One Year

O Eva, last night we slept with the sliding glass doors open, and in between dreams, I heard the waves wash in and out. I had thought by now that you'd be entirely weaned, but here on vacation, sleeping between dad and me, it seems you're nursing more than ever. Every day I remember I know nothing (and everything) about mothering. It's been one year. Yesterday, you ate cake and rolled in sand and laughed wildly when we played the bumblebee game, and the day before, you sailed on a boat and saw stingrays and drank Sprite through a straw. Right now, you're sitting on the floor looking at your favorite book, and soon, we'll take a long walk on the beach before heading back to the home we love. I can feel the days and years layer on top of each other, can feel the infinite pull of my love for you. Happy birthday, my dear sweet bird. Signing off on The Blue Pitcher for a while; I'd rather be sitting on the floor reading books with you.

***Thanks, readers. Gone fishin'. Don't know when I'll make it back.***

Day 362

Or the day of sand in your belly button; the day of pineapple and ice cubes and sail boats; the day of thanks; of great thanks; of last year on this day going into labor with you; day of monkey bread and mango and so much love; of gratitude; of wondering if I ever even knew what gratitude was before I knew you; day of who-loves-you-baby-who-loves-you-baby-who; day of you-mama-you-mama-you.

Day 360

(not taking it too well)

Day 359

Day 358

I love it when you walk on sand.

Day 357

I love it when you hold my hand.

Fever

Pressing my wrist to Eva's forehead to feel for heat, time collapses. My wrist becomes my wrist five years from now, checking for fever, the days gone short, the blinds pulled tight; becomes my mother's wrist when I was a girl; becomes Eva's wrist when I've grown old. So much held in the body, in the delicate pulsing skin. You'll be okay, I say to her--my mantra, my promise--we'll all be okay.

Day 351

O Evabird, your 351st day. Or, the day you ran a fever so high I cried, Or, the day that was two weeks shy of your first birthday, Or, the day you held my hand and walked the length of the park, Or, the day you ate sweet potatoes and apples and french fries and olives and buried your head into my chest, into your dad's chest, into the whole world's chest, Or, the day I kept saying over and over I love you because suddenly it seems you're so full of understanding. I love you, I love you, I say. And yes, you seem to say. Yes,yes, yes, you do. And yes, yes, yes, I do.

Poly(methyl methacrylate)

I teach on the fourth floor of NYU's Bobst Library. The library is an atrium design with twelve floors of balconies overlooking the main floor. I remember years ago, when I was a graduate student, staring down from a balcony for the first time: the black and and gray and white tiles form a mosaic of spikes. For a long time, there was a rumor that the floor's design psychologically kept people from jumping. But then people started jumping. Students threw themselves onto the spiked floor. One by one. From the balconies. Dying on impact. So the design theory was shot.

In recent years, the view from the balconies has become clouded by the plexiglass that extends up 10 feet on each floor. This plexiglass, school officials believed, would keep more students from jumping. But then last week, a junior scaled the plexiglass wall and he too threw himself from a balcony.

Yesterday when I went to teach, I was greeted by a security guard. He smiled from the bench outside the elevator; I smiled back. A couple of hours later, between classes when I went out for tea, I saw him again. He smiled. I looked up at each floor of the library, and through the plexiglass, I saw that on each floor was a security officer. Their job, I guess, was to wrestle down anyone who tried to scale the wall.

The whole scene was haunting. It made me wonder why the school hadn't extended the plexiglass all the way to the ceiling on each floor; perhaps even more, it made me wonder why they had thought plexiglass would solve anything at all.

I have to admit: now that I'm a mother, teaching feels different. I have less sympathy for my students, less time and energy, but, at the same time, I love them more; they seem more capable than ever of bringing me joy or sorrow. I think I used to equate them with me (how PAINFUL to get a B!) but now I'm more inclined to think about Eva at their age (and if she earns a C she deserves it!).

And so yesterday--thinking of my students looking up at each guarded floor and of the guards looking over at each of my students--it broke my heart a little that none of them had likely ever seen the library when it was a true atrium. They only see it as it is now: glassed in--a protective coat that fails to protect--and almost eerily devoid of echoes.

I sipped my tea at the front of the room. At one point, I had to sit on my hands to keep me from reaching out to them. I'm sorry, I wanted to say, and I wanted to say it loud enough that it would bounce off the walls and land deep inside of them. Instead, I drew squares on the board and talked about textual integration until my tea grew cold. Then, one by one, they gathered their things and left.

