It's an Easter bag, actually. Cute and pink, sporting a big bunny head with a sparkly nose. The Boy is entranced by the pink, sparkly pictures in his That's Not My Mermaid book, and I see nothing wrong with this fact, so when I spotted the sparkly pink felt Easter bag at Target, I grabbed it.
It fit perfectly into how I imagined The Boy's first cognizant Easter would go. I pictured him playing with baby rabbits in a sun-dappled field. He would wear a shirt with a collar and no wrinkles and little man-pants. His hair would be abundant enough to be gelled into a movie star handsome do.
Plainly I watched too many J.C. Penny Easter commercials during the days before I got TiVo and began skipping commercials entirely.
Still, I had high hopes for Easter morning as I snuck his bag of Easter goodies and Hubby's token chocolate bunny onto the mantel. I had baked Easter cookies that afternoon, and Hubby was even talking about dying Easter eggs.
Then, at 10:30 Saturday night came the cry of a boy who has eaten too many of said Easter cookies. He arched. He yelled. He stared pleadingly at me with tear-swollen eyes, begging me for more Tylenol, please.
Hubby took his cue and headed for the daybed in the office.
I arranged pillows around the bed and removed The Boy's sleep sac so he could cuddle under the covers with me for the night. Which plainly meant it was breakfast time.
I spent about an hour trying to convince him otherwise, but in the end The Boy and I had a fine time playing in the living room at 2 a.m. as I caught up on old episodes of Eli Stone. Eventually, we headed back to bed, drunk on the novelty of doing what so many normal people do late on a Saturday night.
The difference between us is that The Boy was happy to rise before 8, secure in the notion that a nap would be waiting whenever his late-night revelry caught up with him. I, on the other hand, working with 5 1/2 hours of sleep and the unfamiliar sensation of drinking lots of red wine and not brushing my teeth before going to bed, was not quite ready to greet Easter morning.
By all accounts, Hubby and The Boy had a lovely Easter morning while I stayed in bed. Then I anchored the play -- excuse me, living room while Hubby banged about in the kitchen making an omelet for me and pancakes for him and The Boy. Which were almost ready for the griddle when The Boy's late-night revelry did in fact catch up to him.
Hubby and I ate our Easter brunch a little guiltily, watched over by The Boy's empty chair and the goodies still crowding the mantle.
He awakened from a good long nap after 3. Perhaps not the traditional time for hunting Easter eggs -- and we had none to hunt since no one had been up to making them -- but still with plenty of daylight left, thanks to the ridiculously early onset of daylight savings.
My sunny Easter scenario, however, was still doomed, as the ample sunlight was a poor match for the arctic winds sweeping across our yard. The Boy, it seemed, would receive his first Easter basket in our living room wearing jeans and a stained South Bay Cardinals baseball shirt.
Still excited, I beckoned him to the mantle. "Give this to Daddy," I instructed, handing him a bag of foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.
Off he set, throwing his feet in outward-reaching arcs as he baby-walked his way to his father and proffered the gift.
I called him back and handed him a chocolate bunny. "Give this to Daddy," I said.
Warming to the game, he wobbled around the stroller and placed the chocolate bunny in his Daddy's hands.
"One more!" I called. It was getting more difficult to rouse him, but I managed to coax him back to deliver a final Easter treat to his father, as well as a bag of blue tennis balls for the dogs.
Too late I realized that, although our camera remains in Charleston (or wherever the thief has taken it), we do have a video camera. How could I have failed to record the unparalleled sight of my 15-month-old son making his determined and unsteady way to his father proudly bearing Easter gifts?
I grabbed the camera and reclaimed the chocolate bunny, then resumed my place by the mantel.
"Sweetie," I cried. "One more!"
He gazed at me with a quizzical look. Hadn't he already delivered all the Easter gifts? That bunny looked suspiciously familiar.
"I need you to bring this to Daddy," I urged.
He made his way over and trustingly held out his hands. I plopped the bunny in them and began videotaping his knees, reasoning that once he began walking toward his father he would fit into the frame and our loved ones would understand why we had sent them this video clip.
Only the knees didn't move out of the frame.
I put down the camera. The Boy gravely shoved the chocolate bunny back at me, somewhat hurt that I had abused his trust in this manner.
"Wait, no, bring it to Daddy," I entreated, once again filming his knees as they backed out of sight. He didn't even make it into the frame because I was too busy pointing the camera at the floor as I waved the chocolate bunny enticingly at him.
We have no video of our child on Easter. You will have to imagine the rest yourself.
I took The Boy's Easter bag off the mantle and sat on the floor with him and Hubby. He was busy taking the dogs' tennis ball away from Lilah as she stared at him with a combination of hope that he would throw it for her and annoyance that he plainly wasn't going to.
"Give Lilah her ball," I suggested. "And see what's in your Easter bag."
The Boy glanced over. Apparently the pink sparkly things in his That's Not My Mermaid book are better than the bag bunny's sparkly, pink nose. With a gesture of indifference, he turned his attention back to the blue tennis ball.
"It ought to say 'Tennis Balls for Little Boys,'" Hubby offered unhelpfully, pointing to the tag that read 'Tennis Balls for Dogs,' presumably to avoid extreme disappointment when a human being tried to actually use them in a game of tennis.
