Last Night's Dreams

Shafer Hall rode a pony through Grand Central Station, and I fished off the shore of Vieques where I caught a stingray but threw it back. There was also at least one trip to Burger King and my mother in a long white dress; snow kept falling--either outside my window or on the other side of my mind but I couldn't see through the clouds. In her nestside-nest, the bird hardly squawked, but daylight came too soon anyway, and I woke, worried about sentences, worried that they'd never come, worried about what they'd say if they did.

Drop of the Ball

Several days ago, I saw my watch sitting on the dresser. I couldn't remember the last time I had worn it, and I picked it up and glanced at it and found that it had stopped on November 27 just before 10 p.m.--right around the time I went into labor.

It's been nearly a month and time, as I've always known it, has shifted completely. It has bent and twisted and folded its legs up under itself to sit blankly on the couch staring at the wall; it's battled the wind and tears and a couple of gasps of exhausted laughter; it's snuck out of the house while the baby slept next to her father, just to walk, alone, around the block breathing the solitary air.

I find myself jolting up in the middle of night worried that I'm not ready for Christmas--there are presents to buy and cards to write and loved ones to call--only to realize Christmas has already passed.

There was even the moment a few nights ago when I woke up half out of a dream thinking it was time: the baby was coming: labor had started. Moments later, by the light of the nightlight, I had changed my daughter and was feeding her and realized that soon she won't even need me, that in all actuality, she already doesn't need me.

It's disorienting. Nights last a thousand years, and this month has gone by in a second, and come Thursday, it'll be 2009: the ball will drop; strangers will kiss, and here we will be, in the heart of Brooklyn, my husband, my daughter and me, wondering if the night will ever end and still hoping that tomorrow might hold off on coming.

Ho Ho Ho!!!

It ain't Christmas
if I'm not stuffing my baby girl into a stocking
for a photo op.

Merry Christmas to you and yours
from us and ours...

Merry Merry

Eva's First Movie

She loved it; I loved it; you'll love it.

Day Twenty-two

Yesterday, Ada came by with magic and light and a calender made of birds. She held Eva's head with her two hands and gave her kisses, told her stories about whales and said her ears looked like seashells. After she left, we went to bed early, and I dreamed of icebergs, not just the tips of them but the whole mass of them. When I woke, I pulled Eva close and pressed my ear to her ear, tighter and tighter, until I could hear the whole ocean inside of her.

It's morning like these...

when one wonders if it's a good idea to start smoking again.

The scene: in bed, 3 a.m., baby wants to be fed, but no way can baby be hungry, baby just got fed at 2:30, baby's diaper is clean, oh, but now, baby has peed all over "sleep sack," all over sheets, so much urine out of such a tiny infant, quiet baby, please be quiet baby, shush baby shush baby shush. Take her, the wife says to her husband. Finally. Exhausted. This same song since 8 p.m. Take her before I throw her. Husband, in despair, not believing wife could say such a thing, husband who sleeps on the side of the bed where he can't hear every cry and grunt of infant, husband who knows wife will wake up to comfort infant, will pick her up, latch her on, let her pee anywhere she pleases. Wife tries to comfort husband: You know I would never throw her, and of course she wouldn't, I wouldn't; she's read it in all the millions of books: this is a normal feeling: it's that 3 a.m. feeling, that oh my god what if my bones fall out because my skin's too tired to hold them kind-of-feeling, that I've stared at you all day long little girly bird and I love you more than anything in the world so can't you let me sleep for one hour straight kind-of-feeling, that barter-with-God, barter-with-self, barter-with-child (I'll let you stay out all night for prom! Please just forty-five minutes). Husband says, Maybe you should give up dairy. Wife imagines pouring the milk down the drain, walking around the corner to the deli and bellying up to the counter for a pack of smokes, make that two, ah heck, just throw in a third. Gave up dairy, she could say when her husband came downstairs and found her burning wildly on the couch: her head on fire, her heart aflame, smoke seeping out of every inch of her. Gave up dairy for good.

Bliss

Courtesy of Sweet Margot

Postpartum Pop Quiz

The prenatal fear that you will "break the baby"
is quickly replaced by the fear that:

a) you constantly smell of spoiled milk.
b) the breast pump will scar you
(both emotionally & physically) for life.
c) you will never again wear pants that are not
i) maternity
or ii) intended for sleep and/or yoga.
d) your mind has turned to mush.
d) (see: d, and make this e)
e) All of the above!!!

