October 21, 2009

"Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. That's all I have to say."
--Grandma Ricki, when asked to contribute a line for today's blog.

"Just a reminder: there's no crying in baseball."
--Daddy, when asked to contribute a line for today's blog.

"A weekend in Florida without my daughter."
--Mommy, when asked by Daddy what would make her feel better as she cried on the couch at 11:30am.

The closest we came to the weekend in Florida was Maui Wowi at the mall. They were selling a "soup and smoothie" special. For the toothless crowd perhaps? We bought an XS dog Halloween costume at Old Navy and dressed you in it when we arrived home. You were not pleased.

The sky continues to be the color of a cave. In the upstairs bathroom, the shower curtain is covered with fish and wrinkled with a recent washing. Daddy is your new favorite person. You are content to lay in the crook of his bent leg while he reads "Sports Illustrated." Grandma Ricki is busy in the kitchen, preparing stew in an old orange crock pot. Now Daddy has switched to reading "God and Empire" and you are not particularly pleased.

I try to enjoy my glass of chardonnay while you cry.

October 20, 2009

Since last I wrote...

1. Daddy lays you down the length of his knees and cups the back of your head in his left palm. With the right hand he teases the nipple of a bottle over your lips. You shake your head side to side and fuss. Finally, you take it. A white washcloth hangs over the wooden arm of the IKEA chair for Daddy to use after you drink too fast and the milk spills down the sides of your cheeks. I am upstairs sitting on the floor of our bedroom, trying to watch television, Luxy curled between my legs. But really I am listening to your sounds and gurgles below, trying to figure out if you are taking the bottle. Finally I go and lean over the ledge at the top of the stairs. I hear Daddy singing his invented songs to you. Later, when he sings "You are a pooping machine," you cannot stop smiling.

2. At the Ole Cafe, Martha leans back against the couch and you lean against her, your head snuggled just below her chin. She strokes your bundled body and talks about the possibility of working for the Marty campaign, of what it's like to sit at the LVC informational table while students walk by and walk by, of saying finally, to her mother, "if I want your advice I will ask for it." On the table, her cup of chai grows cold. Outside, sunshine and a mess of leaves.

3.In a re-used yellow envelope we receive a blue baby "Holden Village" hat from John and Anna. With it, a letter typewritten on blue Holden stationary: "hold this letter up in front of Thisbe and explain that she has an uncle who lives in a mountain village who loves her very much."

4. A picture of you, smiling, in your "Little Punpkin" fleece sleeper. I make copies and buy plastic picture frames and write "Happy Halloween! Love, the littlest pumpkin" on the front with a black Sharpie marker.

5. You go to bed between 8 and 9. Then wake at 12 or 1 and again at 5 or 6. You are alert for good by 8:30 or 9. I am glad for the sleep. All the books say that at night the parents are supposed to resist talking to the child, are supposed to keep the lights off, are supposed to act like uninteresting versions of their daytime selves. Sometimes I am good at this. But for some reason I think you look most beautiful in the lamplight. Your blue eyes take over your face, two blue planets frozen in orbit but animated with the potential for motion. And when you smile, oh Thisbe when you smile at 5am, then the rest of the world goes away and there is a plain white thread of joy between us.

October 16, 2009

Last night you were awake from 11:30pm-3:30am. We rocked you and bounced you and snuggled you and swaddled you and let you suck on fingers and nipples; we sang you and cajoled you and shushed you and snapped at you. At 3:25am you smiled at me, big, and fell asleep.

You woke again at 6:30, nursed halfheartedly (tiredly) until 7:30 and then wouldn't fall asleep. I wrapped the Moby around my running shirt and gray sweatpants and put you inside. Hats on both our heads and Peder's lime green down jacket around us both and then we were outside in the parking lot. Fog over everything, dim morning light, back and forth over the black asphalt. I stumbled in my clogs but caught myself; Luxy watched from inside, front paws on the windowsill. After half an hour I took you back inside and we fell asleep together on the couch, still dressed in the Moby and the coat and our hats.

Later in the morning, on the changing table, you smiled big again and again. Is that why you couldn't sleep last night? Were you learning how to smile?

Later in the morning I read to you from "A Visit to William Blake's Inn." Then at Blue Monday, I wrote you this (very rough!) poem:

Rapunzel licked her net of hair
and found a lobster hiding there.

The lobster cooled his claw in fire
where swam a satyr and a lyre.

The lyre found a Liar's hands
and with Contentment formed a band.

Contentment played the upright bass;
the half-notes zoomed to outer space.

In outer space the notes unglued
every myth they found untrue

and all the creatures, from those myths,
took off their bedclothes, pled the Fifth.

