tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29632547046380732322024-02-20T23:49:06.383-05:00the busy heartcirculating creativityDejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.comBlogger347125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-28774248345726411522015-08-05T09:20:00.000-04:002015-08-05T09:20:28.741-04:00Outrageous Expectations<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVyMDeoI0pmJl6mgjNRHXudEN9qHeqAlaO6zt0PpHOxjJMl9eD6MOg7hfpAu7tbK1hvaL7oT4JhyvdBguesNKDReFEtQRL6B90qktisJORid297cNaz-BpAi1K_KAchE6Cn2PjuDwrLE/s1600/IMG_4718.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVyMDeoI0pmJl6mgjNRHXudEN9qHeqAlaO6zt0PpHOxjJMl9eD6MOg7hfpAu7tbK1hvaL7oT4JhyvdBguesNKDReFEtQRL6B90qktisJORid297cNaz-BpAi1K_KAchE6Cn2PjuDwrLE/s400/IMG_4718.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henrietta, in a field by my parents' house, doing her funny little slumped-shouldered, overwhelmed run.</td></tr>
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Last night, as Sam and I put Henrietta to bed, I noticed a pair of silky, light-purple pajama pants on Henrietta's floor. They were handmedowns from cousins, which I had sorted out of her dresser the other day because the elastic waist was shot, and I thought, picking them up to find a place for them, "I should just throw these out."<br />
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And my next thought, sponsored by the mean, Pinterest-saturated voice in my head was, "Throw them out?! Are you kidding me? How shamefully wasteful. You really ought to turn them into a pretty little purse for her. Yes, yes, that's it, sew the fabric into a pretty little purse. She'll love it forever. You say you don't have time? Absurd. Sewing them into a purse is really the proper use of resources and time. Just make time for it. It's important. You have to. It won't take long. If you care at all about Henrietta and your finances, you'll do it."<br />
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That voice in my head says stuff like this to me all day. About organizing my pantry shelves. About carefully going through my jewelry and repairing what's been broken by Henrietta's enthusiastic touch. About over-the-top things I should do for friends, like sew a quilt with two days notice, or make dozens of fabric snowballs as a birthday gift for a child. I get these ideas all day, these arguably good ideas, but outrageous all the same.<br />
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I don't have time to sew the worn out pants into a pretty little purse. Ain't nobody got time for that. And this was where that mean voice made a mistake: it was so absurd I was onto her. I was onto her! And all the other things I had been thinking about my life, all of the other absurd expectations I had issued myself came tumbling down, and even the reasonable ones were called into question.<br />
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I'm still working on this. I'm always working on this. Didn't I write about this before? But here I am. Doing what's in front of me, what I have a moment to do, instead of making elaborate plans to do it every day at this time, perfectly, forever. And now I'm going to take a walk, and I'm going to try to just think about that walk around the neighborhood, and I'm not going to think about doing it every day until I can run a marathon, and I'm not going to think about how I really should have made fresh granola yesterday for breakfast while I eat my cold cereal. I'm going to try again to hush that voice and get to work, the work I can actually do. And when the day is over, it will be over. And I will throw out the pair of pants and sit on the couch for a show and a piece of chocolate before I stumble up to bed to sleep and try again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henrietta, resting after her funny little overwhelmed run.</td></tr>
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-66049486685721555742015-06-08T19:05:00.000-04:002015-06-08T19:05:53.791-04:00Even a Bird<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoluC2A7wYCg7IMICIXlnkCTY94Rt5elOIpPOcClTQdmgiPchjV1aCMCrQO8E7pUTkREX-ph8h4_sK4kb03txFJd9cy1Pv5_orAClcEGEHNWOVqF7qp9nMhXgcx6943iIC_IPQKs-ilSU/s1600/7212140270_5f3792b40f_k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoluC2A7wYCg7IMICIXlnkCTY94Rt5elOIpPOcClTQdmgiPchjV1aCMCrQO8E7pUTkREX-ph8h4_sK4kb03txFJd9cy1Pv5_orAClcEGEHNWOVqF7qp9nMhXgcx6943iIC_IPQKs-ilSU/s400/7212140270_5f3792b40f_k.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/91499534@N00/7212140270/in/photolist-bZj733-9Ky3qT-8bDDtx-9eoTx9-ckHGY5-aw47w3-ed42Z3-ik5TSL-8THNhV-kDnZvP-dEL2r6-9FLjdf-hPd6KB-qZnipp-2mGRrN-88ZxB6-7PCuK7-tcUfFQ-9Convs-4ppJ7L-5BYPnp-rqAHwY-9KivyE-6va4A-97hybB-4RNyJA-atYux3-9wWiPs-aJAcfg-rGF1SQ-q9Lijc-5WNgSd-aL4ZCX-6s9fmC-4fAyuh-jGGn9y-74Tr7u-7dRzqc-iTLvgD-9nYRKb-3uQv26-pXdV84-ay34L1-5KZpmS-6s58nP-85fhQQ-4o4cir-rvQXrx-5Bsps9-sZMoNf">Photo Source. </a> (We didn't take a single photo. It seemed like taking a picture of a holy moment, or a car accident. So here is a blue jay who is not ours, but is also lovely.)</td></tr>
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We recently watched our neighbors--a nice retired couple with chickens and a gorgeous garden--build an elaborate net structure around their bushes to keep birds and squirrels out. It was like a room for their blueberries, made of net. Since then I've seen birds fly into it, glancing off one way or another as the netting pushed back. </div>
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But last evening, as Henrietta and I hung out in the backyard while Sam finished dinner, I realized the bird by the blueberries didn't fly away, though he tried. And then I realized he was somehow <i>inside</i> the structure, flying against it from the inside again and again, getting more frantic each time. </div>
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"Birdie stuck?" Henrietta asked. </div>
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"Birdie stuck," I said. "Let's go tell Hank and Linda." I carried her on my hip and we walked next door and knocked, but no one was home. So we went in and told Sam, and he came out with us to see. </div>
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While Sam stood by the blueberries and Henrietta and I watched from our yard, I looked up the bird on my phone. He was a blue jay. A gorgeous one. His belly looked very white and his wings were brilliant blue, and the pattern of his tail feathers was so pretty that I imagined long lengths of cloth in the same print. I wanted to make a dress from the imagined fabric. I would have worn it to the moon. </div>
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"Birdie stuck," Henrietta told me, her voice concerned. I was concerned, too. We didn't know how to free him. Sam was worried we'd make things worse, that we'd destroy the structure while our neighbors weren't around. We didn't know them well enough to know whether they'd charge us with trespassing or destruction of property. Also, we were concerned that we'd upset the bird so badly that he wouldn't know how to get out. We wished our neighbors would just come home.</div>
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And then, before we'd figured out what to do, getting the bird out wasn't so much an option. The blue jay's feet tangled in the netting. He hung upside-down on the wall of the net room, unable to move except to thrash. His black beak was wide open, wider than I've ever seen a bird's beak, and he called and called, his song turned a plea for deliverance. But we couldn't deliver him. With his feet stuck, we really didn't know how to begin.</div>
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The next hour or so is a blur. I made call after call, trying to find someone who would care about a blue jay on a Sunday evening and come rescue him. All the while Henrietta tugged on my hand, "Come on, come on," she said. "Birdie stuck. Birdie stuck."</div>
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Holding her hand, pacing between the fence so she could see and back to the house so she wouldn't see, I called an animal rescue place. I called the small animal clinic on campus. I called animal control. I called a family in my ward who has a farm. I talked to a few people who were concerned, but there wasn't anyone to come out. I'm not sure why I cared so much, or why his plight seemed so real to me. But it did. It seemed I knew that feeling. I knew what it meant to have gorgeous wings but tangled feet. </div>
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All my calls made and fruitless, I stood at the kitchen counter and cried. I rested my arms on the countertop and found myself praying for the bird, that the bird would be okay, that his small heart would calm, that his wings would settle, that he'd somehow feel comforted, that we'd know what to do to help him if we could.</div>
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Our neighbors still weren't home. We ate dinner with our side door open, watching their driveway. And still, after dinner, they weren't home. Maybe they were out of town, we thought. If someone was going to save the bird, it was looking like we'd have to do it. We couldn't leave him there indefinitely.</div>
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We figured it was at least a two-person job. One to hold him and cut him free, one to hold the net open so he could go. But how would we do it with Henrietta around? She was almost as intrigued and worried as we were, but she was tired. She was throwing tantrums, flinging herself on the floor every few minutes to weep at some injustice. I knew that if we went out to save the bird, she'd never let me put her down. </div>
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I don't know how I thought of it exactly, but I texted our friend Dan and asked if he'd be willing or brave enough to come help with a stuck blue jay. His text came back quickly: "Yes, I'll be there as soon as I can."</div>
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I took Henrietta up to bath time and bed, and this is my biggest regret: they freed him while I washed her in the tub. I wish I could have seen. Sam says that Dan had worked with birds so he was confident, and made Sam confident, too. Sam says the blue jay was soft in his hands, and he worried he held him too tight while Dan clipped the tangled net with a small pair of scissors. And then, quickly, Sam was just holding the blue jay, wondering what he ought to do. The jay's foot looked slightly injured, but he seemed more or less okay. Would he really be okay? </div>
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Sam told me how it went, and I keep imagining it, the moment I'm most sorry I didn't see: Sam simply opened his hands, and the blue jay took off. The bird tucked his feet. He spread his wings. He took off flying for the trees. </div>
Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-3873594105995512732015-01-09T17:34:00.000-05:002015-01-09T17:34:19.069-05:00Make It<i>[First I want to say that I was overwhelmed by your kind responses to my last post. Really, thank you so much for your kindness. That meant the world to me. I continue to feel better, though it's not a straight trajectory by any means. As one of my teachers used to say, We live in hope.]</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sam with the Artist</td></tr>
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Henrietta has taken up painting. And coloring. And, just, making things in general. This is exciting, since I've basically been waiting for it since she was born. At three months, I helped her make her first work of art for her dad for Father's Day, but I confess it made her cry. And ever since I've been waiting, waiting, watching other kids her age get into it and trying not to compare. But I totally compared; let's be honest. And she was much more interested in putting the crayons in and out of the box than actually using them, and this made me feel a little panicky.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting is An Energetic Dance</td></tr>
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So when she suddenly started saying, "Paint! Paint!" I immediately went out and bought more paints and brushes and fat crayons, and now we set her up at the kitchen table pretty regularly so she can get to it. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I can't help it. I think it's so beautiful. </td></tr>
