Only Glee

With all the stress (good and bad) that is quickly approaching AND to celebrate the end of summer AND to remember how supremely awesome so many A.T.* moments truly are--here is a series of images devoted entirely to glee.

*After Thisbe

Cannon Falls to Red Wing to Republicans

We biked over 40 miles this last weekend, Thiz. You rode in the Burley (a trailer that attached to a bike) and we pedaled and groaned about the soreness seeping into our rears. At the half-way point (Welch Village) there was a snack stand, some restrooms, and (of COURSE) an 82 -year-old man dressed in leiderhosen playing the accordian. After playing Edelweiss, the man was also up for talking about the difference between Jews in Hitler's Germany and blacks in the present-day U.S. "She, for instance," he kept saying, nodding his head toward Agnes, "will never be equal in this country. People think it's this way but it's not. It won't ever be." He claimed to be disgusted by racism but he also never addressed Agnes directly. So, you know, it's hard to say.

The hotel was sketchy--smoke-scented nonsmoking rooms, a drunk guy in the pool area, and no hair conditioner supplied with the shampoo (really, what could be sketchier than that?). To battle the sketchiness, we devoured German food--well, I had saurbraten and everyone else had American food served in a German restaurant. Auntie Agnes knew the bartender. They had drinks.

While the rest of the family bowled (there was a bowling alley attached to the German restaurant. Duh.), I took you back to the room and nursed you to sleep. The next morning we biked to Perkins for breakfast and then biked back to Cannon Falls. It was hot but beautiful. The trail is an old railroad bed--flat, paved, well-maintained. For the most part shaded. Farmland and forest and creeks and boggy swamps. Butterflies flitting across the path. I even got to see one of my very favorite things. Minnesota grows a lot of corn and soybeans. Farmers rotate the crops and so sometimes, in the middle of a field of soybeans, you can see corn stalks poking up and out and through this perfect mass of green. I love that. Gorgeous imperfection.

Now we are home again. Preparing for the semester and for John and Anna's wedding. I get teary every time I think of the wedding and anxsty every time I think of the school year. You've been getting anxsty too. An awful neediness these last two days. You're independent and happy with Daddy--but when I come home you wrap your arms around my legs and look up and me and sob. I take you in my arms and you arch your back and scream to be put back down. I put you down and you crawl over to me, the saddest wounded soldier, and hold your arms out as if to say, please help me, please, I'm dying here. This kind of behavior makes me shrug in consternation and then (20 minutes later) makes me want to unwind a roll of duct tape. Seriously. When in doubt, however, we resort to our favorite refrain: "maybe Thisbe's teething!"

I have no idea how we will explain your behavior once you have all your teeth.

("maybe Thisbe's on drugs!" "maybe Thisbe's having an existential crisis!" "maybe Thisbe's joined a cult!" "maybe Thisbe is possessed by Satan!" "maybe Thisbe's become a Republican!")

Some Fragments Before I Forget

You have spent today turning in a circle and then plopping down on your butt when you get dizzy.

Yesterday, you discovered your shadow.

We go on long walks. Long not because of distance but because it takes us a long time to cover a very short amount of space. You like to check out sticks and leaves and rocks. You like to pick at pits of tar and scratch at the anthills thriving between pavement slabs. Sometimes you hold my finger or Daddy's finger while you walk but most of the time you are just your own breathless force, trying to run, almost-tripping with every step but then righting your self and continuing.

You've been needy, extra needy.

You nurse twice per day, morning and night.

Maybe this is why you're extra needy.

You're still beautiful while you sleep.

You love cheesy noodles.

You like other things if you don't know the cheezy noodles are available. Once you become aware of cheezy noodle availability, you drop clumps of other foods off the side of your highchair.

Last night I made Greek stew: spinach and cheese and onion and garlic and potatoes and black olives. You liked it OK. You liked it better once I mixed in some noodles.

I forgot to say in the last post that at the potluck you were a disaster. You hadn't slept for 7 hours and if Daddy or I would walk out of sight you would burst into tears.

Your only truly consistent words are "hi" and "ay-yai-yai" although every day either Daddy or I claims you've got a new one mastered. Today Daddy said you knew "boy." And maybe you did at 11am. But not at 6pm.

Tomorrow we leave for an overnight biking trip with Ricki and Peter and Michael and Agnes. Not sure how you'll do in the bike trailer. Hoping for the best--bracing for the worst.

In the mornings I work on syllabi and think about submitting poems and stories to journals.

I have gray hairs. Did I tell you this yet? Yours are growing in blond and mine are growing in gray and sometimes the circle of life just kind of makes me want to puke.

I have terrible allergies. I am drinking pinot grigio from a box and sneezing.

