Recent Keyword Activity

Rest assured if you google this:

he was unable to manipulate utensils, and was dependent on cub scouts to feed him,
you will find The Blue Pitcher.

It's a proud day in these parts, folks.

In other news, Day 21 with a nonsmoker. Things seem to be going swimmingly. There was only one episode when he threatened to burn down the dollar store around the corner, but that, as they say, is par for the course.

Pregnancy Brain

Also called "placenta brain" or "baby brain drain" due perhaps to the fact that a pregnant woman's blood-filled body causes her brain to become eight percent smaller when with child. (Who need brain when got blood?)

Hmm...and I wonder why it takes me an hour to decide if I should leave a semicolon (;!) in a sentence.

For a whole nother world of wonder, check out my plum-toed friend's blog: HERE!
She's planning to give birth in the ocean; sort of makes that time you tried kite-surfing look easy, huh?

Top 10 Questions you Want your Mother to Answer "Of course not, sweetie" To...

10. Do I have to write a thank you note?

9. Is this ringworm?8. Do you ever wish things had turned out differently?
7. Is being a mother hard?
6. Is it bad to eat ice cream sandwiches for breakfast?
5. Does pregnancy make cellulite worse?4. Do you think I'm crazy?
3. If I don't have a cupcake, will I die?
2. If I have too many cupcakes, will I die?

1. Does giving birth hurt?

Summer Reading

"Love wasn't a thing you fell in, but rose to.
It was what stopped you from falling."
--Darin Strauss

(Such a good book.
It makes you leave dinner parties, claiming "fatigue,"
so you can get back home to finish it.
Highly recommended.)

Midsummer

moon drifts in cloud
I have a mind
to borrow
a small ripe melon

--Shiki

A Little Snippet from the Essay I'm Writing

X

The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,

When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!

Fear is something that settles, like a down pillow slept on night after night. When my husband called with the news of the bird, I double locked the door. I’m not sure now what I believed the bird could do to me, but some fear that, years ago settled deep inside me, was stirred, and I tasted feathers in my mouth, and my neck felt hot, and the hearts inside of me were not beating but pecking.

When I was a girl—five, maybe six—I found a seagull feather on the shore, and I carried it with me everywhere I went. It was my pen, my flower. It was my cigarette and lollipop. It was my bit of hope that sucking its juices would make me sprout my own wings.

A single disembodied feather. That winter, I lost it.

Three decades later, I am hunkered in the foyer, clutching wheat bread in my fist, terrified of what will happen if the door opens. My husband told me later that the bird was tiny, so small it could fit in my hand; two, he said, could fit in your hand. (That would be worth four in a bush.) What, he asked, did you possibly think it could do to you?

What I'm Doing Here

I've gotten three emails asking what I'm doing at Brown and one email asking if I'm really at Brown or just having some bizarre college flashback.

Here, I am going to school; Here, I am writing; Here, I am writing an essay about piling chickpeas too high on a plate and hotboxing cigarettes and what motherhood might mean and how I was thirty before I knew that apples have one hundred calories and how it never seemed there were any men in Mama Heaton's house, an essay about the Cult of Domesticity and Roseanne Barr and being scared of the bird and how in high school Brooke Gregory could burp the alphabet, an essay about love and what it feels like to wear love or carry love or be in love or sit near the shore of love and throw your feet into love or tie your hair back with love, an essay about suddenly remembering who you didn't want to be, remembering who you are, an essay that says nothing about staring out of windows though that is what I do all morning long; maybe I am writing more than one essay. Afternoons, I stir Benefiber into water in a little plastic cup with a spoon I carried all the way from Brooklyn; evenings, I go to lectures then put my legs up the wall and make up songs. Here, it is good. All good.

And that is what I'm doing.

Calling all Smokers and/or Ex-Smokers

So...I'm working on an essay, and Google has (finally!) failed me. I need the word for when you smoke a cigarette really, really, really fast. Shotgun? Bogart? Please advise. Perhaps this guy will inspire you (and if he can't inspire you with the word, perhaps he'll inspire you to die. I mean, ouch, my lungs hurt just thinking about him.):

Home

I'm often unnerved by how I can make a home of almost anywhere. Today after four hours on the train and countless little boats in bays, after a package of smoked almonds and a bottle of cold orange juice, after reading the paper and reading some poems and rubbing my belly and stepping out onto the platform to feel the heat of the sun, I've found myself in another home. So quickly I make these places mine; surely, it's from moving around so much as a child. A pillow, a shaking out of a comforter, a few books--suddenly, I'm home.

