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.

November 2, 2009

Your father and I fought this morning. All the while, I bounced you on the exercise ball and you slept.

Before the fighting: a walk through the grasslands behind our row of town homes. The grass is brown and dry and waist-high. There are paths, about the width of a car, plowed through the grass, and it takes about 20 minutes to walk the entire circumference. The park is bordered by Cedar Avenue and the town homes and a yard which houses three angry black canines that I call the dragon dogs. They attacked Luxy once, when she was running off leash, and I will always carry with me the image of her, writhing on her back and whimpering, while they frothed around her. Today, though, Luxy was pleased as punch. Your father threw a purple ball (the size of a small cantaloupe) into the grasses and Luxy would bound after it and then bring it back to us. You were strapped to my chest, your head poking out of your father's down coat, alert and blinking when the sun hit your face directly. And there was sun and blue sky and an old fashioned windmill turning in the yard of the house on the other side of Cedar Avenue.

Then, later, me bouncing you up and down, up and down, while your father stood in the kitchen doorway and raged. Or as close as your father gets to raging which mostly means his voice gets louder and darker and his arm movements larger and jerkier, as though we were suddenly on stage and performing our fight for an audience of thousands. I am much quicker to raise my voice in a fight, and this time all the words went right past your cheek and the conch curl of your ear. And you slept on and I bounced.

This afternoon we read at opposite ends of the same coffee shop. Not out of anger, I think, but out of a need to be in our own space with words and papers and thoughts.

When I left the house, Grandma Ricki was bent over your changing pad (on top of Luxy's kennel) and you were cooing to her. Your mouth widens into smiles and then shrinks back into a tiny "o."

You spend more time pressed to my body than your father does. I kiss the top of your head more and marvel at your skin more. I clean the lint that collects along the life line of your palm and clip your nails stealthily while you sleep. Some of this affection used to be showered on Luxy and some on your father and I think he must feel the absence of my touch more than he lets on. We have been intimate a few times, but half of my hearing and being is always tuned toward you so there is no time for lingering or bottom-of-the-ocean slowness and purposefulness. But I think it is touch more than sex that he misses and though I want to say there is an abundance of affection to go around and that the added doting over you should not mean a lessening of doting over him, the truth is that I do not have enough energy to give both of you what you need and what you deserve. And so our marriage will have to survive for a while on scraps and leftovers. But I think it is better to admit that we are hungry then to pretend that we are corpulent and well fed.

November 1, 2009

At church today I wrote "Kaethe and Thisbe" in red permanent marker on a sticker and then affixed it to the front of the Moby Wrap. Inside, you slept through communion and the prayers and a sermon on Lazarus. "I have two questions for you today," said the new pastor, "Who are you remembering today? and who are you in this story?"

It was All Saints Day and we were instructed to write down the names of those we remembered on a beige slip inside the bulletin. Your father wrote "Lillian" and I wrote "Grandma Dythe" and "John Steven Paul." On the alter, four white roses and four unlit candles paid homage to four Bethel members who died this year. At 8:30am the congregation was a sea of foam-gray heads.

During the adult education time, your father talked about Luther and vocation. There was a metaphor about concentric circles but he also talked about your poop and how last night at 3am he leaned over your Pack N Play and put his pinkie in your mouth to quiet you. When he mentioned your name, people laughed and shifted in their chairs and smiled conspiratorially at one another. I am not sure they understood about Luther's idea of two kingdoms (the second largest of the concentric circles) but they did understand that your father was a new parent, and I think this made them more sympathetic and eager.

I signed up to pray for an 8th grader named Jayden. I don't know her but now I've seen a picture: blond hair pulled back in a thin white headband, smile spread across a wide, round face.

My throat is sore and exhaustion creeps in and out of my body, a slow thief. You slept seven hours in a row last night again...you've had a run of six or seven hours every night for the last five. This means only one night feeding for me. Sometimes I wake up, startled, thinking that I've falled asleep while nursing and that you are somewhere beside me, suffocating amongst the blankets.

Your daddy and I walk past a retirement community on the way to church. There is a human-made pond surrounded by bark chips colored to look like redwood. Amongst the fake redwood chips are pockets of flowers. A sidewalk meanders by the pond and beside the sidewalk, at various locations, are exercise stations. Each station has a bar or bench and instructions written on a plastic sign that explain how to do a simple exercise using the equipment. These are nice things, these attempts at beauty and community and health, but they make me sad somehow, as though we have forgotten the natural way to do these things and had to re-remember and re-invent them ourselves.