- I was up with the kids at sunrise, serving up popsicles and painkillers, but then we all slept until just after 10.
- I worked a later day, afternoon instead of morning, to attend a training.
- Today was hot as hell.
- My husband was at home with a large number of unpacked beach bags leftover from the weekend.
- The baby was fussy and napless.
- My training at work was air conditioned.
- But it was also super boring.
- Draw.
- Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happened.
- Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happens almost every day.
- It might be why I'm an optimist.
- The boy was cabin-feverish when I got home.
- We offered choices and he chose: go downtown!
- We went downtown, walked around a fountain, walked around a block, greeted an exuberant homeless man who wished us a Happy Monday!, hurried through the beginning drip drops of rain, just missed the downpour with not a minute to spare, folding and stuffing the double jogger into the back of the car while fat, hot drops slapped my forehead.
- I felt like there might be a perfect poem somewhere in there.
- And then for lack of anything else to do in the pouring rain, we went to the mall.
- Not a big fan of the mall, me.
- But: there's a library branch there, which just happened to be open: score!
- And: my husband had been wanting to go the library all day, but between the oppressive heat and the surrounded by unpacked bags and the fussy napless baby, it hadn't happened: double score!
- Also: they have a climbing thing, and a certain little someone might just be in heaven when he's climbing: home run! Or something.
- So, you know, it's not all about me. Or my tortured sports metaphors.
- My boy said to me, at the climbing thing: Oh Mommy! I am having fun!
- He sounded downright rapturous, about the climbing thing, at the mall.
- But later he fell into the (fortunately clean and unused) public toilet in the mall restroom, and he cried a little bit. But only a little bit.
- We drove the long way home through the rainy city, yellow lights glowing on wet blacktop under a dark sky, my ability to find peace in the passenger seat ebbing and flowing with the sound of my daughter's cry in the backseat.
- Bedtime kinda sucked.
- But that's also kinda par for the course right now.
- We're getting there with the bedtime thing. Slowly. It's summer, after all.
- I guess if this day, or my life, had a message, it would be:
- Every day has magic: moments of perfect poetry under a stormy summer sky. And every day has the mall, public bathrooms, spots of crying here and there.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Thirtyish Sentences About Today
Friday, July 8, 2011
Summertime Yellows (Cause it Sure Ain't the Blues!)
Holy hell, it's July! How did that happen?
The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.
I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.
It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.
Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.
God, I love summer.
The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.
I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.
It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.
Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.
God, I love summer.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Flashback: Learning to Lift That Head
When Ryan, over at Pacing The Panic Room wrote about Priceless First Attempts last week, it immediately reminded me of a series of photos I took of my son shortly after he was born in 2008. His head was so big he had a hard time lifting it, and it was comical to watch how much effort it took him to try.
I know it should probably be baby pictures of the actual baby, but in true second-child style, the photos that have actually made it from the camera to the computer have not been converted to JPEGs or compressed down to user-friendly size yet. One of these days...
In the meantime, though, enjoy! He's almost three now, and while his noggin' is still super-sized, he doesn't seem to have any problems hauling it around atop his neck anymore!
I know it should probably be baby pictures of the actual baby, but in true second-child style, the photos that have actually made it from the camera to the computer have not been converted to JPEGs or compressed down to user-friendly size yet. One of these days...
In the meantime, though, enjoy! He's almost three now, and while his noggin' is still super-sized, he doesn't seem to have any problems hauling it around atop his neck anymore!
Friday, June 3, 2011
How Things Are Now
The morning before grocery day, scavenging frantically for a breakfast I have to pack and bring to work because I don't have time to make it, I spot a lone bottle of beer, standing tall at hearty hops and barley attention in the vegetable crisper (beer's not a vegetable?).
I actually paused, like maybe -just maybe- it was a good idea to bring a beer. To work. For breakfast.
In the end, I went with a whole grain dinner roll and a jar of natural peanut butter, thick with oil and gooey nutty goodness (no time to scoop a single serving into a tupperware container; the whole jar tossed in the lunchbag; quicker), the best I could do on the way out the door the day before we replenish our food supplies.