One of the magical things about pregnancy is that even here--in this dorm room at Brown University with little more than a scratchy towel that I'll soon carry down to the communal bathroom--I feel so accompanied. Now we stare at the computer; now we brush our teeth; now we see our reflection in the window when we're trying to see the trees whose leaves we hear rustling; now we lay in bed; now we read Li-Young Lee. Soon, we'll sleep.

Persimmons

by Li-Young Lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmon and precision.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down.

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.

Naked: I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo: you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons,

swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

Li-Young Lee, “Persimmons” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Rose (1986).

It's a...

Belly!!!

And inside that belly is a baby, and
Oh, the doctor kept saying,
what a beautiful spine!
Such a beautiful spine!

And then what looked like two perfectly symmetrical Tic Tacs:
Kidneys, the doctor said.

And look at those long legs, the doctor said.
She has such long legs.

She?
Yes, it's true.
(or as true as these things can ever be until the moment of actual truth)
It's a girl!!!

Good thing I'm pumping her with enough sugar
that she'll be the sweetest girl in the world!!!

Summer Reading

Plum Poll

The Baby Bird

The phone rang. It was my husband. Don't open the front door, he said. Okay, I said. Why? This was yesterday--before the rain fell so hard that I jumped out of bed and ran around the house making sure all of the windows were shut, before I fell asleep reading about my ten ounce baby, before Mary brought over homemade peach muffins. There's a bird, he said. A baby bird. I don't think it can fly.

Trapped in our entrance way, there was indeed a bird. When C. finally opened the door I was scared to look. I thought it would be featherless and half-formed, but it looked as much like a bird as any bird. It was a sparrow, maybe, or a wren, perched on the ground in the corner behind a steel pipe.

We tore the heel of the staling wheat bread from the fridge and made a little path for the bird. I worried this was a test of my capacity for motherhood; I grabbed my camera. No way, C. said. The flash will scare it to death. Oh, I said. Motherhood test: failed.

A few people came over, and we closed the door and ate watermelon and Mary's peach muffins and talked about poems. When they were leaving, the bird was gone. For much of the night, I dreamed wildly, and the baby fluttered inside of me, soft-winged, but then the rain came, and--for the life of me--I couldn't manage to get back to sleep, so I settled for tea and reading and the steady sound of the still-falling rain.

Living with a Non-Smoker: Day 4

The house still stands; all is well.

When Jackhammers were Bluebirds

(and cigarettes were safe...)

Home *%#!@* Home

I left this:

for this:

And if you're wondering where the toilet is...well, it's sitting in the backyard. Unless, of course, you're wondering where the new toilet is and, in that case, it's sitting in the living room, next to the old vanity but below a stack of tiles waiting to be cut by the very loud and very messy tile cutter that's sitting behind the couch. What couch? Oh, the one under all the plastic draping next to the Plaster of Paris.

I had thought re-doing a bathroom would be a contained project--one that happened only in the bathroom. How wrong I was. Combine this cup-runneth-over-project with the fact that the internet and the cable are out and the fact that my husband has decided to quit smoking, and there's a real warm fuzzy feeling going on at this love shack.

Alas, I guess I'll go sing the blues in the gym shower...

Foreign Fitness: The SAHM Contingency

I've taken Total Body Conditioning in Nicaragua, Step Aerobics 3 is Amsterdam, some sort of French Vinyasa in Geneva, but nothing--and I mean nothing--could have prepared me for the spin class I stumbled into in Tulsa yesterday morning.

There's this crew of hot-bodied stay-at-home moms in this town (and by stay-at-home I mean go-to-the-gym), and I marveled at their culture. They're all laying around--a sugar-free half-caf nonfat vanilla latte in arm's reach--with their magic circles and their ankle weights, and I want to point at my belly swell and be like, Dude, I'm preggers, but surely they're thinking, Whoa, she can't be pregnant, she's pushing forty. (Okay, pushing thirty-four, but still...they pop them out young in these parts...)

Anyway, witness the eerie Greek chorus of spinning:

Spin Instructor:
Are you doing this for your husband?