The Fifth Amendment scoffed at them:
"Your naked butts are made of tin!"

And so they were! And so their gleams
reflected in the lobster's dreams

until the gleaming woke the Sun
who said, "My beams are number one!

You'll have to take your butts inside
and mute them down with oxen hide."

The mythic creatures shook their heads,
"Our rears will shimmer 'til we're dead."

And so they did and so they are,
we call them comets, moons, and stars.

October 15, 2009

Rain to snow to rain again. Slush on the windshield. Everything heavy with wet. And you are cranky along with the weather. I hope because this is your 6 week growth spurt. After being fed, burped, and changed, you seem happy with life for about 15 minutes. Then you are back to crying again.

Two evenings ago we lay you down on a play mat on the floor. You kicked your legs and swung your fists and gurgled to yourself for a good ten minutes. Daddy and Ricki and I sat on the couch and ate wild rice soup and kale and bread and tried not to interfere. Ricki says the hardest thing is not to play with you during these sorts of moments, that I have to learn not to engage so that you learn independence. So I sat with the warm bowl in my lap and I tried to enjoy the taste of balsamic vinegar on the dark green leaves of kale while you smiled and cooed without me. Then last night you made it through your bath without weeping--at least until I set your wet, red body on the yellow bath towel. Then you howled.

I think I will always be bad at letting you go, Thisbe. Your Daddy will be better, which is why it's good that you have two parents.

Today I keep thinking of lines from a Tony Hoagland poem: "I've seen rain turn into snow then back to rain / and I've seen making love turn into fucking / then back to making love, / and no one covered up their faces out of shame, / no one rose and walked into the lonely maw of night." Your face tells this story most honestly, Thiz. You smooth from one emotion into the next and then back again. I've explained this before. The poem ends: "Until we say the truth, there can be no tenderness / As long as there is desire, we will not be safe."

Saying the truth, however, can be both painful and scary. "Where the Wild Things Are" premieres this week, the movie version that is. And parents are up in arms about whether the film is too scary for their children. Maurice Sendak says it shouldn't matter; life is scary, we're all scared, there's nothing to be done but tell the truth. When I was six, and Ben and Dave were 10 and 12 respectively, Ricki and Peter took all of us in the Volvo station wagon to a drive-in movie called "Gremlins." My mother thought it was supposed to be a cute film about imaginary creatures. It soon became clear that this was not the case. Gremlins threw other gremlins into microwaves, swimming pools, below lawn mowers and car wheels. Blood splattered across mirrors and windows. One Gremlin cackled and reached for a set of kitchen knives. My mother put a blanket over my head. I shrieked and cried because I wanted to see the movie, but to no avail. A few months later, at my father's house, I watched "Jaws" with my cousin Emily. And no one turned the movie off or fast-forwarded through the bloody bits. No one put a blanket on my head. I slept that night, finally, but sharks circled below my upper bunk. When we arrived at the ocean next summer, I refused to go in above my knees. Even Lake Harriet posed a threat though at 6 I knew that sharks did not live in lakes. Still, I couldn't get the image of an innocent swimmer's body--seen from below, outlined by rays of sunlight--out of my head.

Lies don't make us safe, but sometimes they make us feel safe, and I'm not sure that's always a bad thing. I don't remember being very happy at age 6. My stepbrothers told me they hated my mother while we waited for the school bus in the morning. Peter, in an attempt to draw me closer, demanded signs of affection from me, kisses and hugs, and I hated him for it. My mother, always my greatest confidant, could not be trusted not to repeat my words back to Peter, even when I expressly forbid her to do so. My favorite game to play was "Anne Frank." I made a nest of blankets and dolls below the old sink in the mud room. I waited for the imagined sirens to go off and when they did, I moved all of the belongings to a new enclosed space (behind a couch, inside a closet, under a bed). By that time I was flying once a month, alone, between my two families. No place was entirely safe. I was good at packing a suitcase.

I wonder what lies I will tell to you and which, of the many, will be justified. Forgive me for the rest.

October 14, 2009

On The Day You Were Born

The sunlight was thick.
We stood at the hospital window and observed
long tables covered in paper tablecloths set out below.
Nurses in striped scrubs picked their nails while waiting
for fried chicken. Behind them a man led a black horse
out of a trailer. You were getting hotter.

I leaned against a wall covered in white paint.
I leaned against a rail that ran the length of the hospital hall.
I leaned against a Coke machine and felt the hum in my cheek.
I leaned against your father and he did not fall down.
I leaned against a pillar in the cafeteria.

While they strapped the monitor to my belly I ate
a bite of white bread soaked in gravy. I drank
orange Gatorade from a white styrofoam cup. Meanwhile
the monitor wrote your heart down onto paper.