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And here's my favorite part, the part that makes me feel like I'm witnessing the miracle of life somehow. When we set her up and get the paints out, she says, "Yay! Make it!" She claps her hands. She is so excited to make something, to create. And I forget the dishes and sit there with her, painting with my own <i>very</i> meager skills, and just absolutely glowing with joy. Dark days aside, watching her make art is the happiest I've been in years. And though I'm more or less obsessed with all of her words, "Yay! Make it!" might be my favorite of her phrases. It's the one I most want to remember and say to myself. Let's make it. Let's do this. Let's make beauty where there wasn't any before. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Artist paints a "big monster."</td></tr>
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-478871305598869342014-12-31T07:25:00.001-05:002014-12-31T07:39:58.378-05:00Rotten Vegetables of HopeLast night I cleaned out our fridge, a task I've been dreading and avoiding for some time, which made it particularly daunting.<br />
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I moved swiftly, trying not to think, shoving shriveled red and orange peppers into a garbage bag. I I shoved a package of pale ground turkey and a clamshell of already-cut and now softening butternut squash in the bag, too.<br />
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It felt late at night, though it was only eight. Henrietta was winding down, and I was sweaty from cleaning my kitchen while dancing and listening to Taylor Swift. The energy I had begun with had gone, and the mean voice in my head began to turn on me. <i>What a shameful waste of money</i>, the voice said. <i>Look at this nearly full garbage bag full of rotten food! What a failure you are, what a loser. Who do you think you're kidding?</i><br />
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I stood up and shook my head.<br />
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Just after the end of classes, about a month ago, I entered the deepest bout of depression I've ever experienced. I don't know how much I'll end up saying on here, but I will say it was terrifying. I will say that I narrowly avoided spending Christmas in the psych ward, though now I think I really should have spent time there. I will say that I'm lucky to be alive. I never tried to hurt myself, but I thought about it constantly, and I needed a lot of help.<br />
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<i>I'm lucky to be alive</i>, I said to myself, standing in front of my refrigerator, bag of rotten vegetables at my feet. I thought of the shriveled peppers, the bright colors, the way I felt when I bought them at Costco just before I got sick: hopeful. There's a certain hope involved in buying large quantities of vegetables, is there not? I had felt hopeful then, and I decided to feel hopeful last night. I was there, and I almost wasn't. I was there to clear out my fridge, there to see the colors of the peppers and to consider a dubious head of lettuce. I was there to take what was old and let it go, exposing clear shelves and bright lights, hopeful for more, lucky.<br />
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I took out the bag to the trash. The night was cool and Southern. A car approached from the street opposite, shining headlights on me, and I wondered how I looked to someone who didn't know me. Like a mother, like I'm tired, like I'm not entirely better yet, but I'm getting more so, like I had a bag of trash, and I knew where to go.Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-22418864703729647232014-12-02T15:53:00.001-05:002014-12-02T15:53:33.621-05:00I Died for Beauty, and It Was the Beauty of My Dreams<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emily Dickinson, who may have been amused, but probably not.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eleanor Roosevelt, who I do not think would have been amused.<br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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Yesterday I was teaching Emily Dickinson's poetry. I was so excited to be teaching Emily Dickinson's poetry that I felt like dancing right up at the front of the class. I had inadvertently assigned five creepy poems about death (which is easy to do when you're assigning Dickinson), but it didn't even matter because she's so awesome and I love her and I want to be her when I grow up and I think she had one of the most bizarre and most brilliant minds that has ever graced this planet. <div>
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We were talking about <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/113/4010.html">this poem</a>, which begins "I died for beauty, but was scarce / Adjusted in the tomb, / When one who died for truth was lain / In the adjoining room." But when I went to read to it to the class, I accidentally said, "I died for booty." And then I couldn't stop laughing. I leaned over the podium, gripping the sides of it, and could hardly catch my breath; I was laughing so hard. </div>
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And so I had to tell them about another time when I made such a mistake.</div>
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Here's the scene: I was graduating from middle school. I was valedictorian, or maybe I was salutatorian--I can never remember. I was asked to give a speech, and I had so carefully prepared it. It was full of inspiring quotes and nostalgia and hope and smarm. The ceremony was out on the field, and I stood at the podium on a platform, all of my classmates and their families in front of me, and pronounced into the microphone, in my clearest voice: "Eleanor Roosevelt once said, 'The future belongs to those who believe in the booty of their dreams.'"</div>
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I mean, what I said is also more or less true. But boy, was I embarrassed. </div>
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Yesterday, my students loved this story. And then I kept teaching Dickinson. I kept right on teaching Dickinson until it was really very much time to go. On their way out, some of them said she was creepy, and some of them said she was cool, and I think some of them knew what I know: that she is so obviously both. </div>
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Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-29072832704978131552014-10-29T22:46:00.001-04:002014-10-29T22:46:44.729-04:00Thank You MuchHer adorable lamb costume finally arrived in the mail at five this afternoon. The party was at six. <div><br></div><div>I tried to put it on her and she screamed and writhed, as I somehow knew she would. Long before today I tried to decide what she would be for Halloween, but I kept imagining her tugging at whatever I put on and saying "No like it!" It was sort of like that, only she just screamed and writhed on the floor. <div><br></div><div>So I abandoned the lamb and put on her pinkest, fluffiest dress. I thought about how grateful I was to the Target dollar bins for these wings I bought months ago. I told my inner feminist tough beans, and I called her a fairy princess. </div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8P5pIH5qMzPbezRlInuIS4TLfAdEHmBltOkPtrnICdopSVXwe6aIlYeFAaktxWfS5bWjVah-D3YgVN_Oa8KlOnThm6uIdYI_WHEhmryGm2uzcWdcrlNwg-BqJzZUz6hmOQwnmSBo6jU/s640/blogger-image--1123951146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8P5pIH5qMzPbezRlInuIS4TLfAdEHmBltOkPtrnICdopSVXwe6aIlYeFAaktxWfS5bWjVah-D3YgVN_Oa8KlOnThm6uIdYI_WHEhmryGm2uzcWdcrlNwg-BqJzZUz6hmOQwnmSBo6jU/s640/blogger-image--1123951146.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>This was the only picture I took, and it's not great. </div><div><br></div><div>I felt terrible as we left home for the church party. I felt spread too thin and not nearly creative enough as a mom. I felt so tired. </div><div><br></div><div>Luckily, a fabulous Halloween takes so very little when you're two. I'm pretty sure this was the best night of her life. At first she was confused when other kids stopped by and we kept giving away what was clearly <i>her </i>candy. And then as we walked around she was confused when someone tried to put more <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">in her bag--she cried out and held it back, afraid they would take what she'd been given. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">And then I watched as the nearly incomprehensible glory of trick or treating dawned on her. These people were giving out candy. Putting it right in her bag! What a world. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"Thank you. Thank you much," she said as we walked from trunk to trunk. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Halloween wasn't about me at all, thank heavens. It was about her. It's all about her now, and I couldn't be more glad. It's about the incomprehensible glory of free candy, and your mom not objecting when you reach for a tootsie roll. It's about walking along, knowing you're holding goodness, and saying thank you. Thank you much. </span></div>Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-88743782082391369862014-10-27T22:53:00.001-04:002014-10-27T22:53:59.283-04:00The Late Late ShowHenrietta no longer believes in bedtime. She believes in fighting with every tool available to her until she falls asleep on the couch, watching <i>Scooby Doo</i> (known in this house as "Dooby") at way too late an hour. I'm not a big fan of this development, but we go through phases like this now and then, and things ought to change soon. <div>
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Until then, we're exhausted. Sam usually volunteers to stay up with her, but it's his turn to sleep. So it's 9:36, and I've been grading papers, and we've been eating popcorn, and she's been practicing reacting to the scary parts. She runs to the couch, looking behind her frantically, gasping, and saying, "Oh no!" </div>
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And now I'm done grading papers, and her head is on a couch pillow, and we're watching <i>The Wizard of Oz, </i>and she's practicing saying "witch" and I'm suddenly so happy to be sitting by her that I can hardly stand it. </div>
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"Wish!" she says. </div>
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"Witch!" I say. </div>
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She points to the Wicked Witch of the West in her green face paint. The witch is very upset. Henrietta says, "Wishttt! Whisht! Whiiisht!" She sits up, gets very close to my face, and says it again, clearly prompting me to say it back. </div>
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It occurs to me that it's a funny word to learn by saying it in someone else's face. "Witch," I tell her, slowly, and she watches my lips and my teeth carefully to see how it's done.</div>
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She settles her head back on the pillow. "Wisht," she says, satisfied. She's beginning to show signs of slowing down. She's placing the small bottoms of her feet against the bottoms of mine. Soon she'll sleep, I hope. I hope that soon she'll sleep.</div>
Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-91006517296883782452014-10-23T13:40:00.001-04:002014-10-23T13:40:21.750-04:00Birthday Walk, with Mailboxes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At two, she seems poised on the edge of knowing, of actually meeting and growing curious about the planet. Sometimes now she seems so much like an alien: by which I mean, not yet of this world. She's the most gorgeous and funny alien I've ever met.<br />
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On the morning of her birthday, I talked to her as we walked, pointing out all of the important stuff: trees, leaves, squirrels, the colors of cars and houses and flowers. She participated, repeating the words she knew (tree! sqwrrl! car car car!) and asking, occasionally, "What's that?" She asked that once when we passed an animal smashed in the road, and I said, "Oh, that's nothing, nothing." And kept strolling. I don't have to introduce her to that part yet. Please don't make me introduce her to that just yet.<br />
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My heart was full of her two-ness as we walked. I carried all of the days of our acquaintence around with me, and I felt sure I would weep at something. But it wasn't the dead creature in the road that made me feel like I might weep. It wasn't showing her the trees and the kitties. I didn't feel like weeping when I picked a little orange flower for her and she carried it the rest of the way, and I didn't feel like weeping when the petals came off and she tried to put them back on.<br />