Today you and I walked downtown together. You rode in the hiking backpack. We got iced coffee at Blue Monday and then checked out shoes at Rare Pair. We stocked up on string cheese and some suspicious-looking Gerber instant meals at Econo Foods and then walked back. Over the river. You were content the whole time and cried when I took you off my back.

Potluck

On Wednesday we had a potluck with the play date group. The play date group is pretty much the best group of Mamas and babies that has ever existed in the entire history of the universe. We have talked about everything from health insurance to post baby sex to homemade baby food to marital communication mishaps to carpet choices to books about circus elephants. When we first started to get together, you and the rest of the babes lay like lumps of fleshy clay on the floor while we drank coffee and ate brownies or animal crackers or grapes. Now we have to converse while stuffing grapes into your gaping mouths while simultaneously shielding our beverages from your sticky, grabby hands. In the winter, when the weeks seemed endless, their was a respite every Wednesday from 2:00-4:00. In the summer, it's been a delight to watch you guys dip your toes in wading pools and roll around on porches and attempt to poke one another's eyes out with various utensils.

I don't know if you will know these women when you are older, Thiz, but I hope you do. If you don't, I hope you are surrounded by women like them, women who are full of wisdom and patience but also honesty and vulnerability. Smart, talented women who want to be good Mamas but who admit things are going shitty when things are going shitty.

Your dad will start applying for jobs soon and the jobs will be in places far away. And while I won't be too sad to leave our town home and while I wouldn't mind some mountains a little nearer to our doorstep, it grieves me pretty deep to think about having to leave this circle of friends--my friends who have never known me without you and my friends who would never want to subtract you from me in order to know me better. We are lucky duckies.

(Note: photos totally ripped off from Donya, a Mama who knows her way around a camera)

Getting Hi

Today I was holding you in the library, browsing for books on motherhood, trying to keep you from squirming out of my arms and prevent you from disturbing other library patrons at the same time. Just behind where I was browsing a woman was sitting with her 7-year-old son, working on phonics. Quietly. Ca-ca-ca. Bu-bu-bu. You arched your back and I pressed you closer. Ca-Ca-Ca. Bu-bu-bu. Quietly, like the books were murmuring among themselves. And then:

Hi!
I ignored you. Chose a book by a mother with a PhD after her name.
Hi! (again, and louder).
The mother glanced your way. I chose a book with a woman on the back flap who looked like she was pretending to know something sly and secret.
Hi! Hi!
Finally, the woman, stationed on a plastic chair far too small for her large frame, said Hi.
Hi! you said again, emphatically, although this time to close the conversation.
We made our way quickly out of the quiet section of the library.

You have also developed, in the past three days or so, the Cutest Behavior in the World. Just one week ago, you barely tolerated having a book held in front of your face. Books were static and you were the epitome of dynamic. To, fro, back, forth, around, down, under, beside. You were just a bunch of prepositions housed inside a 28 inch frame. But now--if I say "do you want to read a book? can you bring mommy a book?" you go to your book shelf and bring it over to me and hold it out, smiling and shivering with excitement. We read the book and then you go back for another and another. I can see how this behavior, like any other, may grow annoying at some point in the near future, but for today it remains the Cutest Behavior in the World.

Grandma Dot and Grandpa Mark were here for another whirlwind visit this weekend. We walked to the park and watched baseball and ate tuna steaks and mango salsa. Grandma Dot brought you some lovely purple socks (courtesy of her very own knitting needles) and a lovely Farm Animals flap book. You displayed your new-found ability to point to desired objects with marvelous dexterity. In order to quell your interest in the salt and vinegar potato chips and the gin and tonic, I gave you a tiny taste of each. You then pointed excitedly toward each--again and again. If later in life you become a fat alcoholic, you can look back to this moment as the time when it all began.

We are trying to transition you to one nap per day. Yesterday, this worked beautifully--you slept for 2 hours and 15 minutes. In a row. Today you slept for 35 minutes. One nap, 35 minutes. At 6pm you were walking around with the the lid from the caper jar, giggling maniacally, while Daddy and I looked like we'd been run over by a slow moving bulldozer.

This is also perhaps because, after a sudden temperature shift (75 degrees and no humidity!), fall suddenly feels palpable, within grasping distance. And so Daddy and I are already growing more testy, more protective of our work time, more likely to quibble about issues of responsibility and resentment.

Usually I don't resent you, Thisbe, but sometimes I do. I say this so that if someday you feel the same way about your own offspring, you don't feel bad. I love you every second, but some days I long for the buffers of time your father and I used to enjoy. Time usually not well spent, but time that was our own, that we possessed--now I only have two or three hours a day that are truly my own. This is a gift. Some moms get none. And so I feel like those hours should be enough. That I should return, always, to the house and you and Daddy feeling satiated and present and full of self-generated energy. Some days this is true. And then there are the days when I think about turning left instead of right on highway 3, when I think about where I could go and who I would be when I got there--Horrible but Free--and then I turn right, the way I am supposed to. I return to the life I'm supposed to be living, but sometimes I'm not sure who I am by the time I get here.