We left the sandbox open at some point. I don't know exactly when it happened, but we left the lid off the sandbox, and between the neighborhood cats and the falling tree debris, it's just not fit to use for another summer. So we need to empty it out, but where to put this big box full of sand?
The groundhogs who used to live in our yard seem to have abandoned their abode. The first year we lived here we shared the space with a groundhog bigger than my ten pound baby. He was pretty confident the property belonged to him. The house sat empty for over a year before we moved in, and he had gone ahead and made himself at home, digging burrows closer and dangerously closer to our foundation. Last year we found one of his babies dead on the sidewalk leading from our yard out toward the street, flies buzzing over his tiny body decomposing where we imagined our children might one day play with sidewalk chalk. His family ate all our next-door neighbor's garden vegetables. We aren't disappointed that they have gone. They weren't the most pleasant of squatters to share the property with.
We threw our Halloween pumpkins in his hole to rot, and covered that compost with a thick layer of yard waste in the fall, and then again in the spring. The hole was near-full, but still not quite level with the surrounding grass. I emptied the sandbox, shovel by shovel, into the rusting metal wheelbarrow we found when we moved in. I dragged it up the grassy hill to the groundhog's former hole, and -shovel by shovel- I buried the remaining evidence of their existence.
There's so much work! my husband despaired, looking out over our property.
We're filling the holes, baby, I said as I rubbed the space between his shoulder blades with my hand. We're finally filling the holes. Think about what this looked like almost three years ago, when we first moved in. And now? We're filling the holes!
Damn, he said, you're right. We're filling the holes!
I meet with my boss, and my collaborating partner, and her boss, around a rectangle of conference tables. We have stacks of paper hundreds of pages deep: requirements for reporting our progress, rubrics for measuring our success against the other programs competing for limited funds, budget spreadsheets, and various pieces of a report that will determine our future strewn across the tables.
We look good.
It's on me to make sure we look good. And we do. We look good.
Maybe June will just be an early-to-rise, nose-to-the-grindstone, Puritan-work-ethic type of month instead of a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I can handle early-to-rise. Inhale. I can do nose-to-the-grindstone. Exhale. My Puritan work ethic is all polished up and pretty; it's in fighting shape what with all the practice it's gotten over the last couple of months. I'd make a fine farmer's wife these days with my ability to work dawn to dusk and then on and off overnight tending to a baby in need of mother's milk.
I can survive another month as a farmer's wife. Especially as opposed to a clusterfuck of epic proportions, which is what I was expecting. Another month as a farmer's wife is doable.
And there's always beer for breakfast, if things should come to that.
I scrub out the kiddie pool, hose it down with a jet spray, unscrew the nozzle and slowly let it fill while my son hops foot to foot with excitement in the soon-to-be summer air. I pop my baby girl's backside into the Bumbo seat, placed strategically in the shade of the conifer tree where she can watch me work and listen to the birdsong and windchimes hover in the humid air.
We've been walking over patio stones for going-on-three years now, never knowing they were there, buried under the grass, until our feet wore a path deep enough into the ground to discover them. I dig them up, one by one, and place them in a pile by the back deck. They'll need to be reset in the soil, somewhere higher where the rain water won't flow over them, burying the rock in mud and allowing grass to grow over them again.
Sinking the blade into the dirt at the edge of the stone, I place my foot atop the hoe and heave my weight forward. Again and again, I dig down into the earth -this piece of earth that we own! just imagine that!- and reshape it.
My children laugh in the background. Their voices mix melodically with birdsong and windchimes. And I work, and I work, reshaping the very earth upon which we live.
I am so tired that days and nights blur together. I close my eyes in my office and wish for a pillow in place of a keyboard. I drift off on the couch with my children crowded close to my body, listening to late afternoon rain, and waiting for my husband to arrive home from work. I pause in the early morning, gathering my bearings, wondering if a single beer is a suitable breakfast for a workday lunchbag before coming to my senses. Sometimes in the middle of the night I lie awake and watch my daughter kick her little legs and laugh like a banshee before cuddling her in and nursing her back to sleep. My life resembles a rushed montage from a movie more than a linear sequence of events occurring in real time.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, fast approaching while I ride this wild wave to the end of June.