Class (in unison):
NO!!!

Spin Instructor:
Are you doing this for your kids?

Class (in unison):
NO!!!

Spin Instructor:
Who are you doing it for?

Class (in unison):
ME!!!

Spin Instructor:
I can't hear you!!!

Class:
ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I take the downward psychological slash spiritual slash emotional spiral catalyzed by the fact that being a SAHM and having a rock-hard butt from spin actually sounds half-appealing.

Backyard Swimming Pool

Yesterday, belly-down on a blue float, I played pretend with a few kids. Griffin, 2, was a shark; Campbell, 4, a seal. I'm a bird, I said. I fly. Two popsicles and a sunscreen re-application later, I wanted to be a cloud. You can't, they said. Why not? I said. Duh, they said. You're a bird.

18 1/2

The baby can now see. The book says the baby's eyes are so sensitive that if I shine a flashlight at my belly, the baby will flinch and try to hide. I imagine flashing a sort of Morse code in: an I need you to be good, an I promise I'll try, an I'm sorry I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, a hush baby, an I love you, sweet one. When we went in for the ultrasound at thirteen weeks, the baby sucked on its pinky. So strange to have a child growing in me, sucking its pinky, ducking from light. I feel fat and happy and wish I only felt happy and even for that I'm sorry: I don't want to be so selfish now. Driving these Oklahoma roads, the wind rushes in, and the baby moves. The moving feels like someone running their finger along a freshly healed cut; I shudder then long for it to happen again. Now, I'll take us to bed where it's dark and cool--my mother's bed in my mother's house though she's left for the night to drive to work at a faraway hospital--, and there, on the pillows that smell the way my mother smells, we'll sleep--my baby and me--where the only sound is the clicking of the fan and the only light is the one that will come in the morning.

Church Lady Pies & Cowboy Kickers

Once a year, on the third of July, the church ladies of Joplin, Missouri--and I'd imagine there are quite a few--roll up their sleeves, get out their rolling pins and start making their pies. French silk, coconut cream, lemon meringue, good ole apple, blueberry crumble, boysenberry crisp, anything you can imagine, each for ten dollars a pop.

Poor, poor church ladies probably had to work overtime this year to take care of my insatiable sweet tooth.
And if you're wondering why all of Joplin needs the endless vats of sugar and butter, it's to get the energy up for the homegrown fireworks show courtesy of my father-in-law.
Between keeping both my eyes and refraining from eating an entire pie, looks like it might be a long day. Happy firecrackers and potato salad!!! Long live the lemonade.

Sweet Summer Text

Talk to you soon
Sandcastle lessons today
Love you
Mom

Deep Brooklyn Nuptials

My friend Janan's mom got married this past weekend,
and this photo is so classic I thought it'd be a crime not to post it.

Between the rack and the hair, happiness is a certainty.
Have a fabulous rest of your lives!!! Congratulations!!!

Singing Lessons

In the last email I received about the progressing plum (five and a half inches from rump to crown!), I discovered that said-plum (even in the depths of my cantaloupe-sized uterus) can now hear. Knowing that said-plum can now hear makes me want to sing.

I'm not talking about your mama's threading-a-needle hum; I mean, I really want to sing, "belt it out," if you will, beam the ole pipes heavenward. Anyone who has ever heard me sing understands that this in itself is terrifying, but it's been compounded this week because:

1) I will only sing in the shower (or the car or on a dark deserted street), BUT we're having our bathrooms re-tiled (cue the melodic sledgehammer in the background), so I have to shower at the gym (cue "pregnant pooched" woman through frosted glass of steaming gym shower howling her lungs out).

2) And you might think that since I do my gym showering at off-hours, I cause little harm to the general public, BUT, it gets even worse (and my concern here is not for the general public but rather for the sanity of both my unborn child and myself) because (not including Happy Birthday), I only know four songs. Yep. That's right. Count them: two old church songs, one ditty about two old maids sitting under a tree and finally a lovely ballad my mother sang me when I was little about a girl who gets run over by a Mack truck but bounces right back!

So...you folks out there with children (or nieces or neighbors or very finicky boyfriends), give up the wealth. I need songs to sing. Give me your lullabies, your arias, your anthems and chants--the last thing I want is this baby coming out cooing to a Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall! (Oops. I guess that's five.)