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.