And I am reshaping the ground beneath my feet, building my future with my hands, digging through dirt and sheaths of paper to unearth whatever comes next. And it looks good.
It looks good, you guys.
Inhale. Exhale.
I actually paused, like maybe -just maybe- it was a good idea to bring a beer. To work. For breakfast.
In the end, I went with a whole grain dinner roll and a jar of natural peanut butter, thick with oil and gooey nutty goodness (no time to scoop a single serving into a tupperware container; the whole jar tossed in the lunchbag; quicker), the best I could do on the way out the door the day before we replenish our food supplies.
* * *
We left the sandbox open at some point. I don't know exactly when it happened, but we left the lid off the sandbox, and between the neighborhood cats and the falling tree debris, it's just not fit to use for another summer. So we need to empty it out, but where to put this big box full of sand?
The groundhogs who used to live in our yard seem to have abandoned their abode. The first year we lived here we shared the space with a groundhog bigger than my ten pound baby. He was pretty confident the property belonged to him. The house sat empty for over a year before we moved in, and he had gone ahead and made himself at home, digging burrows closer and dangerously closer to our foundation. Last year we found one of his babies dead on the sidewalk leading from our yard out toward the street, flies buzzing over his tiny body decomposing where we imagined our children might one day play with sidewalk chalk. His family ate all our next-door neighbor's garden vegetables. We aren't disappointed that they have gone. They weren't the most pleasant of squatters to share the property with.
We threw our Halloween pumpkins in his hole to rot, and covered that compost with a thick layer of yard waste in the fall, and then again in the spring. The hole was near-full, but still not quite level with the surrounding grass. I emptied the sandbox, shovel by shovel, into the rusting metal wheelbarrow we found when we moved in. I dragged it up the grassy hill to the groundhog's former hole, and -shovel by shovel- I buried the remaining evidence of their existence.
There's so much work! my husband despaired, looking out over our property.
We're filling the holes, baby, I said as I rubbed the space between his shoulder blades with my hand. We're finally filling the holes. Think about what this looked like almost three years ago, when we first moved in. And now? We're filling the holes!
Damn, he said, you're right. We're filling the holes!
* * *
I meet with my boss, and my collaborating partner, and her boss, around a rectangle of conference tables. We have stacks of paper hundreds of pages deep: requirements for reporting our progress, rubrics for measuring our success against the other programs competing for limited funds, budget spreadsheets, and various pieces of a report that will determine our future strewn across the tables.
We look good.
It's on me to make sure we look good. And we do. We look good.
Maybe June will just be an early-to-rise, nose-to-the-grindstone, Puritan-work-ethic type of month instead of a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I can handle early-to-rise. Inhale. I can do nose-to-the-grindstone. Exhale. My Puritan work ethic is all polished up and pretty; it's in fighting shape what with all the practice it's gotten over the last couple of months. I'd make a fine farmer's wife these days with my ability to work dawn to dusk and then on and off overnight tending to a baby in need of mother's milk.
I can survive another month as a farmer's wife. Especially as opposed to a clusterfuck of epic proportions, which is what I was expecting. Another month as a farmer's wife is doable.
And there's always beer for breakfast, if things should come to that.
* * *
I scrub out the kiddie pool, hose it down with a jet spray, unscrew the nozzle and slowly let it fill while my son hops foot to foot with excitement in the soon-to-be summer air. I pop my baby girl's backside into the Bumbo seat, placed strategically in the shade of the conifer tree where she can watch me work and listen to the birdsong and windchimes hover in the humid air.
We've been walking over patio stones for going-on-three years now, never knowing they were there, buried under the grass, until our feet wore a path deep enough into the ground to discover them. I dig them up, one by one, and place them in a pile by the back deck. They'll need to be reset in the soil, somewhere higher where the rain water won't flow over them, burying the rock in mud and allowing grass to grow over them again.
Sinking the blade into the dirt at the edge of the stone, I place my foot atop the hoe and heave my weight forward. Again and again, I dig down into the earth -this piece of earth that we own! just imagine that!- and reshape it.
