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?

Ah, the Masculine Seed!

From Babies: History, Art & Folklore:

Aristotle believed that "the woman functions only as a receptacle, the child being formed exclusively by means of the sperm." According to an amusing theory of his day, the masculine seed, manufactured in the brain, descended along the ears and then made the journey down to the testicles via the spinal cord; those who championed this view of conception saw the sperm as a sort of "brain drop." He also believed that semen naturally produced males, and that a female resulted only if its development was disturbed.

Things that Open

Hanna came with little more than wind and rain, and then the sky just opened up, and it felt so good to wander under it.

Last night, I went to hear Ada read poems and then I ate Brazilian food with old friends and sipped on pineapple-acai juice; now, I'm thinking of things that open, of parachutes and windows, yesterday's sky and envelopes, drawers and elevator doors, blue eyes and brown, thinking of shows and hands and hips and jaws, of how the o sits between the n and the p open as can be. My dear old plum-toed friend may very well be giving birth today (open as the inside of a flower, as a cracked walnut, a conch shell, an undone heart).

This morning, I banged the lid of a new peanut butter jar with a knife; I ran it under hot water; I wrapped a dishtowel around the neck and groaned like the birthing books teach me. Finally, the gasp of opening, and I downed my glass of milk and licked the knife clean.

Holed Up from Hanna

As if I needed an excuse not to leave the house...

Ruh-Roh

Looks like I was erring on the side of subtlety
when I said I "burned my belly (just a bit)."
Ouch.

In the words of C.,
"Let's just hope you didn't blind our baby." Yes, let's hope.

(Frankly, I was just desperate for one last big dose of Vitamin D before the fall sets in.)

The Peach Itself

It's been too long since I've written about birds or fresh peaches or thought about the temperature at which the oven should be set. I am in the daze of pregnancy, nodding at people as they speak to me but really doing little more than turning inside myself and feeling for kicks. The sun is so bright today, and I laid on the roof, burned my belly (just a bit), wondered (of course) if this means I'll be a bad mother, decided (I hope) that it doesn't. Up there, I watched a pigeon make circles on the silver flattop and ate a just-washed nectarine.

Sometimes I wonder if the doing might be just as good as the writing, if what makes it all worth it is the peach itself--all that sweet juice--and not the hump of the p, that long e, ever-eager a, the ch-ch-ch like a cloudy day train forcing itself over and over up a too high hill.

First Day of School

The day after Labor Day, and this morning on my walk I took the street by the local school (for years I've avoided it--citing noise as my excuse). Lunch pails banged against summertime bruised knees, and girls with bows in their hair posed with backpacks in front of entrances. I rubbed my belly, hoping not to look insane but instead expectant.

In a few hours, I'll be back in my own classroom. I'll be sipping my big ole tea and trying to get everyone's names right from the beginning. I'll probably wave my arms in the air and barely refrain from standing on the chair and shouting. There's something I love so much about teaching. It makes me feel alive and aware and free, and it gives me the liberty to portray my passion for writing in a way that I don't always feel comfortable doing in the ordinary world.

Heck, maybe it's the captive audience, or maybe it's because they're only eighteen or nineteen, or maybe I feel validated because I'm actually getting paid. Maybe it's nothing more than the slight sugar high from the single square of dark chocolate I eat before entering the room. Whatever it is, I love the feeling. I'm a sucker for the first day of school. It makes me giddy and full of hope; it makes me spit-shine my shoes and put cucumbers on my eyes and sing little songs.

Today's assignment: In a single beautifully constructed sentence tell us what you did this summer. Have at it. If they can do it, you can do it.

Confession #1