Undone

Now, you sleep. A wave of sour milk,

a hundred piles of wash and me, your mother, in bed

crying real tears, your gums already so familiar,

and your feet, your seabird cry,

and now, you sleep, a sleep of the very tired,

a sleep I long to be sleeping,

but your cry, your breath. I hear too much

of you, hear black and blue, and when I reach

for you (as I do and do and do),

my hand finds the warm, moist air from your nose,

and I count your breaths. (One, two). Now, you sleep,

and I stand over you, and I want already

for you to forgive me, forgive my lurking,

my counting, forgive my bone-tired bones,

my envying your rest, my wondering if I can do this loving,

this I am your mother, and you are my child

kind of loving. Now, you sleep, and the wash stays

undone, and I too am undone, completely undone by you.

Sweet Dreams

C., circa 1974

E., this morning

Day Twelve

A Pretty Song
by Mary Oliver

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

Week 39: A Recap

It all began Thanksgiving Day. Everything seemed ordinary enough. I woke up, took my "Week 39" belly-shot and then did the ole waddle with C. down to the fancy deli to buy some last minute goods. There was ham and turkey and mac & cheese and two kinds of cranberry sauce; there were green beans and squash and a whole heap of carrots.
Then, our guests started arriving, and there was even more. Here's Olivia with her famous apple pie--to be shadowed only by her famous pumpkin pie.
Looking back now (see below), I do look, as they say, verrrrrrrrrrrrry pregnant, like one of those women you point at expecting that at any moment they're going to burst wildly at the seams...

And...burst I did...Just moments before we sat down for dinner, I thought, hmm...something's going on. I was, I believed "leaking amniotic fluid." I went upstairs and called my mom. Mom, I said, I think I'm leaking amniotic fluid.

Your water broke?

Well, it doesn't seem "broken." Maybe just a leak.

Your water broke, she said. You need to go to the hospital.

When we hung up, I called my doctor for a second opinion. Yes, she told me, I did need to go to the hospital. I went down to the table and made everyone hold hands and say what seemed like a prayer. I might be in the early stages of labor, I said as we piled our plates high, and they laughed. Then we all laughed--all the way to the hospital.
At the hospital, I was given a gown, a plastic bracelet and a Ph test. Since I still wasn't having any contractions, I really wanted to go home and sleep for the night. The pony-tailed resident wasn't having it. Please, I said. I'll come back tomorrow. He stared at me; sitting at the edge of my bed, he played Mr. Empathy. My concern is for your unborn child, he said. As you know, the vagina is a very, very dirty place.

(Uhm, actually I didn't know that but thanks for the heads-up...)

Fortunately, the tryptophan from the turkey worked as a bit of a sedative; unfortunately, the laboring woman next door could have woken the dead. Sleep was not, it seemed, in the cards. The next morning, my doctor arrived. Because of my already broken water, she was concerned about infection. She told me that if I didn't start having contractions by eight that evening, she'd be forced to induce me. I really didn't want to be chemically induced. Again, I begged to go home to try to induce labor on my own. Finally, she agreed, giving me twelve hours to do whatever I needed to do.

It worked a little like this OR how to induce labor at home: Hot shower followed by acupuncture followed by a quarter cup of castor oil chased with apple cider followed by a one mile walk followed by two slices of pepperoni pizza (my mom swore by it) followed by a five mile walk followed by a self-given enema followed by a twenty minute nap followed by a shower and BAM: labor.

Here I am measuring out the castor oil. Yum diggety:
What followed was the longest night of my life. C. and my mom (who had flown in from Oklahoma) were in the labor room with me, and it went a little like this: la dee da dee da dee...oh my God...ouch...moo...(rock)...La dee da dee da dee...repeat. (I had hear mooing could help alleviate some of the pain.) We had gotten back to the hospital around five, and let me tell you, all the yoga in the world couldn't have prepared me for the pain of labor. The thing is: I think I'm tough. Or, I should say, I thought I was tough.