My children laugh in the background. Their voices mix melodically with birdsong and windchimes. And I work, and I work, reshaping the very earth upon which we live.
* * *
I am so tired that days and nights blur together. I close my eyes in my office and wish for a pillow in place of a keyboard. I drift off on the couch with my children crowded close to my body, listening to late afternoon rain, and waiting for my husband to arrive home from work. I pause in the early morning, gathering my bearings, wondering if a single beer is a suitable breakfast for a workday lunchbag before coming to my senses. Sometimes in the middle of the night I lie awake and watch my daughter kick her little legs and laugh like a banshee before cuddling her in and nursing her back to sleep. My life resembles a rushed montage from a movie more than a linear sequence of events occurring in real time.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, fast approaching while I ride this wild wave to the end of June.
And I am reshaping the ground beneath my feet, building my future with my hands, digging through dirt and sheaths of paper to unearth whatever comes next. And it looks good.
It looks good, you guys.
Inhale. Exhale.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop!
Click-clack. Click-clack.
All the trains rush down the track. Where is Thomas going?
Wait! That's not where I meant for this to go.
It was supposed to be my heels. Myhigh low (I'm clumsy, with weak ankles; I don't do high) heels click-clacking on the hallway floors as I rush back and forth, over and over again, every day, delivering reports and reminders, escorting students and staff to the Next Important Event that Simply Must be Completed Before the End of the Year, checking post-its for phone calls to return, and the copier for copies to collate, and the fax machine for faxes to file, and the supply room for posterboard for parenting projects (we're out, don't bother to dig, I already looked everywhere yesterday) and ... And ... ANd ... AND ... itNEVEReverEVEReverSTOPS!
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!
Sorry, thought we could all use a dance party break there. What? That was just me? Oh.
I knew when I came back to work at the end of my maternity leave that I was looking at the toughestthree four (?pleasedon'tbefiveorsixorseven!) months I've ever navigated in this job.
I was right! I was riiiiiggggghhhhht!
And never have I been so dissatisfied to be so dead on. Can I get a refund on my right-ness? I want my maternity leave back! I'd like to take a moment to mourn, just a little jiffy to cry like a baby here in my own special space. Boo-hoo-hoo. (Babies don't say boo-hoo-hoo! Who came up with that?) WAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH! There, that's better. Life is sooooo hard, and the world's tiniest violin is playing a special tune, just for me and my first world problems.
No, really. I hear it somewhere in the distance.
Oh, that's just my ringtone? Another phone call I'm ignoring? Another voice mail I will reluctantly retrieve later with another little job I will promptly forget to do after jotting it down on another little piece of paper which will vanish into the ether (or more likely the mountainous paper pile that feels like it follows me around at all times, invisible, but there. Can to-do lists come back to haunt you if you've killed them without actually completing all the items? If so, I am so fucked.).
Basically, I'm drowning here. But it's Friday and lack of sleep along with a serious case of weekend-itis, topped off with an over-consumption of caffeine, has made me a little loopy. So rather than focus on the drowning, I would like to throw on some of those little arm floaties (they should fit my wrists; my upper arms are looking a little linebacker-esque these days and have no desire to be squished into floaties, adding indignity to the drowning! Plus fat floats, so they should be fine!) and call it a pool party.
Wanna come? Thomas the Tank Engine will be there, click-clacking down the track! He's going to Knapford Station! We'll have a lil' hip-hop dance party (Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop! Get it! Get it!)! And all the while, the world's tiniest violin will be playing in the background.
Pour yourself a drink! Toss it back and think of me! Nah, none for me, thanks, I can't afford to be hungover; my to-do list is ten miles long. You're going to have to party for the both of us.
Are you up for this challenge? I'm thinking it might require shots (for you, of course. I hate shots, but these are desperate times, and desperate measures might be required. Again: for you. I have quite enough desperation already, thankyouverymuch).
I would love to say I'll be napping while you do your party duty, but I'm pretty sure that won't be happening. If there's one thing I know, it's that: Life?
Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop!
Get it! Get it!
All the trains rush down the track. Where is Thomas going?
Wait! That's not where I meant for this to go.
It was supposed to be my heels. My
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!
