming over dead people. Of a man falling in slow motion off a high threshing machine and the thresher cutting out the bowels of peasants still left in the fields.

November 9, 2009

It's been a good weekend, Thisbe, but a long weekend. The weather has been cooperating, which is lovely. Minneapolis wrapped herself up in big blue skies and then sprinkled red and orange leaves on the ground around her for good measure. Everyone and their brother's roommate's mother has been outside. Yesterday, walking around the lake took some real maneuvering saavy. Especially around those who like to walk on one side of the path while their spaniel walks on the other with the leash spread like a jump rope between them. I hate those people.

On Saturday your daddy flew off to Montreal, a city in Canada. Canada always feels to me like a hulking overweight sister who hovers just above us. Canada is north which is not the same as above, Thisbe, but I always imagine the country above, sulking somewhere between Duluth and heaven. Anyway, daddy has been in Canada all weekend at a conference and I have been in Minneapolis and boy am I ready for daddy to come home tonight! I think you are too. You woke up from your nap today screaming and you wouldn't quiet on the ball and you wouldn't quiet when Ricki walked you up and down the stairs. Only the boob quieted you. While Ricki drove Anjuli to the airport I packed you up in the Bjorn and walked us both up to Dunn Bros and we sat on a leather armchair in the sun and read "Catching Fire." Then the barrista with the John Deere hat, David, gave me "Tha Anthologist" so I read that for awhile. On the cover was a picture of a strange fruit, a sort of eggplant violet color, and on the back of the book the same fruit, cut open to reveal an almost semetrical ring of seeds and burnt yellow flesh. The purple and yellow reminded me of Iowa in late fall. Storm clouds rising above the dry stalks, two bands of color, one dry and the other wet, if colors could be that way.

I find myself wanting to type and type, Thiz, wanting to keep saying and saying. None of it important, none of it mattering, certainly not in the future and not even really now, but I want to get it down, because somehow then the day won't seem so lost and blurry.

Anjuli and I walked around the lake. I talked about moving to Valpo and she talked about Carlo's work schedule. When is it too early to ask someone to compromise a career choice? she asked. Would it be better if Peder got a job this year, before we had grown entirely into the cement here? I asked. Not the cement part. I'm adding that now. It doesn't even make sense.

The sun is setting and the sky is bright white, tinged with leftover blue. Bob Dylan is playing. The barristas are slouched against the back counter. The tables are full but the customers are quiet, not like the mornings when everyone chirrups and cackles. There is a 4 o'clock lull over everyone and sparrows are flitting off the edges of buildings and swooping around the electrical wires. Minivans are turning on their lights. The woman leaving the co-op with a pomegranate balanced on top of a carton of spinach pauses and from here I can see her draw in her breath and brush a piece of hair off her forehead and then continue forward into the night.

And I want to keep writing so the day will not be lost. Your father waiting to board his plane somewhere or clutching his boarding pass between his teeth as he unlaces his shoes before going through security. Ricki leaning over a recipe or washing a red pepper, you snuggled to her chest. The urge to make something out of this is so strong and though almost nothing of "note" happens I can never manage to put everything in. What have I forgotten to give you today? I will ask that again: what have I forgotten to give you today?

The forgotten things needle and curdle and finally soften and curl up their edges and disappear. I am wearing a magenta turtleneck. This will not be a day I remember for the rest of my life but why should it be lost? I feel sad for the day. I am on my way home to you now.

November 6, 2009

Dear Thisbe, there will be moments in life when you will meet someone or read something someone wrote and you will think "I am so very like that person. I am so very close to being that person." But that person (in real life or lurking behind lines of print) will be just a little bit more than you. A little bit funnier. A little bit more caustic. A little bit more honest. And you will look at your own face in the mirror and it will look like it's been washed down in a bland sand bath and your hair will be flipping up in the wrong direction and you will feel like a puddle of dirty water.

Actually, my hope is that you NEVER feel this way. But if you do, maybe there will be a tiny bit of solace in knowing I felt this way too. Hopefully, we have raised you with a better and more confident sense of self than what mommy seems to possess.

Where is all this coming from? A blog on motherhood and life by a woman who seems to be like an upgraded version of myself. She is beautiful and says wonderfully sarcastic and insightful things. She's very brave and swears but is also articulate and a former Mormon. Jealousy is a seething porpoise in my heart right now. Probably because she's also rich. She makes lots of money from the web site and the books she publishes that contain posts from the web site.

BUT. There is something eerie in this too. Something about making money off your story as it unfolds, without any time to reflect or process or edit, seems off to me. It reminds me a little of Egypt, 2006.

Your father was in Egypt with TIME (ask him about TIME sometime, but get yourself some coffee first) and I went to visit him. For 10 days I toured with the group--tombs, pyramids, museums, temples, sphinx, toppled statues, the works. And at every site, there were the 26 of us, taking as many pictures of the artifact/ruin/statue/temple/obelisk as was humanly possible before hopping back on the bus and watching the gray haze over Cairo while listening to U2 on our i-pods. Notice I do not put myself in a separate category here; I was as trigger happy as the rest of them. There is a desire to capture the moment exactly so that you can take it home and take it out to look at and show to others--not a bad instinct--but it's hard, well nigh impossible, to actually capture what the moment was like...but you find you've spent the 15 minutes before the sphinx trying to capture a moment that you're not even living in because you're outside, trying to record it.

I am guilty of this with you, too. The minute you start to smile or coo I pick up the camera because each moment feels so fleeting and beautiful and breathless and I WANT it forever. I do not want it to go away. But you, Thisbe Agnes, are not an idiot, and as soon as I get the camera in front of my face you stop smiling or cooing or whatever darling behavior you were up to. You stop and you stare directly at the camera as though it were a portal back to God. You stare so stoically that I get nervous and put it away.