We did eventually convince The Boy to show some interest in his Easter bag. Mostly by taking the blue tennis balls away. For his own good, we assured him as he wailed.
The wind-up chick did quiet him down, though I suspect his silence was more indicative of terror than fascination, as the chick hopped across the leather couch. He liked the wind-up rabbit that poops jelly beans more, but we ruined it by snatching away the jelly beans as they fell, muttering, "Choking hazard," as if that information would comfort him. He did find the bunny ears kind of a good joke, but I was too wise to try to videotape him wearing them. A camera would have come in quite handy.
I did make one big score. The organic gummy fruit heaped at the bottom of his bag was a big hit, once he figured out how to chew it. Of course, I took them away once he'd had three or four and ate the rest myself.
"Why only three?" our neighbor asked a little while later when The Boy and I were out visiting their dogs.
I had thought the answer was obvious when she bemoaned trying to get her sugar-crazed daughter down for a much needed nap. Yet somehow at the moment she asked, that answer vanished, sucked away by the realization of what Easter is.
Easter is not a time for well scrubbed young children to daintily drop purple and yellow Easter eggs into beribboned baskets. It is not a day when any parent in her right mind would adopt a fuzzy baby rabbit just for the chance to see her offspring cuddling it against a milky cheek.
No, Easter, I now realize, is a day when I must let my child eat straight high fructose corn syrup thinly disguised as Peeps until it comes out his ears. It is the day when my child will teach me that, contrary to popular belief, chocolate has just as much caffeine as coffee, at least if you eat enough of it.
Forget about resurrection and rebirth and spring springing after a long winter.
Easter is the day when I am reminded to let go and let him eat junk food and watch my boy grow up.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Why We Have No Pictures of Our Trip to Charleston
We were driving down I-77 on our way to Charleston when my friend Julie called. The Boy snoozed deeply in his car seat, exhausted from a whirlwind of Trader Joe's, suburban toy store where he claimed for his own a pink and camouflage soccer ball, and lunch at a restaurant with lots of noise and people to smile at. The sun was shining, we had a real vacation ahead of us, and I hadn't found the time to chat on the phone in weeks.
"Take lots of pictures," Julie said before ending our call.
"Oh, of course," I assured her. Hubby and I are feeling more than a little bit guilty about the fact that we haven't taken pictures of our son since Christmas. He is now 25% older than he was then and has at least 25% more hair.
We arrived at the coast in the late afternoon, bypassing downtown for our hotel in the suburbs of Mt. Pleasant. This is how grown-up parenthood has made us. When booking a hotel, I felt that traveler reviews of the cheap beachside one noting "black stuff on the bathroom floor" surely justified upgrading to the Homewood Suites by Hilton. Even more startling, Hubby agreed.
So here we were, in The Boy's ideal vacation playground. Living room stretched into bedroom opened into vanity ending in a mirrored closet door perfect for smearing one's hands on and making funny grinning faces at. Carpet covered all floors in one continuous piece so one's newly walking feet did not have to adjust to changes in texture, nor practice the difficult art of not tripping over the edges of area rugs. There were TWO television sets with on/off buttons within easy reach, and Mommy and Daddy didn't seem to care one bit how many times they were pushed. Perhaps best of all, there were no hounds knocking one over, licking one in the face, or otherwise causing frustration. Nor were there hounds to feed at mealtime, but that hardly mattered when so many other joys awaited.
True to my word, I took many pictures in the hotel room: The Boy carrying his new pink and camouflage soccer ball; The Boy looking out the window into the parking lot; The Boy playing with his reflection in the mirrored closet.
The next morning we started out for a day downtown with a well-packed diaper bag, changes of clothes, and, of course, the camera.
It is worth taking a moment to say that Charleston is a really lovely city. My eyes drank in the ocean, my nostrils opened eagerly to the smell of salt air, and my heart sang with the joy of walking and walking and walking amidst a constant swirl of pedestrians, shops, and restaurants. My skin felt a bit left out, as it waited eagerly for the warm sunshine I had promised myself, but, alas, 73 degrees is 73 degrees, and when you're on the ocean it is sometimes even colder.
After parking the car and engaging in much coaxing, running, and swerving, we finally got The Boy to settle into his stroller. He spotted a dog, pointed and yelled joyfully, and forgot for a few moments the indignity of sitting way down at adult hip level while the rest of us saw the world from a more advantageous height. We pointed out the horse-drawn carriages that fill the historic downtown streets, and he gazed with serious interest, trying to figure out how to categorize these dog-like creatures that were even bigger than Audrey.
And then we found the playground.
What joy to watch your little one taking the straddled, Frankenstein steps of new walkers, climbing the stairs to the slide, and then skillfully turning himself around and sliding down feet first on his belly. He really didn't need his mother, except when his second foot got stuck and threatened to remain at the top of the slide as the rest of his body proceeded toward the bottom.
Feeling a deep appreciation of the public space inspired by a long, long Asheville winter, I struck up a conversation with another mother. I never even noticed Hubby adding to our collection of pictures of The Boy. I certainly didn't take note of where the camera was when I returned with The Boy to the top of the slide and yelled at Hubby to take his position at the bottom. It wasn't until some time before we realized we had lost one of The Boy's shoes on the streets of Charleston that we realized we had left the camera in the playground.