Around 2:30 a.m., 33 hours after my water had broken and 9 hours after the intense labor had set in, my mom came in to the bathroom with me while I showered. She cried. Here, the strongest woman I've ever known, and she was crying. Please get the epidural, she said. I can't watch this. I can't watch you be in so much pain.

Uhm...okay.

So I did it. Maybe I'm a wuss. The only way I can compare not getting an epidural to getting one is like this: not getting an epidural is like being hit by a Mack truck; getting one is like sitting in a truck stop eating a grilled cheese sandwich. To be honest, I wanted nothing at that moment except to hold my baby girl. All my tough-girl talk, all my "ooo-I-just-wanna-experience-it" talk, all my blahblahblah, it all meant nothing when it came down to meeting my daughter. (Of course, though, I'll still try it again with my next child; I hear the second one's much easier.)

So, that's it: Eva's birth story. We'll never be the same...

Lullaby

Eva's First Week

Fresh out of the womb...

Day 1:
Nana thinks the bow looks cute; I protest.
Looking back, I guess the bow is pretty darned cute.

Day 2:
Leaving the hospital.
Not a peep from Evabird.
I, on the other hand, bawled.
Were they really letting us take a live human being home?

Day 4:
Life is good.
Day 5:
First trip to the doctor.
All tests passed with flying colors!
Day 7:
First week on earth completed.
She even survived her parents dancing around the room
loudly singing Happy Birthday...

In the News

Earlier today, scientists believed they had found two previously undetected planets hovering dangerously close to the earth's surface. They then realized they were looking at my milk-engorged breasts. Back to feeding...

Her Cry

sounds like a Seagull's squawk

so I call her Evabird and tell her stories about the ocean: all salt air taffy love; how you can walk a hundred miles with the sand between your toes and never think to look back; I tell her about balloons that come unloosed and stars that lay belly-down; I tell her about the time I got stung by fishes made of jelly and the day her Uncle Joe buried me in the sand and made a mermaid of me; I tell her of meteor showers and summer thunder and houses that sit so close to the edge of the earth it seems that any second they could fall into the sky. Then I kiss her head, and Evabird, I say, mama's here. Don't cry. All the ocean is tears...we don't need any here.

Eva Jane Callihan

Six Pounds & 1 ounce

Born (after a long, long night)
5:19 a.m.
November 29, 2008

I'm in love...

Gobble Gobble

Much to the annoyance of everyone I've run into in the past two days, I find infinite delight in these two simple words. Have a good day, they say; Gobble, gobble, I say; or, you're one centimeter dilated, they say; Gobble, gobble, I say; or, Hello? Have you even looked at my paper? Aren't you working? Where are you? they say.

Gobble?

"Vanity, Vanity..."

"...all is vanity,"

said the woman at thirty-eight and a half weeks pregnant
as she slipped into her paper bikini
and anxiously awaited her wax.

(Because, you know, giving birth is a heckuva lot like going to the beach!)

Stay tuned tomorrow for...
The Final Pedicure & The Emergency Eyelash Tint

Note to Self

It's a Baby Bjorn,

not a Baby Bjork.

Week 38

This morning's email tells me that my baby is now the length of a leek; but, try as I might, I can't imagine the length of a leek; it seems too small; it seems as if we've gone backwards, as if the peppercorn-cum-plum-cum-peach stage shouldn't be such a distant memory. Two nights ago, I slept fitfully, and in the earliest hours, I woke up and reached for my belly. I had been sleeping in a strange position, a position that when I reached for her made her so much smaller, and the room was dark and I was still half-dreaming, and it seemed, if only for a second, she was gone. In that moment my heart broke a thousand times. I suppose my body is trying to prepare me for all the love I'll feel towards my daughter; God, I hope I can handle it.

Daddy's Girls

I'm feeling oh-so occupied. I stare down at my wild kicking belly, and I'm certain that my students, my colleagues, my guy that serves my apple cinnamon tea with honey are staring too, thinking, Can't you control your baby?

For months, I felt she was a part of me: an extension, a beautiful tender extension, but still very much me; now, though, with each day, she becomes more and more of her own creature.

Last night, pillow-propped in bed, reading yet-another birthing book, sipping on yet-another cup of uterus strengthening tea, I was trying to get her to move for me: Come on, baby girl, I was saying, come on, and my voice shook a little but was all sweet-mamalike and still nothing. Finally, C. came in--Kick, he said, and she kicked.

