At the still point of the turning world

Fall Clothes

2009-10-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's been looking like this in Portland these last couple weeks spurring a long rainy drive to Salem to find an apple orchard that doesn't seem to exist, a trip out to Sauvie island for pumpkin and gourd gathering, lots of throwing and jumping in piles of leaves in the front yard and for me, a flurry of fall sewing. I saw these pictures and decided my children must have wool pants and sun lit fields to romp through wearing them. 19$ a yard later, only Finn gets a pair and Henry will have to inherit them later and because I spent so much time on them, I'm feeling a little worried about the wear and tear a field might cause. But because I had a certain investment, I spent the time to make pockets and buttons and cuffs and topstitching and all sorts of little details I wouldn't normally waste my time with. And they turned out great. But then I put them on Finn and they were significantly too big requiring some taking in and altering that messed up some of the details. So a lot of work with a mediocre outcome. In this picture, Finn is wearing the pants and an orange t-shirt I made for fall, Henry is wearing a pair of red chino pants I made from a pair of goodwill pants in the spring and a sweater made from an Aunt meg hand-me-down. I didn't make either jacket but seriously right? Who can resist little kids in blazers? They couldn't care less that a certain number of hours went into the making of their clothing but it makes me feel good. Like I've accomplished something and have something to show for the day. Somedays I have little else.

Now I have to come up with something for Halloween. I wanted them to be Clue characters-Mr. Plum and Colonel Mustard maybe?--but I think that might be too involved and it might be creepy to have an 18month old carrying around a lead pipe and a rope.

the land of silk and money

2009-10-13T21:43:00.001-07:00

Working at Anthropologie brings me in contact with an interesting group of people. The women who shop in my store have careers and children and bohemian, eclectic styles but mostly they have money. A lot of money. Like 98$ for a striped t-shirt kind of money. And when they line up at the register to drop 700$ on candles, scarves and ruffled wool pencil skirts, it makes me wonder who they are and why they have this money. It has started a little game I play where I look around the store and wonder who the most interesting or famous person is: the shockingly attractive wisp of a girl trying on ten dresses, the middle-aged man wandering around after his well-heeled wife who is looking at glass ware, the frizzy-haired woman wearing rainbow tights and asking about buying the 3,000$ display cabinet? Who knows? Maybe I'm talking to an Australian real estate magnate or the daughter of a music legend or the inventor of some brilliant vaccine. It fascinates me to think about. Because if you shop for full price clothing at Anthropologie on a regular basis, you have the kind of money that I can't really comprehend, the kind of money that is limitless--which basically for me right now where money is very limiting is a land of make-believe. So everyone can be some kind of star, a little debutante or genius, a mogul or a legacy. You never know.

Happy Anniversary

2009-10-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

As John Beeler pointed out, it's been a year since I last posted on this blog. I've been busy. We moved back to Portland from Hawaii, set up house in an amazing old craftsman home on the near north side of town with great friends, got a part time job, lost a full time job, got two more part time jobs, took a roadtrip cross country, welcomed two new nephews in the span of two weeks, had a reunion, turned one, turned 27, turned 35, turned 3, flew to Phoenix, rented out our house to new renters, bought a serger, got potty trained, grew some new molars, let our hair grow long and bought (almost) nothing new, in no particular order. So there. Ha.

As I'm looking back on this blogging void of a year, it's been one of the hardest and one of the best years I can remember. Our roles in Hawaii were difficult but the process of being there set us on a track that we needed. The last time I posted, I mentioned the need to take control of my life, be the captain, change what I can and accept what I can't, find ways to make my mark, be creative. This has continued, making this last eight months some of the most creative of my life. Not in writing, mind you. I've written hardly anything of note in a very long time and I think the boat where I thought that writing would be my profession may have sailed. But I am making things, tangible things that affect our lives. I am sewing and building things, a literal construction that brings an intangible sense of putting things together, of having value and power.
We have also had the most marked financial windfalls and frightening shortages of our marriage. Our relative employment and unemployment has rocked our balance but to our constant surprise, has an arbitrary effect on our ability to pay our bills, travel and buy the things we need. In fact, unemployment has made us buy less that is unnecessary and plan more carefully, which we also needed. I make more food from scratch and sew more of the boys' clothes because it is cheaper but as a result I also feel more connected to our consuming and have motivation to be creative. And because we didn't have jobs where vacation time would be used up, we traveled for a total of about 6 weeks over the span of the last three months, staying with family and working out the details of our ensuing poverty among the network of people who would support us by both tangible and intangible means.
So It's been really great and it's been really terrible. Overall we are happy. I think if I can get out of the way long enough to enjoy it, that is not worry about the zillions of things that could be worried about, I will be happy even more of the time. So that's the goal. Get out of the way. And maybe blog about it once in a while.

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

2008-09-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Having my sister Heather here has brought our life under inspection and been found loud, regimented and quite boring. She's right, really. There is almost always someone crying or screaming. We are always within an hour of someone needing a nap, a meal or a diaper change and because it takes longer to prepare for an outing than the actual outing takes, we stay home a lot. We are often amused-- like when Finn runs back and forth on the lanai with a tin plate serving Heather and me imaginary eggs, bacon and pickled herring like a harried waiter. Or when Henry skates around the baby gym on one foot until he inadvertently rams into Jake who turns and pushes him away only to be rammed again. Or when Finn sings at breakfast and gets both the little babies laughing hysterically. But then, mostly we are boring and we are tired.

I've set out to take control of the things we eat, making more from scratch and buying less packaging. This weekend I started with pureeing vegetables for baby food, and baking teething biscuits and bread. So far, other than the wallpaper paste consistency of the sweet potatoes, it's been a great success and I really enjoy it. I wrote Mandy an e-mail to tell her about the first week of the experiment and I realized as I typed out the message that both Mandy and I feel isolated and tied to routine, and we have both been trying to find ways to interrupt the routine, make something beautiful, have a personality separate from the duties we perform and have control over a part of our world. For me, I think portioning liquid green beans into labeled jars and pulling batches of dinner rolls and loaves of bread from the oven gives me that. It's still pretty boring but it has my stamp on it. It's loving and in a basic, practical way, it's important--which in a life that often seems like a constant maintenance, feels very good to me.

Henry's little man suit

2008-09-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

The shirt is from the Children's Place but I made the jacket and the pants in a couple of hours over 3 days for about $7 total. I have yet to make the button holes (and may not because I hate button holes) but otherwise it's finished. For half a yard of fabric, no pattern and lots of interruptions, I'm a little proud actually.

I'm sick

2008-09-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

the really icky kind of sick with body aches and unpleasantness, which is no fun anyway but with the boys, there's no taking the day off to lay around in bed and watch HGTV so everything is a bigger drama and much less easy. Thank goodness for James and strong medications found only in the house of two doctors.

wishing I had a wall to paint

2008-08-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Living in someone else's house, while financially liberating, is creatively a bit stifling. The furniture is arranged, the walls are painted and being in the middle of the ocean, all things purchased or created must be packed into airplane approved luggage at the end of our time here. So I've been working on "small space" projects like photo album/baby books for the boys and sewing seat covers promised to a friend in Indianapolis and thinking about making henry a little man suit for my uncle's wedding. But I still spend a really shockingly large amount of time thinking about beautiful things that cannot currently be mine and searching for them online.

Here's a little list, I'll call it: "someday, we'll be home together"

These notebooks on etsy would almost be too beautiful to write in...but I would try just so I could turn the lovely covers and leaf through the vegetable dyed pages.

I think I have the taste of a nineteenth century old woman because if I could afford to wallpaper every room in my house with these wallpapers, I think I would.

Mornings with this stovetop cappucino maker would make me feel like a well bred european with a flat in the city, and a cottage in the country with an aga oven, a few spaniels and some wellington boots...basically a character from a rosamund pilcher novel and my dream come true.

I'm all for the modern conveniences looking like electronic fossils of bygone eras so this and this would likely find a place in my future (dream) house (where money were no option).

What joy to stir my cappuccino with this spoon!

Sort of trendy but seriously, who wouldn't want a pop art poster of an owl, typewriter and or telephone pole?

Who says these roofs are only for pole barns and outhouses? I want one on my house.

And of course, all things anthropologie but especially this towel and this table cloth

a day's routine

2008-08-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Laura's blog about her twins and the idea that even a routine--when thinking about posterity--is interesting, and as an ego centric log of how much I do in a day, here is a sampling of our days, with today as model.

5-6am feed henry, give jake bottle #1, change first two diapers

6-7am get jake, henry and finn up, change diaper #3, feed all three breakfast.

7-8am clean up breakfast, change diapers #4 and #5, henry goes back down for morning nap

8-9am play trucks on living room floor and keep jake from mangling stereo system. finn in time out #1 for pushing jake. Gardener William arrives to finish trimming fig creeper on pool wall and clean out flower beds.

9-10am Jake in timeout #1 for screaming, Jake goes down for morning nap, change diaper #6, color with Finn on the back porch, henry wakes up, feed henry.

10-11am jake wakes up screaming, give him bottle #2, get him up, change diaper #7 and #8, retrieve four pieces of cat food from Jake's clenched jaws and clean up large puddle of cat throw-up. talk to next door neighbor about collecting her mail while she is away next week while finn pours contents of his sippy cup into pots of herbs by back door. finn in time out #2 for screaming. james off work for break, run to post office to mail lease to tenent in Indiana.

11-12am come home, cook brats on grill for lunch, finn colors on back porch, jake chews on plastic ball pit balls in playpen and henry rolls over on baby mat/gym thingey. bring everyone into kitchen for lunch, eat lunch, offer william the gardener a brat and let unknown pool guy into backyard to check saline function (?) sounds suspicious, he says andy sent him, andy not known to me.

12-1pm bring james lunch, put finn down for nap, change diaper #9, follow jake around house as he follows cat around house, feed henry.

1-2pm put jake and henry down for naps, change diapers #10 and #11. clean up lunch dishes, puddle of spit up and four more spots of cat throwup discovered in dining room. rearrange furniture on back porch and replace pillows with baby gates to block off non-baby-proofed half of porch. Watch part of episode of Jon and Kate plus 8, which makes me feel better about my life.

2-3pm sit by pool and read magazine, take short dip in pool and get dressed, talk to terminex guy who is coming to check on termite traps (did not know we had termite traps), get all three babies up, change diapers #12, 13 and 14, make bottle #3

3-4pm feed henry, hook up trailer to bike with james and take all babies on ride to library.

4-5pm jake in timeout #2 for screaming, make dinner while finn sits on counter asking for a bite of everything, jake goes down for evening nap.

5-6pm feed all babies dinner, james gives jake bath, clean up dinner dishes and play trucks on coffee table, share bowl of ice cream with finn.

6-7pm eat dinner standing up in kitchen with James, put Jake to bed with bottle #4, give finn bath, read books and put him to bed, feed henry and put him to bed.

7-8pm watch recorded episodes of the Colbert Report and Project Runway.

8-9pm take contacts out, read in bed, go to sleep.

Take away the terminex guy, the neighbor and the post office and add sick scott at home, trips to safeway for gatorade and making cups of chicken broth and you have yesterday's schedule.

Remembering the cars of the ones he loves

2008-08-26T14:11:00.001-07:00

borrowed from Kevin's blog of Eng Sem the lesser

2008-08-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

"The dream and the knowledge of alternative futures is with me. I choose my life with every breath I take."

have seat and trailer and basket, will travel

2008-08-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

Doesn't want his picture taken

2008-08-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Waking Up

2008-08-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

James and I have a deal. On Saturday mornings, I get up with the boys and he can sleep in as long as fancy strikes him. On Sundays, I sleep in. This is not entirely a foolproof plan for a number of reasons including the fact that I wake up with every stirring in the house be it animal, vegetable or infant and James has programed himself so thoroughly to wake up at 4:30 that he finds it difficult to sleep past 7am. But regardless, it's a really brilliant and loving set up for a number of reasons:

On Sundays, after I have woken up at 5 or 6 to feed Henry...I go back to sleep. I'm not sure you all realize the magnitude and revolutionary-ness this represents. On weekdays and Saturdays, I wake up to feed Henry, maybe put him back in his crib maybe bring him to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee and make Jake a bottle and turn on good morning america while I lay out breakfast for the three boys, and the day has begun.

On Sundays, when I wake up again, to the noise of a breakfast I am not making or the cats running hissing away from Finn's smacking feet on the pergo floors or Jake screeching to be given a bite of whatever Scott is eating, I can go back to sleep, as many times as I want.