To be honest, I was more upset about the shoe than the camera. New cameras can be purchased with a shrug of "it happens" and a comforting "it's okay" meal at Sticky Fingers (home of the Stephen Colbert portrait) for Hubby. But justifying another $40 for really cute blue Chuck Taylor-like shoes with laces that must be painstakingly double-knotted or tied every other minute is more difficult. We stopped at the Target just across the parking lot from our hotel (did I mention how convenient it is to stay in the 'burbs with children?) and bought him some sandals, but it just wasn't the same.
Nor was using the video camera to record his rounds on the pirate ship slide at the Charleston Aquarium. In fact, I was having way too much fun watching him lurch excitedly between tanks full of fish to be bothered with trying to record something we won't be able to figure out how to post on You Tube anyhow.
We headed home with The Boy wearing his new Target socks without shoes and no pictures to memorialize these fleeting, joyful days with our almost-fifteen-month-old. Incidentally, my hair dryer stayed in Charleston as well, completing our trifecta of lost things.
I could mourn the loss of precious reminders of The Boy growing up, but it would be a much better use of my time to just buy a new camera. After all, less than 24 hours after our arrival home The Boy had new shoes and I had a new hair dryer.
But sometimes I think things happen for a reason. Not that some stranger really needs pictures of our boy enjoying his time in the Homewood Suites. But it never hurts to be reminded to watch my child growing up with both eyes and my whole heart and no need for a camera in the way.
"Take lots of pictures," Julie said before ending our call.
"Oh, of course," I assured her. Hubby and I are feeling more than a little bit guilty about the fact that we haven't taken pictures of our son since Christmas. He is now 25% older than he was then and has at least 25% more hair.
We arrived at the coast in the late afternoon, bypassing downtown for our hotel in the suburbs of Mt. Pleasant. This is how grown-up parenthood has made us. When booking a hotel, I felt that traveler reviews of the cheap beachside one noting "black stuff on the bathroom floor" surely justified upgrading to the Homewood Suites by Hilton. Even more startling, Hubby agreed.
So here we were, in The Boy's ideal vacation playground. Living room stretched into bedroom opened into vanity ending in a mirrored closet door perfect for smearing one's hands on and making funny grinning faces at. Carpet covered all floors in one continuous piece so one's newly walking feet did not have to adjust to changes in texture, nor practice the difficult art of not tripping over the edges of area rugs. There were TWO television sets with on/off buttons within easy reach, and Mommy and Daddy didn't seem to care one bit how many times they were pushed. Perhaps best of all, there were no hounds knocking one over, licking one in the face, or otherwise causing frustration. Nor were there hounds to feed at mealtime, but that hardly mattered when so many other joys awaited.
True to my word, I took many pictures in the hotel room: The Boy carrying his new pink and camouflage soccer ball; The Boy looking out the window into the parking lot; The Boy playing with his reflection in the mirrored closet.
The next morning we started out for a day downtown with a well-packed diaper bag, changes of clothes, and, of course, the camera.
It is worth taking a moment to say that Charleston is a really lovely city. My eyes drank in the ocean, my nostrils opened eagerly to the smell of salt air, and my heart sang with the joy of walking and walking and walking amidst a constant swirl of pedestrians, shops, and restaurants. My skin felt a bit left out, as it waited eagerly for the warm sunshine I had promised myself, but, alas, 73 degrees is 73 degrees, and when you're on the ocean it is sometimes even colder.
After parking the car and engaging in much coaxing, running, and swerving, we finally got The Boy to settle into his stroller. He spotted a dog, pointed and yelled joyfully, and forgot for a few moments the indignity of sitting way down at adult hip level while the rest of us saw the world from a more advantageous height. We pointed out the horse-drawn carriages that fill the historic downtown streets, and he gazed with serious interest, trying to figure out how to categorize these dog-like creatures that were even bigger than Audrey.
And then we found the playground.
What joy to watch your little one taking the straddled, Frankenstein steps of new walkers, climbing the stairs to the slide, and then skillfully turning himself around and sliding down feet first on his belly. He really didn't need his mother, except when his second foot got stuck and threatened to remain at the top of the slide as the rest of his body proceeded toward the bottom.
Feeling a deep appreciation of the public space inspired by a long, long Asheville winter, I struck up a conversation with another mother. I never even noticed Hubby adding to our collection of pictures of The Boy. I certainly didn't take note of where the camera was when I returned with The Boy to the top of the slide and yelled at Hubby to take his position at the bottom. It wasn't until some time before we realized we had lost one of The Boy's shoes on the streets of Charleston that we realized we had left the camera in the playground.
To be honest, I was more upset about the shoe than the camera. New cameras can be purchased with a shrug of "it happens" and a comforting "it's okay" meal at Sticky Fingers (home of the Stephen Colbert portrait) for Hubby. But justifying another $40 for really cute blue Chuck Taylor-like shoes with laces that must be painstakingly double-knotted or tied every other minute is more difficult. We stopped at the Target just across the parking lot from our hotel (did I mention how convenient it is to stay in the 'burbs with children?) and bought him some sandals, but it just wasn't the same.