New York: A Love Story

It was 1996, and I was dating a poet who lived in Spanish Harlem. I called him Blue, and he called me Miriam and left little notes all over my apartment. I'd go to light a cigarette or open the fridge for juice, and there I'd find--in his scribbled hand--a tiny fading note. I found them for years, actually: Trumpet, or, The sky was crooked, or, This is not a metaphor: my heart is full.

But the night I'm remembering we were in his apartment, his tiny, dirty apartment. It was late October, and I was wearing that old army jacket, and we were sitting on a futon mattress on the floor trying to break up. He was crying; I was sopping up pizza grease with a paper napkin. You, he said, are the coldest person I have ever known. (This haunted me for years. Am I cold? I'd ask people, particularly after wild displays of warmth.)

And then, suddenly, in the midst of one of our painful long silences, we heard something coming from outside. The whole city was going wild. Horns honked, and music played, and we ran to the window and pushed it open and let the cold air rush in. The streets were filled with people celebrating. "What the hell happened?" my poet yelled.

We were lost, two flights up, wild-haired in the wind. A man looked up at us. "The Yanks just won the World Series, you #**##%! idiots!" Before we knew it, we were out in the street, holding hands and laughing and the whole city was on fire. Those moments were so magical--so alive and spirited--that we stayed together for a couple of months--me and the poet--and while we never did manage to fall in love, it was that night that I fell so hard for New York that I knew that I'd never want to leave.

Day 337

Yesterday, Eva, you had a balloon, and you wouldn't let go of it, and so I worried that you would suddenly let go of it and that it would float up into the blue, and you would cry and cry, and it would be a lesson on how balloons float away if you don't hold onto them. Finally, it occurred to me that I could tie it to your wrist and save you, at least for a little bit, from having to learn that lesson, and so I did, and then we played and played, and later it came undone and floated away, but by then our minds were somewhere else, and we hardly even noticed as it got smaller and smaller before disappearing entirely.

Send in the Clowns

Subway Poem 10

An Orthodox boy carries a hat box
And stares at an old map.
He's never been where he's going.


And beyond him, another man
With hundreds of keys
And a black umbrella.

I want to tell him how cloudless
It is above ground,
Tell him his umbrella is useless.

Here, a baby cries,
And down in Memphis,
A baby waits to be born.

Yesterday, my oldest friend asked
If we ever get over the past.
I thought of him all those miles
And years and years away.

I sure hope not.

Subway Poem 9

I've got a rubber chicken
In a plastic bag
And I'm Coney Island bound
On the F-train


People are wearing pearls
And smacking gum
And reading the Post


And I'm wondering
If before all this
There was a rubber egg
If it came first
Came before this chicken

Wondering if home will come first
Come before the cyclone and the sea
Wondering if these doors will open
And I'll wander out to find a saner me

Day 331

O, Evabird, I'm baffled by how much there is to teach you. This is the fall, and these are the leaves and this is what the leaves do in the fall; this is the ground; (that is the crunch of the leaves that you hear with your ears! & these are your ears!); this is a wheelbarrow, and over there is a pumpkin; this is an orange pumpkin in a blue wheelbarrow under an even bluer sky; this is green and this is red, and red means stop, or sometimes love, and green means go or grass or that you may be feeling ill or envious, or that spring is near because the tips of trees are turning green, but spring is really not near at all; this is fall, and then there will be winter, and it will snow, and I will worry about all the things I may have forgotten, and I will wish us another thousand seasons and hope that in them, everything else will come.

Subway Poem 8

The tunnel was dark.
The woman was warm.
Would you rather be light?
The woman asked.
Would you rather be cold?
The tunnel replied.
The woman said nothing.
Instead, she stepped onto the train,
Pulled her hair off her neck
To cool herself



And in the sway of the train
And the dark of the window
She made a list of all
That she had ever loved.
You were there, of course,
On the list, along with the birds
And fall and falling,
But then there were other things,
Darker things, tunnels, silences.
And the list grew and grew
Until it became something else entirely,
Something silver and filled



And hidden under the city,
Something pulsing, vibrant,
Entirely unseen from the sky,
Almost invisible in its desire.

Subway Poem 7

I've started believing that if you wait long enough, the train will come, and if you wait even longer, it'll go, then come again and go, come again and go, and probably if you waited even longer, the building would crumble and the tracks erode. No, that's not right. It would all just get slicker and newer and faster, and you'd still be standing on the platform when it started wearing down again, and hell, you'd think, I've been standing here since it only cost a buck to get on this train. And you'd laugh at all the suckers who paid $2.25, laugh and laugh, and they'd look at you like you were just some crazy on the platform, standing there while the trains enter and leave the station, again and again, like the most obedient of sunrises.