Sorry, thought we could all use a dance party break there. What? That was just me? Oh.
I knew when I came back to work at the end of my maternity leave that I was looking at the toughest
I was right! I was riiiiiggggghhhhht!
And never have I been so dissatisfied to be so dead on. Can I get a refund on my right-ness? I want my maternity leave back! I'd like to take a moment to mourn, just a little jiffy to cry like a baby here in my own special space. Boo-hoo-hoo. (Babies don't say boo-hoo-hoo! Who came up with that?) WAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH! There, that's better. Life is sooooo hard, and the world's tiniest violin is playing a special tune, just for me and my first world problems.
No, really. I hear it somewhere in the distance.
Oh, that's just my ringtone? Another phone call I'm ignoring? Another voice mail I will reluctantly retrieve later with another little job I will promptly forget to do after jotting it down on another little piece of paper which will vanish into the ether (or more likely the mountainous paper pile that feels like it follows me around at all times, invisible, but there. Can to-do lists come back to haunt you if you've killed them without actually completing all the items? If so, I am so fucked.).
Basically, I'm drowning here. But it's Friday and lack of sleep along with a serious case of weekend-itis, topped off with an over-consumption of caffeine, has made me a little loopy. So rather than focus on the drowning, I would like to throw on some of those little arm floaties (they should fit my wrists; my upper arms are looking a little linebacker-esque these days and have no desire to be squished into floaties, adding indignity to the drowning! Plus fat floats, so they should be fine!) and call it a pool party.
Wanna come? Thomas the Tank Engine will be there, click-clacking down the track! He's going to Knapford Station! We'll have a lil' hip-hop dance party (Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop! Get it! Get it!)! And all the while, the world's tiniest violin will be playing in the background.
Pour yourself a drink! Toss it back and think of me! Nah, none for me, thanks, I can't afford to be hungover; my to-do list is ten miles long. You're going to have to party for the both of us.
Are you up for this challenge? I'm thinking it might require shots (for you, of course. I hate shots, but these are desperate times, and desperate measures might be required. Again: for you. I have quite enough desperation already, thankyouverymuch).
I would love to say I'll be napping while you do your party duty, but I'm pretty sure that won't be happening. If there's one thing I know, it's that: Life?
Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop!
Get it! Get it!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Christ Is In All of Us, Right?
After a long and stressful day at work I came home to change my daughter's explosive diaper. Noticing how far up her back it had travelled, how infinitesimally close it was to staining her freshly washed onesie, I was heard to utter the Lord's name in vain.
Of course the almost-three year old picked up on it. Of course.
You said 'Christ', Mommy?
Eager to correct my errant ways, or at least cover my ass for the time being, I replied: I did. I said a prayer to God. I'm asking 'Christ, please help me clean this mess'. (I take a generous view of those of us calling on the Lord in less than orthodox ways.)
My son, ever certain of his exalted place in the world, responded to my plea: No Mommy, not right now. I don't want to help.
Well, thanks anyway, kid. I wasn't previously aware of your divinity. Perhaps you can nip your sister's explosive diapers in the bud and we'll have more time for your regularly occurring temper tantrums there, Jesus Himself.
Of course the almost-three year old picked up on it. Of course.
You said 'Christ', Mommy?
Eager to correct my errant ways, or at least cover my ass for the time being, I replied: I did. I said a prayer to God. I'm asking 'Christ, please help me clean this mess'. (I take a generous view of those of us calling on the Lord in less than orthodox ways.)
My son, ever certain of his exalted place in the world, responded to my plea: No Mommy, not right now. I don't want to help.
Well, thanks anyway, kid. I wasn't previously aware of your divinity. Perhaps you can nip your sister's explosive diapers in the bud and we'll have more time for your regularly occurring temper tantrums there, Jesus Himself.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Personal and the Political
Osama Bin Laden was killed last night.
I had already gone to bed by the time it was announced. The only conversation I had later in the night was with my husband, who woke me up to ask why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. I mumbled something in response; I don't know what I said; I don't know why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. It may well be that I leave it on my side, snuggle in underneath it, and gradually kick it over to his side as I get overheated. Or maybe I pour it onto his side straight from the basket? I don't know. I don't pay much attention to the laundry, to tell you the truth, even though it's my chore and I do it. I do it quickly. Half-assed. It's how I'm doing almost everything these days.