Nor was using the video camera to record his rounds on the pirate ship slide at the Charleston Aquarium. In fact, I was having way too much fun watching him lurch excitedly between tanks full of fish to be bothered with trying to record something we won't be able to figure out how to post on You Tube anyhow.
We headed home with The Boy wearing his new Target socks without shoes and no pictures to memorialize these fleeting, joyful days with our almost-fifteen-month-old. Incidentally, my hair dryer stayed in Charleston as well, completing our trifecta of lost things.
I could mourn the loss of precious reminders of The Boy growing up, but it would be a much better use of my time to just buy a new camera. After all, less than 24 hours after our arrival home The Boy had new shoes and I had a new hair dryer.
But sometimes I think things happen for a reason. Not that some stranger really needs pictures of our boy enjoying his time in the Homewood Suites. But it never hurts to be reminded to watch my child growing up with both eyes and my whole heart and no need for a camera in the way.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
YogaMamaMe
So I've got this great story to tell about our trip last weekend to Charleston and losing our camera and one of Jack's shoes and eating seafood and barbeque and staying at the Homewood Suites in Mt. Pleasant. But in the two days since we've been back in Asheville, I haven't had a minute to write it.
I've been waylaid, you see, by another blog.
"Another blog?" you cry. "Why would you devote time to yet another set of ramblings that perhaps promote good writing discipline and at best amuse a reader or two but are otherwise pretty useless when you have a child to care for, responsibility to contribute to the household income, yoga classes to attend?"
I blame one of the ushers at our wedding.
Being an usher at our wedding is not the most significant thing about this person. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it has totally slipped his mind that he performed this honorary feat. But the fact that he was an usher at our wedding speaks to the importance of his friendship with Hubby, as well as his ill-defined obligation to be nice to me as the wife of his good friend.
This is frightening territory because he is, you see, a literary agent. Because he is both a literary agent and had the honor of ushering guests at our wedding he has graciously listened to many, many great book ideas float out of my mouth. The thriller that turns on a protagonist with a disability and some provision of the ADA. (I never worked out just which one, but I had this misguided notion that writing what you know includes your legal area of expertise.) The first-person mostly fictional narrative about a 39-year-old woman living in Long Beach and trying to get pregnant. (It is fiction, really, and made the semi-finals in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel contest to prove it. Emphasis on "Novel.") And now, YogaMamaMe.
YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby is my current brilliant this-will-get-me-published idea. It combines all the things I think I'm pretty good at (with the exception of law, which I am pretty good at but don't really care to emphasize any more than is financially necessary). Practicing yoga. Teaching yoga. Writing witty, self-deprecating anecdotes about my not-very-interesting life. And being the mother of a toddler.
The usher-agent wrote me a very kind email on Monday suggesting I start a blog on the subject so I have some sort of presence on which I can sell publishers. Hopefully a large audience is not a prerequisite to having an internet "presence."
Because I read this email when we arrived home from Charleston on Monday night, it was only natural that I spend all my free time on Tuesday writing a post. And all my free time today. And now it's 2:30 and I have just two hours to do the legal work that pays for all this useless blogging before I pick The Boy up from preschool and do the mothering thing that is supposed to sell my YogaMamaMe authority. (Sadly, the yoga part is taking a break today, as it does most Wednesdays when the huge stretch of time alone in the house to accomplish legions of work seems to slip away like my consulting checks in the Lucky Jeans store.)
I will write about our weekend in Charleston before it becomes a distant memory, I promise. In the meantime, if you really care enough for me to promise you more of my pithy stories, take a look at http://yogamamame.blogspot.com/ And if you know someone else who might appreciate it (say, more than stories about some woman she doesn't know living in a town she hasn't heard of), pass the information on.
I'll get me an internet presence yet.
I've been waylaid, you see, by another blog.
"Another blog?" you cry. "Why would you devote time to yet another set of ramblings that perhaps promote good writing discipline and at best amuse a reader or two but are otherwise pretty useless when you have a child to care for, responsibility to contribute to the household income, yoga classes to attend?"
I blame one of the ushers at our wedding.
Being an usher at our wedding is not the most significant thing about this person. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it has totally slipped his mind that he performed this honorary feat. But the fact that he was an usher at our wedding speaks to the importance of his friendship with Hubby, as well as his ill-defined obligation to be nice to me as the wife of his good friend.
This is frightening territory because he is, you see, a literary agent. Because he is both a literary agent and had the honor of ushering guests at our wedding he has graciously listened to many, many great book ideas float out of my mouth. The thriller that turns on a protagonist with a disability and some provision of the ADA. (I never worked out just which one, but I had this misguided notion that writing what you know includes your legal area of expertise.) The first-person mostly fictional narrative about a 39-year-old woman living in Long Beach and trying to get pregnant. (It is fiction, really, and made the semi-finals in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel contest to prove it. Emphasis on "Novel.") And now, YogaMamaMe.
YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby is my current brilliant this-will-get-me-published idea. It combines all the things I think I'm pretty good at (with the exception of law, which I am pretty good at but don't really care to emphasize any more than is financially necessary). Practicing yoga. Teaching yoga. Writing witty, self-deprecating anecdotes about my not-very-interesting life. And being the mother of a toddler.
The usher-agent wrote me a very kind email on Monday suggesting I start a blog on the subject so I have some sort of presence on which I can sell publishers. Hopefully a large audience is not a prerequisite to having an internet "presence."