Behind the black horse was corn and behind the corn
was wild grass and behind the wild grass was a windmill
and behind the windmill were dorms on a hillside.

Meanwhile you were dreaming of juniper berries and a man
with a billy club. Webbing stretched from under his arms
to the sides of his ribs. A sweet phosphorescent glow
prickled his veins and he smelled like just
browned meringue. Would you like to stay?

My thighs opened wide, pantomiming galaxies.
Your soul crashed into the air.

October 12, 2009

4:30am
Pinched face red and screaming, you are wrapped in a blanket that has velcro tabs stitched throughout for airtight swaddling. Your father holds you on the length of his left forearm, moving you up and down while he hands my two Tylenol with the other.

5:30am
You are pacified but fully alert and nestled on your white foam pad between us in bed. We are exhausted but you are wide eyed and cooing and we cannot resist you. I use my index finger to manipulate your gaze...to Daddy...then back to me...then back to Daddy. Your head moves back and forth, a slow shaking of "no."

10:35am
You scream in the car all the way to Baby Talk but quiet when I take you out into the cold air. Snowflakes on your face for the first time. Your dried tears leave a white residue at the corners of your eyes.

1:12pm
When I left the house you were snuggled close to Daddy in the Moby Wrap, screaming while he flipped through a book. Now I am at Blue Monday, eating a bagel, drinking a latte and reading "The Soul Thief" by Charles Baxter. His writing is laced with intelligence, but the kind that glitters and calls attention to itself rather than the kind that is simple and honest and rooted below the surface of things.

There is a certain quiet that falls along with snow. Everyone looks tired but also more patient. It is the season of making sure blankets are tucked under, the season of saran wrap around the doors and cardboard in the crevices. The sky is so uniformly white it erases itself. Meanwhile, I will spend the winter trying not to be erased: a new battery in the car, a freezer full of food, lime stationary with a gilt border so that I can write. "I was here, this is what happened, remember me."

October 11, 2009

3:42pm. Dunn Brothers on Upton in Minneapolis. Cold enough for a navy scoop neck shirt and wool cardigan and fleece jacket and Peruvian hat for me; onesie and foot pajamas and swaddle blanket and crocheted hat for you. At the bottom of Ricki and Peter’s driveway, a gang of ducks waddled through the fallen green leaves. The cold blew in two nights ago and when we woke up there was a sheen of snow on the deck, the earliest October snow in 24 years. Another storm is supposed to move in this afternoon.

Your eyes are beginning to connect to your mind and your ears. If I move the rattle across your line of vision, you follow it, not smoothly, but in little jerks, as though you are looking at paintings on a wall, set frames rather than one object in motion. You are cooing and squeaking too, kicking and moving your arms of your own volition rather than reflexively.

Ricki and Peter’s neighbor, David Grube, is in the hospital with Lymphoma and pneumonia. He and his wife, Nan, always leave soup in the refrigerator and bread on the counter on the evening Peter and Ricki return from a trip. Nan has a soft, round face and nods her head affirmatively whenever anyone is talking, a slight supportive movement, soothing and knowing. Five years ago, David developed a speech impediment. When he talks, I sometimes don’t know where to rest my eyes. In the summer, their yard is always filled with flowers and grandchildren carrying plastic trowels or laid out on blankets in the sun. I haven’t actually been inside Nan and David’s house too many times. Once to help Ricki water the plants. Another time to look after the dog. A few times I stood in the doorway while Nan dug around in her cabinets for the can of cream of mushroom soup or box of gelatin my mother needed to finish a recipe. Once they invited us over to make ice cream on their porch. Ben and Dave (your uncles) and I took turns cranking the handle on the ice cream maker; we didn’t talk to each other but we were polite enough not to argue in front of Nan and David.

I tell you this because the Grubes have defined, for me, what neighbors should be. Also because I am beginning to realize that there are many people, of my parents’ generation, who you may never know. This is startling and sad; the Grubes have been such a presence in my life, albeit peripherally, that it’s difficult to understand they will not be a part of your life too. I want to transfer everything that has been good about my life—the places, the people—directly into yours. This will not always be possible.

Ricki is walking back to the house now; you are cuddled close to her in the Ergo backpack, a blue hand towel stuffed in beside you because you are still too small to fill it out completely. Dorothy visited yesterday and brought olive-thyme bread from the monestary in Collegeville. Also an adorable bunny that she knit for you, its eyes little “x”s of blue thread. “Thisbe is so much bigger!” she cooed as soon as she saw you. We laid you on her chest and you raised your head up to look her in the eye.

I dread your growth as much as I rejoice in it. Never have I been so completely aware of the passage of time. Now it feels as palpable a dwelling as your nursery.