So Osama is dead and the laundry is -again- unfolded.
I found out this morning. I was standing at the kitchen counter debating between peanut butter and jelly on a deli round versus chopped chicken breast and a slice of whole grain (for my son; I'm eating chicken quinoa soup this week), and all of a sudden my husband says: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
It's not even like it was the first thing he said to me! We had already talked about the water pressure in the shower and the whole unfolded laundry issue. I had semi-apologized, while at the same time noting that we really have no workable system for our laundry. He had simultaneously grumbled at my poor laundry-putting-away skills and grunted acknowledgement that Martha Stewart herself would battle with our poorly-developed laundry system.
And then it's pb&j versus grilled chicken and: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
Did I brag on this blog about how my two-month baby was sleeping through the night? I can't remember if I said it here or on facebook, but I knew -even as I typed each foolhardy letter- that bragging about your sleeping baby to the internets was just asking for trouble.
And sure enough, it hasn't lasted. My four month old could use some lessons from two months ago. Ah well, it'll come and it'll go. Sleep, that wily bastard. She's too busy chewing her hands and drooling enough to soak her tops straight through.
On the other hand, my daughter? The teething, awake-far-too-often one? She's a riot! She is the grinniest and giggliest thing I've ever met, but when she wants something she just goes ahead and yells out whatever it is in her loudest, most demanding voice, and the rest of us pretty much step to it. And then she laughs at us.
I adore her!
So Osama is dead, and the laundry's unfolded and my daughter's teeth are teasing us all with their elusive presence, and what she lacks in sleep she makes up for in magnificent smiles, looking coyly up at me from the breast and giggling that hoarse baby giggle that sounds like it should come from the lungs of a long-time smoker.
I wonder if Osama Bin Laden's mother breastfed, if he ever suckled, hungry and innocent at someone's breast, if he laughed. I wonder if someone held him, loved him beyond measure when he was just four months old.
Where is she now?
Can you imagine?
I don't think I can.
September 11, 2001 was my first day teaching preschool in conjunction with the local school district. All I could think of later was how much time, effort and energy had gone into planning and preparing for that first day of school. While I had been doing that, other people were planning and preparing for 9/11. It all seemed so incomprehensible.
We watched it on our neighbor's TV because we didn't have one. They had NASCAR decor in the dining room and made vaguely racist comments about their daughter's failure to win the public school talent show. Still, they seemed mostly goodhearted.
We lived above an African imports store, which was short-lived, and a long-time beauty shop. We were only blocks from one of the natural wonders of the world, but already neck-deep in poverty, crackheads in the alleys, unlocked cars picked over in minutes.
We lived in my hometown, which I loved and hated in equal measure. It was just over a year after we got married. The fall before I had walked to the Convention Center two blocks from our apartment to vote, early in the morning, before work. I walked the same direction to get to the local newspaper, where I stopped in on my lunch break one day to drop off our wedding announcement, that same fall as the election. The fall before the planes crashed on the first day of school.
I'm listening to the radio in the car in the morning. After a certain time it becomes clear that all the information they have has been imparted. Facts are repeated. This is what we do. We keep talking when there is nothing more to say.
My son says, from the backseat: I don't want any more talking on this radio, Mommy.
Do you want music? I ask, my hand hovering over the scan button, ready to run through stations until we find a song we like.
No, he says, I would like quiet, please.
I turn the radio off and we drive in silence through the rain. Trees are budding green all around us, and daffodils, crocuses and tulips are popping up in all the yards. My children are warm, dry, and safe with me for the time being.
I don't know the meaning of life and death. I don't imagine I ever will.
I know the washing sense of relief when your babies are safe. I know how to drive through the green and the rain. I know how to be silent.
And so that's what I do.