Because I read this email when we arrived home from Charleston on Monday night, it was only natural that I spend all my free time on Tuesday writing a post. And all my free time today. And now it's 2:30 and I have just two hours to do the legal work that pays for all this useless blogging before I pick The Boy up from preschool and do the mothering thing that is supposed to sell my YogaMamaMe authority. (Sadly, the yoga part is taking a break today, as it does most Wednesdays when the huge stretch of time alone in the house to accomplish legions of work seems to slip away like my consulting checks in the Lucky Jeans store.)
I will write about our weekend in Charleston before it becomes a distant memory, I promise. In the meantime, if you really care enough for me to promise you more of my pithy stories, take a look at http://yogamamame.blogspot.com/ And if you know someone else who might appreciate it (say, more than stories about some woman she doesn't know living in a town she hasn't heard of), pass the information on.
I'll get me an internet presence yet.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hanging Up For Good -- Homage to The Wire
The Wire ended last night, and I'm feeling really sad.
"It's just a television show," Hubby shrugged as I lamented the sudden hole in my life. Then he turned away to wash the dishes, and I swear he swatted a tear out of the corner of his eye.
The Wire, as Hubby well knows, is not just a television show. It's the best television show ever. It's a rich novel he and I read together, carried along over the years of our relationship. We worked as a team to figure it out, squinting with concentration as we tried to follow Lester's logic. We'd pretzel together, my face buried in his chest whenever I worried that Bubbles was going to get hurt. Together we rewound every bit of dialog Omar uttered and tried to translate it word for word, rarely with success. Often I'd laugh at something Bunc mumbled around the cigar fixed in his mouth and Hubby would turn to me to explain. "I don't know what he said," I'd admit. "It was just funny."
I'll cop to getting a tad too attached to some books so when the end came I felt the same kind of sadness I experienced every year as I cleaned out my college dorm room and flew home to Los Angeles -- lonely, a bit adrift, vaguely displaced. I still remember crying the hot summer night I finished And Ladies of the Club . . . , though I can no longer recall a single detail of character or plot. I can easily retrieve the choking sensation that rose up through my chest all three times I finished Gone with the Wind, and the last time was over 25 years ago. Even the end of Harry Potter left me a little bit misty eyed, even though my attachment to the series was so fraught with ambivalence that I spent much of my time trying to figure out what past events the characters kept referring to.
I am a firm believer in the humanity of well drawn characters. As they speed toward their fate in the last few pages of a book to interrupt would seem an injury to them. I nearly broke up with Hubby the first time he tried to engage me in conversation during the last 25 pages of Straight Man. I'll put a book aside and stare at the seat back in front of me during the last half hour of a flight if I think I might be forced to deplane with only 6 pages to go. And it goes without saying that I've stayed up way too late on way too many occasions soaking up the end of even mediocre novels.
But The Wire. Bubbles and Lester and Randy (oh, that smile). Not my friends, exactly, me being a clean-living white girl in a small, not terribly gritty city where I can indulge my deep desire to avoid seeing pain inflicted on anyone, especially an animal. I love these characters because I don't see a bit of myself in them -- unlike the characters in novels, to whom I grant voices, cadences, emotions that arise from something inside myself. I admire them because they are smarter than I am, speak more eloquently, live more vividly.
Mostly, though, I think it's possible I love them and their story because Hubby and I became acquainted with them as we became acquainted with each other.
Season Two of The Wire began just as we began living together. Neither of us had seen Season One, but that didn't matter any more than the fact that we hadn't even known each other when it was on and still didn't know much about each others' lives at the time. We didn't have the first clue what was going on for about half the season, but it was so good we watched anyhow. Not unlike our relationship.
By the start of Season Three we were newlyweds, with a history behind us to build upon. I had bought Hubby the DVD of Season One for Christmas, and we were now caught up on the story. It was both comfortable and thrilling -- returning to a plot we now sort of understood and continuing our own with the same uncertain sense that we didn't understand it as well as we hoped.
Season Four -- the really devastating one about the middle school kids -- rolled around in the middle of my pregnancy. Maybe I can blame the fact that for weeks after it ended I stumbled around the house moaning "Randy" on the hormones. I don't know what Hubby's excuse was.
And now the end has come. What does that mean for our marriage? I suppose it's a good thing that nothing was really resolved -- who expected it would be? -- and that life continues. Ours will too, even without those coveted Sunday nights watching really good tv (as opposed to old episodes of Reno 911 or even new ones of The Colbert Report).
And who knows? Maybe something just as good will come along one day. Or maybe we'll just be left with all the good things that happened to the tune of our Wire addiction -- our love for each other, our marriage, our child, and the beauty of being able to feel the loss of true art.
"It's just a television show," Hubby shrugged as I lamented the sudden hole in my life. Then he turned away to wash the dishes, and I swear he swatted a tear out of the corner of his eye.
The Wire, as Hubby well knows, is not just a television show. It's the best television show ever. It's a rich novel he and I read together, carried along over the years of our relationship. We worked as a team to figure it out, squinting with concentration as we tried to follow Lester's logic. We'd pretzel together, my face buried in his chest whenever I worried that Bubbles was going to get hurt. Together we rewound every bit of dialog Omar uttered and tried to translate it word for word, rarely with success. Often I'd laugh at something Bunc mumbled around the cigar fixed in his mouth and Hubby would turn to me to explain. "I don't know what he said," I'd admit. "It was just funny."