And on Sundays, when I have finally slept as long as I possibly can, I lay in bed for a number of minutes and rub my eyes. And then I sit up in bed and look out at the yard or the sky. And then I swing my feet over the side of the bed and wait to let the blood adjust to my legs and my head and then slowly, walk to the bathroom, put my contacts in, maybe trim my bangs or cut my fingernails. And then, when I am fully awake and slightly more groomed and in a significantly better mood than when I fell asleep, I come out to the kitchen and greet the boys with a temporary surplus of patience and magnanimity.

It's a wonderful thing to sleep and wake of my own volition. Where waking is normally instantaneous and unnoted, a springing (or more likely a trudging) to action; Sundays are languid and unrushed. In my current role, the luxury of languishing is really indescribable.

in the mean time:

2008-08-17T00:41:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Nights in Rodanthe by that incorrigible Nicholas Sparks, gave up reading a tedious German novel called Stones from the River after about 300 fruitless pages and started up The Constant Gardner. This strange combination of narratives is swilling around in my head and I'm quite certain will produce some gem of a thought about gender and childrearing and the overlap of the feminine voice in various stereotypical roles.

But that epiphanic connection has not quite coalesced yet. So I thought instead I would tell you, "dear void" that tonight completely free of children, I drove my sister and brother-in-law's flashy yellow convertible to the local movie theater and saw the Dark Knight. As it would happen, a couple with my exact identical Phil&Ted's stroller wheeled their sleeping infant into the theater behind me and took the seat on the aisle beside me, the stroller wedged in the handicap spot between us. So much for getting away from the kids for the night. I shot them very dirty looks in the darkness between previews. The baby must have sensed my hostility so made not a single peep throughout the entire, rather ear splintering movie. After jumping out my own seat a couple of times, I actually started feeling bad for the kid and marvelled at his or her resilience.

The movie was very good actually but it seemed strange sitting in the theater on my own and then coming out into the parking lot in the pouring rain and driving home without talking to anyone about it. And James hasn't seen it yet so I feel a bit untranslated-the curse of the extrovert-not having processed the experience of the movie with anyone else. So have any of you seen it? And if so what do you think? Without spoiling it for any one who hasn't, I'm really interested in the Joker's theory about chaos and motive and the whole sense of balance in the movie; the hero they need, not the one they want; Batman and the Joker's mutual reliance on one another...I don't know. The whole sense of the power of fear to create chaos. It's a very thickly layered movie, if you want it to be.

"Things are looking up" or "Finding more ways to get out of the house"

2008-08-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

Since James got home and we've had a chance to really settle in to our "real" schedule, things have been going much more smoothly, or I am less of a basket-case, or the boys are behaving better, or Meg's visit dissipated the bulk of the chaos, or the stars have aligned, or whatever concoction of elements has come together to put me in a significantly better mood. Sorry for those last angry posts representing the emotional overflow of our first and last experiment with solo tri-baby-watch or as I will forever remember it, "the weeks of the screaming trio".

All is looking much brighter now, especially with the addition of two brilliant Craigslist purchases--the kiderooz bike trailer/double stroller and an old school, hang off the back of your bike kid seat (just like the one I sat in back in the eighties) making for one heck of a caravan behind Mandy's teal beach cruiser. After a trip to Wal-Mart to buy an enormous planetary-orbit-of-its-own-helmet for Finn, we took our maiden voyage this morning before lunch, Henry and Jake in the trailer with a pool noodle between them to keep them upright and separated so Jake doesn't swipe Henry's pacifier and Finn strapped into the bike seat behind my seat on the bike.

The unintended comedy of this picture (I seem to be cultivating my circus acts-we just need a monkey) is that the bike cruiser has an enormous, cushion-your-big-fanny-seat and the bracket to attach finn's seat barely bolts to mine with room for his legs. So he sits so close behind me that his huge helmet bumps against my back as he turns his head to look at passing traffic. Which I think in Native American would make my name, "sunburned woman with large headed papoose pulling two dazed babies and a noodle".

I love the whole contraption though. I feel free, as strange as that is to say, and I foresee long productive rides to the grocery store or the coffee shop or the scrapbooking store where upon arrival, I lock up the bike, unhook and attach a front wheel to the trailer to convert it to a stroller, take finn by the hand and...voila! My dad would be so proud.

signs of a not good baby-sitter

2008-07-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

every time you come back into the room where she is entertaining 1 of the 3 babies, she sighs loudly and gives you a stricken face
throughout the day she states her waning interest in children of her own saying things like,"huh, I thought I wanted five kids. Now I don't think I want any." and "geeze, you can see why they warn you about teenage pregnancy."
when coming back into the house after having been at the beach with oldest and most difficult child for no more than 30 minutes, both babies are crying, one with a diaper on backwards and the remnants of his previous dirty diaper still all over him, toys are strewn helter skelter and she looks at you with pained expression of trapped animal.
when asked to feed middle child lunch (all elements of the lunch lain out before her on the table and child already in high chair), she shrugs and says"I've never done that before" and after feeding him half a jar of baby food, they are both covered in the red goo of savory beef and potatoes. She gets up to clean herself up and leaves the gooey (and still hungry) child to me.
when food or drink are offered to her in attempt at hospitality, she says in slightly annoyed voice, "when I'm hungry, I'll go looking for it" and does not eat the entire day.
she calls your son ambiguously derogatory terms with a gradually more aggravated tone throughout the day starting with "little monkey" going to "little monster" and sticking at "you little devil" with no playful edge to the moniker.
She tells smallest of babies (5 month old) not to roll off the couch as she rummages in her purse to find her ipod earphones.
She manages to look both relieved and honestly put out that you won't need her tomorrow.

frustration

2008-07-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

sample sized blush with its similarly tiny brush is completely useless to me. There is no way that I know of, to apply the blush from compact to cheek in a natural circular motion. It always looks like a thick tipped pink highlighter was colored haphazardly on my cheeks.

the little scoop that comes in the ridiculously expensive tin of formula is like-wise annoying and while provided for measuring out the right amount of powder for designated water, the diameter of the scoop is about the same as the diameter of the bottles so when dumping the, again, very expensive formula from scoop to bottle, much is sprinkled across the charcoal granite counter tops. The contrasted residue left after each and every bottle is made makes me want to scream.

Taking a walk with three boys takes much organization and coordination. Putting all of the boys in the car is similarly difficult. Bringing lunch adds to this effort exponentially. So when I pack Finn, Jake and Henry into the car with all parts of lunch and stroller and toys and plugs to go find the Kailua Beach Park and when we get there, I have two flat tires on the stroller and it starts to rain, it is a grave disappointment and much effort wasted. We walked a little ways to a covered picnic table anyway but then the famous--and until today absent--trade winds blew our lunch all around and we had to concede defeat, go back to the car and eat the rest of our lunch at home.

Fake crying is even more frustrating than all these combined. Finn sees me react to one of the little boys' crying and realizes in his developing mind that he can get my attention by crying. So he does, in the most annoyingly manipulative way that makes me want to put him in time out for the rest of time.

one good day; one really really bad day

2008-07-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

James is out of town for training in Portland this week and next and Scott is hardly around while any of us are awake so I am on my own. I have known this was coming and assured all worried parties that I would be fine, that plenty of parents of three children and more do it all of the time and I would just adjust, step up and it would all be over before any permanent damage could be done to any of us. Yesterday, I was sure this was the case. I got everyone up, fed, bathed, entertained and generally ran the household effectively with very few mind blowingly awful moments.

But today was just chock-full of them. I finished the book I had been reading while Jake was feeding himself a bottle, Finn was still in bed talking to himself and Henry was squawking beside me in bed. The ending was just really, really sad in that it-could-end-no-other-way sort of ending, which just made me put the book down and cry very hard because it was sad and because I didn't want it to end.

To rally my spirits, I fed everyone and put them in the car to go for a drive up the coast, to actually see the lovely coast line so famous for surfing and breathtaking views. I consulted the next door neighbor, as she came back from the beach, on the best route and then we set off. I went too far and didn't bring enough snacks or pacifiers or whatever the magic combination of soothing instruments and so half way through our hour-long outing, everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs. Including me. I pulled over a number of times to replug and redistribute toys, making the trip even longer and by the time I had turned around to go home, we got stuck in some mind boggling traffic at 11am, went through a construction zone that materialized in the time we had been gone and then followed the slowest little dodge spirit along the last 3 miles of winding road to home. I nearly back ended him to help the process along.

All three boys were fine really; I think they were crying mostly because everyone else was (this seems to be a common theme) but by the time we pulled into the driveway to my enormous relief, they were all hiccuping with subsiding sobs.

I'll do better tomorrow. Maybe.

rocky road

2008-07-11T23:39:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago today we flew from the misty cool spring of Portland to this humid splotch of land in the Pacific to start up this lovely adventurous (read here maybe totally insane but trying to be upbeat) chapter of life. We are raising three boys age two and under who are each in their own way adjusting to transition with varying levels of patience and grace. Finn is two in all of the lovely ways that two is. He seems to be finding hawaii quite a bit confusing (this is our car? no mandy and cott's car. no maybe grandma barbara's car.) and often frustrating (no jakie the cakie not awakie, mommy color with finny!) but also really thrilling (we go a beach, no maybe go a pool or no maybe take a rest and play trucks). Henry seems to think pacific time was working just fine for his schedule so why change it now and so wakes fully ready for the day at 3:30 am. And Jake is finding this onslaught of new people both fascinating (he sits enthralled in the playpen on the back porch slowly scooting in circles to watch finn lapping around him on his tricycle) and slightly traumatizing (the first time James went in to re-plug Jake with his pacifier in the middle of his nap, Jake screamed quite loudly in surprise--probably thinking this strange bearded man looked nothing like anyone he knew).

It's been a rocky first week for me too now that Mandy has officially flown overseas and James is working. Most days are purely reactionary, changing diapers, feeding and putting children down for naps when it becomes blatantly clear that full blown melt down is approaching or already arrived. And for the most part, I'm starting to work things out and settle in. But we still have our moments of total mayhem or hilarity or beauty and mostly combinations of all three:

Tonight when giving all three boys baths at once, Finn conked his head on the faucet and started to cry making Jake cry and both cried harder to outdo the other until both of them were screaming in sobbing gulps. Henry lay between them in the tub grinning from ear to ear.

There are few things more cruel to a toddler than the small space on the porch where a tricycle might almost but does not actually pass through and which allows him to enter and get wedged but then somehow shrinks, chinese handcuffs style to keep him from getting back out again and which requires an adult to pick him up and wrangle the trike out from between the couch and the wall only for him to try again and yes, get stuck in the same place to cry and scream in complete exasperation.

Between the swallows and squirming that qualify as feeding Jake his bottle, I propped him up to pat him on the back and had the lucky reward of projectile spit-up launching from his mouth, ricocheting off the side of the leather chair in his room and drenching my entire left side from ribs to mid calf. I plopped him down on the floor, sopped up the mess with a blanket and picked him up again finding his back thickly frosted with poop that had pushed its way out of his diaper and nearly up to his hairline--this all within ten minutes of the bath mentioned in the first point.

During a salutory cocktail party given for mandy by her lovely next door neighbors, I added another person to the list of likely faces I will see when floating towards the light of heaven. Ralph, the sixties-ish math proffesor who hosted the event, found Finn a plastic sippy cup from his store of grandkids paraphernalia, filled it with juice and herded him to the backyard with a fist full of fancy whole grain crackers and once the sustenance had settled, picked Finn up, turned the sprinklers on and dashed around the yard in a previously determined path that left them both miraculously dry and noticably exhilerated.

At this same cocktail party, the huddle of women gathered on the wicker settees discussing a number of topics, had the unfortunate collective urge to discuss all manner of Hawaiin pesks leaving me for a number of nights following, laying in bed fearing the biting centipedes known to show up in people's beds, the scuttling rats along the back walls of the yard and the stinging man-of-war jellyfish that often entangle the appendages of helpless swimmers on the beach at the end of the road. As is probably supposed to be forgivable about these types of conversations, all stories were supplemented with some sort of dissmissal like, "oh, just watch for the blue bubbles in the surf that come after the trade winds have passed, 2-14 days after the full moon, and otherwise, it's perfectly safe to swim" making me feel less comforted than confused.