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Oddly, it was when I told her about mailboxes that I got choked up. Of everything I showed her, the mailboxes seemed so uniquely earth-y, so specific to our planet and the human experience. I told her that we all have mailboxes, and that a mailman comes and brings letters. Mommy and Daddy have a mailbox, and we go out to it and bring the letters inside. And if we want to send a letter, we put it in a box and it gets delivered wherever we'd like, just about anywhere in the world. The mailboxes on our street seemed so remarkable then, so beautiful. Or not beautiful, because they are weatherbeaten and leaning and a little sad. But still marvelous, still somehow miraculous. Welcome to being human, Henrietta. There are things called computers and emails and text messages that try to negate these mailboxes, but here they are. You're going to love this place.<br />
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Sometimes, when she's resisting bedtime, Henrietta asks to see the moon. Just because she knows it's there. And she knows if she asks for the moon, we give it to her. How could we resist? The three of us leave the house and stand at the edge of our driveway and point up to the sky. We say, "Moon!" with an extra long O. "Moo<span style="text-align: center;">on!" we say. </span><br />
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-4118243870873437652014-10-05T23:08:00.001-04:002014-10-05T23:15:18.160-04:00Twenty-Five Marvelously Cute Things Henrietta Does at (Nearly) Two Years Old<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helping me make cookies.</td></tr>
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1. She calls water "otter."<br />
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2. She calls yogurt "ogre." </div>
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3. Tonight she did "this little piggy" on my toes. It sounded like this, "This! Piggy! This! Piggypiggy! Weeweewee Piggy!"</div>
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4. She comes up to me, holds out her arms and says, "Again?" This means she wants me to do "Itsy Bitsy Spider" up and down her arms. Then she does it back to me.</div>
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5. She counts. She counts like this: two? two? three! six? nine? </div>
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6. She's devoted to saying thank you. She says it when anyone gives her anything, or when she gives us something, too. My favorite is when she says, "Thank you <i>much</i>."</div>
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7. Her favorite activity is undoubtably running circles through our living room, kitchen, and dining room, chasing us or being chased. She growls, we growl, and then we all giggle. </div>
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8. Dancing consists of spinning around in a circle saying "Dance-a! Dance-a!"</div>
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9. She can say <a href="http://www.markrothko.org/">Rothko</a>. She says goodnight to Rothko when we go to bed. </div>
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10. When I drop her off to be watched while I work, we put on her shoes and I help her on with her toddler backpack and I hold her hand and we walk to the door. The image of her wearing her little backpack: I cannot get enough of it.</div>
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11. Aside from when she's throwing a tantrum, she's so insanely <i>happy</i>. She giggles and chatters to herself. Her first sentence was "That's funny," and she has a generous sense of humor. It doesn't take much to make her laugh and laugh. </div>
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12. She is, unaccountably, fascinated by covering her head with a blanket or a towel or a box or whatever is on hand and walking around so she can't see. She runs into things, but she still does it. She seems to do it <i>in order</i> to run into things. </div>
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13. She knows that <i>The Little Mermaid</i> is on her training pants. She calls her "Mer-mer." In fact, all princesses or pretty animated ladies are Mer-mers. </div>
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14. One morning, when I was upstairs getting dressed, I heard her start saying, "Oh boy!" I'd never heard her say it before, but she said it over and over again: "Ohhhh boyyy! Ohh Boyyyy! Ohh Boy!" Now she says it all the time. Along with "okay." Sometimes she says, "Okay! Oh boy!" When Sam got out a slice of birthday cake for her this evening, she kept saying, "Oh boy!"</div>
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15. She loves balloons. She loves them so much. </div>
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16. She holds her baby doll, pats her head, and tells her, "It's sososo kay." </div>
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17. She likes to climb up things and then jump off of them, preferably into our arms. </div>
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18. She snuggles me. We watch shows in the evening so we can sit together and she can lean her head on me and take my arms and wrap them around her. I don't mind. </div>
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19. She's got this funny little mincing walk. She takes tiny tiny steps, making tiny stomps. </div>
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20. When upset, for some reason she says, "Doctor! Doctor!" We have no idea what this means. I've heard Sam tell her she needn't be so formal with him, that calling him Dad is just fine. </div>
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21. When given a sticker, she places it immediately on the back of her neck.</div>
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23. She climbs on my back and says, "Kitty-ya? Kitty-ya?' This means I'm to crawl around on the floor pretending to be a kitty. You better believe I do it. </div>
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24. When I come to get her, or when I come home, her face lights up like no one's face has ever lit up for me. It's astonishing every time.</div>
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25. When she wants something, she says, "Gah me." When she really wants something, she says, "GahmeGahmeGahmeGahme!"</div>
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Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-81129198790516903642014-08-01T12:51:00.001-04:002014-08-01T12:51:18.513-04:00The Sound of Rain Falling on LeavesAs I made the two of us a smoothie, I noticed it began to rain. It was only sprinkling, but I rushed Henrietta out to the back porch, both of us still in our pajamas, telling her we needed to save the sidewalk chalk before it disintegrated. I picked up the thick sticks of chalk--already a little damp-- piled them in a bucket, and set it down inside the back door. When I turned around, Henrietta had climbed up into a patio chair, and was looking up at the rain.<br />
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I pulled up another chair, and we sat together. It was gorgeous out, mild and misty and so quiet we could hear the sound of rain falling on the tall trees in our back yard. Henrietta was barefoot, and a bit concerned about the leaf debris on the bottoms of her feet. "Help! Help!" she said, showing me. And I did my best to brush them clean. She wore her jammies with the ballerinas on them, and a grey and black faux fur vest which she's recently become obsessed with and insists on wearing at all times.<br />
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I loved her as we sat there. And not just the way I love her as her mom--with a blissful and billowing and fierce sort of devotion--but as a companion. That's what we were, sitting there: companionable. We both wanted to be there for no other reason but to sit for a moment and look at the trees in the rain. Our wills--which do their share of clashing throughout the day--were for a moment perfectly simple and sweetly aligned.<br />
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-39142735806859881912014-07-26T08:54:00.000-04:002014-07-26T08:54:04.889-04:00What it Means to be Settled<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Honey Dewlicious Melon</td></tr>
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And then, one morning this past week, I felt settled. I cut up a melon for breakfast, and it was in the top five most delicious melons I've ever tasted. The three of us sat at the table, eating melon (or rejecting it wholeheartedly, in the case of Henrietta) and talking. The house was in good enough shape that I cleaned up easily, without stepping around enormous boxes or having to look at a baffling mess in the living room while I did it. We had all rested. We had things to do which didn't seem like pressing emergencies in order for us to live in this place. We could just be here, working out our days in this new house with the big, green trees out our windows.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from our bedroom window</td></tr>
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I'm not sure why exactly, but so far Alabama--the place itself--hasn't been the difficult transition I expected. It is undeniably beautiful here, which I'm sure helps. On my way to Target I pass green fields full of horses and the most incredible trees. The trees, the trees, the trees. Can you tell I lived in the desert? It rains here, rains quite a bit, so moss grows on the trees and the rocks, and sometimes when I'm outside I see the world's finest, fingernail-sized frogs, which look like tiny leaves until they jump. Henrietta plays in our backyard, running over to look at the neighbor's chickens, running to chase me, running and laughing. She has so much room.<br />
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The house is the right house. It's big enough for us to stay here awhile. I type you this missive, dear reader, from my own office, located in the back top corner of the house. It's quiet in here, full of my things and the art I love is on the walls, and my books are on the shelves, and I can see my sewing machine waiting for me.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking out the window, wrapped in sheer curtains</td></tr>
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At the produce market, I stop a woman who is grabbing big handfuls of strange, long purple and green mottled beans. Pink-eyed Peas, the sign reads. I say, "Excuse me, but how do you cook those?" "Same way I cook collards," she answers. And she tells me. We have them for dinner the next night. Another night I make cornbread and Sam boils shrimp. Another night he fries okra. I steam summer squash and toss it with a little butter and Sam declares it the best thing on the table.<br />
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People are so kind here. And I know some of them may not be as kind as their exterior, but I'm frankly so pleased to mill around with kind exteriors all day. The young man at the grocery store, eyes bright and clear, looks in mine, and says, "I would really love to help you out to your car with these groceries." And I am so astonished that he seems to mean it (even if it is store policy--store policy! to help everyone out with their groceries!) that I can't answer for a second. I want to hug him.<br />
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I don't really know what this place will bring. I don't know how long we'll stay. But I have a feeling that we'll stay for awhile. That we are, to some extent, experiencing what it means to be settled. Cross my fingers, say my prayers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking to the Farmer's Market</td></tr>
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-88745369755670445492014-06-06T14:54:00.000-04:002014-06-06T14:54:13.392-04:00The Next Big AdventureWe're moving to Alabama. Sam landed a job teaching at a University there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This one.</td></tr>
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The move came as a shock. I hadn't planned on moving back to the South. We'd felt inclined to move all the way out here, from Boston to Arizona, and now we were going to move back across the country? And why, exactly, had we come out here? Nothing has really worked out the way we'd hoped. In fact, many of our ideas for surviving here have outright failed. Sam began to say, "You know when I found that <a href="http://dejavuearley.blogspot.com/search?q=clover">five-leaf clover</a> just before we moved? I'm thinking I found it so I'd know I was <i>already</i> lucky. I wish I'd known I was already lucky." He also began to suggest we name our next child Equity Dwindle, which is rather a beautiful name, right? (No, I'm not pregnant.) If nothing else, we've learned this year. We've grown up this year. We've enjoyed being close to family. And the two of us have had time to hang with Henrietta constantly for the first two years of her life. And that's worth a lot to us.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trying out pink headphones on our way there.</td></tr>