Two Blissful Years

Day 322

Today, my little love, you've eaten blueberry pancakes at 4 am in a vegas casino, and you've laughed (hard!), and you've swam in
a swimming pool and napped with your dad and said Hi to at least a hundred strangers, and just minutes ago, inside the cabana, you took your first steps. The breeze is light, and the palm trees are tall, and every moment I love you more than I loved you the last. Happy 322nd Day! I hope it's your best one yet.

And then there's this...

Why I Subscribe to the Listserve (Ex. 3)

My co-worker really likes beef jerky. So to thank him for his help this year, I'd like to buy him some good beef jerky. Not the mass produced kind that you can find at the supermarket. But the "gourmet" beef jerky that is very delicious. Does anyone know where I can buy "gourmet" beef jerky online or in Brooklyn?

Thanks in advance for your recommendations,
-Ellen

Why I Subscribe to the Listserve (Ex. 2)

I get really bad headaches and get extremely dizzy while having sex. Does this happen to anyone?

Donna

Mom to Corey and Alex

Why I Subscribe to the Listserve (Ex. 1)

Hello all,

I have inherited a quaker parrot. (Unbelievable story). The bird has became very attached to me and craves attention. So much so, that I can't give it all the love it deserves. In the process of keeping him, I purchased a beautiful med-large cage. It's powder dye (so it doesn't chip), a nice gray blue and on wheels. (Bought for $350; an impulse buy,wanted him to have the best)
I am selling both for $300 or best offer to a good home. I want to make sure that he goes to someone who has time to spend with him. training, etc. He is very smart and is talking. (he says goodbye when I leave. so sweet).

Please let me know if you are interested or if you want me to send some pics

Best,
Stella

Subway Poem 6

Seeing Eva on the sonogram last year
Her spine so strong and perfectly curled
She looked like a seahorse

Now she waves at me from the window
As I leave for the train,
Checking my pockets
Again and again
For all I might have forgotten

It was easier when I carried her in me--
The seahorse, the sea--
Easier to understand how to be

Subway Poem 5

A single escaped flower
Biding its time before rush hour
Still uncrushed

Subway Poem 4

I wonder if you enjoyed your lunch today; if you left your paper at your desk and carried your sandwich--perfect in its plastic case--down to the courtyard; if the sun glinted off the foil as you unwrapped it; if, perhaps, unwrapping it, you found a Post-it that your lover had scrawled. Thinking of you, it read, in her knowable hand, then x's and o's, and your teeth sinking into the bread, and the wind, o wild fall wind. Soon she'll pull out that old blue scarf again.

Subway Poem 3

The sun's on its way down
And the whole town's
Gone underground



Waiting for the train
Can hardly remember
This morning's rain


Down here, we're all so close
Your breath on my neck
My breath on her sleeve

Down here, it doesn't matter
That hours ago
I left my umbrella in some room

Doesn't matter who I miss
Or what I crave


Doesn't matter if you've got on
Gold peep-toes
Or a shiny yellow slicker

'cause down here
We're not going anywhere
But home

Day 319

O Eva Jane, it seems you're not a bird anymore. Or maybe you're still a bit of a bird, but then equal parts wind and girl and sunshine and laughter. Already, it's hard to remember how you felt in my arms when you were first born, hard to imagine how my mind occupied itself all those years before you came. Your cry is no longer a seagull's squawk; it's become its own thing entirely, become you. 319 days on earth, and now fall is here. You're going to love its leaves and its breezes; and it--like everything that has ever come to know you--is going to love you too.

Subway Poem 2

Night was a crocus
Now day
Slick and shiny
And miles away




I keep thinking
Someone will use
All this space to dance

The woman beside me
Smells like hair gel and syrup
And I can feel a mamba
In the knock of her elbow on mine


And you, sir, across from me
With those fancy black lace-ups,
You want to dance too, don't you?

And the whole train says...
5, 6, 7, 8
Let's all dance
Don't mind if we're late!