In a spurt of energy uncharacteristic of the last two weeks in general, I waited for the perfect moment of the morning to pluck Finn from bed just as he started to wake up, changed him, dressed him and loaded him into the front seat of the stroller, moved on to Jake's room and repeated the process, snapping him in behind Finn and then with baby bjorn cinched to my chest, scooped Henry out of his closet bedroom, fanangled his limbs through the grace-less holes of the bjorn, misted us all in a cloud of spray sunscreen and walked the mile to the Safeway down the road to buy nothing less cliched than baby food. I sort of preened to see the number of people who gawked out their window in awe of me or perhaps dismay at my circus-y looking caravan in the high heat of hawaiin 10am. The walk home was long and hot and slightly more circus-y as I balanced an iced coffee and favored a developing blister from my plastic flip flops.

The other day, when James got Finn out of bed, our son took James' face in his hands and said, "daddy, are you sad?" and James said, "no, I'm not sad buddy" and then Finn said with alarming clarity about the really densely emotional landscape that made up Mandy's week long leave ending with another trip to the airport for an unknowable time of separation, "just Mandy and Cott and Jakie sad." James said, "yeah, Finn. Mandy and Scott and Jakie are sad."

I'm sad too.

Highlights of moving week

2008-06-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

T minus two days and we are wheels up to Hawaii. As I mentioned before, our furniture is gone so pretty much all that is left in our apartment are stacks of clothes to be packed and bizarre food items from the back of the cupboard left to be consumed before we leave. The boys seem to be adjusting mightily well. Finn enjoys the expansive carpet space to park his cars and trucks in broader lots of OCD organization and Henry really couldn't care less whether he is sleeping in a fancy crib or a blanket on the floor next to our air bed. It's been an interesting week:

Finn once again ran out of diapers before we realized it so while James scanned the aisle at Target for the smallest possible bag of diapers so we don't have to carry them with us to Hawaii, Finn went "nakie". We have been slowly introducing the idea of potty training but not wanting to start something in the middle of major transition (babywise peeps would be so proud of me), we have put off actual training until we get to Hawaii. Even so, Finn yelled over the women of the View this morning, "I need to pee", we ran into the downstairs bathroom, I hoisted him up to aiming level and he peed. I realize that for many of you who read this and do not have children, this is a sort of uncomfortable and unnecessary anecdote for me to be sharing. But for those of you with access to kids, this, you realize is a momentous moment that makes your heart swell with pride on a first words, first steps sort of level.

Using up the cupboard and fridge food makes for interesting meals. Monday, James made grilled cheese with the last bit of creamy tomato basil soup and supplemented with the final contents of a can of spaghetti sauce to make it go further. We've eaten kiwi with nearly every meal because I found an entire bag of them in the back of the fridge behind boxes of leftovers. And this morning Finn and I made pancakes with the last bit of mix in the box. We have about one table spoon of butter left and no syrup so feeling very martha stewart-y, I thought to sprinkle some powdered sugar on top for taste and aesthetic appeal. I keep the powdered sugar in an old ball canning jar and when I went to sprinkle, I dumped a huge pile on top of the pancakes that resembled a science fair rendition of Mount Hood. Finn promptly plunged both hands into the sugar and then clapped. This all took place during the nakie portion of the morning so wrapped in a towel, sitting on the counter, he covered us both in fine, sticky white powdered sugar and grinned from ear to ear.

Finn's language skills seem to grow with surprising speed and content these days. He often latches on to a word or phrase caught from some unknown origin and repeats it in every possible scenario to try it out. This week's phrases have included "ride it like a horse" and "backing up, backing up" as well as the Happy Birthday song sung in a monotonous zombie-ish voice that makes James and me laugh a little nervously, not sure if we should be entertained or disturbed.

I read the Babywise books one and two over the last couple of days because Mandy mentioned that their philosphy on baby-raising is most closely aligned with hers and Scott's sense of how they would like to parent Jake. But having already traversed the stages they talk about with two kids, I'm having some guilt that I didn't implement these strategies with my kids for their obvious health and emotional benefits. It's like reading the directions on a super-elaborate barbecue grill after you already assembled it willy nilly and turned the propane valve on, thinking, "wow it's a good thing nothing exploded."

I also read Anne Patchett's newest book Run and really loved it. I'd heard it wasn't so good and had even thought about taking my name off the waiting list at the library but then, as is my custom, I forgot about it and got an e-mail that it was waiting for me at the holds desk. Since I'd been something like #940 on the waiting list and I was already at the library picking up the Babywise books, I thought I might as well skim it. I was really pleasantly surprised. Anne Patchett has a way of making really unlikely situations very reasonable and accessible while still successfully making her prose full of lovely descriptions and unexpected connections--sort of the best of a romance novel, a political thriller and a naturalist's walk through the woods.

More once we get to Oahu....

Happy Birthday Heather!

2008-06-23T10:25:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday Meg!

2008-06-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Not sure if I am coming or going

2008-06-13T12:32:00.001-07:00

These last few weeks have been a flurry of changes and decisions leading up to a monumentally exciting move to Hawaii. The accompanying emotions are mixed.

We are getting the chance to live in Hawaii rent free in a five bedroom house a stone's throw from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world for six months. James has gotten the Ok to work from home on Pacific time (5-2 in Hawaii) so we will be going to bed early, exploring the island, taking naps and watching for "LOST" stars. We'll pay off some lingering debt more quickly, save up for a newer car and live a life we might not ever get the chance to live. It's really an amazing opportunity that I think anyone would fanangle their lives to allow.

But the initiating reason for us going is that my sister Mandy--whose house it is and whose son I will be caring for--is getting deployed to Afghanistan and is in fact already in the middle of Texas in the middle of the hot season getting ready to be shipped out. Via Skype, she seems in relatively good spirits, resigned to this reality as part of the deal, but maybe slightly more crabby and less impressed with all that the military has done for her. Sitting here with Henry squawking beside me, I just can't really imagine.

As a part of this move, we are packing up our apartment, paring down our belongings once again-less than a year since we moved out of our house in Indiana and did the same thing. Good friends who have recently moved to the Portland area and had no attachment to their previous furniture have given ours a new home while we are away, an easy, free storage system that benefits all involved.

So our living room is a parking lot for finny's trucks and cars and the boxes that vary in stages of fullness. I mentioned before my inability to time the weaning process of food in our fridge before a vacation. I seem to be about as good at packing up a house without putting something ridiculously necessary like a warm sweater for each of the boys in cool Portland spring or spatulas in the bottom of a box not to be found again until the next arrival.

We sold our car to a lovely girl who bought it for a song for her sister, also a lovely girl who seemed a bit down on her luck. I felt good about giving her the keys. But as she drove away and the boys and I stood in the cold rain at a Fred Meyer on the northeast side of Portland, waiting for our ride, I got very nostalgic and sad. With all of its quirks (awful handling, bizarre dash lights constantly blinking on to betray a new chronic problem, electrical malfunction making the back windows and the sun roof unusable), we brought both of the boys home from the hospital in this car. It's come a long way with us.

This all sounds very negative considering the unbeatable situation we have been handed. I am really excited about this chapter for James and me and the boys-Jake and Scott included. I think I'm just focused right now on the leaving and not as much on the arriving. I can't quite see the forest yet for the trees.

If praying is something you do, I would ask for yours especially right now. For the details of leaving; for Mandy, Scott and Jake's comfort and relative ease in transition; for a smoothing over of all the possible difficulties of living in community, for safety, and I guess also for a respectful, effective end to these wars.

As usual, this reminds me of Eliot, "not farewell but fare forward"

Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'...

Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.

Dear Phil & Ted

2008-06-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

I picture the two of you very vividly as hippy parent inventor extraordinaires: well tanned and with lovely accents (you are Australian after all), athletically thin (you make jogging strollers) and bearing the characteristic idiosyncrasies of both the modern progressive parent and the self made business men that you are (this part I'm just conjecturing). And with this image in my mind--a sort of boyscout meets crocodile dundee meets metrosexual dad of three with a Subaru forrester and a compost pile sort of image--I write you this letter of appreciation believing that it means something to you to hear it.

I love your strollers. I mean really. I really love your strollers.

I fancy myself a progressive parent in my own right, but more of the garage sale-ing, taking mass transit, carrying a canvas tote everywhere I go kind of progressive (see here-less money than your typical granola mom) so your stroller, with its hefty price tag and slightly yuppy looking exterior would normally not appeal to me. But here's the thing, the whole design of the double stroller that converts so simply for varying children in different stages and does so with such minimal bulk is really just so very brilliant. So brilliant in fact that when I first saw one of your strollers on a clandestined day at a Borders in Beaverton, I chased the man down who was pushing it and bombarded him with questions as he hastily tried to find his wife and make his escape. I actually followed him through the store marveling at the apple green stroller with his two toddler aged sons riding comfortably double decker as their father swiveled and maneuvered between narrow bookshelves and dawdling customers. I dropped my books on a table near the door, waved my husband down and followed this man with the stroller out the front door to continue my interview.

The very next day, I went to the store of his direction and found the vary same Phil&Ted's stroller parked just inside the front door. A week later, after much rationalizing and some financial fanangling, we took our own green apple stroller home. As it would happen, we found the last stroller of a certain shipment from your lovely company that had been specially priced so that the double kit came free. It seemed like a good omen.

Ever since, I have pushed my stroller proudly to all manner of events and places, through airports and MAX stations, festivals and carnivals, on dirt and on grass and on pavement. And it has been worth every penny we paid for it and more. I live in a lovely city where it rains unforgivably often and as a newcomer, I know very few people. It would be very easy for me to stay home with my newborn and two-year-old sons and mournfully look out the drizzly windows. But with the initial motivation of making sure I got my money's worth and then for the continued joy of being outside and finding the trails and playgrounds in an ever-broadening radius from our house, we use it all the time.

I realize this sounds like hyperbole. And to some extent I know it is hyperbole. We would live quite effectively with a less lovely stroller and in fact would probably continue to breathe without a stroller at all. But my point is, your design is useful to my life. I walk more often: to buy groceries for dinner, to send a birthday present, to get coffee and then play at the park. And if walking more isn't progressive, than I don't know what is.

Thank you for the ingenious design of your double jogging stroller. I believe I am a better mom for its convenience and comfort.

Very best,

Kate Rohl

PS. While I appreciate the stroller's jogging capacity, I should disclaim that I have not yet utilized it for actual jogging.

PPS: Your company might want to think seriously about issuing me some sort of commission structure as I am easily persuaded into conversations with perfect strangers about the brilliance of your strollers and then a subsequent demonstration of its function. I have also introduced the stroller to entirely new markets visiting friends in both Indiana and Arizona where you, Phil&Ted are not nearly as well represented as you are here in cutting edge Portland.

Thank you ESPN; thank you very much

2008-05-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

Any of you that know my husband James might note in the first points of any description of him that he loves sports, I mean really loves sports. He would rather be watching an NBA basketball game than doing pretty much anything else in the world. And all other sports rank only slightly lower on his list of priorities. Give him a remote, he can find a sporting event. Leave him at home with the boys and our cable-less TV, he will stream the most interesting game available online. Give him a ball he will kick it. And give him an unknown person, he will find their unique sports passion so that he can talk to them about it- seriously.

And since the NBA playoffs are upon us (really the height of the height of his favorite thing), all conversations lead to some excited description of an elaborate play at the end of the game or a player's comments to some obscure journalist or a backwoods obsessive blogger's theory about the weaknesses of the triangle offense or the LA Times' most recent editorial about Kobe or...you get the idea. He is single minded.

For those of you who do not know my husband James particularly well, he is an excellent conversationalist. He finds not only your sports loyalties but your other passions as well. He can talk about urban development, tonka trucks or literary analysis of the modern American novel with equal candor and knowledge. He will find the subject that uniquely provides an overlap of interest.

Not so during the NBA playoffs. Or maybe its just me. Maybe he just feels the need to be polite to other people and talk about other things than the most important thing of all time, the Lakers playoff run. And so he comes home and just must talk to me about the burning questions of matchups and defensive strategy. Maybe he spends all of the alloted time and energy he has for other subjects at work. But around here, we are like a one man NBA TV-all basketball, all the time. And here is where my grievance with ESPN and really all sports media comes in. There are a number of bloggers and sports writers and pundits and hosts who love sports as much as James. They live sports. They know all the stats and subtleties of players and plays, they call coaches by their first names and refer to the playoffs of '88 or the obscure off season scrimmage between D-league rookies. They make podcasts with their other fanatic fan friends to talk about all sporting subjects. And in their broadcasted sports obsession, it validates James' personal sports obsession-he has camaraderie in this shared knowledge and passion. There are others who care as much as he does.