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Last week we flew to Alabama to find a house. In five days, we looked at a few dozen houses, some of them several times. The very green trees lining the road were a delicious shock after the desert, and the way we felt about the town shifted dramatically every time we looked at a house. After a good house, one in a nice neighborhood with kitchen updates and a garden tub, I looked around and loved everything. After a house which reeked of dog pee and cigarettes, or one whose stair railing came off in my hand when I tried to grab it, or one that Sam said was surely a portal to a demon world, I felt very sad and lost and wanted to go home, wherever that was. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trees and the road. </td></tr>
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Henrietta was a trooper. Sam's mom came along, so she often stayed with her grandmother in the car watching shows on my iPad and eating a lollipop. The kid ate a lot of lollipops. But often she'd insist on coming in with us. I could see her in the car from the front porch, her face broken in devastation to be left behind, and her grandmother trying in vain to comfort her. So I'd go back out and extract her from her carseat, and she'd immediately find the door to the backyard and begin running as fast as she could, running and laughing and ignoring the insane heat and humidity, and raising her arms up in the air. Well, raising one arm. The other she kept clutched to her torso, holding her lamb with its head and arms draped over her arm. She learned how to pick bright dandelions, crumbling them in her hand so she held a tangle of wilting flower parts. Once we convinced her back inside the house, she had a knack for finding the empty room we were thinking of for her, the one with the big windows and lots of light. She'd go in and close the door, lie down on the carpet, kicking her legs and talking to herself for minutes on end.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOeXQwCh1H0eDAAEEoWYyw7xVATsMoaNwhQnU4bJyPDS5Bx-XGi2bFPO8lys3YAYRb_3QmJpFskRkC5oqJCQlcZFQ_R7-qG-U2PamOjFfAIIh5x85xvIZSBvnfmXWCb0_U8ynpbTCSuI/s1600/IMG_8322.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOeXQwCh1H0eDAAEEoWYyw7xVATsMoaNwhQnU4bJyPDS5Bx-XGi2bFPO8lys3YAYRb_3QmJpFskRkC5oqJCQlcZFQ_R7-qG-U2PamOjFfAIIh5x85xvIZSBvnfmXWCb0_U8ynpbTCSuI/s1600/IMG_8322.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The classic luggage cart game, with Grandma.</td></tr>
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I think Alabama is going to be okay. I think it's going to be good. We found a pretty brick house with tall trees in the yard. Our friends from grad school who live and work there had us over for dinner, and they were so kind and delightful. Did I mention there are fireflies there? I've never lived in a place with fireflies.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">House</td></tr>
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Last night Sam and I stayed up late talking. We had one of those great conversations where everything is going to be new, so you're thinking hard about everything else you'd like to be new. We're going to get responsible with money--for real this time. We're going to each have offices at home, so we're going to work harder. We're going to stop keeping treats in the house. Henrietta is going to watch fewer movies (she loves movies with all of her heart). We're going to take turns going to the cool coffee shop with good writing space. It was dark in our living room here in Tucson, Henrietta finally asleep on my lap, the music from the credits of <i>Tangled</i> playing from the television. As we talked, I looked around at our bookshelves, still heavy with our books and knickknacks that have come along on all of our moves. I could imagine packing them soon. Wrapping them in paper and securing them in a box full of other things wrapped in paper. And I imagined walking around that new house--which I only have a shadowy sort of love for now, since I'm quickly forgetting what it looked like--and learning its walls and doors and corners, trying to decide whether my big white fish looks better on this shelf, or that one. Sam picked up our sleeping Henrietta and talked to her softly as he rested her head on his shoulder and her eyelids fluttered. I walked behind them, turning out lights, glad we'd all go together.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from the local State Park, where we decided which house to get.</td></tr>
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-71737804519148990612014-04-17T15:30:00.000-04:002014-04-17T17:12:58.017-04:00On Marriage and Shorthand ArgumentsJust before I got married, the women in my mother's ward--though they didn't know me all that well--were kind enough to throw me a bridal shower. Somehow the conversation turned to marriage advice, and I still remember just about everything the bishop's wife said about marriage. My impression of her prior to that shower was that she was quiet and smiley and not particularly "real"--if you know what I mean. But she was more than real that night, and I am still so grateful. Just about everything she said has proved true of my own experience in marriage.<br />
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Among other valuable and down-to-earth advice, she told me that eventually our arguments would whittle down to shorthand. That after awhile we'd know each other so well and we'd have had the same conversations and disagreements so many times that we'd be able to say, "Hey, could you ...?" And the other person would know instantly how we meant to finish the the sentence and be able to say, "Yeah yeah, okay. I know." And there, that would be it. A entire fight that previously would have brought tension for several days would be over in eight words. At the time, I confess, I couldn't really imagine what she meant, but now, over five years in, I think Sam and I are beginning to reach shorthand.<br />
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There's this memory I have of our first few months of marriage that can, without fail, make me feel like giggling at how cute and misguided I was as a new bride. I had decided that I wanted more help around the house, that we really could be sharing more of the burden of running a home. We were both working full-time, and it seemed there was no reason why we couldn't split the tasks more evenly. And I geared up for the conversation and prayed about it and thought about how I would say it and sat Sam down on the couch and told him how I felt. I was so earnest! And I can't really explain why this makes me feel like giggling, except that somehow I thought this would be the end of the conversation--that I just needed to communicate how I felt and Sam would surely agree and then we'd maybe make a chart of chores or something (?!) and then we'd be more equally yoked in this matter. That's not exactly how it worked. Sam was like, "Okay, sure, whatever." And then he asked what specifically I wanted help with, and I realized I didn't really know. We were so new together, and just making sense of our home and our lives, and I had no idea that it would just take time, lots and lots of time, years and years to really figure each other out.<br />
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Of course, this is a conversation we've had since then. And I confess I haven't exactly handled it better. In fact, the problem is that I usually wait until I'm good and resentful before I bring it up. And then, sadly, I'm not really praying and thinking very carefully about how I say things. It's late at night and I'm tired and I make accusations and I'm not very nice at all. Most recently, I accused Sam of ruining my opportunities to work on my writing because he didn't help around the house more.<br />
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Sometimes I'm a terrible person.<br />
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After that conversation, I was pretty much immediately sure I had been a fool, and that I had handled it all wrong. And in the middle of the night I remembered what the bishop's wife had said, and realized this conversation was probably one that would benefit from shorthand. Sam <i>knows </i>I'm always anxious about the house, he <i>knows</i> I'd love more help. And I know he's willing, but that he's not always sure exactly where to pitch in. And why fight about it, again? Why not just say--before I'm angry and resentful and before I've attached all sorts of other frustrations to this particular problem--"Could you help me a little more around the house? I'm feeling overwhelmed by it." And Sam could say, "Yeah, okay. What do you want me to do?" And hopefully I'd know. And we wouldn't have to pull out the big guns to make our points. We could carry on, sit down to dinner, put the baby to bed, and hang out on the couch--all heavy conversations accomplished--and talk about the really important stuff, like what to watch on TV.<br />
<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-38693407785765837632014-04-14T16:39:00.002-04:002014-04-14T16:39:14.457-04:00The Strange Art of TryingI once told a woman I didn't know all that well that I was "trying" to do something. She immediately said, "You're trying, you're lying." And the rhyme was so catchy and she seemed so sure of this truth, that I thought she must be right, even as I hated her for saying it.<div>
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But motherhood has changed my sense of "trying," and now I feel sure that this woman was wrong. To me, trying--especially when divorced from concern of outcome--is a noble art. And the most difficult and important one I practice as the mother to Henrietta. For Henrietta and I, it doesn't work to force it, and it doesn't work to give up entirely. It only works to come at it from somewhere in the middle, to approach it as gently as possible, as unemotionally as possible, yet still with a great deal of persistence. </div>
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Here's what I mean: Henrietta is not, sadly for me, an eat-everything-on-her-plate kind of girl. She's picky, and it seemed for awhile she was getting pickier, and I was worried we were going to end up with a white diet kid--the kind of kid who only eats cheese, white bread, pasta, etc. I'd offer her a strawberry, and she'd spit. I'd offer her a piece of broccoli, and she'd politely hand it back to me. I knew it would do no good to shove the broccoli down her throat or express how disappointed I was that she wouldn't eat it. I've read enough to know that adding my emotions to what she chooses to eat is a terrible idea. And for awhile, I sort of gave up. I stopped making real meals. I'd throw her a quesadilla or some Mac & Cheese--things I was pretty sure she'd eat--and call it a night. But I could feel that this wasn't the right approach. I had to<i> try</i>, even if she never willingly put broccoli to her lips in her life. I read somewhere that a kid has to be exposed to a food 10 times before she's comfortable with it. So I kept telling myself that--10 times, 10 times. And some days I'd feel more like trying than others. But I tried to share my own food with her, and show her what I was eating and enjoying, and not get upset when she outright refused whatever I had prepared. And last weekend, she grabbed a strawberry from my own bowl of strawberries (though she had her own on her plate) and ate the whole thing, and now she can't get enough of them. Strawberries three times a day! And she's eating peas again, and dipping crackers in peanut butter, and it seems, suddenly, like her food adventurousness is exploding. Cross my fingers, knock on wood. </div>
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These babies, they change so quickly. And it's hard to have this job of guiding someone whose tune changes, and who can't yet communicate exactly what she wants or needs. I sometimes want so badly to enforce my sense of what's necessary--to hold her down and brush her teeth as she screams, to give her nothing but celery until she learns to love it, to shout that yesterday she seemed to <i>love</i> eggs, so what's wrong with her today?! But I'm learning that it's no real use, and that it's more useful to save my shouts for when things are really dangerous, like when she's standing on the chair with one leg up on the table, two seconds from cracking her skull on the tile. </div>
