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.