Hmm...a daddy's girl already? Not quite sure how I feel about that...

Monday Again

"The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it."
--Paul Celan

[Outside, a freeze threatens;
in here (if I just close my eyes):
a thousand spots of heat.]

Realization #72

I actually can believe it's not butter.

Week 37

Your baby is now the size of a free-with-purchase turkey; incidentally, you feel about the size of a Macy's Day Float. Ginormous, you soar through the streets of New York City. Small children cover their heads in fear of your collapse; grown men step aside to make way; grown women shake their windblown hair and smile little secret smiles, the secret of which you're still a few weeks away from understanding and, quite frankly, a little scared of understanding. When your husband asks what you want to do for Thanksgiving you take it as a dig. Ha, ha, you say. Not funny.But then, maybe it's not so bad, being so high up there in the still-changing leaves and the wild blue sky. The air is crisper than you ever remember it being, and, looking around, the world--the world you thought you knew so well--is a whole nother place: pinker, sweeter, ready to be shared, to be passed around like so much cranberry sauce and stuffing while in the background the TV flickers again and again with the sounds of the parade.

At the Office

These days, I chomp on Laffy Taffy and chug water and stare down at my ankles, waiting for them to swell like un-canned hams; these days, I pop Papaya Enzyme to quell heartburn and say little prayers to avoid heartache and sing loudly in the shower, even when I know it'll be a long day, even when I've forgotten to buy new Body Wash or change the razor blade, sing that old church song about melting and molding; these days, I imagine what labor will feel like and if I'll want to get a pedicure in the early stages and if I'll remember how to breathe. I take naps, too--short ones in my cubicle--and then, not quite groggy, I walk back into the office next to mine and (discreetly) grab another Laffy Taffy from the jar, and wow, I think, has it always tasted so darned delicious?

Monday Poem

Love Song

by Carol Muske-Dukes

Love comes hungry to anyone’s hand.
I found the newborn sparrow next to
the tumbled nest on the grass. Bravely

opening its beak. Cats circled, squirrels.
I tried to set the nest right but the wild
birds had fled. The knot of pin feathers

sat in my hand and spoke. Just because
I’ve raised it by touch, doesn’t mean it
follows. All day it pecks at the tin image of

a faceless bird. It refuses to fly,
though I’ve opened the door. What
sends us to each other? He and I

had a blue landscape, a village street,
some poems, bread on a plate. Love
was a camera in a doorway, love was

a script, a tin bird. Love was faceless,
even when we’d memorized each other’s
lines. Love was hungry, love was faceless,

the sparrow sings, famished, in my hand.

From Poetry Magazine, Oct.-Nov. 2002
The Poetry Foundation

Saturday To-Do List

Listen to hypnobirthing podcast.
Wash tiny baby clothes.
Put together bouncy seat.
Drink uterus-strengthening tea.
Alternate between giddiness and tears.
Wonder what she'll look like.

Downy

Said the woman who smelled of fabric softener:
"I want to live a life
where I'm so overcome by love
that I forget to do the laundry."

Hope

I'm feeling so full of feathers and firecrackers; a feeling that I remember so often from childhood, that seemed to be lurk around so many corners, say, waiting at the mall to see the trapeze artist or being at the tent revival and watching believer after believer find Jesus again; hope was everywhere then: it was in Dairy Queen and the Braves and sitting shotgun in the station wagon and saying the pledge of allegiance and wanting to be a ballerina and live at Myrtle Beach; and then, time turned (as it does); leaves fell (again and again); snow came and rain and a whole cloud of mosquitoes, and hope was still there but it came in pulses and flashes: it was standing in line for the bus with my one giant suitcase when I first moved to New York; it was in the sudden pink of the sky on an early morning walk and in the sound of the waves on my wedding day; it was walking to the drugstore to buy yet another pregnancy test, just to make sure it was true, hearing the heartbeat, seeing the profile; and, heck, I've always loved the feeling, but for so long, it's felt so independent, so solitary, so my own explosion of feathers and firecrackers.