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This is such a strange art of trying--to try with tenacity, but without a goal, and without a demand, and without a sense what what success might actually look like. To let her guide me, more or less. To follow her lead. </div>
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And I'm finding this is--as so much of motherhood is--a larger lesson. I'd do well to be this gentle with myself. To try tenaciously to establish better habits as a human--eating better, exercising more, writing more often, keeping my house cleaner, living a more humble and spiritual life. But doing all I can to divorce those attempts from expectations, or a sense of shame or failure. </div>
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I think about that woman sometimes, wishing I could find her and tell her: You are dead wrong. Trying isn't lying. It's the only real truth. </div>
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Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-81405681591233610332014-03-07T15:53:00.000-05:002014-03-07T15:53:13.344-05:00An Icon of Fame and BeautyYesterday, Sam and Henrietta and I went downtown to the Tucson Museum of Art, and we found a little pocket of downtown Tucson that felt like a<i> real</i> downtown. It wasn't just a sad whisper of Boston, but a genuinely hip part of Tucson with green space and cool restaurants. This was exciting. We looked up at the few high-rise apartment buildings and imagined living right around there, in walking distance to interesting shops and cafes and parks.<br />
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We were walking down the block, trying to find a place we'd heard about with good reviews and good prices for dinner, and Henrietta was holding my hand. She's taken to holding my hand lately, really holding it. Her hand is so small, and she grips mine like I matter more than I sometimes suspect I do. I hold on tight, in case she decides to dart away, but she's not interested in running off (yet). She's happy to walk right with me, connected to me, seeing the world pass by on the sidewalk.<br />
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In the crook of her other arm she held her lamb by the neck--the lamb you see at the top of the last post, a gift from her dad for Valentine's Day. Henrietta had on polka dot socks and little white summer shoes she'd insisted on wearing, and I could hear her feet slap-slap-slapping along the sidewalk next to me. Now and then, a pleasant gust of wind would hit us, ruffling our clothes and hair, and Henrietta would laugh and laugh. The wind, apparently, is hilarious.<br />
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People walking the other direction, leaving work with serious faces, would see her and smile. They'd point her out to someone walking with them, they'd comment on how lovely she was. And I thought I would burst. She <i>was</i> lovely. She <i>is </i>lovely. It felt for a moment like I was walking with an icon of fame and beauty, a celebrity. And babies are sort of celebrities, aren't they? Sam sometimes asks Henrietta, "You know who loves you?" And then he answers: "Everyone who meets you."<br />
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I hope I can remember how that felt, walking down the street with her, holding her hand, prouder to be with her than anyone, grateful to feel, even in small part, beautiful and famous by association. Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-34998942513512186162014-03-03T10:57:00.003-05:002014-03-03T10:58:01.031-05:00Habits of Babies<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjeTLVb2OLQAx4kVRmVu9Zm8xa0l9HF7cbbOz2790249S-FNgtwhaSd8Ro2MwdpVXFQdUYPnrYdpYPu3Zr97gh6sv6i5OAR1swPzSgJvz3LIrw0B7VwuOpuMK2KZZo_oSjbth24yfJaTA/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjeTLVb2OLQAx4kVRmVu9Zm8xa0l9HF7cbbOz2790249S-FNgtwhaSd8Ro2MwdpVXFQdUYPnrYdpYPu3Zr97gh6sv6i5OAR1swPzSgJvz3LIrw0B7VwuOpuMK2KZZo_oSjbth24yfJaTA/s1600/photo.jpg" height="400" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Contraband Pacifier + Lamb</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
Henrietta does these three things that I find so charming. The last of the three is charming and deeply disturbing. You'll see what I mean.<br />
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The first is that every time I change her top for any reason--to change her out of her pajamas, to put on her dress for the day, to change her dress when it warms up to 80 degrees in the afternoon--she waits until her head has popped through, and then says "Boo!" This on its own is plenty endearing, but to me what's even more endearing is when she forgets to say it right away, and then, with one arm partway through a sleeve, she says, "Boo. Boo." Quickly, almost apologetically, twice for good measure. This is so fascinating to me, as if we've signed a very serious contract that she must say "boo" while getting her shirt changed. We've signed no such contract, but it's lovely to me that this small thing matters to her. It amuses her, and she knows it amuses me because I still laugh every time she does it, so she considers it her obligation to never forget.<br />
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The same is true for saying "uh-oh" when something drops to the floor. And I know both of these things (this one especially) are fairly typical for this age, but what's fascinating, again, is how devoted she is to the practice. She does it not just when something falls, but when something is already on the floor and appears to have fallen some time previously. The other day at the grocery store she saw something on the floor, and from her perch on the cart she pointed to it and said, appropriately, "Uh-oh!"<br />
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And for this last one, I do hope you're not eating lunch as you read it. She's taken to spilling liquid--on purpose. Milk, water, applesauce in a pouch, yogurt in a squeezey tube--whatever it is gets deposited in a small <span style="text-align: center;">puddle on the tile or the couch or the coffee table, and then she gets down really low, in her best crouch, and slurps it. She looks up at me, and says, "Mmmmm!" This happens quickly, very quickly, before I can cross the room to stop her. I try to tell her yucky, yucky, nonono, but again, she seems to simply find it amusing. I don't know where she got this behavior from. She's definitely not modeling me. But my hunch is that she gets it from the cats. She watches those guys all day, and they, of course, crouch down to eat their food or lap their water. I haven't heard them say "Mmm!" But maybe that's a Henrietta signature addition.</span><br />
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And even as I type these out, I'm realizing she does them less often. They change so quickly, don't they? She seems to be this particular way, this little personality with quirks and particular intentions, and almost before I can cross the room to record it, she's onto something else, changing faster than I can manage to keep up with. I must do better at trying.Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-64856739913511318132014-01-18T09:07:00.000-05:002014-01-18T09:07:13.484-05:00Brought to You By Language AcquisitionI've been fighting some pesky depression and anxiety, hence the silence. The first thing to go are my words. I stop writing, stop blogging, stop feeling like I can articulate to Sam or anyone else what's wrong or what I think, even about the smallest things. It's a terrible, miserable way for me to live. The good news is, I got asked to teach <a href="http://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-10-2070-elder-jeffrey-r-holland?lang=eng">this amazing talk</a> at church just before things got really lousy. Having those words in my head as I entered the lowlands was a gift.<br />
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But I don't really want to say more about it. I want to talk about Henrietta, of course, who is by far my favorite creature on the planet and becomes more so daily. And while I've grown sort of silent and strange, my girl is gaining new words every day, and figuring out what they mean, and figuring out what she wants, and learning how to ask for it. It's been an absolute miracle to witness. I think I knew I would like this part--this language acquisition part. But I wasn't quite prepared for how<i> much </i>I would love it. When she does the sign for "baby" and says "Bay! Bee!" I usually have to will myself not to weep.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M6L0NfDixYyacjdv-qOPC-dcmL0xsllZZn9dCgsHUQR1y5ymnQrS1wduK8hqg_YjFrmhwiAIRSKh68_D5s7fpaeq6HloIcAeCHQ5UKS1rcha0Xzn-ef0aXDwj2nP_LSiY0JJpLxjhy0/s1600/IMG_6572.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M6L0NfDixYyacjdv-qOPC-dcmL0xsllZZn9dCgsHUQR1y5ymnQrS1wduK8hqg_YjFrmhwiAIRSKh68_D5s7fpaeq6HloIcAeCHQ5UKS1rcha0Xzn-ef0aXDwj2nP_LSiY0JJpLxjhy0/s1600/IMG_6572.JPG" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pointing.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Because here is this little human I made. And when she first arrived she couldn't tell me what she needed. She could only cry. She could only cry and cry, and I could only guess what was wrong and fix it as best I could. And I got pretty good at guessing, but it was still guessing. And now, when suddenly she can tell me what she wants more of, or she can go to the pantry and open the door and pull out what she'd like to eat, my word, it's magical. I know those things seem small, but they are revolutionary when you've been trying to field a constant stream of mute longing for over a year. <br />
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And this morning, this morning we had such a sweet forty-five minutes together, maybe the most perfect forty-five minutes of my life. And I knew I needed to get up and write it out, that I would really be sorry if I didn't record it.<br />
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They were simple minutes. She woke up crying a little after five, and Sam prepped her a bottle and I went in to help her. She was standing at the corner of her crib when I came in, and I picked her up, and rocked her while she gulped down the bottle. Her eyes were sort of half-closed while she did it, so I assumed we'd all go back to sleep soon enough and I was not sorry about this. But then she took the bottle out, and started making her sounds, <i>her</i> words, the ones she seems to know but I don't yet, and I said, "Yes, yes, I think you're right about that."<br />
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She began to point at the big basket full of books we keep by the rocking chair, pointing and pointing, and this meant she wanted me to read one, and I find her interest in books deeply thrilling, so I picked one up and asked if she wanted me to read it, but it was obviously the wrong one, so she fussed and kept pointing. I let her down to pick her own, which it also amazes me she can do.<br />
<br />
We read <i>Little Fur Family</i>. I love <i>Little Fur Family</i>. Do you know it? "There was a little fur family, warm as toast," is how it begins. And we particularly love it because the fur child has a small red ball on most pages, and we know the word "ball," and we really really love pointing to the book and saying "Ball!" every time we see the little red ball. In fact, when we reach pages that don't showcase the little red ball, we simply must go back and look at the other pages where it is showcased.<br />
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When that was over, we read it again. And then we read <i>Moo, Baa, La La La! </i>several times. And then I pointed to her changing table and asked if we might change her pants, and she pointed as to say, yes, we really ought. And then I pointed to her crib and asked if she might want to go back to sleep for a bit. And she pointed as to say, yes, yes, I'd like that. And I held her for a moment and rocked her, and told her I was going to give her a kiss before she went back to bed because I loved her very much and I would miss her while she slept. And she picked her head up off of my chest and gave me a kiss, a kiss with her pacifier in her mouth, but still, a kiss. What a word to know--kiss. And I held her some more, and then I set her down and tucked a quilt around her, and told her thank you, thank you, my sweet and darling girl. Thank you for coming to be my friend.Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-19780039158371518812013-12-02T19:33:00.001-05:002013-12-02T19:33:17.896-05:00Ten Voices ProjectMy friend Kathy created <a href="http://kck.st/1fptu0Z">an awesome Kickstarter project</a>, and asked me to be a part of it. It ends <i>tonight</i>, so there's not much time to contribute. But I'd really love it if you'd do so. Here's a guest post from Kathy, explaining why she created the project. She's says some honest, beautiful things here. Enjoy.<br />