* * *
I had already gone to bed by the time it was announced. The only conversation I had later in the night was with my husband, who woke me up to ask why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. I mumbled something in response; I don't know what I said; I don't know why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. It may well be that I leave it on my side, snuggle in underneath it, and gradually kick it over to his side as I get overheated. Or maybe I pour it onto his side straight from the basket? I don't know. I don't pay much attention to the laundry, to tell you the truth, even though it's my chore and I do it. I do it quickly. Half-assed. It's how I'm doing almost everything these days.
* * *
So Osama is dead and the laundry is -again- unfolded.
* * *
I found out this morning. I was standing at the kitchen counter debating between peanut butter and jelly on a deli round versus chopped chicken breast and a slice of whole grain (for my son; I'm eating chicken quinoa soup this week), and all of a sudden my husband says: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
It's not even like it was the first thing he said to me! We had already talked about the water pressure in the shower and the whole unfolded laundry issue. I had semi-apologized, while at the same time noting that we really have no workable system for our laundry. He had simultaneously grumbled at my poor laundry-putting-away skills and grunted acknowledgement that Martha Stewart herself would battle with our poorly-developed laundry system.
And then it's pb&j versus grilled chicken and: Osama Bin Laden is dead.
* * *
Did I brag on this blog about how my two-month baby was sleeping through the night? I can't remember if I said it here or on facebook, but I knew -even as I typed each foolhardy letter- that bragging about your sleeping baby to the internets was just asking for trouble.
And sure enough, it hasn't lasted. My four month old could use some lessons from two months ago. Ah well, it'll come and it'll go. Sleep, that wily bastard. She's too busy chewing her hands and drooling enough to soak her tops straight through.
On the other hand, my daughter? The teething, awake-far-too-often one? She's a riot! She is the grinniest and giggliest thing I've ever met, but when she wants something she just goes ahead and yells out whatever it is in her loudest, most demanding voice, and the rest of us pretty much step to it. And then she laughs at us.
I adore her!
* * *
So Osama is dead, and the laundry's unfolded and my daughter's teeth are teasing us all with their elusive presence, and what she lacks in sleep she makes up for in magnificent smiles, looking coyly up at me from the breast and giggling that hoarse baby giggle that sounds like it should come from the lungs of a long-time smoker.
* * *
I wonder if Osama Bin Laden's mother breastfed, if he ever suckled, hungry and innocent at someone's breast, if he laughed. I wonder if someone held him, loved him beyond measure when he was just four months old.
Where is she now?
Can you imagine?
I don't think I can.
* * *
September 11, 2001 was my first day teaching preschool in conjunction with the local school district. All I could think of later was how much time, effort and energy had gone into planning and preparing for that first day of school. While I had been doing that, other people were planning and preparing for 9/11. It all seemed so incomprehensible.
We watched it on our neighbor's TV because we didn't have one. They had NASCAR decor in the dining room and made vaguely racist comments about their daughter's failure to win the public school talent show. Still, they seemed mostly goodhearted.
We lived above an African imports store, which was short-lived, and a long-time beauty shop. We were only blocks from one of the natural wonders of the world, but already neck-deep in poverty, crackheads in the alleys, unlocked cars picked over in minutes.
We lived in my hometown, which I loved and hated in equal measure. It was just over a year after we got married. The fall before I had walked to the Convention Center two blocks from our apartment to vote, early in the morning, before work. I walked the same direction to get to the local newspaper, where I stopped in on my lunch break one day to drop off our wedding announcement, that same fall as the election. The fall before the planes crashed on the first day of school.
* * *
I'm listening to the radio in the car in the morning. After a certain time it becomes clear that all the information they have has been imparted. Facts are repeated. This is what we do. We keep talking when there is nothing more to say.
My son says, from the backseat: I don't want any more talking on this radio, Mommy.
Do you want music? I ask, my hand hovering over the scan button, ready to run through stations until we find a song we like.
No, he says, I would like quiet, please.
I turn the radio off and we drive in silence through the rain. Trees are budding green all around us, and daffodils, crocuses and tulips are popping up in all the yards. My children are warm, dry, and safe with me for the time being.
I don't know the meaning of life and death. I don't imagine I ever will.
I know the washing sense of relief when your babies are safe. I know how to drive through the green and the rain. I know how to be silent.
And so that's what I do.
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