Subway Poem

I'm between three women
Talking Chinese
And I'm acting like
I don't understand
Because I don't understand
The ads, those boots,
This man reading the bible
With his dry cleaning
On the pole
Rocking back and forth
Rocking like a treetop baby
And no one's singing
On this train
No one's begging or dreaming
At least not outloud
I've got nothing today
Not even a cup of coffee



Just got these shoes
And something knocking
The back of my heart
Something that feels
Like a song
Something that feels
Like it's been too long

The Teacher Looks Up from her Stack of Papers

It seems strange to me that after all these falls and springs I still haven't gotten used to how cyclical the world is. I spent the day at home reading student drafts; my feet were cold because I haven't dug out last year's socks, and I worried I'd never have time to write again, and I worried Eva would never nap again. It's this sort of hyperbolic un-contextualized thinking that gets me in roar in my comments to my students. You must expand your thinking about [a given moment], I write in the margins, underlining must, decorating the whole thing with exclamation marks. Step outside of yourself! I say. I'm glad they never call me on it, never yell, When was the last time you stepped outside of yourself, woman?

[The teacher looks down sheepishly, exits stage left.]

What the Sky Said

Teeth

Yesterday, she cut her third tooth, and today it rains and rains. (So sharp and white, the glare, the windows.) Years ago, I dreamed my teeth fell out while I was standing in line at the grocery store, that I coughed and when I looked into my hand I found them: shiny, bone-like. I remember feeling terribly embarrassed of them and shoving them deep into my pockets. These days my dreams are quick and panicked, and I seem to remember all of them because I never get past them in sleep: I hover at the edge, like I've rolled up my blue jeans and am just sitting by the shore; I don't go any further than that; too afraid, I guess, that I won't hear Eva if she cries. I've been thinking of her growing up, how she'll lose these teeth, how we'll joke about doorknobs and strings and taking bites of apples, how she'll have dreams that she could never recount to me, dreams she won't even recall. The rain will stop. (I think it already has.) But now this: more glare through the windows; my hand absentmindedly touching her forehead, forever checking for fever; my finger reaching into her mouth and pressing on her gums. Teeth, I say. Teeth.

What to Do this Saturday

Come to Prema Yoga
at 6 p.m.

Eat these:

Drink this:

Listen to these:

Original Fairy Tales
by

ADA LIMÓN

Sanjana Nair

Kristin Dombek

& me.

There will also be a raffle of manicures, Pilates sessions, massages, dresses, plants, toys,
Italian meals, books, and much, much more.
All to support:
this.

Hope to see you there!

How to Wile a Day Away II

First, forgive yourself for misspelling "wile" several days ago
(that should take until well after lunch).

Then, read someone else's love letters:
go here.

A Divine Afternoon

1 napping baby
1 scoop homemade egg salad
1 cold Diet Dr Pepper
the sun slanting (///) through the blinds
Miles on the stereo
first day of fall

Day 303

O Evabird, somehow Day 300 slipped by without a 1000 pink balloons to celebrate. I guess that's how it happens: the days get more and more slippery; fall keeps coming, year after year. All week I watched yellow school buses and knee-socked girls, and I imagined how, not so long from now, you'll be running to catch your own bus.

Already you're teaching me. Just yesterday, you fell backwards down a few stairs, and I picked you up, so sure that you were hurt, so sure that you needed me, only to have you wail more. Finally, I put you back on the steps, and you stopped crying. You were crying, I realized, not because you were scared or in pain, but because the stairs had been taken from you.

You, my little love, are funnier and smarter and sweeter every day; every day you become even more of who you've always been. Aw, 303, the day we saw a flock of white balloons flying through the blue. It's hard for me to imagine that 304 could be any better.

How to Wile a Day Away

Courtesy, unironically, of my brother.
It appears he's not really a (word) hater.
Go:
here.

11-384-2531

Word to My Brother

Last week, it was brought to my attention that my Irish twin of a brother (today 36!!!!!!) doesn't like the word "word," as in "Word?" as in "Dig?" perhaps even as in "Word!" and all I can think is: how can this being with whom I share at least an eighth of a brain and a quarter of a soul, how can he turn away from words? I mean, my brother, don't you know what words are? They're bananas and Cheerwine and these huge sunflowers that Eva and I saw late this afternoon when we were walking through an alley and the whole sky turned pink. Words, my brother, are cats on roofs and drives in the mountains, are puptents and cigarettes and staying up all night telling jokes, are Mama Heaton's front porch and Pappy's ukulele, are swimming pools and movie stars and meeting in the panhandle to give you a car; words are, are...; oh, they're sweet and sticky and sometimes icky; oh, those silly words: when all else fails, they rhyme with birds (!); oh, words, forever words, three words, a million words; they're verbs and nouns and mom and sky; they're me and you and airplane blue; they're more (always more); they're happy, happy (ever so happy!) birthday to you.

