he has his limits

Take One:

Isaac has been creating metaphors left and right as per his poetic usual.
(his bitten toast) "Mama! It's a boat!"
(the stamen of a calla lily flower) "It has a carrot inside!"
(the water filter faucet) "Look, Mama! A letter J!"
(cheerios stuck together in stepped pattern) "It's like stairs!"

Finally, it is almost 6 o'clock and we are both waiting impatiently for Daddy to get home. I lie back on the grass in the front yard.
"Isaac, what do the clouds look like today?"
"White."

Take Two:

After a full day of cars talking to each other ("I'm a forklift. I pick up big, heavy things. Watch! Wanna come to my house?") and the wee men Isaac begs me to make with my fingers reading imaginary books to each other and watching rubber whales splash into the ocean (living room rug), and cooking strawberry shortcake soup (granola in a sauce pan on the coffee table), it's bath time.

We go looking for the pieces of Isaac's camping set to join him for bath play. It includes a little plastic man, plastic boy, tent, fire, cot, and dog. Can't find the boy. Mama grows tired of looking and eyes the clock.

"Maybe when you get in your bath, Iz, the man and the dog can talk about where the boy is. Maybe that can be part of their conversation."

My son looks at me, head lowered, eyebrows lifted. "Dogs say like 'woof-woof,' like that, Mama. Dogs can't talk."

"Right, Iz. I forgot. Sorry."

more garden

I'm struggling with photo location on upload here, but anyway. you'll notice they are all closeups. sometimes I don't want to see the dump trucks and the baseballs and the plastic shovels. and sometimes I feel guilty for planting as a renter. my poor plants. uprooted again and again or left behind. what kind of mother am I?

Earth Day in my garden

heard it from a friend who...

There are certain trademarked music classes for children out there – if you are a parent of a young child you likely know what I'm talking about. They are the ones where parents participate and a REALLY HAPPY teacher sings and doo-doots continually, sometimes a capella, sometimes along with recorded music. And children get a chance to “explore” instruments for about 30 seconds before we say “bye-bye, instruments” and practice putting them away again and begin to sing some infernal ditty, each transition - to a standing dance, to a lap clap play, to whatever else, come up so quickly and suddenly it feels like channel surfing between “Soul Train” and some kind of Walt Disney marathon.

People swear by these classes; there is talk about brain development and music's pivotal role; there is a lot of smiling.

Yesterday, there was a free trial class of one of these puppies. I heard it from a friend who had been going and liked it alot. Isaac and I had nothing better to do in the afternoon and I hadn't been to something like this since he was an infant and surely they were different for this age and sure, I'll come.

We got there more than fashionably late. The remaining 20 minutes of the class were the longest 20 freaking minutes I can recall in this lifetime. If I ever, EVER, mention the IDEA of POSSIBLY attending one of these flipping things again EVER, and if you care about me or my child at all, you will rush to where I live and tie me to a towering redwood with steel cable.

Can I just mention that if I get the bug up my butt to flap around the room clucking like a chicken, I'm perfectly content to do so in the privacy of my own living room without the leadership of a paid professional? Can I also mention that as we entered the room where synapses were audibly snapping into place for the adults marching high-kneed in a circle exuding disingenuous joy while several children made a play fort under a folding table, that my son gripped my arm with something like the fright one might feel when chased by demons made terrible in our dreams?

I know it's just the craziest thing, but whenever possible, I take my son to music ... in the real world. We are exploring things with Isaac. He hates theaters – the dark, the crowd, so we find outdoor venues or other places we can come and go from. So far, he enjoys harmonies, people singing live in front of him without too much loud music accompanying. At one recent festival, he sat all the way through a gospel session.

I have to say, as unhappy and unidentified with the Christian tradition as I am, I adore gospel. I'm a sucker for a great voice and damn if people singing gospel don't feel the passion in what they are sharing. Afterwards, one of the singers asked Isaac if next time he'd come up and sing with them on stage. My son, who speaks to no one he doesn't know for less than a day, who has yet to answer the favorite stranger question “What's your name?” straightened up, smiled at her and said, “When I get bigger!”

I'd like to think that teaching my child what authentic interaction looks like trumps letting him play with disinfected cymbals for half a minute once a week.

Maybe I just have a wee problem with people telling me what to do and how to feel about it, and with selling the like to my son. Maybe the idea is to move and do what you feel when and if you feel it – to find music you emotionally connect with – to, dare I say it again, find the company of others you emotionally connect with.