Since Tuesday night, though, hope has swelled through the streets of the city. It's palpable. This town--this town that hasn't quite been able to shake the cloud of September 11, 2001, that's had its stock market troubles and its millions of tiny despairs, its fractured friendships and failed relationships--now reeks of hope and love and desire and belief. I'm just feeling grateful to be a part of this time in history, grateful that my daughter will be born in a year when hope was also reborn into the hearts of millions. Thank you, Mr. Obama, for bringing that wild, giddy feeling back to so many of us. May hope cease to be something that catches us only in flashes and once again become something that we stumble into, corner after corner, season after season, whether we're pushing a stroller or holding a hand or running to yoga after having just dropped the kids off at school; may it be something we know and savor and demand, and may, in the end, it manifest itself into something even greater.

Don't Forget to Vote!

Even if your sole purpose is to cancel out the vote
of your wacky
spouse slash neighbor slash coffee shop lady
slash Nader-loving professor with the hair growing out his ears.

My Little Brother: Helga

Pretty is as pretty does.

Looks like Pretty needs to shave his armpits.

Dream 112

Didn't dream of saints--lost or otherwise--instead there was the ocean, so much of it filling the streets, and I kept thinking of how I can hardly swim and how I should be drowning but I stayed on top of the crests; parking meters floated; bridges snapped; the sky was an eerie cloudless blue, and I wasn't fighting the surges, just waiting to be taken down by them, observing how surprised I was that I was calm, not dying, but calm; and when I finally woke--after everything had dried out and the edges of the earth were crisper--I stared out the slats of the blinds at the sun, a different sun, a later sun than yesterday's sun.

It's Halloween!!!

Celebrate like the rest of us:
Eat your body weight in candy corn!!!

Things that Turn

Pages; vinyl records; milk when it is bad; sunflowers--towards the sun, chicory leaf--towards the north; a roly poly when touched; waffles and pancakes and merry-go-rounds; the night to cold, the day to warm; a light on and off; a friend on the street when you call out her name; that bright-eyed heart-eclipsed girl from the old 80's song; an old jerk, a new leaf; the seasons; a good car on a shiny dime; the time this Sunday, falling back; this baby girl inside me: head down now, Readying herself, the doctor says, to be born.

Something to Ponder;;;

Week 34

Your baby now weighs four and three-quarters pounds; you know this because she is balancing on top of your bladder and you can feel every ounce of her, but you don't really mind, actually you don't mind at all, because all you can think about are her toes and how small and perfect they already are and how you'll kiss them and how they'll smell like a newborn baby--that smell you never understood when other people gabbed about it; hmm, you thought, bizarre--but now, getting so close, you're beginning to understand, and you can hardly wait, so you bide your time sipping tea and thinking about how next fall you'll have to find tiny matching socks before you even leave the house.

Thursday Poem

Trying to find a poem to post, I notice a terrible deficiency in poems that contain Thursdays. Tuesdays are everywhere; Sundays follow closely, but Thursdays seem all but forgotten. How sad to be a Thursday, especially when the cold sets in, and you have not worn socks (your mother would be disappointed), and you have left your scarf on the hook by the door, the hook you hung so you would not forget to grab your scarf on a cold day, a Thursday say, when you were running--breathless, poem-less--out the door, running somewhere that you have already arrived and now nearly forgotten.

Latin for Cake

Perhaps I've found a way to simultaneously curb my sweet tooth and quadruple my anxiety about giving birth. [Not that I'm anxious (I keep telling myself!), not at all--it's perfectly natural and beautiful; everyone was born.] I'm just struck by the vast new vocabulary I've acquired since getting knocked up.

I remember when "sunny side up" was merely a way to order eggs, when "back labor" was akin to working overtime, when "placenta" was just something somehow related to babies. Now, placenta, Latin for cake, has a whole new meaning, and those long walks down to Sugar Sweet Sunshine, the ones I couldn't do without early in my pregnancy, where I'd belly up to the counter and order vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, well, they've taken on a whole new hue.

Ah, for the days when cake meant little more than happiness and calories...

One Year

One absolutely incredible year.

Fall

I never fail to be amazed
by how much joy the leaf blower brings my husband.

Rightside Up

As a general rule, I prefer being upside down.

Exhibit A:

Imagine then my despair at my thirty-two week ultrasound when Uh-oh, the doctor said, looks like she's bottom-down breech. I stared hard at the screen, and there happy as can be, surrounded by my amniotic fluid: my pretty little daughter sitting on her pretty little bum. What are you doing in there? I wanted to yell.