I'll cop to getting a tad too attached to some books so when the end came I felt the same kind of sadness I experienced every year as I cleaned out my college dorm room and flew home to Los Angeles -- lonely, a bit adrift, vaguely displaced. I still remember crying the hot summer night I finished And Ladies of the Club . . . , though I can no longer recall a single detail of character or plot. I can easily retrieve the choking sensation that rose up through my chest all three times I finished Gone with the Wind, and the last time was over 25 years ago. Even the end of Harry Potter left me a little bit misty eyed, even though my attachment to the series was so fraught with ambivalence that I spent much of my time trying to figure out what past events the characters kept referring to.
I am a firm believer in the humanity of well drawn characters. As they speed toward their fate in the last few pages of a book to interrupt would seem an injury to them. I nearly broke up with Hubby the first time he tried to engage me in conversation during the last 25 pages of Straight Man. I'll put a book aside and stare at the seat back in front of me during the last half hour of a flight if I think I might be forced to deplane with only 6 pages to go. And it goes without saying that I've stayed up way too late on way too many occasions soaking up the end of even mediocre novels.
But The Wire. Bubbles and Lester and Randy (oh, that smile). Not my friends, exactly, me being a clean-living white girl in a small, not terribly gritty city where I can indulge my deep desire to avoid seeing pain inflicted on anyone, especially an animal. I love these characters because I don't see a bit of myself in them -- unlike the characters in novels, to whom I grant voices, cadences, emotions that arise from something inside myself. I admire them because they are smarter than I am, speak more eloquently, live more vividly.
Mostly, though, I think it's possible I love them and their story because Hubby and I became acquainted with them as we became acquainted with each other.
Season Two of The Wire began just as we began living together. Neither of us had seen Season One, but that didn't matter any more than the fact that we hadn't even known each other when it was on and still didn't know much about each others' lives at the time. We didn't have the first clue what was going on for about half the season, but it was so good we watched anyhow. Not unlike our relationship.
By the start of Season Three we were newlyweds, with a history behind us to build upon. I had bought Hubby the DVD of Season One for Christmas, and we were now caught up on the story. It was both comfortable and thrilling -- returning to a plot we now sort of understood and continuing our own with the same uncertain sense that we didn't understand it as well as we hoped.
Season Four -- the really devastating one about the middle school kids -- rolled around in the middle of my pregnancy. Maybe I can blame the fact that for weeks after it ended I stumbled around the house moaning "Randy" on the hormones. I don't know what Hubby's excuse was.
And now the end has come. What does that mean for our marriage? I suppose it's a good thing that nothing was really resolved -- who expected it would be? -- and that life continues. Ours will too, even without those coveted Sunday nights watching really good tv (as opposed to old episodes of Reno 911 or even new ones of The Colbert Report).
And who knows? Maybe something just as good will come along one day. Or maybe we'll just be left with all the good things that happened to the tune of our Wire addiction -- our love for each other, our marriage, our child, and the beauty of being able to feel the loss of true art.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Spring Showers
A few weeks ago, I found myself eagerly looking forward to our neighbors' baby shower. This fact is notable for several reasons.
First of all, I was looking forward to a baby shower. Those who know me well probably noticed that something odd about this long before I did. Traditionally, I am not exactly to be found in the front lines of enthusiastic shower-goers.
My curmudgeonliness, I hasten to make clear, is not directed against the joy of childbearing. My antipathy toward showers goes all the way back to the first bridal shower I had the joy of not being able to attend. As I prepared to graduate from college, a dear friend from high school regaled me with stories about gifts of tacky lingerie, insipid guessing games designed to pry into a young couple's most intimate plans about how many children they wanted (none in her case), and lots of girlie squeals and blushing. (Actually, I added this last detail myself, as I wriggled out of ever viewing pictures of the event.) Even though I was her maid of honor, I was proud to have missed the bridal shower.
As bridal showers morphed into baby showers, I managed to work my vagabond life to my advantage. Move every two to four years, and you have a good shot at being on the wrong coast when a dear friend's friends send you the flower-adorned invitation in the pink envelope. "So sorry," I would grin into the phone as I RSVP'd. "I won't be able to make it."
The first baby shower I finally attended actually seemed promising enough. Two friends in St. Louis -- a cardiac surgeon and a physician's assistant -- adopted a son from Belarus. They asked that all gifts be made in the form of donations to the orphanage. No icky/cutsie clothing to trill over, professional women in attendance, and an honoree who was more likely to be spotted mowing the lawn with a hand mower than hanging little blue lambs in the nursery. It seemed a safe bet.
To this day, I have not figured out how putting a bunch of women with impressive graduate degrees into one room with quiche and piles of diapers could so fully transform them into something so deeply disturbing. Fruitlessly, I wandered from couch to chair to table in search of conversation that didn't revolve around the conversationalists' children. Not only did I have no children of my own at that point, but I didn't have much of a prospect for fathering them and was toying with the notion of using an anonymous donor once the university granted me tenure. I could easily imagine thumbing my single-and-artificially-inseminated nose at the Jesuits who employed me, but no part of me wanted to face the prospect of being reduced to the heated discussions surrounding me about whether a stop sign ought to be installed at the end of the block to make the street safe for play time.