The other day, I was working in a café where they were blasting the most ridiculous line up of horrible 80s music – REO Speedwagon, Journey, Billy Idol, some Fleetwood Mac thrown in. God, I loved it. I felt like I was flying sitting there in front of my laptop. My head started bobbing involuntarily. I could barely keep from singing. I glanced over at the business woman in the celery-colored camisole and black eye-liner at the table next to me, who was flipping through important looking folders while the men with her in their onyx-shiny shoes spoke seriously clunking their heavy watches down as they gestured. And I noticed, is she? yes, I think so! She was mouthing the words. Home is where you find it.

...they say you got a boy-friend
and you're out late every week-end...

earth day soap box

Earth day is approaching. Here's an NPR report from today. Number one reason I am a vegetarian.

restlessness

And the little bears growl to each other, “He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line.”
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk.
-- from “Lines and Squares,” When We Were Very Young, A. A. Milne

How do you know when it's time to make a change? Do you make changes or wait for them? If I want to leave behind the psycho Western frenzied tradition of do do do more more more, do I solve that by hurrying up and doing something? I can only change myself but I seem to be in a marriage with someone else. Must he be informed of the change? Agree with it? Embrace it too?

How do I write about a restlessness I can't really define? How do I explain the feeling that has followed me for several years now that something big has to shift in my life for me to feel like I'm living it? How do I find my peaceful, slower pace in a home surrounded by natural beauty without becoming even more isolated from the friends I already have to turn myself inside out to manage to see at all?

I started my job two years ago. So much has changed for me in those two years and my heart isn't in the writing the way it once was. It takes away from my time to do poetry and essay writing and submitting and revising and and and. There is no dedicated time for any of these. How can that be? In 38 years I haven't figured it out? Why don't I just quit my job and write? (I can answer that in 3000 words or less, but is it a valid answer? I may be forced to address this in another entry.) But this newspaper writing job, it's crept in to lend me a type of identity again. It feeds me free tickets to other people's evenings of creative expression and I want that to continue. Is that good enough? Is it good enough a reason to not do my own writing?

How do you know when it's time to make a change? I've actually caught myself on more than one occasion while looking at the pile of dollar store writing pads I use to scribble interview notes from my discussions with would-be stars and unquoteable executive directors thinking that maybe I'll only keep doing this job for as long as the paper lasts (double-sided of course, we love our trees). Once that runs out – that's it! I'm not buying any new ones. Like my vegan friend who, after his inspired conversion, continued to wear his leather shoes until they wore out, then – no more. His philosophy makes a hell of a lot more sense than mine. The infantile notion at work in my brain here, makes me think I am some bizarre form of human or at a stage of arrested development I could only dream of before or maybe just totally screwed up. I imagine watching the paper dwindle, judging the right time to give notice by the thickness of the pad on my desk. But how do you know? What do you do? What do you not do? Will life spin me around when it's time, like whipping me through a revolving door, on the other side, a new universe for me, my path through the singing daisies clearly marked? Doubtful. This isn't really about whether or not I'll write next year's Beer Festival article. How do you know? Active? Passive? Contemplative? Meditative? Gradual? Sudden?

jury duty

“I have to find something to really make me look like an engineer,” Mike said this morning while looking through his closet, “so they don’t pick me.”

He grinned widely and pulled out an olive green short –sleeved button down shirt and UPS-brown pants. (I didn’t even want to go near him.)

Then, he was off to jury duty.

This has been a dilemma for me ever since three and a half years ago when I got that letter in the mail and showed up at the courthouse only to be told to go home before 9 a.m. I was barely pregnant and afraid I might throw up on someone official that could take it the wrong way. It was still a dilemma for me when, just earlier this year, I wrote an eloquently dramatic letter stating the reasons it was impossible for me to serve on a jury, like how I needed to care for my son, who was not yet three at the time. All the reasons I stated were quite true and veiled me with a kind of melancholy about the job I do, alone, as mom every day.

But the root of the dilemma is that I believe mothers of young children have to be excused from jury duty whenever necessary, and yet, that means that a significant portion of the population, a portion of which I am a member and about which I feel strongly when it comes to needing more voice and less isolation in our society, ends up excluded from the public end of the justice system.

Has anyone researched this? Likely, but I don’t have time to look for it. It’s an NPR story waiting to happen.

I’m not saying I’d be thrilled to serve on a jury. (Though think of the writing it could produce!) But I do know that something our penal system could benefit from is the warmth and wisdom of a mom.