I mean, how do you explain to an unborn child how difficult it will be in the real world to be upside down? You have to hunt down trapezes and monkey bars and yogis who cling wildly to inversions--it ain't easy. Do it now, I want to say. You've got your whole life to be rightside up!

So now in my spare time I google "turning a breech baby." Yes, it's only been forty-eight hours since I got the news (which, by the way, they told me was waaaaaaay too early in the game to worry about), but already I've done acupuncture and shoulder stand and cut out sugar (well, except for cupcakes) and talked to her and sang to her and made C. shine a flashlight at the bottom of my belly and put a bag of frozen peas near her little head.

And though I've yet to find "try shaming her into turning by writing about it in your blog," I thought I'd try that too.

Other People's Windows

I love my early morning walks around the neighborhood, love seeing the sky turn pink as the sun rises over Brooklyn and smelling the sweet, doughy fresh baked Italian bread. I love looking in people's windows and seeing their coffee pots dripping in empty kitchens as they--somewhere in another room--shower or hunt down cufflinks or try to get their sleepy-headed spouses out of bed. And then there is the homeless man around the corner, or maybe he's not homeless, maybe he's just waiting for the bus in an old beat-up coat, and God bless your baby girl, he says. I love him too.

Dream 1013

Sometimes I don't dream about the baby. Last night, I walked miles and miles...always walking.

There are these old, old mountains in southwest Oklahoma, mountains so old they've been scaled down by time and almost aren't even mountains anymore, mountains where I'd camp in college. Nights, we'd channel dead poets and eat Frito's; mornings, we'd wake up to buffalo outside the tent. I haven't seen those mountains in over a decade, and they were always so fragile--earth breaking up under my hiking boots, memory slipping away on the drive back to school--that I sometimes find myself wondering if they're even still there.

That was all that was in the dream: just a long walk through those archaic mountains, and then the room grew a bit cold, and the baby kicked, and, finally, I got up to close the window and make us warm.

Sign of the Times

Paid a buck fifty for a nectarine;
it tasted like wet wood.

Three-Ring Mind

My mind has been a total circus lately. I woke up on Tuesday with a deep gash in my leg from my own thumbnail. It sent me into a spin: If I can't keep my own nails trimmed, I thought, how will I take care of a baby and trim her nails and how do you even bathe them? Aren't they slippery? And what about those little suction-y things? And why have people given me mitts? And what if I can't hear her crying? And what about when she gets older and glares at me over uneaten-quinoa across the kitchen table? What if she says she hates me?

I spent the rest of the day wandering around in a wrinkled dress trying to figure out how I could be thirty-four years old and still believe that wrinkles just magically fall out of clothes.

Yesterday's anxiety was more generalized. I took an early walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was gorgeous, and the sky was so blue, and the city so perfect, and What, I kept thinking, is the purpose of life? Why do we write and love and grasp and grapple, and all day I was coming up empty handed. Students came in and out of my office. One told me a story of her estranged father reattaching the neck of a tiny ceramic goose he had given her mother years earlier. Maybe that's it, I thought. Or maybe the way this light's coming in; or this kick from the baby; or this perfect peach.

By the time I left the office and was walking to yoga, my mom called back. I had left a message that I had two questions.

Her: What's up, girly?

Me: Hey momma. How do you get rid of a sty?

Her: Warm, moist heat.

Me: Great. Thanks. Okay. What's the purpose of life?

Her: Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

Me: I thought you might say that.

We hung up, and I went to yoga where I fell into a deep and peaceful sleep and woke up only to eat an Organic Oreo.

So, folks, my mother's weighed in--though she may change her tune now (I was kidding! Do you think they'll know I was kidding!?!)--I need more. Purpose of life, please.

Playing with Poems!!!

My dear friend, Zoe Ryder White who also happens to be expecting her first baby (!!!), just came out with a book. It's an instructional book for K-2 that uses poems to teach word lessons, and what a beauty it is! Congratulations Zoe!

Zoe included a few of my poems, ones that I wrote especially for the book, and I feel really honored and grateful. (Thanks, Zo.) I'll spare you the one about screaming for ice cream as I've been doing enough of that around here lately, but here's one that teaches compound words. Hope you enjoy...