But there is a difference between James and them, a key, important difference. They get paid to know everything there is to know about sports. James does not. And when James knows as much as the people whose whole full time job is to know these things, well, it makes me wonder. Maybe James loves sports more than they do because he doesn't have to. Maybe these sports professionals with their intern researchers and their whole weekday schedule make it tough on us middle-american housewives whose husbands must read and know all that is offered. Maybe someone would pay James to spend his whole day loving sports. Maybe it's just May and the Lakers are in the playoffs.

You can't count on me

2008-05-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yes you read that right. I always thought that growing older and bringing children into the world might make me instantaneously more dependable, as if the hormones involved with childbirth might also bring about a sort of supernatural sense of parental weight-that I am now responsible for other human beings and so should be able to remember commitments and shot records and keep fruit cups in ready supply. Not so-in all of those examples actually.

I think I have come to terms with my youngest child-I'm pretty fun to be around-but don't count on me to make the reservations or arrive on time-kind of irresponsibility. And in most cases, I have surrounded myself with people (husband, friends, sisters, coworkers) who are generally more capable and so make up for my lack. But there are moments-and this week has been full of them-where I really cringe at my own space-cadet-ism. For instance:

At various points this week, both Henry and Finn have been down to two or less diapers and because the realization of this shortage came at inconvenient times (ie other child down for nap, in the middle of the night, generally feeling lazy, etc) instead of immediately running out to the store, I improvised other means. Not like swaddling them in a towel for days or anything but Henry has certainly worn finn's diapers once or twice in his life, cinched around his armpits for optimal fit and for Finn, we have dipped into the size six diapers that Bing accidentally bought, which I believe are large enough to fit most adults. Must work on keeping track of number of diapers left in package.

We are leaving on vacation this coming week and in an attempt to be responsible, I have been carefully avoiding perishable food that can sit in our refrigerator and rot while we are gone. However, it seems that this weaning process has taken its course a bit sooner than I expected and now, three whole days before we leave, we have bare cupboards and a fridge consisting of two containers of yogurt that stains Finn's lips a sort of frightening bright blue, a dribble of milk, a jug of iced coffee (not practical for children's consumption) and various kinds of cheese. Needless to say, yesterday in total exasperation at our food situation, we walked to Fred Meyer, bought corn dogs from the deli and ate them ravenously on the way to the playground across the street.

And the real clincher to my general reflective cringing came this past Monday when after napping the full amount of time that Finn would allow, I checked my e-mail and had a message from two dear friends with whom I was supposed to meet for lunch that said something like, "um well, we've been sitting at the agreed upon cafe for almost an hour and you aren't here. so I hope all is well and you just forgot..." The more awful thing is that these friends live far away, they have a 3 1/2 year-old son who I have not met-it has been so long since I have seen them. And I really care what they think of me. They are intelligent, caring people who I owe quite a bit of academic and spiritual clarity to. And I stood them up because I forgot and I took a nap.

This all, in combination, has made me feel quite bad about myself this week. I keep picturing Finn's friends' mothers in kindergarten issuing bans on my involvement in the PTA or carpools because I have been known to leave children waiting on the sidewalk at school for a number of hours or harriedly dumping chips ahoy on a plate for the bake sale. But the one consolation I can find is that I do manage to keep my children alive-pretty successfully actually. They mostly eat well and healthily with an occasional corndog, they are usually clean unless they have recently rolled around in mulch at the playground or eaten strawberries. And they seem happy. Really. I mean you should see them. If you didn't know me, you might think I am doing quite swimmingly. And while I am actively working on being more dependable (I see an elaborate internet calendar in my future that sends reminders through every technological method available), I think this sort of spaciness comes with the package. You might not like me quite so much if my datebook and I were better friends. I might give you a dirty look when you showed up late for our coffee date. As it is, you will always beat me there, always have well portioned snacks in your bag for your antsy children, and you will probably have to spot me a ten once in a while when I realize I left my debit card in the back pocket of my other jeans. I'm working on it; I'm not there yet.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-05-02T11:00:00.001-07:00

I really meant well when I said that I would post on a regular basis, chronicling the moments in my stay-at-home-mom-ing life that are worth remembering, for my sake as much as for the people that read this blog. But for as many moments in a day that are worth telling, there are usually more harried, forgettable moments that keep me from meditating on those lovely worthy ones. So the last couple of weeks has been full of both types and I have written little. Here's my attempt to make up for it.

We flew to Arizona last weekend for an extended visit with Rohl family and friends who mostly mass-emigrated from California for the affordable real estate in the Phoenix area. Because this group of people have known James since junior high or longer and because we make it to Arizona so infrequently, everyone wanted to see us. So every meal, basketball game and shopping outing involved about 30 people and what seemed like 9,000 children. Compared to my relatively solitary life in Portland with the boys where the weekly trip to the grocery store constitutes the majority of our social interaction, all these people were a bit overwhelming. Once I realized that all talents of extroversion and adaptability were going to be required for this vacation, I really had a great time. I also got to see James and the boys in a different context than I am used to. For instance:

Finn is a natural born leader and seems to be perfectly content on 5 or 6 snatched hours of sleep in car-seats, various pack and plays and leaning on Bing's chest on the airplane. He dashed around Kyle and Melissa's house with Hayley yelling "dah dah dah dah" for a number of hours, zigzagged around Mark and Kendra's back yard with their dachshund Tyson, like two ships passing in the night-in fast motion, never actually acknowledging each other but following the same figure eight pattern worn in the grass, played with trucks at church nursery, sat in the dirt with the Jackson kids at the farm on Sunday afternoon, rubbing much dirt onto his sunscreened face to make warpaint looking pattern and generally made friends with everyone he met: "pop pop chuck, Yenny, mahhk, kenna, mahl, owen" and his favorite-baby hayley.

James is the best version of himself in this group of friends both because he has known them so long making him more comfortable and because James is enough different from the other boys in the group that he sets himself apart. He did dishes after huge meals, he picked up kid explosion of toys wherever we stayed and he held and cared for both of our boys as well as any other child who seemed to have a need. While these are normal parts of James' and my life, this kind of participation in the domestic and child-rearing scene is not expected of many of the other men we visited. It made me feel so progressive with our non genderized roles and reminded me that I am lucky to have him. He also told stories and teased his brother and generally shined bright the whole weekend.

And Henry, well he is just the nicest, best, smiliest, good natured baby ever-even with my bias taken into account. He got put in and taken out of the carseat and the stroller a zillion times, slept on a chair, in a king sized bed, on a couch, the floor and wherever else he could manage to drop to sleep amidst high volume, much action and a number of interested dogs. And never cried or noticeably fussed even when it had been an unforgivable amount of time since he ate and he had been passed to the thirtieth set of arms to be cooed at. He smiled at each oggling relative with fresh delight and even sat through an entire basketball game in the arms of his 7 year old cousin lyric, to her enormous joy.

Vacation in Arizona-more to come

2008-05-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

kind words

2008-04-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for your warm encouragement and your mutual distaste for the whole gosh darn grad application process, which often leads to rejection. Not just my rejection either, lots of really brilliant people have been rejected by grad programs. This makes me feel better. So thank you also for being rejectees and sharing your rejection so I can commiserate.

I have been bombarded with comments, e-mails and facebook messages to convince me of my non-dumbness and I think it may be working. I'm on the mend. I've thought very little about the scathing forward I would write in my first book citing institutions of higher learning with elitism, condescension and general demoralization. Much progress, really.

I feel dumb; the best word for it is dumb

2008-04-01T10:05:00.002-07:00

James brought the mail in yesterday afternoon and handed me a suspiciously skinny envelope with the return address of the MFA program I applied to at Seattle Pacific. I opened it quickly with a sinking sensation, like I already knew what it said, that they had a number of very talented writers apply this year and unfortunately they were not recommending me for admission to the program and that they hope I continue to pursue my writing and that I am actually an atrocious writer who they all referred to as the amateur but good luck waiting tables for the rest of your life with that English degree anyways. Ok not that last part but you get the idea.

Obviously the first overwhelming emotion I found was anger-that they could take such a subjective process and actually claim to have the authority to judge one manuscript over another, not in its actual merit but its potential, that I spent hours and many dollars at Kinkos copying versions of both personal writing and published pieces and agonizing over the order and cover page to send it off and be rejected, never seen again, that I actually spent those hours the week Henry was born making copies and doing last minute editing instead of staring at my new baby and soaking in my enormous good fortune.

But mostly I just feel dumb. Dumb that we moved to the northwest in no small part so that I could go to this program, dumb that I quit my stupid job and made James go back to work so that I could "pursue my passions", dumb that I have been cultivating a sneaking suspicion that I am a brilliant writer and will be discovered, published and heralded in the New Yorker as the "voice of our time" and just dumb that I made plans and told people and now its all not true. Now I have no plan. I am a stay at home mom in the suburbs, not an MFA student raising her children while interacting in a creative academic community, which sounds infinitely less boring. And the idea that I would take this time while going to school to figure out what I want to be when I grow up now just seems arbitrary, like I just needed some noble reason to quit my job.

After an initial freak out, we went to Applebees because advertising works inexplicably well on me and citrus teriakey boneless wings, mini bacon cheeseburgers and a margarita were just the things I wanted at that moment. Hoards of greasy food later, I'm fine really. Actually surprisingly fine. Lying in bed last night I told James that with him my base seems broader, like I'm less easily bolled over and while things still affect me, they affect me less potently. My edges are a little smoother because of him. This is a little cheesy in the manner of Jerry Maguire "you complete me" proportions, I realize. But I'm not devastated and I think I would have been before I met him.

So to sum up: I didn't get in to grad school, I was angry, I fealt dumb, I had some hot wings and I'm fine. I still feel really dumb for a lot of reasons and this week has really been awful in more ways than just this one but (and again not to sound cheesy or tie this up too neatly) I'm lucky and things are not all bad. Finn and Henry are getting over their colds, it's supposed to get into the 60's this week and not rain. And yesterday as usual when I woke Finn up from his nap, he had stripped his socks off during the time he spent in his crib. But this time he looked up at me and exclaimed in perfect imitation of me, "why are your socks off!!?" and grinned.

on saying no

2008-03-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

I think of myself as a much better parent than I actually am. When I saw frustrated mothers wrenching the arms of petulant children in the aisles of grocery stores, I shook my head disapprovingly and thought how I would do it differently, how I use words to explain why the world works the way it does and how I will instill feelings of compassion and goodwill in my children by example. But that was all before I actually had a two year old who drives his trucks forcefully over his newborn brother's head, who runs out into the street in the flash of an eye and screams to eat grapenuts cereal when I give him kix (silly me). As the author of the book I just finished said about her two year old, she must constantly"foil his attempts to kill himself"and I might add, foil my own attempts to wring his skinny little neck. Because obviously grapenuts will not kill him but the process of explaining to me that he wants one thing over another gets him and me worked up into such a lather that one of us ends up screaming and crying. And in these moments, I am irrational. I yell and snap and have even been known to wrench an arm here and there. Because thinking of a way to explain to Finn that he must not propel himself down the ravine of our backyard atop his riding truck takes too long. I must snatch him out of danger, not explain to him how to make good decisions so he keeps himself firmly planted on the cement of our back patio. No one warned me about this part of parenting. I thought that if you are a level-headed relatively laid back person in regular life, that you might be mostly that same person as a parent. Not so. I mean, I do have my good moments where Finn and I excitedly make connections between the ducks on the stream near our house and the ducks in the books that we read or that Grandpa Tom Tom does indeed have an RV like that one on TV and many others. But I am not the parent that I pictured I would be. I am the type to breathe a sigh of relief when they are both asleep because I am no longer on lifeguard duty or give in and feed Finn chocolate easter eggs because I don't want to fight him and explain the nonexistant nutritional value of the candy coating. In short, I am more impatient and lazy.

There was a great article in the most recent Wondertime magazine where the writer argues that lazy parenting might actually be good for the kids-ie they are more independant, lower maintenance and more easily adaptable. And I am just now watching the View where barbara and whoopi (we are on first name basis) are talking about their grown children coming to appreciate them and developing friendships with one another as adults. I know this reality with my own mom, realizing how much she loved me even when (or especially when) she sent me to my room to scream about the injustice of not getting LA gear sneakers. So I know I can redeem myself. And in the mean time, I'll probably let him eat grapenuts, snatch his truck away and say the thing I said I never would: "because I said so"

the voice in my head

2008-03-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

I don't think I am alone in thinking that my own voice--on a message machine or a video--sounds so shockingly not like the voice I hear myself speaking with that it always catches me off guard when I hear it, like 'who is that? oh, it's me...is it me?'