Word?

Birds on the Wire

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Back in the Classroom

Yesterday was my first day back, and except for the time the nanny called (Let this serve as a reminder for us all to turn off our ringers, I said), and except for the time I started babbling about how I thought we were all in a dream, and except for the one brief comment about manhandling texts and the other brief comment about herpes and semicolons, and except for the moment when I realized they are now HALF my age, that when I was their age, they were Eva's age, and except for the second when we just stared at each other as if through glass or windows or rain and were probably all thinking about where we had come from or where we were going, thinking about anything except where we were; except for all that, it felt good--really good--to be back.

Haiku Interview

Read what I had to say about writing
(It was snowy. And Eva wasn't too long in the world.):
here.

Summer's Last Light

Day 289

O Evabird, I love how dirty you get, and I love that you climb up the slide and that you hardly ever cry when you fall. I love that swings bore you and that you want to chew on sticks and chase pigeons and scream at passers-by. I love how when you stop (and you rarely ever stop) you stare up at the leaves and look up at the clouds. Ah my little love--how fearless and happy and enchanted you are; what a fierce and beautiful combination of qualities to take on the world.

Language

The doctor weighed you and measured you and looked in your ears and looked in your eyes, and oh, she said, what's she doing? Crawling, I said, and eating and pooping and laughing and standing and pointing. Pointing? the doctor said. That's BIG. That's language.

But then we left and you cried and cried (all those shots; your week-old cold; your days-old bellyache), and I bounced you up and down. Oh birdy, I said, what's the matter? But you just yelled and yelled, and words meant what they might always mean: little more than what they weigh.

Why I'm Steering Clear of Writing Poems

You sit in chairs!
You climb up stairs!
You've got blonde hairs!
You fear not bears!
You love you some pears!

Your smile is a dare!
Your feet are bare!
The people they stare!
You've yet to ride a mare!
Your mom she cares!

She don't use Nair!
She'll love you fore'er!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I am.

Day 276

O Evabird, yesterday you mastered the wave. For months, I've practiced with you, lifted your wrist and said over and over, Say Bye-bye. Say love you. For a while you turned your palm towards yourself and opened and closed your fingers. The other way, I said and turned your hand. Say Bye-bye to Daddy. Or Nana. Or Mimi. Or Poppy. Or Grandpa. Or Auntie CC. Bye-bye to whoever it was who had been with us and was leaving.

And so this morning, when I had to head back to work at NYU for the first time since you were born, it broke my heart a little to watch you wave at me. All day, if I closed my eyes too long, you'd be there waving. I bragged a little, and a dear friend declared saying goodbye a "useful skill."

Much of the day, I took notes, wrote words like essay and glass and RAIN in all caps; sympathetic vibration; LOVE; arpeggio; dream. It felt good to find myself in another mind--an old familiar mind--but as good as it felt, towards the end of the day, I noticed something else: I had doodled birds all along the edges of the paper. Nothing exquisite or detailed, the same simple birds that littered all my childhood drawings, little more than upside down w's, but there they were: everywhere.

In essay, we teach that if you're truly engaged you can't really leave something, that you have to return to it, that that original thing has done such work on your mind and your thinking that it has left an indelible mark on you. I think--at least in this instance--we may very well be right.

35: The Good Life

Guest Blogger

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Breeze (noun)

[Sometimes I think life would be more enjoyable if I stopped writing about it and started simply living it. In those moments, I reason that if my only self-imposed obligation was to be present I'd be able to understand the clouds differently; I'd hear Eva's laugh more clearly; I'd really feel these breezes that keep blowing, that I keep telling her about, Ocean breeze, I say, or, hot summer breeze, or this is what the wind feels like in Oklahoma. Sometimes, I wonder if writing--and perhaps even speaking--removes us from where we are or delivers us where we want to be.

Other times, I eat a square of chocolate, brush my teeth then crawl in bed and read.]

What Love Looks Like

Week 39

She's now been out in the world for as long as she was inside of me. Feels like forever ago.

I Carry You in my Heart

Ah, bittersweet, my last day of teaching
(at least until next spring!)
at the Hungerford School.
Oh, how I'll miss it.

This might be how each day began...

...but this is how most days ended!!!

(Pictured: Rachel having her usual existential crisis.)

Sweet, soulful Christerpher.

