Sunshine today and everyone looking radiant. I met the women from the book group at James Gang Coffee Shop and two of them were wearing cranberry colored shirts. Sheri's daughter, Lauren, had her senior pictures taken today, first on a bridge and then in the tall grass behind their house. In one photo, Lauren held the guitar from the Guitar Hero video game. In another she posed with Crackerjack, her overenthusiastic terrier. "My arms are exhausted," said Sheri, "from holding up the filter. I spent all day getting ready for the shoot. I made my husband spread mulch all over the backyard. I was going to have him put the rowboat in our pond but he drew the line at that." I imagined having a yard big enough to hold a pond. What is involved in pond upkeep? This summer, near Pepin, Wisconsin, your father and I watched a woman cleaning the pond beside her house. The algae was thick and green and her net hung on the end of a long stick. According to the owner of the B and B where we were staying, it took the woman all day long, every day, to clean the pond. But she was retired and this was what she wanted to do.
Yesterday I dressed you in the shirt Katie Sexe bought for you at the Galleria when you were only 8 weeks old...in the womb. There is a fuzzy pale green hippo on the front that you can't yet appreciate. Nevertheless, in the faculty lounge at St. Olaf yesterday, laying on my lap, with Grandma Ricki and I peering over you, you smiled. You don't know what you are doing yet, but you are certainly trying. Your mouth opens wide and the corners of your lips turn upward just slightly. Then they pull back into a grimace that shows off your gums and your eyes squish shut. You stay frozen in this expression for three seconds and then either your face melts back into softness and you open your eyes or you begin to scream. I wonder what it is that shifts (or doesn't shift) inside of you at these moments.
Last night the Twins beat the Tigers in a regular season playoff game. One of the last that will be played in the Metrodome. Minnesotans have decided that we prefer to watch baseball outdoors, ironic considering that last night was 45 degrees and rain. Today also I received an e-mail from Tupelo Press saying that they are not interested in my manuscript, though it is "quite riveting, and never less than rewarding." Clearly, the e-mail is a mass e-mail and it is somehow more insulting to receive a compliment that is not truly meant for me than to receive no compliment at all. I would prefer that these sorts of rejections not affect me but already I have considered numerous times how boring this particular post is, already I am thinking that my one audience member (your father) is bored to tears and has stopped reading, already I am thinking it was a huge mistake to have an actual reader for this blog, already I am contemplating taking up pond cleaning as my vocation, already I am doubting whether I could truly consider it my vocation if I only took it up as a result of my failure as a writer. But how satisfying to see the green growth disappear from the surface, to have left, at the end of the day, your own reflection wavering back at you.
The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who's to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.
from "The World Doesn't End" by Charles Simic
I call you baby duck, love duck, little bug. Today I will call you cricket. I love you, cricket.
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