I know this phenomenon has to do with hearing the tone of your own voice through the reverberation of your own body or something like that and this makes sense. I have a particularly vivid memory sitting on my mom's lap at thanksgiving and listening to her talk as I leaned my ear against her sternum, hearing the muffled version of her voice and thinking this must be what her voice sounds like to her.

But as my sister Mandy visits us this week with her husband Scott and their new baby Jake, I realized something about my own voice- or maybe just cemented a thought that has floated around for some time. When I am talking with authority or with confidence-the voice I hear talking is Mandy's. And when I am telling a story and I know I am being funny, my voice sounds to me just like my childhood friend Emily's.

I'm sure this is not exactly coincidental or even genetic. I think to some extent I actually emulate these two voices when in the situation where their voice would lend some experience-like I channel them to communicate more fully. Because Mandy-the oldest of my three sisters- as a kid was the big boss of all of us by age and disposition and her voice in this mode sounds sort of cynical and annoyed, like she knows more than you do, thank you very much. We have a home video where she runs the camera, darting around our backyard in New York and barking orders-telling 4 year old me to stop limping (I think I had just gotten a shot). Now grown, this isn't her only tone. She is gentler and more diplomatic and we've leveled out in recent years, both adults, mothers and better friends. But she is a doctor in the military and a naturally electable leader so she's still got authority, even if not over me.

And Em sort of dallies through a story with no real set up or show, like she's sort of complaining about something-not whiny, just matter of fact and spontaneous. But then you are listening to what she's saying and it's hilarious and so unpretentious, like she doesn't even realize herself that it's funny until you erupt in hysterics. So when I am telling something, I use this voice. Not consciously, mind you- I just realized all this this week. But I do; I sound like Em and like Mandy and probably like a number of other people if I think about it. Mostly those two though

So Em and Mandy, you are the voices in my head (for better or worse). Congratulations.

Happy Birthday to me

2008-03-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

I've realized on earlier birthdays than this one that birthdays change considerably as you grow older. No more bringing cupcakes into class or birthday parties at the roller rink of course, but also no more princess-type of days, where everything is special. Yesterday I woke up at five in the morning to feed Henry, woke up again at eight to ferry both boys downstairs (Henry in my arms and Finn clinging to my shoulders and hanging down my back as I barump, barump down the stairs to his glee) made breakfast-peaches and cheerios and coffee for me and settled in to watch Sesame Street. So far nothing straying from every other weekday morning except that when James kissed me goodbye he said "Happy Birthday, I'm glad you were born". The day progressed with both regularity and a few very princess-y moments:

My one consolation on making my birthday special-when the boys were both asleep so no nutritional accountability hovered, I made myself five pieced of bacon and cinnamon rolls-the kind that pops out of the refrigerated cylinder-because that was exactly what I felt like eating

When putting my makeup on later that afternoon, I found my foundation particularly thick and cakey and realized that I still had cinnamon roll frosting on my fingers and had smeared it on my face with my makeup.

About 50 of my 87 friends on facebook wished me a happy birthday including my old friend from elementary school, Janet who reminded me that I shared a birthday with my almost first boyfriend Chad-who asked me out by the bus in fourth grade and I said no (what a heart-breaker I was).

James came home for lunch and announced that we would be going out to dinner sans children in a ridiculously extravagant way (at a restaurant with no color crayons on the table and where the cost per prawn would buy a number of McDonald's ice cream cones) while James' parents watched the boys.

While straightening my hair getting ready for said dinner, I realized that I had a line of yellow smodged down my index finger and onto the back of my hand that I could not distinguish-either baby poop or yellow paint from earlier craft project. Later at the lovely, fancy dinner, I realized that I also had yellow smeared on my wrist with a hue of black marker making me look like a domestic violence victim being taken out for an apology dinner and confirming at least that with the evidence of marker, it was in fact yellow paint and not poop.

As a birthday wish, I requested that James take care not to refer to me as mommy the entire time we were away from the boys.

I ate braised lamb with gnochie and yukon potatoes at a restaurant called Veritable Quandry, which even if the food had been yucky would have been worth eating at for its name alone. The lamb, which I don't normally eat because it reminds me of Finny's white lamby in his crib and the lamby's live counterpart, was delicious and which I justified in that it was a very special occasion.

We arrived at Cupcake Jones a little after eight and ordered four itty cupcakes: bananas foster, thin mint, pearl chocolate and something coffee-ish that I can't remember the name of to eat later when dinner had settled a bit.

And finally to finish the night, we came home and watched the two hour season finale of October Road- a guilty pleasure we share and can only stomach the cheesiness of by regularly berating the lines and the dramatic montages. This episode did not disappoint us for material-there were three lengthy montages of angst and making out. We watched ten minutes of the evening news, long enough for the weather man to comment that he had "a forecast for our travel plans" making me pause and then comment, "Travel plans? What about a Monday night in March, nowhere near a holiday weekend makes him think we have travel plans?"

I turned the TV off and gathered a handful of shoes, toy trucks and dishes to deposit in their various destinations before climbing the stairs, brushing my teeth and going to sleep-all in all a wonderfully ordinary day leading up to a lovely extraordinary night out as an adult-where I ate leisurely with no one else's food to worry about and where I wore high heeled boots and a dress and eyeliner for crying out loud.

Rockin boys

2008-03-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

books on my end table

2008-03-03T14:23:00.001-08:00

Since finishing the Hours, I have started in on a stack of books I got from the library and a pile of magazines we got in the mail over the last week. Reading bits of one thing and then another based on my mood, the list of things I am learning and absorbing is oddly diverse and perhaps a good indicator of who I am right now: potty trainer, vapid style watcher, self-appointed political theorist, blogger and future grad student.

So here's the stack:

On becoming Potty Wise for toddlers by Gary Ezzo and Robert Buckman-I assume the same driving force that came up with baby-wise; uses lots of terms for the process of potty training I never imagined needing like: elimination, volitional development, and enuresis and breaks all potty options and development into three steps. I guess three is a magic number

the Spring Anthropologie catalogue-lots of bohemian waifs in lovely eastern-inspired photo shoot-think curry, jewel tones and crumbling architecture

Country Living-really amazingly adorable story about a upholsterer in upstate New York who covers things the way you might dress someone with one cushion different from another in vintage stripes, toille, florals and velvets. These are a few of my favorite things.

Writers talking to writers- an anthology from Believer magazine where writers interview other writers and talk about the issues predominant in their writing, techniques, motivation. Really a great book but tough to read cover to cover.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd-one of about seven copies we have of this book, which is a good thing because it really is Finn's favorite and there needs to be a copy wherever we are. I don't actually need to look at the pages anymore because I have the entire thing memorized. A couple of weeks ago, James and I actually laid in bed reciting it aloud, racing each other to the next line to prove we knew every word.

Practically Perfect in Every way by Jennifer Niesslein- a non-fiction book about a mom's journey with self help books and recommended by Catherine Newman, my favorite blogger that I don't actually know.

Rolling Stone-February issue- Beautiful picture of Jack Johnson on the cover (really, who doesn't love Jack Johnson, especially once you have seen his face? He's just so sandy and unpretentious) and the rest of the magazine seems to be about politics-Obama and McCain both make up stories listed on the front cover. Funny that my favorite political writer, Matt Taibbi writes for a music magazine.

Anybody have good book recommendations for me when I get mostly finished with(or give up on) these?

more than a mug

2008-02-25T14:46:00.000-08:00

James and I are coffee drinkers but not really coffee drinkers. We have one of those tiny 4 cup coffee makers (4 measuring cups not 4 mugs) and we often don't even drink all of the coffee in the pot. When we don't finish the pot, we usually put the leftover in a cup in the fridge to have iced later. Our fridge is particularly cold so there is often a film of ice over the cup by the time you pull it out so you just add some cream and enjoy.

This weekend I opened the fridge, picked up the mug with the coffee dregs and did one of those close the fridge door with your hip moves and must have gained some momentum before hip hit door because the fridge closed with high velocity knocking the mug out of my hand onto the floor, shattering it into too many pieces to repair. I said,"that really sucks" after it hit the floor because it was a great mug, heavy and sturdy and nicely shaped. In fact, we have a number of mugs that match our dishes and hardly ever get used but this mug gets rinsed out nearly every day--it doesn't even make it to the dishwasher because it can't be spared that long.

It's also great because I stole it from the house of some close friends back in New Jersey, the Furlers and it commemorates the 10th anniversary of the church that my family helped plant when I was in junior high. So every morning my coffee or tea or oatmeal cools in this nicely shaped mug that reminds me of these friends and this church. It's like the t-shirt you have from summer camp that's faded and thinned to a lovely consistency that makes it infinitely better than any other t-shirt you own.

James was standing in the doorway of the kitchen as the mug broke and immediately started picking up pieces, pulling the trash can out and sopping up the spilled coffee with an old towel so that I wouldn't track through it with my bare feet. And he said, "I'm sorry honey" because he knew it was more than a mug.

I moped around the kitchen making Finny a plate of food to tide him over until dinner and James walked over to pick up my cell phone from the coffee table. Halfway through his first sentence, I realized he was talking to Al Furler, claiming that he broke my mug and wondering if they could send us another. Al, not being sentimental in the least, passed the phone off to Sue, also not very sentimental because she said half jokingly, "tell Katie, it's only a thing; get over it" but told James she would see what she could do about the mug.

I stood dumbstruck looking through the kitchen to the dining room where James paced, talking on the phone and when he hung up, I walked around the counter, put my arms around his neck and said, "I think that is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." And I think it was. Not that James isn't a thoughtful person normally or that people haven't done kind things for me but our life, James' and mine, made this act beautiful and loving because he knew the context of the mug both in nostalgic and daily meaning without me actually referring to either. And he knew that it sucked that the mug was broken. We have this ever growing pool of shared information that usually just goes unacknowledged but this Saturday, he saw something simple that made me sad and knew exactly why it made me sad and saw a way to make it better. And I love him for it. And I love the way his life and mine and now our boys' life all overlap and inform the others, like venn diagrams, making it a more delicate and a more poignant process to love each other-knowing what we know.

another kind of vivid

2008-02-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

Today seems to be a retaliation day. Yesterday seemed so hopeful and lovely and today seems to have come out to smack yesterday in the face. For instance: Finn is screaming his head off in his crib because he is so tired that he actually is past the point of thinking it is a good idea to take a nap and henry has been continually fussy for inexplicable reasons all day and is just gearing up to join his brother in chorus from his crib in our room. I'm taking the let em' cry approach both because it seems to have the support of some child psychologists and because I am having a moment myself right now-the overcoming the urge to strangle one of them kind of moment. Not really strangle...nobody worry...it just seems a long way away-those beautiful intelligent and thoughtful children I had yesterday.

Here were the highlights (the vivid moments) of today:

Finn sat on the counter watching me make James' lunch munching on cereal but then insisting on having "a bahht" (bite) of whatever the current ingredient was that I was handling. I humored him with slices of onion and pepper, which he crumpled his face at in disgust after barely touching them to his lips and then proceeded to eat almost the entire package of provolone cheese I had saved for this particular meal. I salvaged two pieces from his grasp to melt on top of the sandwich but got howls and shrieks of protest in return.

Henry, sitting in his car seat and a fresh diaper nearly propelled himself under the table with the force of his pooping while James and I tried to take the smallest of naps on the couch nearby. He seemed to scare himself enough to start crying and hence end the nap before it started.

I finished the Hours, which made me sort of sad-both because it isn't the happiest of endings but also because I don't have it to read anymore. It should also be mentioned that I almost finished it this morning (three pages to go) while Finn cried in his crib wanting to get out of bed and with Henry lying next to me in bed, waiting to be changed out of his full diaper and milk soaked clothes...mother of the year, huh?

I realized with a pang of acute frustration that the kitchen, which I just scrubbed down with bleach yesterday (was it yesterday? it must have been wednesday when finn was with grandma. he would never have let me get something like that done) is already covered in onion peels, cereal crumbs dried into fruit cup syrup, a sink full of already stinking dishes and a garbage can full of dirty diapers and coffee grounds (our garbage can an indicator of life). Then I realized with an even more tragic clarity that everything I do is a process of redoing. I feed Henry and he is hungry again, I wipe Finn's face to have it covered in chocolate frosting again, I vacuum to find the rug so crumb covered you can't make out the design, the dishes, the laundry, the diapers, the showers and baths are all a maintenance. This sounds awfully depressing and fatalistic and again I say don't worry about me too much. I'm not sinking into the hopelessness of it yet. It's just all so damn unfinished and my house is always a mess. And unlike yesterday when I was struck by all of the beauty, today I am struck by all of the grime, the diaper rash cream and bacon grease under my fingernails so to speak. I know it gets better or there are better times.I hope I am grateful when they come.