Postcard from Someplace Lopsided

Dear Sweetheart,

I have spent the afternoon
watching the sunrise.
All is sideways but full of butterflies.
Here, the ladybugs live in beehives
and the sunflowers bloom on seashores.
Oh, it is something!
Just this morning,
sipping my tea from a buttercup
and basking in a moonbeam,
I heard the heartbeat of a rosebud.
I'd do anything if you could be here
to see the wheelbarrows of wishbones
and the downpour of starlight.
Please visit soon.
I am awestruck but oh so lonely.

Love,
Somebody Blue

If only grading were so easy...

Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
A+!

by Richard Brautigan

Sweet Little Ditty

On Friday night, I ate ice cream for dinner.
On Saturday night, I had pie.
Tonight, I'll sup on sugar cane soup,
and that, my dear, ain't a lie!

A Good Saturday Morning Cry

It involved horses and snow...

Week 31

Your baby now weighs more than a large head of cabbage; your heart has grown more than 30 percent, and you, you...well, how do we say it? You may be feeling...emotional? Perhaps you drop a jar of mustard on the floor; it doesn't even break, just sort of flies and rolls, and you want to yell; you get sort of teary; you feel like when you were thirteen and you want to punch something but your husband looks at you like you're insane, so instead, you choke on your own thick words and try breathing deeply (all that yoga!) but that doesn't work, so you point to your belly and tell your husband you need him to love the baby and to love you and then you make him promise that he will never leave, no matter how crazy or clumsy you get. No, you say, really promise. Cross your heart. You have to. But don't hope to die. Please don't. Promise. Because we need you. And there you are: standing in the light of the kitchen, clutching a jar of mustard and wishing, wishing, oh deep-belly-wishing that you had bought a head of cabbage last week so you could pick it up and forget all of this and try (try, try just a little) to begin to understand the weight of things to come.

Mama Heaton's Birthday

Today, my grandmother, had she lived, would have been a thousand, maybe even a thousand and two. Timeless, true. I feel most like her when I’m in my old brown housedress, and I spread my knees and let the fabric hang between my legs, and there in that bowl made of cloth, I have a whole batch of beans to string or socks to match. I feel most like her when I’m propped up in bed sipping on ice water; when I’m yelling for someone and they don’t hear me so I yell and yell again; when I sop up bean juice with cornbread or call someone no-good or suddenly just want to sing. Sometimes it feels like a hundred years ago that we were all cooped up in that old green house, but sometimes, like this morning with the way the light is hardly even making it through the windows, it feels like I never even left.

All the King's Men...

So, I'm in the return line at Lowe's yesterday, and the cashier needs to see me ID to assure--I'm guessing--that I don't make a weekly habit of going into Lowe's with a bunch of unused sconces demanding merchandise credit. (I do.)

Uh oh, she says. What? I say, afraid I've been found out. That's a bad idea, she says. What? I say.

She holds up my license. Organ donation, she says. Terrible. My dad runs a funeral home, and he says they just cut you all up and then it's so hard to put you back together, and you're just laying there a total mess. Nobody even recognizes you. Just guts, you know, with nothing else really in there.

Uhm, thank you, I say.

Any problem with the lights? she asks. I shake my head, take my card. Well, good luck with the baby. She smiles--her teeth, an unsettling white--and points from my belly to my face, my face to my belly. You two have a fun day, she says.

Uhm, okay, will do.

Dream 927

Dreamed the baby was born but wouldn't eat. She would only swim in the ocean. I stood on the shore and kept calling her back. Mom said not to worry, she'll cry if she's hungry. There in the ocean, she seemed more fish than anything else, slippery, foreign. Outside our bedroom window, the rain fell so hard against the turned-off AC it seemed all of Brooklyn might drown.

When Weight Watchers Goes Awry

Dad: So, I think I'm gonna just keep on losing.

Me: Dad, don't get crazy or anything.

Dad: Just another ten pounds or so.

Me: I mean, I don't want you to become anorexic.

Dad: No way, Sis. You should see my gut.

Me: It's not about the gut, dad. It's about control. It's the mind. Besides you probably don't even have a gut.

Dad: Wanna hear me fry up some turkey bacon right now? Will that make you feel better?