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<b>On the fear of being unheard and hurt</b><br />
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by: Kathy West<br />
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My greatest fear is that no one will hear me.<br />
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I face this fear in small doses: with my three-year-old who ignores my instructions, or at night when I want to stay up and talk but my husband wants to sleep, or in large groups where my stories are too long and my voice doesn’t carry. My quiet, quiet voice.<br />
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But I’ve never been unheard in a dangerous way, a violent way.<br />
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I know someone who has.<br />
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A friend shared with me vague stories that seemed full of anxiety. Average conversations felt loaded with fear. Until I realized that over months, I’d been hearing about my friend’s abusive relationship.<br />
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I didn’t witness the physical violence. But I did hear an abusive spouse mow down my friend’s voice by talking over every word, shutting down a conversation by mocking and chastising and shaming in front of everyone.<br />
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I think that’s one place violence springs from—from refusing to hear another person.<br />
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If you refuse to hear someone else, you think they’re separate from you. You can treat them as an other. You can hurt them without it hurting you. But the boundaries between us are blurrier than that. The sound waves of my voice vibrate the bones in your ear.<br />
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I couldn’t change my friend’s insistence on staying in that relationship, on staying silent.<br />
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But I wanted to do something. So I created a project called Ten Voices.<br />
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Ten writers and artists created ten pieces of art meant to inspire voice. We’re organizing a creative workshop for survivors of domestic violence. Our goal is to support and inspire the voices of those who have experienced abuse and decided to leave.<br />
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I’m becoming as committed to hearing others’ voices as I am to being heard.<br />
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(I would love you to raise your voice with us. Support the Ten Voices workshop and own the art here, only through the end of today, 2 December 2013: http://kck.st/1fptu0Z)<br />
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Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-22426611655012369512013-11-29T11:16:00.001-05:002013-11-29T11:16:18.490-05:00Small World <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPwdyNa0KAq1CZcbdQi0mtxWsJu5TEtZlt9kleY7Btrjf2CdHsqeU1xughSJIVmyLppldA1fAMgFUgeG67up5e5T9wOrvS7c4w0H9AqczJqZJKHULUkeR_o_rqycDXNwgHmuxCdI1qHo/s1600/IMG_5927.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPwdyNa0KAq1CZcbdQi0mtxWsJu5TEtZlt9kleY7Btrjf2CdHsqeU1xughSJIVmyLppldA1fAMgFUgeG67up5e5T9wOrvS7c4w0H9AqczJqZJKHULUkeR_o_rqycDXNwgHmuxCdI1qHo/s400/IMG_5927.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Small World</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: center;">The advantage of living much closer to family is that I could make a semi-spontaneous decision to go see my sister in California. Sam was desperate to finish his novel and Henrietta and I wanted to see her aunt and cousins, so off we went, the two of us making the eight hour drive together. She was remarkably well-behaved during that eight hour (okay, nine hour) drive, and once we were there we went to the beach and ate fish tacos and went to a glorious California farmer's market and cooked good meals and stayed up late talking to my sister. And we went to Disneyland.</span><br />
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I'm a bit of a Disneyland skeptic, as it turns out. I loved Disney when I was a kid, but I confess I don't much understand people who still love it as adults. So I was going mostly on my sister's word that we'd have a good time.<br />
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Henrietta and I had terrible trouble actually getting to the park (long story), and it took a complicated hour getting from the parking structure to the gates, so by the time I got there I was exhausted and hungry and I sort of hated everything, including Disney. I ate a sandwich as we rushed to a big theater showing a live performance of Aladdin, and it was during that show that I started to change my mind. Henrietta loved it, for one. She loved it immediately and completely, bouncing up and down on my lap and making her happy sounds. And I was transported back to when I was a kid, playing the cassette tape soundtrack to Aladdin, rewinding and fast-forwarding so I could copy down every word of my favorite songs, going to the other room to ask my mom, again, what "nom de plume" meant. It was such a complete and perfect time machine, that music. And I was suddenly looking forward to Henrietta loving those movies all over again.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiOASBQj2JOHNR-W9gHEbCHFvTcxBGfWeWWZAV7xxBlTnSQMV_OygJtjujkH8y6MpkPW2RHA-9Csy0kv1jl8Kpv1mJgS-FrS6QqigOYltfFt5oJFZV1bU1_l1jTKTkafY12Uz7dMfRKCE/s1600/IMG_5928.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiOASBQj2JOHNR-W9gHEbCHFvTcxBGfWeWWZAV7xxBlTnSQMV_OygJtjujkH8y6MpkPW2RHA-9Csy0kv1jl8Kpv1mJgS-FrS6QqigOYltfFt5oJFZV1bU1_l1jTKTkafY12Uz7dMfRKCE/s400/IMG_5928.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Toon Town</td></tr>
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<br />
But she was tired, very tired after the show. It was time for her nap, and that place was much too exciting for her to consent to one. I tried tricks that worked beautifully just weeks ago, and still she screamed and screamed, and I didn't know what else to do but force the issue until she screamed herself to sleep. It got cold as she slept in her stroller, and I was completely unprepared for it. My sister and her family were all off at rides, and my cell phone had died, and despite our pleasant experience at the Aladdin show, I thought I had probably made a mistake in coming at all. Henrietta woke up after not too long, and with her teeth chattering I tore the cardboard back off a dark chocolate bar package and dug around in my purse for a pen and wrote a note to my sister, saying we were just going home and I was sorry we were lame. She came back just as I was poised to leave it and gather our things, and she talked me out of leaving and sent me off with my nephews to Tower of Terror.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUaSrlFPZPWu2JmsFY4ksRmyWuBq2jb9wWjiixXWUCzHqmU3zfk9x0rappeguT1GivccSU2pKJ5FoW3ueZaDoHhCpgrNyqt-tJN0YnZfs4PNN1DU0IYe80Kx1EtNW8bWa3z13myNNcNg/s1600/IMG_5877.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUaSrlFPZPWu2JmsFY4ksRmyWuBq2jb9wWjiixXWUCzHqmU3zfk9x0rappeguT1GivccSU2pKJ5FoW3ueZaDoHhCpgrNyqt-tJN0YnZfs4PNN1DU0IYe80Kx1EtNW8bWa3z13myNNcNg/s400/IMG_5877.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where I waited, trying to catch my breath after the horror show of nap-avoidance.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And there, on that ride, as I screamed and laughed, I realized what else I loved. Briefly, everything about that ride was real. It was a big pretend machine, and we were all pretending, and I wasn't Henrietta's tired mom, I was exactly what they said I was, a frightened guest at an old haunted hotel. It was a marvelous feeling, to be removed so forcefully from my real life, and I loved it even more on a ride that took me Soarin' Over California, meaning I was in front of a big IMAX screen showing scenes of the state I love, and my feet were dangling and they were blowing back my hair with pretend wind and I breathed in fake orange and pine and ocean smells, and it worked so completely on me that I was weeping, tears down my cheeks and landing on my shirt, it was so beautiful and the pretending was so perfect.<br />
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I'm unlikely to ever be a grown woman wearing mouse ears (and I saw an embarrassing number of them), but it's an incredible thing, to hold a tiny someone on your lap who is experiencing that same complete transportation. My sister and I came back another day, just us with Henrietta and her four-year-old cousin, and we went on It's a Small World and Winnie the Pooh and we walked through the castle and visited the Enchanted Tikki Room and we met the Pirates of the Caribbean and toured The Haunted Mansion, and Henrietta loved them all, her eyes wide and her happy sounds abundant and her little bouncing body on my knees.<br />
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-57707064224193459202013-11-12T10:59:00.003-05:002013-11-12T10:59:27.458-05:00The Darling Has a BirthdayThe other day I was running on a trail that goes along a dry wash here in Tucson. It was gorgeous out, seventy-something degrees, and I was listening to <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/">RadioLab</a>, a podcast I'm crazy about. The most recent episode is called <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/288733-23-weeks-6-days/">23 Weeks 6 Days</a>, and the whole hour is about a couple who has a baby at that point in gestation, and the difficult decisions they face, and how science lends insight to those decisions (or doesn't).<br />
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When I turned around to head back to my car, the woman was just about to go into labor and they couldn't hold it off anymore, and she and her husband were talking to doctors about their options and the various risks. And suddenly I was bent over on the trail, sobbing. Everything about my difficult pregnancy flooded me, and my gratitude that we were spared those difficult decisions was so humbling that I wasn't sure I could finish the run. It seemed like I should sit right where I was, far from my car, and not move for a very long time.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henrietta on her first birthday, visiting a farm.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Greeting Goats</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Checking out the smelly sheep.</td></tr>
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Henrietta turned one year old almost exactly a month ago, on October 9. And since then I've been trying to figure out how to capture it, or what to say about it that would be meaningful. It was both a very big day--almost a sacred day, to me--and fairly ordinary. On her actual birthday we took her to a farm with a petting zoo and pumpkin patch, and on the way home we got her a small cup of vanilla ice cream. And it was a sweet day, but of course she didn't understand any of it. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henrietta and the Chickens</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the big barn, walking with her dad and grandmother.</td></tr>
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That Saturday we threw her a small party and I made her a kitty cat cake, and while she really loved the balloons and her cake, she didn't understand any of that either. We had a friend tell us that the first birthday is really for the parents, and it gets progressively more about her as she gets older, and that seemed true. We made it to a year; we're here; we're a family; she's changed absolutely everything, so let's just stop and think about that for a second.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kitty Cake</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birthday Girl, with Crackers, I</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birthday Girl, with Crackers, II</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With her dad, and cupcake.</td></tr>