In fact, during the time it has taken me to type this post, finn is quiet in his room and henry seems to have slipped to sleep in his crib beside me, both clean and silent for the moment. And I think I will go downstairs and do the dishes before I start new ones for dinner, take the trash out, put finny's toys back in the toybox and maybe take a nap myself--all a redoing but a bringing back too, back to peace, to tidiness and to my own conviction that this is a good decision-this move, this having kids and staying home, this recipe for dinner.

vivid, pointless moments that don't make good stories...

2008-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

So I'm reading the Hours by Michael Cunningham, a book that has sat on my nightstand in that stack that gets started and left for other easier reads or for books that have due dates at the library (this stack also includes a Japanese book in translation, Places left unfinished at the time of creation and a number of anthologies that are easy to read a chapter and put down for months at a time). I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to read the Hours as it is beuatiful and flowing and I've seen the movie so I can sort of picture what the whole thing looks like, which is nice in that picture plus a thousand words way. Unfortunately, the book itself has the movie poster as a cover and I am fundamentally opposed to books that have been made into movies sporting the stars who made it-especially in this case because the character Clarissa who is played by Meryl Streep in the movie really loves Meryl Streep the actress in the book, which is just too strange and unfair to deal with when you are trying to absorb a character's personality.

Regardless, there is this really beautiful line where the Meryl Streep character talks about wanting to pour out her life to this old acquaintance but not in some sit around for hours and catch up-sort of way. She wants to pour out in one motion all the vivid pointless moments that don't make good stories. I don't have the book in front of me right now, I am busy watching sesame street, pulling the whells off and then "fitching" (fixing) them again, typing this post and pulling the blanket away from henry's mouth and nose so I'm not sure the quote is quite exact, but you get the idea. I told James that these vivid, pointless moments are just what I am struck with daily and tell him about and try to connect them in some way by saying "the other thing is" or "oh and also" which he always laughs at because he can never figure out what the first thing was.

But this line is so true about life. The moments like when Bing and his brother went walking along the train tracks with a kid they weren't supposed to hang out with and the kid shot a woman in the shoulder with his shotgun thinking she was a scarecrow (she lived and was out in her garden the next week) make really good stories but it's the other moments that fill in your life. I was thinking of these sorts of moments and compiling a list. My life as a stay at home mom right now does not have that many good stories but it is certainly full of the vivid, sometimes pointless moments that don't make good stories. And just thinking of them got me excited to write them down. James said that Larry King's column is like this (I haven't read it) where he lists things like "I really like green beans" or something like that. I'm going to try to jot down some vivid moments on a semi-regular basis, here on this blog to make this or that live in time and be remembered.

Here are a couple I am thinking of today:

Henry breathes really loudly when he is sleeping, which is really great because I don't have to get up and lay my hand on his chest to make sure he is still alive. This seems a little morbid I know, but any of you who have or have had a newborn know the feeling-like the life you made is so fragile and could stop and go away so easily.

Finn has started pretending to talk on the phone, imitating me, by leaning the phone on his shoulder and jabbering into it with his hands free to do other things. Just now he is holding the phone in this way between his ear and raised shoulder and then holding his toy school bus up to eye level and blabbering like he is reading the VIN number off to his insurance agent.

He also saw a commercial for Jeeps this morning and said outloud, with total joy, Jeep! like he had discovered that word and what it meant for the first time. I told him that Aunt Bum has a Jeep and he has been muttering "Jeep! Aunt Bum!" and smiling at me in this knowing way all morning. if I don't respond right away, he repeats it until I confirm and then raises his eyebrows and nods like, yeah I'm a pretty smart kid, huh?

New to town: some first impressions of Portland

2007-12-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

So we've been in the Portland area now for about three months and I thought I would corral some of the impressions I've made of the Rose city so far. Here goes:

1. True to all assumptions and stereotypes, people really do drink a ridiculous amount of coffee in the Northwest--enough to justify Starbucks on three out of four corners of an intersection and at least two other locally owned coffee shops within sight. And just in case one of these is not convenient for you, there are cafes inside the first automatic doors of nearly every book store, grocery store and Target-esque store (they call them Fred Myers here) you walk into. So you can get good coffee (not just the gas station drizzle you picture-even quick shops have real espresso machines) pretty much wherever you go.

2. Speaking of Fred Myers, a store that overwhelms and confuses me, I hate it. I feel small when I walk in laning on my cart, like someone should give me four and a half hours, a pocket directory of the store, a price scan gun, a thorough explanation of the reasons for placing the beer section of the groceries right up against the tableware, which is next to the storage solutions (large plastic bins) in order for me to even begin to successfully find the things on my list. I will drive the one exta mile to the lovely familiar organization of Target. Ah the joyous convenience of the suburbs!

3. No matter where you are, local news is local news. Even in progressive, vibrant Portland, they will cover the wild deer adoption controversy, the most recent storm and the mayor's comments on the weather with equal hyperbolic enthusiasm.

4, It really does rain pretty much all the time here. I mean I knew it was rainy here and had heard all the statistics about depression and overcast weather in the Northwest but you really don't realize how true it is until mid October hits and you have completely forgotten what the sun feels like coming through a warm window and you have fully abandoned all attractive footwear for galoshes that it really does rain a lot, like pretty much all the time. It's not even noteworthy anymore. And I'm sure locals would be amazed it even took me this long to realize this quite obvious fact. I think I was holding out that we were having a rough year or something. Alas!

5. Highway 217 in Beaverton and Tigard was spawned from the same matter that really evil and annoying things were like smoke alarms with low batteries chirping in the middle of the night. Every time I have found reason to traverse 217, traffic immediately gridlocks, the heavens open in a fresh downpour and three BMW SUV's cut me off in the span of ten minutes. I may not have lived here long, but I have a deep seeded aversion to this highway. Ditto for the ramp traffic lights. V. Annoying.

6. If you have the money and the willingness to pop in and out of the rain , there is really miraculous shopping opportunities in the Portland area. We have indoor malls and outdoor malls (seems strange marketing campaign considering #4 above) quaint little neighborhoods with collections of boutiques and restaurants on all sides of the city and it seems to me like there are as many locally owned shops as chains. very refreshing coming from the midwest chain-land.

7. Despite the shopping loveliness, I thought there would be more thrift stores. I mean considering Portland's reputation for environmentally friendly, progressively hip attitudes, you'd figure there'd be a thrift store for every rainbow bumper sticker. But so far, I have not been impressed. Granted, Goodwill seems to be as prolific here as anywhere but the few true gems, the local thrift and second hand stores I have come across seem to be well aware of the value of their matching retro velvet lounge chairs, so fork over your $700 per chair thank you very much.

8. If bike and ski racks on land rovers and subarus are any indication, people really are more active here than in other parts of the country. Despite the rain, if I had a nickel for every spandex bicyclist who peddles up next to me in downtown traffic, my college loans would be paid off. And if Portland is any indication of how the rest of the country is going, we should be investing in Subaru.

9. Powell's really is pretty much the greatest place on earth. Assuming you don't have any outside obligations to pull you elsewhere, you could easily spend the better part of a month wandering the aisles of its colored rooms and periodically stopping off at the coffee shop on the ground floor. Its only downfall might be in this ability to overwhelm--it would be the perfect place to go if you had a ridiculously long layover in Portland and didn't know anyone.

10. Having hills surrounding a city make it really beautiful and somehow more mysterious. Most midwest cities lack this topographical benefit and I think really suffer the loss of aesthetic appeal. Portland feels at once like a bustling stop on major waterway and then also like a lovely little village you discovered through a magic tunnel or stumbled across atop a snowy mountain pass. The frequent morning fog makes the gradations in elevation even more beautiful and enchanting, as if you could weave your way up a hidden drive and find a magnificent castle or a magical cottage. The smaller hills and the larger mountain peaks in and around Portland make the city feel more like a discovery and like it belongs there. You don't get to see the skyline cropping out of the landscape from 100 miles down the freeway, it seems like you find it, or it lets you find it.

Cool colors

2007-06-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am a winter hued girl. You may not know this about me. The combination of my light blonde hair, blue eyes and pink toned skin makes me look best in cool colors like ice pink and all blue tones and white, but not so good in colors like yellow, cream, bubblegum pink and other warm toned colors. I’ve known this for some time and I’m sure to some extent, it was some marketing campaign that taught me this to get me to throw out half of my wardrobe and buy new cool colored clothes. But I think it holds true. Often the shade of a pink shirt, as much as the style or the fabric, will either complement my skin tone and the blue of my eyes or clash with my natural tones. By genealogical odds, Finn is similarly colored and by some odd departure from his Mexican roots, James also has cool toned skin and eyes. We are a pale, blue eyed family.

This weekend, we painted the one room in our house, our bedroom that had not yet been painted at least once since we moved into our house 2 years ago. I painted it a darker blue-ish, grey-ish teal inspired by a t-shirt that my sister Meg gave James in a similar color. I really like it. I mean, this does not often happen. I usually buy paint by impulse and decide on a color that vaguely matches some color in my head that I saw in a magazine once and often looks not at all like how I imagined it would look. This is not always a bad thing. Our living room and Finn’s room ended up looking really great even though they came out far from the rooms of my imagining. Our kitchen, on the other hand is on its third paint color and I still hate it. This could have something to do with the fact that I generally hate our kitchen, the linoleum, the tendency towards grime and the mismatched cabinets. But all this is to say that I painted a blue room because it was a color I really loved on James and then as I looked around our house last night and saw the aqua of the front room, the various greens of the kitchen, Finn’s room and the library and the mud color of the entry and the dining room, (more of a grayish brown than a chocolate) I realized that our entire house is cool colored, painted in tones that would look good on us in a shirt. Maybe this is some subconscious desire to frame us all in a complementary light or maybe I have so trained myself to be drawn to cool colors in clothing, that I am now drawn to the same colors in paint. But either way, I have a very aqua and green house. I’m sure that in not so many years, these colors will be the mustard yellow and pea green of my parents generation, disgusting, overdone and out of style. I will have to move on to a new cool color; I am a winter after all. But I will be sad to see Aqua go.

work malaise

2007-06-12T11:21:00.001-07:00

I feel guilt come over me when I realize that I have been looking at a non-work related e-mail for ten minutes now and probably missed things that I should have been doing to do my job. And then I flip over to my work e-mail and there are no new messages and I flip over to my calendar and our database and there is still nothing new to do. And so I bring up my gmail again and read another paragraph of a beautiful essay written by a friend who is trying to get a job where she can help people discern their spiritual and occupational direction. I wish that I was doing something so connected and important. But then I feel guilty again and try to find something work related to do and I sigh for what I am wasting and what I am wanting and for all the things that eight hours a day could accomplish.

Finny turns one

2007-06-01T08:36:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Finn passed a big milestone, the first Birthday. Unless he has uncanny memory skills, he will not remember a thing about it. He won’t remember me lifting him out of his crib in the morning and doing a jig around his room singing “happy, happy happy birthday to you to you to you-oo-oo” like the way the waiters sing at Mexican restaurants. And he will probably not remember James driving him up to Panera bread, as they do every Thursday to hand him over to my mom for the day and where this day in particular she will tell everyone she sees that her grandson is one today and allow them the joy of celebrating with her by giving Finny something for free--a cookie as big as his head, an ice cream. He will not remember how his new habit of pointing to everything but especially things in the air or on the ceiling will obligingly seem like he is showing how old he is now, how many years he has been here-how cute we will think that is. And he will certainly not remember how my dad, his grandpa held him on his lap at the Cheesecake Factory last night and laughed till his face turned red and he had to cough for the effort of it while Finny slapped at the lit candle and then the whip cream and then the mound of ice cream in the sundae that the kind waitress had brought him as yet another free treat to celebrate; how he smooshed the sundae in the direction of his mouth and then repeatedly turned towards dad to see what was so funny and reach up with whip creamed hands to touch his mustache and his nose. I’m sure he will not remember how in the car on the way home, while he shrieked in his car seat approaching a full blown break down, James and I discussed how to best handle small children in restaurants. And at the end of the day yesterday, I stripped Finn down to his onesie, changed his diaper, cranked the dial on the stone angel that played music and swung him into his crib on his belly. He watched me put things away in his room and then let his head fall down on his sheet where he couldn’t see me below the bumper and he was asleep shortly after. He won’t remember it but I will, the whole day. And I guess that’s the point. We make a big deal every year on at least this one day. And though eventually he will start to understand and demand presents and parties, yesterday was really more about us, about making my mom proud and my dad laugh, making James and me grateful and remembering how one year ago last night, Finny came out of me into the world and changed everything.