As I made my get-away, I called my best and also-single friend. "I am never going to a baby shower again," I vowed.
And I meant it. Until I hosted one myself.
I'm not really sure why I decided I needed to host a shower for a friend who lived 1,500 miles away and was already being feted with two other showers, other than that she was very, very dear to me. Perhaps I also had some twisted notion that it made sense, since she and I had become pregnant within weeks of each other and I had soon thereafter miscarried. Surely, I must have thought somewhere in my hormone-addled brain, if I act like I'm okay I will be.
It is, I can now report with authority, hard to act okay when you have to dash out of the party and find a bathroom upstairs in which to sob without any real notion of what set you off. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing, having your grief come at you like a firehose when you're busy being happy for your friend.
So I stayed away from the showers until they were my own. Even then, I complicated the same friend's efforts to throw me a St. Louis shower by insisting there be "no games, no quiche, nothing pink or blue or too cute." She did her best, but I take full responsibility for initiating the traditional chorus of "oohhs!" that accompanies every tiny cute outfit. They are, I assure you, so much cuter when they are going on the being growing inside your own uterus.
Hubby and I had a shower in LA as well, our home at the time. I discovered that even men will say "oohh!" when presented with a cute baby outfit at a co-ed baby shower.
And now here I was, excited to be going to a baby shower. Convinced by my own experiences that baby showers needn't be icky? Perhaps. Transformed by motherhood into someone who no longer recognizes icky things? Only if the ickiness involves bodily fluids. So starved for a social life in my new home that anything will do? If so, Hubby and I had better get on those plans for a Vernal Equinox party.
No, I have to conclude, it has nothing to do with my growing tolerance for all things shower-related. I was just really, really happy for my neighbors and excited to spend time with them and their friends and, okay, ruined by my own pregnancy into really enjoying buying tiny little nightgowns and caps with a knit pea pod on top.
My happiness for my neighbors and for my invitation to their shower was also notable because not so long before I hadn't been sure about how happy I'd feel once they had their baby.
That sounds terrible. Let me explain.
In October, I had been looking forward to my own babies following theirs by a few months. By December, I found out those babies weren't happening. An ultrasound showed two empty egg sacs and one big explanation of why I hadn't been feeling nearly as sick as I had with The Boy. There would be no neighborhood baby showers for me.
I'm happy to say I didn't give those egg sacs a single thought at the shower (except maybe to tell myself one more time that come June I'll be mighty glad we aren't parents to newborn twins and a neglected 18-month-old). What I did think was how interesting and welcoming the women at the shower were, from the publicity director of the local Habitat for Humanity to the pediatric hospitalist whose eight-month-old goes to preschool with The Boy, to the hostess who lives one house to our south and the soon-to-be parents who live one house to the north.
Okay, we talked about our kids, but not obsessively. And I had The Boy with me as an instant, "Isn't he cute?" conversation-starter. But I am not and was not icky and there was nothing pink to be found because they didn't know the sex of the baby (although an errant ultrasonographer had more than suggested it might be a boy).
Seeing little Bodhi for the first time yesterday, I was struck not only by his beauty, but by the beauty of adulthood as well. His mother laughed about how strange it was to have "my children" in the car with her, and I knew exactly what she meant. With just The Boy, Hubby and I can take him out to restaurants and buy ourselves moments to read snippets of the Sunday Times by telling him to bring the basketball to the other parent. Once we have two -- or even the three that might be in our plan -- we will be real grown-ups, not some young couple with a baby. All the youth stuff will officially belong to the next generation.
And therein lies the beauty. I imagine watching The Boy playing with Bodhi and his siblings riding their bicycles down the block to play with the other kids living here. I feel a little bit too giddy at the notion of rereading the children's books my children read and refreshing my recollection of algebra by trying my hand at their homework assignments. It's as if the whole idea of youth is bigger than anything I can do or any way I can look. It's an energy that comes from the young but doesn't belong exclusively to them.
So maybe, just maybe, when they start having showers of their own, I'll be both old enough and young enough to feel as excited as I did about the neighbors' shower. And maybe I won't even mind a little tacky lingerie and a few pink bows.
First of all, I was looking forward to a baby shower. Those who know me well probably noticed that something odd about this long before I did. Traditionally, I am not exactly to be found in the front lines of enthusiastic shower-goers.
My curmudgeonliness, I hasten to make clear, is not directed against the joy of childbearing. My antipathy toward showers goes all the way back to the first bridal shower I had the joy of not being able to attend. As I prepared to graduate from college, a dear friend from high school regaled me with stories about gifts of tacky lingerie, insipid guessing games designed to pry into a young couple's most intimate plans about how many children they wanted (none in her case), and lots of girlie squeals and blushing. (Actually, I added this last detail myself, as I wriggled out of ever viewing pictures of the event.) Even though I was her maid of honor, I was proud to have missed the bridal shower.
As bridal showers morphed into baby showers, I managed to work my vagabond life to my advantage. Move every two to four years, and you have a good shot at being on the wrong coast when a dear friend's friends send you the flower-adorned invitation in the pink envelope. "So sorry," I would grin into the phone as I RSVP'd. "I won't be able to make it."