Eleven Months and one Week

You are eleven months and one week old today, Thiz.

In my mother's Page-A-Day journal, her entry for eleven months and one week after my birth reads: "Today we went to Susan Still's to plan a puppet show for the PSN meeting tomorrow. Susan showed Kaethe a lion puppet, and Kaethe walked up and kissed it. Her 4th tooth, the upper left incisor, broke through."

What I love about this entry is that the breakthrough of the tooth seems so directly connected to the make out session with the lion.

It was hot today. Too hot in the shade, too hot to be outside. In the morning I drove to Mapleton and met Phoebe Joy, my friend Joleen's new baby. She was adorable and alert and tiny. I remembered, Thiz, what it was like when you were that small, when we never put you down, when you were connected to us--it seemed--at every instant. Now you walk around the house in a very business-like manner. Carrying flashcards featuring gnus and kangaroos you walk from the living room into the kitchen, down to the far end where the dryer rumbles, then you turn and enter the living room again. You stop and bend and grab hold of the door of Luxy's kennel. Or you brush your palm against the leaves of a potted plant. Or you steal a cotton sleeper from the bin of clothes next to the changing table and drape it over your head--and then you walk around, blind as a bat, giggling.

Now you are asleep. Daddy is having a beer with Pastor Charlie at El Ranchero, a supper club that is not Mexican. Instead there are checkered tablecloths and frosted mugs with dark German beer and relish trays with pickles and olives and miniature corn cobs. I am at home, listening to the whir of my computer fan and the drone of the cicadas, audible even through the closed windows. Summer is beginning its long good-bye.

It will be the last summer we spend in this townhome, I think. Even if we stay in Northfield, I think our time in this particular space is limited. And though when the time comes I will be eager to leave, I will always have a fondness for these rooms. The oven that never told us the correct temperature. The kitchen light that won't turn on in the humidity. The gray carpet that turns the tops of your feet black from all the embedded dirt. The furnace room with the boxes Daddy stacks so neatly to make space for his trains. Your nursery with the elephant rug Grandma Ricki found in an alley and the bookshelf Daddy found in an alley and the nightstand Daddy found by the side of the road. The dressers and desks and armoires that line the sides of our bedroom like monks waiting to offer a benediction. Our bathroom sink with the crack I always think is a hair. How the front door sticks in every kind of weather. How the air conditioning never offers complete relief and so we sleep with the sheets tangled around our calves, too hot to touch completely, just our fingers knotted together or my palm upon your father's chest or the back of his hand, flush against my thigh. I concentrate on that warmth, Thisbe, and fall asleep.

Tantrum

It had to happen sooner or later.

It's happened sooner.

You are tantrum-abled. That is, you have the ability to throw a hissy fit, a hurricane of displeasure, an mangled opera of dis-ease. We have moved past the days when, given a new object, you could be distracted from the old (potential to do harm and/or fragile and/or belonging to Luxy) object. No longer.

The first point of contention, real contention has been Luxy's water dish. Daddy and I have uttered versions of "no," "uh-uhh," "that's Luxy's," and "stop that" so many times that the plastic mat wherein the water resides has become a sort of ceremonial center.

Next, you moved on to Luxy's kennel. The kennel is made of metal that is flaking bits of rust. The kennel has pointy places and hinges and edges and lots of potential for disaster. You love to play with the door (open, close, open, close). This seemed deeply hazardous. Well, not deeply hazardous, not like piranhas or sharks or COW'S MILK!!! but kind of hazardous. So we shut the door. But then Luxy got anxious. She likes to go inside the kennel to relax and I don't blame her. It's her space. So then we left the door open but we blocked it open with the newspaper rack so you couldn't swing it around. Then you decided you would like to go inside the kennel. Into Luxy's sacred space which happens to consist of a skanky, skanky blanket and a sheet of metal. So we told you "no."

Disaster ensued. By disaster I mean a torrent of tears, a howling of Lear-like proportions. We tried distraction. We tried lifting you up and dropping you on the other side of the room. To no avail. This is something my words cannot capture so I shall post the video. And let me explain that the video only captures the end of the tantrum--to truly understand how long this went on, you'd have to watch the video seven or eight times in a row. And you should, Thiz, you really should. Let's practice empathy. For your parents. My favorite part is when you attempt to put just your toe inside.

Addendum: the morning after this tantrum occurred, Daddy reported that the first thing you did upon arriving in the living room was to grab your favorite book from the book shelf, toddle over to the kennel, and drop it inside. Then you turned to look at him, just to make sure he'd noticed.

Luckily, you're still young enough that we mostly find all of this to be exceptionally entertaining. In a few weeks, our reactions might not be quite so congenial.