National Poetry Month

We're almost two weeks into National Poetry Month. Have you hugged a poet today?

NYC is even sponsoring a Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 17. Makes a person want to get up and move across the country.

But as it is, I just updated my "What We're Reading" sidebar, which is really all I could manage and while I should have chosen a poetry book for Isaac's too, I'm inconsistent and my rug is unvaccumed and I'm lucky if I remember to eat, though judging by the way my jeans are fitting, you'd think I don't have any problem, and I have to go pick up my son, and I looked on line for this Sharon Olds poem I really like but I can't find it and it's called "The Sound"and then I considered her poem "The Pope's Penis" but I don't have time to answer hate mail and there's this line, this LINE in the Sound poem that goes "We improvise on the edge of milk and sleep" and well, shit, I don't even know what it means, but I wish I wrote it.

May your day be wild with poetry.

grandmom

Alright, I'm starting to feel guilty.

My mom keeps blogging away about our visit there last week and I'm talking about gophers and urine-soaked carpet.

She kept asking me if we should “get together” on what we were going to blog about regarding our experiences. Ain't she cute? Thinking our ideas might overlap.

My mom writes about days and lives and lifetimes. I write about moments. It's the same thing, really. And not.

I can't believe she didn't post this picture of laughing Isaac from the trip; it's my favorite.

We see our families so rarely it's difficult. It's difficult not to have them. It's difficult figuring out how to see them. It's difficult to leave. I've written about past encounters with grandmothers and the like when Isaac was an infant. The real reward of this trip was that Iz is finally at the age when he can start remembering all these far away people who love him.

We have our photos running as a screen saver on our computer. All I have to say about the matter is, if it's been once it's been a thousand times this week that Isaac has called to me frantically “Mama, come! Come, Mama!” Thinking the cat must be on fire, I race into the living room where my son is leading over the arm of the couch grinning like he's waiting for the parade to pass by. He points to the computer screen where inevitably some picture ancient or recent of my mom is fading onto or off of the screen. “Look, Mama!” he squeals, “It's Grandmom!”

my kid the drunk

Isaac seems to be suffering from blackouts. He wakes from naps with his bed soaking wet and claims not to know how it happened. “Me not sure how my pants get wet! Hmm. Dat kinda funny, huh, Mama?”

Hilarious.

Yesterday, Mike went in to find him on the floor of his room, his pants around his ankles, asleep in a puddle. In that magical space between the dream and waking worlds, the pile of pajamas next to his dresser looks so much like a toilet. You can understand.

Other times, it's even wackier.

“Isaac, how exactly is it that your underwear is perfectly dry and your pants are sopping wet?”

“Me donno.”

“And why does monkey smell like pee?”

“Ew, montey 'mell wike pee-pee!”

Truly, I can often not begin to piece together the series of events that lead to these kinds of findings. Bed wet, kid dry. Kid wet, rug soaked, underwear no where to be found. Underwear dry, pants wet, bed dry, kid peeing in toilet. The distinct smell of urine, no physical evidence. Etc.

In the past, I have posted entries about coming upon what feels like a crime scene, me the detective, and about something I referred to at the time as “QP.” Lately, I'm starting to think my kid is just a drunk.

Why can't the child employ these mysterious methods of relieving himself in the middle of the night? Once in a damn while, at around 3 am, I could use him to just take a whiz in his closet and fall peacefully back to sleep in whatever state of undress and poor hygiene he'd like. But noooooo.

(2:41 am)

“Mama! MAMA!”

“Wha?”

(the bathroom door – directly opposite my bedroom - swings open slamming BAAM into the wall)

“MAMA! Me haffa go pee pee!”

“Wha? ... Oh, uh-huh. ... Who? ... Okay, I'm awake now.”

“Me not need help.”

“Great, Isaac. Thanks for letting me know.”

Encounter

(This entry needs pictures, perhaps they will come next.)

There were new holes in the garden. A lot of them. Some of my most gorgeous poppies, complementing the blue daisy bush thing, (whatever that is) were weeping and languid.

That little bastard. He's lucky he's so cute.

Of course, I am speaking about my gopher.

I'd gone to the Mexican grocery store, bought the biggest bag of the hottest peppers they had – chile de arbol. “Estos son los mas picantes, verdad?” I ask the clerk stocking produce. (“These are the hottest ones, right?”) He looks at me, first with confusion, then with what appears to be sympathy. “Si,” he says, slowing returning to his gigantic pile of papaya. But you know he's thinking. Ay, gringita, dju can' hannle dee hottest pep-pears.