The first baby shower I finally attended actually seemed promising enough. Two friends in St. Louis -- a cardiac surgeon and a physician's assistant -- adopted a son from Belarus. They asked that all gifts be made in the form of donations to the orphanage. No icky/cutsie clothing to trill over, professional women in attendance, and an honoree who was more likely to be spotted mowing the lawn with a hand mower than hanging little blue lambs in the nursery. It seemed a safe bet.
To this day, I have not figured out how putting a bunch of women with impressive graduate degrees into one room with quiche and piles of diapers could so fully transform them into something so deeply disturbing. Fruitlessly, I wandered from couch to chair to table in search of conversation that didn't revolve around the conversationalists' children. Not only did I have no children of my own at that point, but I didn't have much of a prospect for fathering them and was toying with the notion of using an anonymous donor once the university granted me tenure. I could easily imagine thumbing my single-and-artificially-inseminated nose at the Jesuits who employed me, but no part of me wanted to face the prospect of being reduced to the heated discussions surrounding me about whether a stop sign ought to be installed at the end of the block to make the street safe for play time.
As I made my get-away, I called my best and also-single friend. "I am never going to a baby shower again," I vowed.
And I meant it. Until I hosted one myself.
I'm not really sure why I decided I needed to host a shower for a friend who lived 1,500 miles away and was already being feted with two other showers, other than that she was very, very dear to me. Perhaps I also had some twisted notion that it made sense, since she and I had become pregnant within weeks of each other and I had soon thereafter miscarried. Surely, I must have thought somewhere in my hormone-addled brain, if I act like I'm okay I will be.
It is, I can now report with authority, hard to act okay when you have to dash out of the party and find a bathroom upstairs in which to sob without any real notion of what set you off. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing, having your grief come at you like a firehose when you're busy being happy for your friend.
So I stayed away from the showers until they were my own. Even then, I complicated the same friend's efforts to throw me a St. Louis shower by insisting there be "no games, no quiche, nothing pink or blue or too cute." She did her best, but I take full responsibility for initiating the traditional chorus of "oohhs!" that accompanies every tiny cute outfit. They are, I assure you, so much cuter when they are going on the being growing inside your own uterus.
Hubby and I had a shower in LA as well, our home at the time. I discovered that even men will say "oohh!" when presented with a cute baby outfit at a co-ed baby shower.
And now here I was, excited to be going to a baby shower. Convinced by my own experiences that baby showers needn't be icky? Perhaps. Transformed by motherhood into someone who no longer recognizes icky things? Only if the ickiness involves bodily fluids. So starved for a social life in my new home that anything will do? If so, Hubby and I had better get on those plans for a Vernal Equinox party.
No, I have to conclude, it has nothing to do with my growing tolerance for all things shower-related. I was just really, really happy for my neighbors and excited to spend time with them and their friends and, okay, ruined by my own pregnancy into really enjoying buying tiny little nightgowns and caps with a knit pea pod on top.
My happiness for my neighbors and for my invitation to their shower was also notable because not so long before I hadn't been sure about how happy I'd feel once they had their baby.
That sounds terrible. Let me explain.
In October, I had been looking forward to my own babies following theirs by a few months. By December, I found out those babies weren't happening. An ultrasound showed two empty egg sacs and one big explanation of why I hadn't been feeling nearly as sick as I had with The Boy. There would be no neighborhood baby showers for me.
I'm happy to say I didn't give those egg sacs a single thought at the shower (except maybe to tell myself one more time that come June I'll be mighty glad we aren't parents to newborn twins and a neglected 18-month-old). What I did think was how interesting and welcoming the women at the shower were, from the publicity director of the local Habitat for Humanity to the pediatric hospitalist whose eight-month-old goes to preschool with The Boy, to the hostess who lives one house to our south and the soon-to-be parents who live one house to the north.
Okay, we talked about our kids, but not obsessively. And I had The Boy with me as an instant, "Isn't he cute?" conversation-starter. But I am not and was not icky and there was nothing pink to be found because they didn't know the sex of the baby (although an errant ultrasonographer had more than suggested it might be a boy).
Seeing little Bodhi for the first time yesterday, I was struck not only by his beauty, but by the beauty of adulthood as well. His mother laughed about how strange it was to have "my children" in the car with her, and I knew exactly what she meant. With just The Boy, Hubby and I can take him out to restaurants and buy ourselves moments to read snippets of the Sunday Times by telling him to bring the basketball to the other parent. Once we have two -- or even the three that might be in our plan -- we will be real grown-ups, not some young couple with a baby. All the youth stuff will officially belong to the next generation.
And therein lies the beauty. I imagine watching The Boy playing with Bodhi and his siblings riding their bicycles down the block to play with the other kids living here. I feel a little bit too giddy at the notion of rereading the children's books my children read and refreshing my recollection of algebra by trying my hand at their homework assignments. It's as if the whole idea of youth is bigger than anything I can do or any way I can look. It's an energy that comes from the young but doesn't belong exclusively to them.
So maybe, just maybe, when they start having showers of their own, I'll be both old enough and young enough to feel as excited as I did about the neighbors' shower. And maybe I won't even mind a little tacky lingerie and a few pink bows.
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