Sunday, May 31, 2009

Day 190

Evabird, you're just two days over six months, and already you love words.

When I read you books, I point and point at pictures. This is a sunset, I say, or, these are ten toes, or, oh look, a whole sea of jamberries floating under a jazzberry sky. But you, my little love, look at the words.

I guess for you those words are pictures too: that pretty humpbacked P; the lonely L; slippery s; too tall T.

O elegant E, I so love thee.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

A Story about Fish

Or maybe it's about love or the Harlem Globetrotters or fire or that blue and white striped scarf the people in our dreams who fly airplanes seem always to be wearing.
Painting by Pat Saunders-White

New story:
here.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Summer Sliding In

Evabird, all weekend we’ve been in the Catskills with friends. There’s laughter and bare skin and trees taller than any you’ve ever seen. Yesterday we sat by the lake, and I shaded you with my body. Shadows, I told you, this is what the sun makes of us. The pond thrummed with the sound of mating frogs, and the sky changed over and over: stone to white-wall to bluer than blue.

Last night, thunder storms rolled through and I was scared that they’d wake you. Or maybe I was just scared. So I took you from your crib and held you in bed with me. Come morning, the raindrops glistened in the green, and we walked down the crooked lane and past a field of yellow flowers where a beat-up old piano sits. YARD SALE, a sign read, but when I asked the woman how much she wanted for something, she said, “Nothing. It’s all free. Just take it,” and then I didn’t want anything.

The days are already getting so long. Your third season out in the world, and nights, I give you spoons full of pears, then bathe you and, finally, watch as your dreams pass over your face. O sweet bird, I imagine some day it’ll be these trees and this thrum and this rolling sky that inhabit your dreams. Summer will slide in, settle around you, and you will hold all of this somewhere deep inside you, and it will give you all the peace you need.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Eight Things

Lazy, lazy mom Amanda tagged me in this note, and so, what the heck? Here we go...

Eight Things I Am Looking Forward To:
1) the 4th of July in Joplin
2) Eva reaching for me
3) this weekend in the Catskills
4) remembering these exhausting times
5) watching Grease II with Eva when she's older
6) seeing my mom, listening to the songs she sings
7) getting in bed and reading
8) my goodnight kiss from Cody

Eight Things I Did Yesterday
1) picnicked in the park
2) walked five miles
3) toasted a dear friend's AP celebration
4) Pilates
5) pushed Eva on the swing, read her stories, nuzzled her
6) got stunned by the Manhattan skyline
7) peeked in to see if my dear friend who's crashing made it safely
8) worried that the bird is weaning herself

Eight Things I Wish I Could Do
1) sleep eight hours straight
2) slow things down a bit
3) love unselfishly
4) drop eight pounds
5) drive with all the windows down
6) show Eva the Pyramids, the Great Wall, the Grand Canyon, how to be kind
7) publish a couple of books
8) kill this fly that got in the house this evening

Eight Shows I Watch
1) The Bachelor
2) The Bachelorette
3) Sex and the City re-runs
4) Law & Order

That's about it. Since Eva was born, I don't watch much of anything but her.

Eight Bloggers I am Tagging:
1) Zoe: The Red Engine
2) Kate: Flights of Fancy
3) Margot: Un-BLOG-eavable
4) Little Miss Mel: littlemissmel
5) Heather: Cheese 'n Pickles
6) Dad: Old Runner
7) Olivia: Near Life
8) Andrea: Sneaking Poems into Academia

The Calamity Janes

Last year, when my dear friend Zoe and I met up for our annual walk around Prospect Park, we were surprised--and thrilled--to find out that we'd both managed to get ourselves knocked up since we'd last seen each other. (No wonder we'd been too busy to get a coffee!) And so we walked. And walked. And walked. All around the park, all the months of our pregnancies, planning our drug-free, surprisingly painless births and trying to fathom the beings that grew inside of us.

And then they were born: Anna Jane on November 20 and Eva Jane just nine days later. The Calamity Janes, we call them. Yesterday, we didn't walk around the park; instead, we laid on blankets with our daughters and celebrated Anna's six month birthday. Happy birthday, sweet Anna. We look forward to years and years of sunshine, laughter and blankets in the park.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Caregiver Dilemma

After Sunday's post, you can only imagine how I felt yesterday when, after spending an hour or so staring at the computer, I came down to find Eva asleep--on her babysitter's chest.

Me: Uhm, hey.
Babysitter: I know. It's crazy. It's the only way I can get her to fall asleep.
Me: Uhm, okay. Cool.