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She changes so quickly now that I feel like I can't keep up with recording what she learns. She's such a spunky, vibrant, vocal, curious soul. She spends all day walking through my mother-in-law's house, picking up items that strike her fancy, putting them into other objects, stopping to consider, and then taking them back out and going on her way. She laughs a lot. Sometimes she sits on my lap and I manage to get her giggling, and then we both just giggle, and I am astonished all over again at how lucky I am that she's here. She is literally the greatest pleasure of my life, and how can I possibly capture that? How can I possibly thank her and thank God and thank whoever or whatever else is responsible? </div>
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When I got done with my run, I stopped by the grocery store on the way home, so when I came in I was bustling around the kitchen trying put everything away and trying to get us lunch and therefore trying to keep Henrietta from attaching herself to my legs. I was saying things like, "Okay, I know Sweetheart. Just give Mama one second." And though my tone was kind, it was my kind tone that isn't authentic; it's my tone that channels the nice mommy I know I'd like to be, and not the really nice mommy. But when I went to put away a head of celery, that podcast popped back into my head, and I put the celery down, and picked Henrietta up, and held her, and kissed her, and hugged her and told her I loved her and thanked her for coming to be my kid, and my voice was breaking and Sam was asking what was up, and Henrietta was squirming to get down, having received enough attention, thank you very much. </div>
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I don't know why were spared the difficult decisions and heartbreak of a very premature birth. We were expecting one, and trying to prepare as best we could. And if she'd come very early, we would have fought with her and for her and would have been glad to do so, though it would have drained us. And I guess I don't have anything more profound to say than that about her first birthday. This has been the fastest and best year of my life, and I am grateful, more grateful than I've been for anything in my life, to have my dear and darling Henrietta Plum. </div>
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Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-29979267067527582492013-10-14T11:00:00.000-04:002013-10-14T11:00:05.103-04:00SwarmThe other day I went out for my morning walk as usual, and at the end of the driveway I passed a giant swarm of black flying insects. It must have been ten feet high. "Whoa," I said out loud.<br />
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The swarm frightened me, is the truth. I was grateful Henrietta had made it clear she needed additional sleep more than she needed to join me on my walk and was back at home with her comfort-lamb, doing her baby snore.<br />
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I walked a little further and passed another swarm, and another, and another. They were as tall as houses, as tall as the giant Saguaro Cactuses that lined the road. There were half a dozen of them before I'd even left the cul-de-sac. There had been a big storm the night before, a monsoon, and I wondered if that had somehow signaled all of these colonies to hatch. It was if they had alarms that rang promptly at six a.m., and now they were getting on with it, with the next stage of their life cycles.<br />
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But what <i>were</i> they? I pretty much assume everything that flies is a killer bee, but these definitely didn't look like killer bees. They weren't at all yellow, for one thing. They looked like giant ants with wings, is what they looked like. And while most of them were swirling around in their concentrated swarms, I noticed they had begun breaking off, too. Some of them dropped to the ground, where I got a better look at them, and some of them wandered off flying, and as I walked I had to dodge them, jerking my head around, trying to avoid having one slam into my sunglasses.<br />
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About halfway through my usual route, I turned around and headed home. I had passed another half dozen giant swarms, and I started to feel frightened with no hope of talking myself down. If this was some invasion, some pestilence, I wanted to be inside before it got worse.<br />
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I asked my mother-in-law what she thought they might be, and she said she thought they were termite swarms. She looked it up in her desert wildlife book, and I looked it up on the Internet, and between the two we confirmed it: termites, newly hatched, doing their mating flight. Good for them, I suppose.<br />
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Maybe it's just that I lived for so long in the city, or maybe I'm just still acclimating, but I feel pretty overwhelmed by all of the wildlife here. An encounter with an animal is often either the highlight or low point of my day.<br />
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Sometimes it's a lovely, inspiring encounter, <a href="http://dejavuearley.blogspot.com/2013/08/on-arriving-in-tucson-bobcat-families.html">like the bobcats</a>. A black butterfly laced in fluorescent yellow kept me company one morning during my swim. A coyote crossed the road very slowly and elegantly on my way to the grocery store. I've seen all sorts of birds: roadrunners, cardinals, soaring hawks, doves who try to drink from the fountain in the backyard, hummingbirds, clusters of quails who rush off together like they're late for family therapy appointments. A bunny with the loveliest tuft of a white tail. A shiny red beetle. A one-winged owl I met at a nature event we attended a few weekends ago: he had a name like Sparky or Bingo but he looked like a Sebastian to me, his feathers as lovely as an evening gown, and he caused Henrietta to kick her legs and laugh and make the sounds that most resemble a desire to communicate--"Eeh!' "Eeeh!" she said, and waited for the gorgeous owl's reply.<br />
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And sometimes the encounter is harrowing. It shakes me to my center, like the morning walk with flying termites. While our movers moved our belongings into Sam's mother's garage, they reportedly saw a huge rattlesnake cross the driveway, and a tarantula the size of a dinner plate scurried in among our boxes and did not emerge. One morning when I went out for a swim, a small mouse was drowned at the bottom of the deep end and I was convinced I'd die of the plague. Another morning, a small tarantula was on the pool's steps--drowned, though I didn't believe it was actually dead, and I cut my swim short. On a walk, I saw a coyote cross the road quickly in front of me and I felt hunted. I looked out on the patio while I was feeding Henrietta breakfast one morning, and there was a tarantula underneath the outdoor dining set and I had to hand the baby off to Sam and go back to bed.<br />
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I don't recover from these harrowing experiences quickly. I don't have a casual dislike for tarantulas. The thought of them, literally, makes me wish I didn't live on this planet. I dare not let the thought of scorpions enter my brain; I don't know what I'll do when I see one. But while I'm sure I hate spiders with a wild and--let's face it--immature loathing, I can't always make sense of my other reactions. You'll notice coyotes show up in both the lovely and terrifying encounters, and while I've seen some gorgeous butterflies, I've been known to say they're nothing more than tiny hairy lobsters with wings. They give me the willies sometimes. And what makes the difference? Did I love one coyote because I observed it safely from my car? Is that why I loved the bobcats, because I was snapping pictures through a window? Or do I love them because they're mammals, because some part of me knows they nurse their babies, like I do?<br />
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What I mean is, I've been looking for a hard and fast rule to what I loathe and love, and I can't seem to find it. I've thought I was most frightened by the creatures I don't know enough about, that's not really it either. I've loved seeing some creatures that I know are dangerous, that I know would haul off my baby and eat her if they were hungry and she was available. And I've been frightened badly by animals that I know won't do me harm, for whom human harm-doing is simply not in the repertoire.<br />
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The truth is, I suspect, that this has little to do with the animals at all. They are beautiful or terrible depending mostly on how I'm feeling. I'm still adjusting, still rocketing back and forth between thrilled hopefulness that we're here and everything will be great, and doom-and-gloom fretful feelings. Those termites on the walk could have been lovely, perhaps, their swarming silhouetted against the big blue sky. But instead they embodied how I felt that morning: unmoored, spinning frantically in a devastatingly foreign place, unsure of what was coming at me and what was under my feet.<br />
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-34816428061069137642013-10-08T10:26:00.000-04:002013-10-08T10:26:13.464-04:00Strange ElationHenrietta has been sick. She's happy, for the most part. It's not the miserable sort of listless sick. She's just had stomach trouble. Explosions in her diaper. Horrifying puddles on the floor. You see what I'm saying here?<br />
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It's lasted a couple of weeks, as her pediatrician told us it would, and though at first I was surprised by how cool I was with it, it has begun to get old. I'm ready for that sort of event to <i>not</i> punctuate our days, and I'd really like to take her places without worrying she'll pass illness to every kid in a mile radius of the park.<br />
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One night last week, Sam and I both had trouble sleeping. I was up late working on a freelance project, and after that I couldn't settle my brain down. It was nearly three in the morning when I finally fell asleep, and just after three in the morning when Henrietta woke me up, crying. Or actually, it was Sam who woke me up, saying she'd been crying on and off for fifteen minutes, and maybe we should go make sure she was okay. He was worried she'd had a blowout.<br />
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I got up, grumbling. She hadn't had any blowouts in the middle of the night, and I was ready to give him a lecture about how the digestive system slows down at night, and she probably wouldn't have a blowout while she slept.<br />
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And then I opened the door to her room. It smelled like a sewer. My little sewer rat was soaked through.<br />
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She screamed while we changed her and tried to scrub her down with wipes, and she screamed when I stripped her down and passed her to Sam in the shower. She cried while Sam bounced her and cleaned her up and sang to her, and I ran around trying to change her sheets and find new pajamas and get things ready for her to sleep again. I hoped she'd sleep again.<br />
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By the time she was all cleaned up and her crib was all cleaned up, all three of us were wide awake. I put Henrietta in little footie pajamas and gave her Lambie--her comfort object of choice, and set her down so she could walk around for a minute and wear herself out.<br />
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A strange thing happened. I felt so happy. It was almost four in the morning, and I'd been woken up by feces, and spent a good long while cleaning up feces. But I felt so motherly, so <i>parental, </i>in the best way. My husband was good and kind and willing to shower with a stinky baby in the middle of the night, and my baby. My baby, who is almost a year old now (tomorrow's the big day!), was walking around in her little footie pajamas, smelling freshly clean, sucking on a pacifier, holding a little white lamb up to her nose, and making humming sounds in the back of her throat. And I was so full of love for her that I felt I'd burst.<br />
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Parenthood is made up of these odd pockets of joy, of joy in unexpected places, of strange elation after a run-in with bodily fluids. If you would have told me I'd somehow end up enjoying a night like that, I would have thought you were batty. But I did, thank heavens. And I'm surprised by how often I do.<br />