Hilarious Matthew who informed me that the mysterious
"man in the red suit"
who often shows up in his poems
is, in fact, Santa Claus.

The ever-inspiring Courtney who described her teacher as
"cuddly as a tiger lily."

Da Boyz of Mr. Anthony's class
who took the last day to write deeply passionate love poems
to their sub.

Adam & Manny--
big-hearted, fairy-loving fun--
half the time I forgot we were supposed to be learning.

Goodbye, sweet poets!!!

I carry you in my heart
along the city streets,
and, oh your love, it makes me smile
at everyone I meet.

Day 261

O Evabird, I thought you might forever smell like pears and lavender. Already you're changing, already you smell of waffles and mango and sometimes chlorine or sleep or crumbs. I try to take in every bit of you before you change again, before you start smelling like sweat or salty ocean or running-through-the-fields, like cherry lip gloss or lollipops or Scratch-n-Sniff stickers, before you smell of drugstore perfume and backyard Truth-or-Dare, of places I've never seen, people I've never met.

Tonight when I was giving you your bath, I squeezed the water from the rag and watched the drops roll down your back and wondered what on earth it was I did all those days before you; I mean, I really wondered. I'm still wondering, and I can only guess that I'll be wondering for a long, long time, at least until the days before you were so long ago that I can hardly even fathom them. Happy 261st day, my little wild-eyed wonder. So much of the world for you to see; so much of you to see the world. Sweet coconut cream dreams.

Xo.

Confession Thursdays

I've had two burgers today; it's not even five o'clock.

Spanish for Feathers

Look Eva, I said, las uvas! Las uvas! We were on the airplane, and I was pointing to the clouds. She had slept soundlessly on my chest as we climbed to 33,000 feet, but then she woke, and there was the rattle and the silver teether and Baby Jane, but finally, all the tricks in my bag could do no good, so I pointed to the clouds. Las uvas, I said, las uvas. I couldn't quite remember if uva was the word for cloud or bird, but I took pleasure in the fact that we were in the sky and either might work. Las uvas, oh, las beautiful uvas.

Very cute, the woman beside me said, and I smiled. Yes, my daughter is bilingual, I wanted to say, and so am I! Grapes, the woman said. Floating grapes.

Grapes?

Las uvas, she said. Grapes.

We three stared out the window, and the clouds were long and stringy as cotton candy pulled from its paper cone. Cumulus may have saved me, may have painted me as both bilingual and wildly imaginative, but those wisps were as thin and real as a dream. I thought hard for the word for feather. Pluma, I thought, but then I thought la pluma was a pen. I imagined Eva growing up to believe that the sky was filled with ink pens and grapes, that it was ready to be written on and devoured. Feathers, I whispered to her and she pressed her hand on the window. Las plumas, the woman beside me said, and I repeated it, and the loud hum of the plane carried us home.

Sunnyside Up

Cover-Up

My mom often says there's only so long you can lie about your age before you have to start lying about your kid's age. I like this. It means in her world I'm only 27. I've started feeling the same way about under-eye concealer. There's only so much you can use to mask the fact that you're not getting any sleep before you have to start dabbing under your baby's eyes as well. Oh Evabird, looks like you may be a Covergirl long before you're due!

Fear

I've never been afraid of much. I love heights and falling and flying; I consider spiders to be good luck; I can speak in front of large groups without having to picture anyone naked. Because of this, my transition into motherhood has been particularly strange. Suddenly, there's so much to fear: choking, drowning, kidnapping, sure, but then there's even more. Am I kissing her too much? Not enough? Feeding her too much? Not enough? Is all this crazy singing making her happy or scarring her for life? Does she feel pressured to learn the alphabet? Should I not have flicked the Roly Poly away? A couple of nights ago, I tried to watch an episode of Law & Order but had to stop after ten minutes because I got so scared that something would happen to her, that she'd be dealing pot at 14, that the creepy neighbor would "help" her, that she'd never even make it to 14 because the video monitor was broken and delivering an old "sleeping" picture while she was actually upstairs sprawled on the floor because she had climbed out of her crib. I guess I'm wondering what to do with all this fear, wondering if it goes away or becomes half-remembered or if--and I, uhm, fear this might be the case--I should get used to plucking all these grays.

Day 246

O Evabird,

Let today be known

as the day you pooped in the pool.

I'm sure your friends

(pictured below)

are glad it didn't happen

on Day 245.

Summer II

(Or: Vat O' Babies)