Standing there, my heart broke a dozen times. Let's just hope this isn't a sign of things to come, or I'll be saying ixnay to orkway!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Day 169

Evabird, you've grown too big to sleep on my chest. For months, I pinned you there and held you until you stopped crying, until your breath grew rhythmic, until you slept and slept and finally woke. It's been almost six months, and still, I can't get enough of you. You smell like lavender and stewed apples and wishes gone good, and I bury my nose into your neck and lift you into the sky and think of how much more you'll grow, think of jumpropes and hopscotch and T-shirts and bubblegum, and my heart clenches a bit, wanting to keep you this close forever. This. Close. Always.

Eva, two days old

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Wednesday Poem

Blue Willow

A pond will deepen toward the center like a plate
we traced its shallow rim my mother steering
my inner tube past the rushes where I looked
for Moses we said it was a trip around the world
in China we wove through curtains of willow
that tickled our necks let's do that again
and we'd double back idle there lifting
our heads to the green rain
swallows met over us later I dreamed
of flying with them we had all the time
in the world we had the world
how could those trees be weeping?

by Jody Gladding

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Breakfast-in-Bed Memo

Okay. So I'm official. I've now survived my first Mother's Day and feel I can wear the "Mama" banner with pride. Not to worry: I wasn't smothered in kisses nor did I drown in the coffee brought to my bed or stuff myself into oblivion with pillow-side banana chocolate chip pancakes. Apparently, the hubs didn't get the memo about serving the new mom breakfast in bed. Not like every other dad in the universe. Yesterday, while C. slept soundlessly on the downstairs couch, I read Facebook status after Facebook status, all to the tune of: FRENCH TOAST!!! IN BED!!! I'M THE WORLD'S LUCKIEST MOMMY!!! BACON TOO!!!

I have to admit: I set myself up for failure. At 5 a.m. after the bird had been squawking and eating and squawking and eating for several hours, C. said, I'm gonna go sleep on the couch, and I was all (in my head): Sure you are, you're gonna go make pancakes and coffee and put a pink peony in a little tiny vase and I'm gonna say, you didn't have to and you're gonna say, Oh but I did, and then we're going to lay around all day and read the Times and Eva's going to take naps and maybe there will be a small piece of jewelery involved and maybe I'll get to yoga but mostly we'll just kiss and the house will clean itself, and Bacon, you'll say, Extra crispy!

Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, my husband--who is (almost) always incredible, who I respect and admire and love more than anyone in the world--emerged from the couch cave at about 9:30 (an obscenely late hour in these parts!), scratching his belly and letting out a bear yawn. What's for breakfast? he asked. And then, even after he nuzzled me and made me dance with him in the kitchen and cooked me dinner and told me jokes and said I was the best mom in the world, I still pouted. And pouted. And pouted.

He says he can't read my mind. Looks like next year's memo will need to be in black & white. Anybody out there not get breakfast in bed?

Sunday, May 10, 2009

With Cherry Blossoms

Our First Mother's Day


Evabird, we're at a little French cafe, and the wind is wild outside, and I've been telling you about all the things I love less than you: croissants and stars, long drives and new blooms, blue fish and dark skies, travel and sunshine and sweet, sweet sleep; all the things I've always loved most in the world...until I had you, until I understood something entirely new about love. I am a happy mother, indeed, little one. Little plum, little bird, thank you for changing my world.



Thursday, May 7, 2009

Confession Thursdays

I'm not quite sure how to say this, but here it is: I fear that becoming a mother is making me anti-feminist. I used to feel sorry for men and the burden they carried; I used to admire that burden and want it and think about how I could do anything a man could do; I used to be surrounded by all these equal signs but then they turned into question marks.

Now, I marvel at generations and generations of women. I guess this doesn't make me anti-feminist but it makes me something other than what I've been for years. Maybe (in 2037) when I'm getting a little more sleep I'll be able to articulate it...

It's times like this I think of a conversation I had with my mom a few years ago. She's an ER doctor with 3 young kids, and I asked her why she loved work so much, and she laughed and laughed and said it was the only time she got to relax. Now I know she wasn't joking.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Yet Another Reality Check

Nothing like waking up after another fairly sleepless night, hooking myself up to the hands-free breast pump and trolling "Baby's First Solids" message boards to remind me that life ain't what it used to be. Let's just hope I can make it to my two o'clock meeting at NYU without reeking of spit-up.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Early May




Thinking about what will happen to all these blooms. Already, the streets are a deep speckled pink,
and the branches seem so singular.
Not lonely, really,
just a return to what they were before--
bearers of sky--
no longer weighed down
with such sweetness and beauty.