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<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-35320468281838933292013-09-23T19:03:00.002-04:002013-09-23T19:28:28.330-04:00On Being Too Sensitive: A Water Aerobics Follow-up Post {Alternate title<i>: Aquabitches</i>}<br />
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I was dreading going to water aerobics this morning, likely because of <a href="http://dejavuearley.blogspot.com/2013/09/in-water-i-am-beautiful-kurt-vonnegut.html">my blogpost</a> from last Saturday. You know how when you told your mom how great your friends were and how much they all liked you, and how the day<i> after</i> that you were a little afraid to see them all, afraid they secretly thought you smelled bad?<br />
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It felt like that this morning. I'd joyfully blogged, and now it would never live up to that again.<br />
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I got there late, and the water was crowded, and I felt awkward. At one point we had to jog to one end of the pool, then jog back, so I took this opportunity to position myself a little deeper in, since it's hard to do the moves in shallower water. I thought I fit fine, but soon two women near me looked at each other over my head, and I could somehow tell they found me irritating.<br />
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I racked my brain for why: was I too eager, too happy to be there, too fat? Should I just settle down and splash less? Was I too splashy? And the other part of me was thinking, too <i>splashy</i>? Come <i>on</i>. If you didn't want to get your hair wet, you should have brought a pink polka-dotted shower cap like that lady in the back row.<br />
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I tried to be confident and chill and assume I'd misunderstood their glance, but then one of the ladies, who was sporting sinister-looking black nails, said, "Umm, could you please move over?"She said this rudely, like I'd been standing in her personal space for days, instead of for thirty seconds. She said like I'd made her morning, giving her something to be very upset about.<br />
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And I said, sure, sorry, and also, "You have plenty of room on the other side of you, too. <i>You</i> could move over." I said this as nicely as I could, but it seemed important to stand up for myself, to say something assertive.<br />
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She said, "Yes, but this is where I <i>was</i>. This is my <i>spot</i>."<br />
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I was tempted to argue further, but I knew that I only wanted to argue because I felt very small and stupid and sad, because what she'd said had arrived like an explosion in my chest, and I knew arguing further wouldn't take that feeling away.<br />
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There are those close to me, those who love me, who say I'm too sensitive, and they're right, of course. What this woman said was not at all a big deal.<br />
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But in a way I don't know what that means--<i>too</i> sensitive. What does the word "too" mean here, exactly? Because if her words made me feel small and stupid and sad, if they arrived in my chest like an explosion, if I was tempted to weep and never return to the gym, what exactly could I do about that? My emotion was real and unruly, and my gym-courage is still young and tenuous, and I handled it the best I could, in the way I've learned over the last 30+ years of being "too sensitive": I stayed. I prayed silently that my feelings would get more manageable. And by the time I left, I felt fine. I even looked for her, wanting to apologize again, make peace, and tell her it was only my second time, and I was still learning the ropes. I wanted to ask her name, so I could nod and say hello the next time I came to class.<br />
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I'm particularly interested in all of this because of Henrietta, of course, because it's clear, even now, that she's my kid in this regard. While her cousin who's the same age seems to glide through life as easy-tempered as anything, things break Henrietta's heart all day long. She doesn't even speak English yet, and already we're breaking her heart all over the place.<br />
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And what will I tell her? Will I tell her she's too sensitive?<br />
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I don't think I will. I don't think I can, knowing what I know about feeling that way. How can I tell her that the way the offense explodes in her and threatens to ruin her day is not the way she should feel? That doesn't seem a useful way to approach.<br />
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She's going to run into aquabitches all her life, I assume. Women with long black nails, women who like confrontation, who live to make you feel a little smaller so they can feel a little bigger. And I want to teach a different way.<br />
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There's an elementary school around here with a big sparkling reminder painted on the wall near the entrance: "Be Kind" it says, and I want to tell her that. That there's too little kindness, too much that feels threatening, that all of our hearts are breaking and we all worry we're too splashy and even the ones who break us are worried they smell bad. And all we can really do is pray, extend our hand and say, "I'm Henrietta; sorry I crowded you."<br />
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And if none of that works, we find another class. We try yoga. We try spin. We get on the treadmill and we run very fast.Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-78730669324176382052013-09-21T17:52:00.000-04:002013-09-21T17:53:25.085-04:00"In the water I am beautiful." --Kurt VonnegutI joined a gym this week. My morning walks around my mother-in-law's neighborhood were great, but last week, after running into a snake and a neighbor's unleashed doberman who gave me a little nip (among other terrifying wildlife), I was done.<br />
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I went in really just to a get a few days of working out for free. I didn't expect to love it. But surprise: I loved it. I dropped Henrietta off at the gym daycare, got on the treadmill, rocked out to my music, watched the news on closed caption, and started a couch-to-5k program using an app. Endorphins flooded me. I forgot how much I love those endorphins.<br />
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And this morning I went to my first water aerobics class. I'm not yet brave enough to try the other classes, though I will get brave enough soon, and this was the perfect reintroduction. Water aerobics is ideal for a post-pregnancy body. Really, I think water aerobics is just ideal.<br />
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There aren't any mirrors! No one was competing! Someone told me my swimsuit was gorgeous! All of this was precisely what I needed.<br />
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My post-pregnancy body is such a disappointment, still. My hips are hippier and my belly is loose and my breasts are heavy with milk. I'm working on it, but gently, gently, and slowly, slowly. I refuse to beat myself into a smaller form. But in the water, it doesn't matter at all. All you can see is my head, and I'm okay with my head. I love my head.<br />
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All of us had beautiful heads. There was a woman with a gorgeous afro and another with a stylish grey bob. A few of us wore glasses, speckled with pool water. It was clear our bodies had suffered: we'd born babies and lifted grandchildren and perhaps had a few joints replaced, and we were freckled and wrinkled and sagging.<br />
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But our swimsuit cleavage was magnificent, and we swished and splashed. I found myself laughing out loud. It didn't just make me happy; I was outright joyful. I loved myself under the water. I loved all of us, moving our bodies and making waves and churning things up as much as we pleased. Underwater, we were dancers and kickboxers and yogis and cheerleaders and basketball players. Underwater, we were beautiful. Underwater, we ran so fast. <br />
<br />Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2963254704638073232.post-73938265080205589362013-09-18T17:18:00.001-04:002013-09-18T17:18:59.615-04:00CloverAs it turns out, <a href="http://dejavuearley.blogspot.com/2013/06/announcing-move.html">jumping off a cliff together </a>is terrifying, especially when a few of your parachutes don't open. We've had, since we've moved, a string of bad luck. Our house still hasn't sold, and the opportunity to make a good bit of income has dried up. That income was meant to carry us through the next few months and give us a bit of cushion and allow us to move into a place of our own.<br />
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Stress? What stress?<br />
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Luck is a funny thing. I've been thinking of it that way--as a string of bad luck. A month or so before we left, on a picnic at the park, Sam found a five-leaf clover. He wasn't trying to find it. We were in the middle of a stressy conversation about money, and he looked down, and there it was.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCC5aMR6iuYUO-cDCirZRqGpdV7ky1K0sNIJKFh86IH79Jl8JBTLL99zZfRG8e543L8e3WiX2KG-yZLtmN1ABFv0vcLJH9hBx8w9TM_fdXJoW109_7yZchPNRsolgjxh7qa6IxdtOI4Ro/s1600/IMG_3413.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCC5aMR6iuYUO-cDCirZRqGpdV7ky1K0sNIJKFh86IH79Jl8JBTLL99zZfRG8e543L8e3WiX2KG-yZLtmN1ABFv0vcLJH9hBx8w9TM_fdXJoW109_7yZchPNRsolgjxh7qa6IxdtOI4Ro/s400/IMG_3413.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Clover, pressed and preserved in a book about Paris gargoyles.</td></tr>
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I did a quick Google search to see if five leaf clovers are good luck, or if it must be four, and Google said they were even rarer, and therefore luckier. We're not people particularly prone to symbols of this kind, but it seemed hard to ignore. Our stressful conversation dissipated. We finished our dinner, laughing at Henrietta's enthusiastic crawling and interest in the grass, and went home hopeful.</div>
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We've tried to stay hopeful, tried to think things will work out, but it's difficult. Sam sometimes thinks we've just made a mistake, that we shouldn't have made the leap, but I had such an unmistakable impression that we were supposed to come that I don't usually think that. Don't get me wrong, I'm terrible to live with right now. I alternate between hopeful and happy, when I can muster my internal and spiritual resources, and sad and pouty and catatonic and downright mean, when I can't. We've had the worst fights of our marriage in the last few weeks, our relationship buckling under the pressure. But still, when I think about our situation, I'm certain things will settle out somehow. </div>
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We're learning patience, here. A slow, plodding, endurance sort of patience. I'm remembering how important diligent spiritual practices (prayer, study) are to my sanity. We're learning what is essential and what is not, and what becomes unessential when it has to be. We're living monastically, sometimes not leaving Sam's mother's house for days, trying to finish writing our books and hammering out the freelance work we can get, and passing Henrietta back and forth and following her around while she laughs at the cats and claps her hands, practicing her new walking skills. We've zeroed out our expectations for our futures and our careers, rethinking everything, imagining new business ideas and going back to school and applying for various jobs and whatever else we care to think of, as seriously or unseriously as we're inclined, because there's nothing we have firmly in mind to do next. </div>
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I'm worried. I really am. But underneath all of that worry, I'm thinking and hoping that this is the sort of drastic life change that is bound to lead to a breakthrough. Something new is coming, as we muck around in our unlucky situation, trying somehow to manufacture our own luck. I don't know what the something is, but I'm sure enough that it's on its way. </div>
Dejahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18116049968601456512noreply@blogger.com9