Over the phone line, I hear only the faintest of sounds, probably just Fiber One nuggets knocking against the porcelain bowl.

Longing #923

New knee socks.

My Morning Glory

Every morning, just before six, it begins.
The kicks above my belly button
so evenly spaced they might be guided by a metronome.
Finally, I crawl out of bed, open the blinds, put on the hot water,
and she settles--
again, it seems,
content with the simple mechanics of the world.

Surrounded by Strangers

On weekends, C. wears a cap around that his dad got free with the purchase of a chainsaw. Nice hat, I say. He is a changed man. You have to understand: I married a smoker who thought that a weekly indulgence in fettuccine alfredo was a God-given right. Today, less than a year later, he smells of soap and grilled chicken.

Fade to three nights ago: the middle eastern restaurant threw in some baklava with our hummus. Ooh, yum, honey, I said, and it dripped off my finger.

Him: Do you realize how fattening that is?

Me: Do you realize I'm seven months pregnant?

All in all, it's pretty amazing, but occasionally, I'm like, uhm, can we order Domino's and dip it in ranch dressing, and he's like, uhm, no.

Then, there's my dad who's lost 27 pounds in the past three months! Lots of Fiber One and running, he says. Last week, he ran his first 5K (and won his age division! placed 11th in the whole race!); today, he's entering a five miler. The man now has a compost pile and an electric car! This from a guy who ate Wendy's chili on his first day as a vegetarian.
They claim they're getting healthy for the baby; they wanna live forever, see her get married, see her kids kids have kids. Meanwhile I sit on the sidelines chomping on baklava and marveling at the kindness of these handsome strangers.

Sweet Seava

A new bird in the world...

Welcome, little one.
A mammainthemaking is now a mama made!

Blur

Flew the red-eye back in the wee-hours of full-moon Tuesday and am feeling only half awake but wildly wired. The sky seems sloppy, all blurred at its rough blue edges. It is Week 29: my hair still smells of Monday's fire; the baby now weighs almost three pounds; she has just begun to dream.

On this Day in History

1835:

Darwin reached the Galapagos.

1973:

My brother, Joe T. Hefner, was pushed into the world.

2003:

I smoked my last cigarette.

Today:

Woke up in Vail, lit a fire in the fireplace,
made a cup of hot cocoa and looked at the snow-capped mountains.

Animal Woman

I've just been informed that there's an entire subculture of folks--Fluffs, they're called--who feel most comfortable when dressed in fluffy costumes. They wear bunny ears or cat tails or furry little mitts--a sort of cross dressing for the animal-loving set.

Which brings me to the wings I've been constructing for years and reminds me of a friend I once had who I was certain was part-bird. From her toes to her nose to the weird way she hung out in trees, I was almost always waiting for her to fly away. (Eventually, she did.)

C. and I are in Colorado where it's gray and rainy. I have just lifted my feet for the vacuuming maid; she has just spied my trashcan littered with mini Milky Way wrappers that I hoarded--squirrel-like--from the glass bowl at the front desk.

I think with pregnancy I feel more and more animal. Eat, sleep, hug, eat. Dream: fitful, wild, little bear of a baby born. Now, to nap, then slip on my furry slippers and stalk the halls of the hotel until dinner time.

Join the Lakeview PTA!!!

Got five bucks burning a hole in your pocket?
(I know you do!)
Remember Gabe?
(I know you do!)

Well...C. & I are each donating five big 'uns (that makes TEN!) to become card-carrying members of the Lakeview PTA. Gabe's mom, my dear friend Holly, is pioneering the membership drive, and she thought it would be fun if Gabe's little Norman, Oklahoma school had members in Brooklyn, and that got me to thinking, and I think it would be fun if Gabe's little Norman, Oklahoma school had members everywhere--Gastonia and Sri Lanka and Tulsa and Dubai, Key West and Tuscon, Tuscany and Santa Barbara!!!

So, just sign up below, and I'll send in the cash (five bucks for each of you!), then the next time you see me you can buy me a cupcake the size of my head. And, hey, pass it along, because life's too short--we all know that, especially today we know that--to sit around on our haunches dreaming up where our next baked good is coming from and filing our already too short nails.

Longing #91

To spend all day under a tree watching the sun through the leaves.
You?