On 9/11 for my writing group

2007-05-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

On the west coast, the realization that came with the terrorist attacks on September 11th, that our lives were changed, that our world was at risk, that “the American way of life was being threatened” came in a very different tone than it did for other coasts, for other places. I was a sophomore in college, avoiding an early morning aerobics class, laying in bed groggily, when a thin, large eyed friend who lived in the room across the hall burst in our room and said her mom just called from Massachusetts, planes were crashing all over the country and hundreds of people were dying. It was a dream. I’m sure that has been said before, in those exact terms, a dream. But as I pulled on a pair of maroon sweat pants with felt numbers on the left hip, as if I was athletic and shouldered a grey hooded sweatshirt over my head, aware that the colors complemented and that I looked attractively rumpled, aware at that point that it mattered what I looked like when flip flopping into the dorm lounge to watch the TV bolted to the upper corner of the wall, I was dreaming. I was not awake yet. I shuffled into the lounge and watched the news cast, the pictures at 7am in the morning as others had already been at work for hours and then been scorched to death or thrown themselves out of burning windows 57 stories off the ground. It was a dream. I was groggy still and then I woke up gradually to the choked up accounts of journalists, the ashen faces of onlookers, the shrieking drone of sirens. I remember being amazed that everything continued to work, that the shower still turned on and the cafeteria ladies still came to work and the microwave hummed with my hot chocolate water. I was amazed that everything didn’t just take a few days off to be very sad. We spent the day in the dorm room lounge on the pristine Montecito campus of a small private college where the lack of parking passes was the biggest problem we faced, in a town full of movie stars in flip flops in a state where Arnold just won in a country full of those that remembered another time of crisis and a generation that had never had crisis before. I peered at this trauma through a small television screen, shoulder to shoulder with the educationally and financially elite, the millennial generation who had not seen civil rights or Vietnam, or the atom bomb but through an even more distant film strip in history classes or in the distant voices of our grandparents. This was very new to us.

A year later, I was studying abroad in England with lovely intelligent people from that same pristine college and our two professors and their spouses led us through the cities of the UK and settled us in to a month long stint of intensive study at an enormous old manor house run by nuns called Hengrave Hall. The nearest town was called Bury St. Edmonds and to reach it, one must amble down a picturesque lane through the grand entrance gate of Hengrave, along a street lined with thatched houses and cottage gardens to a very regular and modern looking bus shelter where you caught a very regular and modern looking bus and wound through the roads that were made before maps, before cars and before modern looking anything to the city center bus stop. It was on a day that I had come into town to escape the literary intensity of my comrades to walk through the local market, that I stopped for a coffee and a sandwich in a very british looking café. I sat at a small table near the window, aware as I always was when away from my group, of my American voice ordering the meal and my very American hair and shoes. I had brought a book of poetry, partly to feel productive while escaping and partly because I knew that I would stop and eat alone and eating alone with a book in hand is far less pathetic. As the waiter brought my plate and I pushed my cup of coffee further towards the center of the table to make room, I was aware of sympathetic looks. I thought back to the bus ride and the walk through the market and realized that I had received many of these looks throughout the day, from the chemist at the drug store when I asked where to find a certain kind of chapstick, from the vendor at the market who had sold me a scarf I planned to give my sister for Christmas. They heard my voice and cringed a little and smiled. I sat eating my sandwich carefully, thinking how strange those looks had been. And then the manager of the little café came out from the kitchen and said in a slightly raised voice as he looked around the room, “In respect for the lives lost and the terrible tragedy that took place in America exactly one year ago, I would ask your silence for a minute now to remember.” The café hushed and many people looked towards my table near the window. A woman near the swinging door to the kitchen bowed her head and some businessmen looked towards the large clock above the bar, their faces furrowed and concerned. The sympathy in the room was palpable. I felt a thick knot rise in my throat and nearly sobbed for the sadness of it all. I knew that I was being watched and so did not sob, or even cry a little; I knew, especially as a lover of literature that that would have been too much, too dramatic. But I loved England so much in that moment. The thoroughness of the emotion was full in me in Bury St. Edmonds, a small British town outside of London.

Winter Sweat

2007-04-30T20:18:00.001-07:00

I just thought of a smell that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Winter sweat. I was thinking about how I wanted to start exercising and that I would ride my bike to work, all one mile of it and how I would maybe smell or be sweaty when I got to work and how my dad used to run miles and miles every day on his lunch break and then shower and be back to his day, refreshed, exercised, like a horse. When he ran during the winter, he wore wind pants and a long sleeved t-shirt, some shwag from the last marathon he had run, a knit hat of nuetral color (but not cool nuetral like khaki or chocolate, usually just grey or navy) and those small one-size fits all gloves that stretch over your fingers and reach just to the veins of your inner wrist. Running was the only time I saw my dad where a hat. He was and is a very functional man with a thick head of wavy hair that in the seventies grew long and very Michael Landon-ish but in my child hood was cut short, not buzed but short so that he had a perfect rippling helmet when he brushed his hair back after taking a shower. Baseball hats or flat top old man hats or winter caps for their fashionable or bald spot covering function had no practical purpose for him so the only time he wore a hat was to cover his ears while running in the winter. Saying that he ran in the winter implies a certain commitment to his craft, we lived for nine years in upstate new york where every winter we had snow drifts so tall that we dug forts out of the side of them, not rolled up into a pile, dug out of from the sidewalk or the road with intricate rooms. Granted, I was small at the time, but these were large snow banks. Large like you couldn’t see our Winnebago parked in the drive way from the side, snow banks. One winter, we had such a big storm that all the electricity went out and our heat must have been electric because we all had to sleep in the living room in sleeping bags around the fireplace and when we woke up and the TV flashed on, the news was saying that the Challenger had exploded and we were all very sad and cold and snowed in.

We also lived in Minnesota where temperatures are judged by the actual and feels like, both usually in double digit negative numbers. My freshman year of high school, the governor (Jesse Ventura the ex-wrestler mind you, no sissy politician from the city) called off all schools in the state because wind chills were going to reach -65 degrees. My dad ran in the winter in Minnesota too. In fact he trained for the grandma’s marathon in Duluth, the last marathon he would run through the winter, running the mile and a half to the community center and then running about 897 laps on the indoor track and then running the mile and a half home to cool off.

And when he came home, I remember this from the very first memories I have, he smelled like winter sweat, a different, more pungeant version of sweat that hung in the air around him like the cold air itself, thawing in the indoors and becoming more potent. He grew a beard every winter and the condensation of his breath would freeze into icicles on his beard making him seem like he had come in from another world, very supernatural and Narnia like.

I wonder often why this running thing, I guess you would call it a passion or a talent, didn’t run in the family, no pun intended. I have never had the inclination for nor the ability to run. I realize that running long distance takes conditioning and training. But it just would not take. I tried. When we first moved to Minnesota the summer before my freshman year of high school and I started to go by Kate instead of Katie and went on the first diet of my life (something having to do with grapefruit and bacon) to have a fresh start and be the funniest, most stunning person anyone had ever met, I started to run. I ran on the beautiful trails surrounding our apartment complex, past a lake and a few churches, through lovely peaceful woods and serene backyards…and my lungs nearly seared themselves through my chest when I finally stopped and panted and clutched my right arm as if anticipating a heart attack. I had run a half a mile. I started again the next day and would try all manner of distractions from singing favorite songs (obviously in silence, I couldn’t pant frantically and sing at the same time) to replaying particualrly vexing moments in my recent life and figuring out the best, most witty and cutting thing to say to achieve my goals. Nothing worked and I gave up quickly. I started high school with an awkward hair cut that was ment to look like Meg Ryan in IQ and the same extra pudge that had hung with me since childhood. Running was not my game.

I think perhaps that my dad has always run as a process of renewing, of coming back to something paced and kinetic. He had run track as a kid, in fact it was coming home from a track meet that he had walked into his kitchen and heard that his father had had a massive heart attack and was dead. My dad had been running when his dad dropped dead. There must be something to that. He had placed in two events that day. Maybe he returns to running every time to get back to before the sky came down, before his mom taught sewing classes in their basement to keep food on the table and they saw less of his dad’s raucous family and had a lot less fun. Maybe running has always been something that he has been good at. He won two ribbons that day and no matter what happened later in life, he could beat his mile pace; he could find a new trail and clock it with the car and run it in a loop. I ran to accomplish, to be thinner or be able to eat more. I think my dad thought these things too. I mean his dad died of a heart attack at 43, a short life of whole milk and not enough exercise. So he ran to be healthy but he also ran to pound out stress or process through things. He was happier when he ran regularly.

I thought all of this in some form tonight while I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, how maybe I should write it down, the memory of winter sweat and how the writing it will make it more permanent, a history instead of a flashing rememberance that I will not remember tomorrow but that will leave a bit of a pang because I knew it was a good thing that I had remembered. So I write it down, for what it will accomplish but also for the process of remembering and I am happier for articulating it, for pounding it out on the keys. Writing it makes me put the thought into a sequence and make sense of it. And I know that my writing, whether I make anything of it or not, is like my dad’s running. We return to something we know to put reason back and find the peace in the pavement or the clarity of the document.

half a year down...

2006-11-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

Finn has been alive now for almost six months and obviously, so much has changed. So much though that I am already forgetting things about the beginning and wishing that I had followed through with the journal idea and logged this process more thoroughly. At the time though, I thought I would never forget what time he was born and what I thought when I first glimpsed him or the way James slept all folded up on the cot in the recovery room and kept whining about the TV volume being so loud and inexplicably impossible to adjust.
Six months has passed and those memories seem far away. A friend from work just had her baby girl on wednesday and I realized as I heard the details of the birth how important this information is, how it offers the web to support the story. How the fact that Finn was born on a Wednesday in May is interesting because I went to the Indy 500 the Sunday before I was induced in record breaking heat and nearly fainted in the stands. James soaked a towel in our cooler over and over again and slapped the icey wetness on my neck to keep me cool. How Finn was 8 pounds 11 ounces and most of the weight was in his enormous head that still looks a little bulbous and makes me wonder how he ever came out at all. And how when I first saw him, he was sort of pinkish bluish, greyish--not in a scary he might be dead way but in a wrinkled, I've been in the pool too long way. He looked so much like James in that first instant too. Not the pool color thing, his features. He seemed like he was squinting at me just the way his dad does at the TV without his glasses. He has come to look less and less like James these last months. Or perhaps he has just looked more and more like himself and I don't notice the resemblance so much. But at first, it was uncanny.
I was induced that Wednesday morning, and we arrived a few minutes past 6am. I had showered the night before and curled my hair that morning knowing I would look hideous for pictures and figuring my hair might as well look nice. We waited in the waiting room with a middle eastern family, a chatty patriarch and silent pregnant wife with two little brown eyed girls, about two and four years old. It came out that they had four other children at home and this pregnancy was more risky, the baby was flipped the wrong way. We watched cartoons until our rooms were ready. Apparently it had been a busy night.
Wednesday was the one day my mom said not to go into labor because she had to work and had no one to cover for her. But she called in sick anyway and they had to reschedule all her patients. She wouldn't miss it. And my dad couldn't have missed it. As the putocin started to work and the contractions came on, my mom sat at my right watching the moniter and talking me through the swells, telling me when the number peaked and I would start to feel better, running her fingers over the skin of my arm and looking so concerned. James sat at my left and held my hand loosely, registering no emotion on his face apparently so that I would read relaxation in his body language. It looked like indifferent nonchalance to me at the time but has since been cleared up and the hysterical tears after the birth confirmed the presense of plenty of emotion.
My dad stood at the foot of the bed, his hands in his pockets, his camera at the ready and a ridiculous grin on his face. He looked from the moniter to me to mom and smiled with what could most accurately be called pride but also, it must be said looked nearly maniacal in its consistency and considering the circumstances, very out of place. I looked between the three of them and most often ended up staring at my dad and flexing my toes against his legs at the end of the bed as the contractions waned. He was directly in front of me, so it was easiest to look at him. But he was also the least charged one in the room. He was just ecstatic to be there and certain that all would end in a gradchild. He was easy to lock eyes with because he was so sure and so happy. He had to leave when I started to push, no one's dad needs to see that. But he didn't want to go. And he paced in the hallway outside the door until the nurses chaced him off to the waiting room. Even then, he made laps around the maternity wing and slowed conspicuously in front of our room each time until one lap, he heard my mom say "he's almost here Katie, one more push." And he stopped and he waited and ducked into the vestibule of the room where none of us could see him and he heard that first little cry after they scooped out the gunk in Finn's throat. And then he went back to tell Heather and when my mom called to give the news, "He's been born!" My dad said, "I know!" She was so mad.