Point being: I worry that if I did what this woman does (blog about my life for money), that I would get so caught up in how I would report on my life that I wouldn't be in my life. Of course, it could also have the opposite effect; that is, maybe I would always being in the mode of paying reverent attention to everything. Loving. In awe. You would cry and I would bask patiently in the sound, trying to memorize the timbre and tone exactly. I would take off your dirty diaper and stare into the poop for minutes, like tea leaves, searching for a comparison other than cottage cheese, searching for a color to describe it other than lime or chrysanthemum.

You were a fussy pants this morning. And I didn't get enough sleep because I was up late reading the other woman's blog and thinking about how I could have done the exact same thing and why didn't I.

It's blowsy today. Blowsy means the American flag and the blue Minnesota flag are twisting on themselves in the wind but there is also sun warming the side of the yellow house. So it feels blowsy outside. At 2:30 your daddy and I will be vaccinated against the H1N1 virus. By the time you read this, that last sentence will either have no meaning for you (as in, what the heck is H1N1?) or else you will be printing out this post and taking it to school as show and tell (as in, this is what people thought of the virus when it was just beginning. See how naive my parents are? At this point in time they don't realize we will end up spending a whole year in our bathroom eating ramen noodles.) At the moment, however, you are tucked against me in the Baby Bjorn, shaking your head back and forth across my breastbone as you wake and then nod yourself back to sleep.

November 5, 2009

Sheen of frost on everything this morning: deck, leaves, grass, branches. As I nursed you on Ricki and Peter's couch this morning, we were gored by the sun. That's how it felt, suddenly heaving itself over the edge of the neighbor's roof and boring through the window pane and lighting my hair where it fell away from my face and turning the colors of your cow sleeper (lime green and pink) one shade lighter.

A picture book fall day today. I will push you in the stroller around Lake Harriet saying "duck, water, lake, please-stop-your-fussing."

You stirred a lot in your sleep last night, making miniature cries that sounded like waking. The space heater under the window, now 20 years old, also made a sound like crying, a distant high-pitched whining, when it heated up.

Your father is 30 miles down the road in Northfield. His first night without us.

Dunn Brothers Coffee is filled with gray-haired men in glasses who rest their elbows on the table and lean toward one another slightly to hear better. The mothers who come here are usually around 40, new running shoes and short, stylish haircuts worried slightly by the wind. They move with a sort of feigned haggardness and roll their eyes at the barrista while trying to coax a toddler from where he pants against the juice cooler or a seven-year-old from where she presses her index finger against the glass again and again saying, "the blueberry one, mama, I want the blueberry." Outside the coffee shop there is always a patient and bored-looking dog tied to a slim tree, a jogging stroller nestled in carefully beside him.

I am thankful for this day. For the warmth of this coffee shop, for hanging plants whose leafed limbs dangle down into space, for your conductor's hands that reach out suddenly as you sleep, for your blue eyes and good health, for the folded give of your grandparents' skin and the plump expansion of yours, for the warm heat in the BMW, and for the BMW that will, God willing, take us back to Daddy through blue skies and trees that hang suspended between color and nakedness.

November 3, 2009

When I came downstairs this morning I found Grandma Ricki holding you on her knee with her left hand and pushing a wooden train with the other. The train is from your Great Aunt Lisa and Great Uncle Ed. Each of the five cars is the size of a book of matches and the three middle cars each carry one of your initials: T, A, J. The cars are held together by round silver magnets that slip apart a little as your grandmother drags the train over the plexiglass surface of the coffee table. "Choo-choo, choo-choo" she says. Your head still slumps forward, chin into neck, your face scrunching into itself, cheeks shoved upward so that your eyes look smaller.

Upstairs, there was the sound of your father's razor, then the shower, and then he appeared in a maroon sweater with a collared shirt underneath.

Last night your father and I left you with Grandma Ricki and went to the Contented Cow. We sat on a red couch beside a fire and drank white wine and talked about you and jobs and moving. Your father held my hand, still a little greasy from popcorn, and we stared vacantly at the wall in front of us: a clock, a cow statue with a sign reading "I sold my cow do I don't need your bull" and a framed certificate claiming the Cow as the best in Northfield at something. I told your father how I am scared about going back to work, about how much I love watching you change and grow, about how being away from you for six hours in a row seems like an eternity. Your father doesn't make enough money at his job for me to stop working and if we move to a new city, where he does have a tenure-track job, then I would be remote from friends and relatives and a community that would make being a stay-at-home mom a healthy option for me. At least I think so. So it feels like a catch-22. And I cried a little. And your father held my hand and then drove us both home.

I spent this morning reading a romance novel filled with hard erections and heart-shaped faces and Donna Karan wool knit pants. On my computer, I clicked on someone's face and was transported to the poem he wrote. Then I learned, via Facebook, that Tom is "doin the dishes" and that Brendan "never had a rational dream in his life" and that Ishanaa is "overwhelmed by the literature on African democracy." And I wonder, by the time you are 30, how often you will be updated--on everything--and if this will change your brain into a mechanism that works in flashes and lurches rather than meandering, stream-like. I wish for you days when you only think about one thing, slowly. I hope your mind turns things over and circles and returns. I hope sometimes it is still, like a fox whose coat is drowsied with shadow. I wish you days sitting on a porch swing at Holden, watching the summer leaves shake and glisten when the wind moves down the valley. And I wish you long aches at the base of your back and your hair wet and scentless with glacial water and the taste of carrot sticks dipped into a creamy white dressing. You will forget to watch them while you eat because you are watching a figure come up the road and your heart is lifting with the dust.