Happy Halloween

2006-10-31T09:36:00.000-08:00

Three years ago today, my two roommates convinced me to grab a New Orleans mask I had hanging on the wall, bring my thirteen year old hoodlum student and make an appearance at a party with many varieties of intoxicated people. I shouldn’t have gone. I am normally a much more responsible and rational person and would worry too much that my charge would tattle on me. But I went. And amidst the revelry and the bizarre costumes and the shirked responsibility, I met a boy who made me laugh. He wore a loud polyester shirt rolled up to his elbows and funky glasses that framed his very blue eyes; he cheated at cards with as much skill as he dealt them; he quipped back at every brilliant comment I could muster; put cocky drunk people in their place and directed my preteen to the video games in another room away from the bad influences; and generally began the process of making me fall in love with him.

On another October night, less than one year later, I married him. And I can’t help but feel very grateful that for one evening I departed from my normal sense of appropriateness and showed up at a Halloween party. And then showed up at a bowling event the next day and a night out for drinks a couple days later. And then talked all night a week after that and washed dishes in my kitchen with the low ceilings and then drove to Solvang and went to Roy and said I love you and then, one night on our way to see Jerry Seinfeld, that same boy who made me laugh had a ring turned in on his pinky finger and on the lawn of the courthouse made famous by Michael Jackson’s conviction, he got down on one knee and asked me to be his. And I said yes and I am and he is at home right now taking care of our little boy.

And it all started on Halloween, three years ago today. James, happy anniversary in a manner of speaking. You showed up and changed my world and I’m so glad you did.

the frustration, the fear and the prayer

2006-07-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

Six weeks has passed quickly and Finn is dealing with the world with a bit more consternation. Gone are his days of blissful sleep interrupted by simple and obvious needs. They have been replaced by evening hours of choking, screaming cries with little or no consolation, which only constant swaying and rocking will eventually exhaust. He is not always this way but his early peace is not unvarying the way it was the first few weeks. He has started to smile though. This makes up for quite a few hours of crying.

In the moments of frustration, inability and fear, I have found prayer to be a surprising byproduct or I guess, companion. It sounds clichéd to say that my lack of control has induced a dependence on God but that is how it is. I need to defer the control, when I cannot have it, to someone or something that can. This started when labor started, or when the inducing appointment was made. Despite the many tubes and drips and utensils of the hospital, I arrived at labor by natural processes and found myself feeling completely without control, or at the whim of this momentum. Knowing that things could go wrong and nothing that I could do would help or hinder this brought me to a prayerful place unlike anything else has in a very long time.

And since we have come home, when I stand in the dim light of the lanterns above Finn’s crib, my leg cramping from the constant motion of jiggling him to sleep, I have found myself making noises like what the old testament gnashing of teeth must sound like. It is an inarticulate articulation of frustration that is a prayer; not a prayer I have ever prayed before. This is why it is surprising. I knew prayers before bed and call to worship and benediction. I even knew prayers of commitment and salvation and confession. Those prayers had become rote and clichéd and the most condemning of all, “evangelical”. But these prayers in the nursery were new, the circumstances and the language unfamiliar. Not any foreign garbling of the Corinthian tongues, but just an energy directed upward in blank supplication that can be translated most closely as: stop the crying; keep us safe; take away my fear.

We surround him, our home is filled, with protective measures. I lay him on his mattress, which is firm to prevent suffocation, surrounded by the bumper that cushions his head from the hard wood spindles of his crib. And I change his diaper on the contoured foam pad atop the changing table to keep him from rolling off. The bottles are sterilized; the outlets covered; I take vitamins. Yet when I return to bed in the wee hours after feeding him and wrapping him and settling him back into his protected bed, I feel fear come over me. I fear intruders breaking into the house and snatching him; or that he will stop breathing or that something will happen to James-and it paralyzes me. My life is tied to these two men, one grown and one small. I would end if either of them did. And in these moments where this fear comes, I can only whisper or think up this wordless or inarticulate prayer that we would all be protected: From faceless burglars, from car accidents, from bad health, from the very air.

Last week I trekked downtown, pushing the stroller over Fountain Square’s garbled sidewalks, over the pristine smoothness of the Anthem Insurance campus, to the vast crosswalks and lunch time clicks of Indianapolis. It was a hot day. I kept the stroller’s canopies shut over each other like petals as we walked through the sun and pulled them back to offer the breeze when trees or buildings shaded us. I walked quickly by the smoke breaks and slowly by the book store, hoping he would absorb only the latter. And then as I left the circle, my Starbucks frozen drink perched in the cup holder of Finn’s chariot, I saw what I assume to be a homeless man approach a marine in full military uniform, grasp his hand in friendship and greeting and then close his free hand over the handshake to bow his head and murmur a prayer. They stood, the crisp lines of one and the mangy margin of the other, both heads bowed for a moment in a sticky city, on a Wednesday. I slowed as I approached them to offer a few more moments of this intimacy. I thought how this was a reversal of expectations, how he could ask all day by wriggling his cup of change and then how the marine respectfully allowed the man to offer him something. I stood there, sweating and got choked up. It was beautiful. I watched them pray, I could not hear them. Someone else’s inarticulate offering made me feel better about mine. My recent prayers seemed to match this streetside incongruity much closer than the call to worship or the alter call. This companionship validated me. And I thought that the pollution and the smoke and the sweat was worth risking this day for the walk and the drink, the lack of control and the surprising circumstances of prayer.

Pain and its relief

2006-05-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

All these babies are in the process of growing and being born around me and I can't help but think about my own baby's entry into the world and the inevitable accompaniment of pain to the process. My feelings on pain and the controversy over its alleviation regularly change, but at their extremes camp out in these two attitudes. After hearing about Tonya's near super-human effort at birthing Cosette sans any pain medication whatsoever, it seemed that the pain was a glorious physical journey not only necessary to the process but the priveledge of the new mother to experience the birth so tangibly. I thought about the women in the fields hundreds of years ago birthing their children with little more than grass and friendship to aid them. How beautiful that picture seems.
But then I visited John and Tonya in the hospital and heard Tonya's mom retell the labor story- all about Tonya's strength, the stretches of time, the contractions, the tunnel vision Tonya experienced where she heard only voices and felt completely taken away by the pain. This story is beautiful too, in its way. Because Tonya is (and I've thought this about her from the first) capable and reasonable and strong. I, on the other hand, am not enough of any of these things to deliver my baby without the most that modern medicine has to offer by way of relieving pain. Tonya is Titania-Amazon queen of mythical forrest. I am just me, spoiled and silly and all talk.

James said last night that he is already more proud of me than he thought he could possibly be; that he thinks I have dealt with the discomforts of pregnancy with both stoic strength and quiet grace and that he doesn't compare me to other women; that he doesn't expect a certain level from me. I am glad... and I think I need to think more in this vein. I am not a failure if I get an epidural, I am choosing the experience, which is a freedom the women in the fields didn't have. It is not important enough to me to feel every tear and strain of the labor process. As Carrie put it, "it's still work, it's still labor, it still hurts with pain medication."
And I don't think the drama or the emotion of the experience will be lost on me. If anything, I have a tendency to overdramatize and emotionalize situations. And I think this will be a big one no matter how much of my lower body is numb.

the cliched plight of an extroverted pregnant feminist

2006-04-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

It's very difficult to write about being pregnant without employing the same tired phrases and cliches that so many other women have used before me. But then nothing is said and I will look back on this time and not remember what exactly it was that I thought or worried about. So I will attempt to get at the feeling here, even if it is the same feeling as so many who have gone before me.
I am tired of women-those I know and those I do not- telling me the horror story delivery that they survived despite atrocious odds. I'm not sure if they think this is some badge of courage they feel they have earned and therefore have the right to brag about to any expectant mother they see, but it's frightening to those of us who haven't given birth before, because that could be me. And I don't want to almost die and have emergency anything done to me or the baby. By the sounds of it though, it's inevitable that something horrific happen. Maybe they don't realize the effect this has on us, the expectant mothers, that is. Maybe they don't know that I am an irrational sponge for information and as they recount the shades of blue they and or the baby turned, I file the information away for future use. I don't necessarily think that it will happen to me but I am petrified at the prospect.
I am also very afraid of my part in the chain of dependance created when a child is brought into the world. At this point, I have no career to leave so I will stay home for an indefinite amount of time and James will work. The physical and circumstantial factors of our lives make this both practical and necessary for us. But even though I know I will love this child, I don't think I love him yet. And so it is hard to picture the life of dedication and love I will have in two short months. I hope giving birth is a transformation. I hope I am awash in maternal euphoria that lasts far beyond the delivery room. Because right now I can't picture me happy at home with a small crying person alone.
The financial and emotional dependance I will feel towards James also frightens me. I am too much of a feminist, too much of an extrovert, too easily distracted and changed to feel fulfilled by only one adult person in my life. Aren't I?
I know I make this sound like I am moving to a small deserted island to commit my life to silence and self sacrifice and really there are plenty of people who will interact in my life and challenge and inspire both my emotional and spiritual and mental persons. But sometimes it feels like I am moving very far away from adult conversation and career paths and coffee dates and epiphany to that very solitary and child talking place- stay at home mothering.
I'm sure I'll be fine.

Aging

2006-04-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

The Starbucks at College and Fall Creek seems to draw an interesting crowd. My visits here have been limited thus far (two times to be exact) so I haven’t exactly made a study of the demographic but each time, I have been surprised. Today for instance, a forty-ish associate pastor looking man with a goatee has just rolled his absent-faced father through the door with various fanangling required to maneuver the unwieldy wheel chair over snow banks and door jambs to stand looking dazed at the seating area full of busy business types and students. He veers over to the overstuffed chairs in the corner where I am obnoxiously talking to my sister on my cell phone and positioned in the very center of the five chairs. He starts and stops a bit vaguely glancing at me by side-ways looks until I finally manage to focus away from Meg’s latest complaint on my mother’s insensitivity to this poor man’s predicament. I say quickly, “would you like to sit here?” He seems relieved that he didn’t have to initiate the request and moves towards the chairs as I jump from the chair and move to another corner. He gratefully gives his thanks and mentions that the corner makes it easier to hear for him—pointing at the aged man in the wheel chair.

Finding an audibly pleasing spot in the coffee shop seems to be one of many challenges on this outing. He pushes the wheel chair up to the arm chair and through such awkward heftings and slidings that I consider offering my help, lifts the older man from one chair to the other. Once positioned, the young man leaves his oblivious companion to fetch drinks. He returns and they say very little. The young man even unfolds a newspaper as he settles into his chair and they sip iced drinks through straws. About ten minutes later, after a mumbled comment by the older man, they reverse the lifting and settling back into the wheel chair and roll back through the seating area to the door and the snow packed parking lot. Relationally, the visit seems unfruitful to my observing eye. But perhaps if the young man is the older man’s son and if the older man’s mind is as absent as his expression, time spent is the most productivity they can expect. This excursion from the nursing home or wherever the older man lives is a consolation for the young man, an activity to enact an earlier relationship, the silence after the last note has sounded before the music ends.

As most young people do, I fear this scene in my future with my parents. Recently, my marathon-running, detail-obsessive dad lost his hearing in his right ear and since has taken on an almost caricature like tendency to cock his head in confusion and say “what?” He jokingly says things like “in my good ear sonny” but he had an MRI done and a CT scan on the hip that has been giving him pain and keeping him from running. I know I am lucky, as these things go. My parents are healthy for the most part; young for parents of people my age, and active. And sanity-wise, well there are other important qualities and none of their lack has come with age. It was always there. But I know I will be sad when I have to pick them up or check them in or pay for them. And I’m sure I will be like the young man who just wheeled his dad back to the car. I will bring them to coffee or dinner or movies like we have always done, whether they know what’s going on or not, for my sake.