Look, I'm trying to be humane and eco-friendly here. Plus, let's be honest, Mike once stomped his foot to frighten away a gopher and Isaac, witnessing this horror, cried for an hour. And I read it somewhere. Hot peppers in the gopher holes. I was okay with it. Isaac was okay with it. Mike laughed at me, but come on, it could've worked.

Unfortunately, I think I only succeeded in educating the palate of my little garden guest.

Mike suggested sticking the hose down the holes and turning on the water full blast so as to try collapsing the tunnels and spur a move out. The last time I'd tried this technique, the hose disappeared – no lie – eight and a half feet underground.

I needed a miracle, but instead I went out this morning, tossed my once-beautiful poppies in the compost and shoved the hose down the biggest hole. When lo and behold, out scrambles little mister small, grey and very wet. He ran through the back garden and I followed him with the hose, not having a clue what to do.

I decided I'd try to trap him under a pot and then...I dunno. I couldn't take my eye off him. I needed help. I yelled in the door for Mike then quickly returned to the chase. He'd disappeared, but a spray of the hose over the suspected area produced a little running rodent again. He jumped into the open square of a cinderblock. I ran to the door to scream for Mike again, but no one heard me. I returned just in time to see the bugger dig his way under the deck.

And as I slunk back inside, who was sitting at the door begging to go out – Emily cat. Damn. Why didn't I think of that sooner?

To My Esteemed Professional Contacts

freedom
free enterprise
free-fall
free-floating
free-for-all
free-form
free-hand
freehold
freelance – a) a knight or roaming soldier available for hire by a state or commander b) one who acts independently without regard to party lines or deference to authority c) one who pursues a profession without long-term commitments to any one employer
free-living
freeload
free love
free lunch

Esteemed Colleagues and Contacts (e.g. the woman at the box office of the theater that regularly pisses me off anyway and the city official in charge of the 3,184th annual street fair of blahdeeblah, you know who you are):

I did mention, didn’t I, that it was my HOME number I gave you, right? And that might suggest that perhaps I work AT HOME, right? And if you know anything about the state of affairs of our print media, you might suspect that that also suggested I am a freelancer, right? Which could mean – I’m just hypothesizing here – that I have a life outside of my job and could even, though I know it’s a bit hard to swallow, keep irregular hours…right?

So why when you get the answering machine with the three-year-old roaring like a dinosaur would you assume you have the wrong number? And honestly, don’t you find it a bit silly that just a wee little roar could send you scrambling in every direction to find my “real” number – frantic emails to my editor, repeated hang-ups on my machine, pleas for the number to the cell phone I never get to in time and that I consistently forget to charge?

How little it takes to rattle you. How narrow your imagination, that you can’t envision your local arts writer also mother to a prehistoric beast such as this.

In case you are ever interested, in case you might want to ask me a question or two, my larger reality can be reached at 555-ROAR.

pining

I do the best I can for the boy.

But ask me to pull from my days beauty? From the trip to the doctor's office, where a babe asleep over his mother's shoulder goes into the room next door, is awoken by cold instruments, screams and screams, the walls so white as to blind? From the rooster my neighbor keeps, raking the grass, crowing day and night, the poor bird pining for a barn, a field of dirt marked with grain? I cannot make beauty nor sense of this.

There is nothing to speak of here, just a mid-afternoon nap if I'm lucky, just a moment to pour the tea. His blonde curls undo me, his questioning why. I am only his mother and tomorrow is like today and I don't know, I don't know.

Pavlov's bitch: An ode to sea salt and vinegar Kettle Chips

I hated the giant seminar class in college.

All the talk about behavioral psychology coming towards our slumped figures wedged into auditorium seats – mice made to do this; people made to do that. No, I'd think, you're leaving something out. This isn't the whole story.

And of course it wasn't. I didn't have to know what the “else” was to know it most certainly was. It would happen over and over again in my life, people presenting “the” way while I shuffled to the left trying to see what else was hidden behind their backs.

“People work in offices 9-5.” Freelancing from your living room? “Educational research requires statistically significant results and empirical evidence.” What's an ethnographic case study?

Lies of omission.

But still, here I am, PMS Diva. Just the thought of turning down the chip aisle sends my saliva glands going. Then, when I see the bag, I am all animal and remembered patterns.

It's science like they kind they sell in undergrad seminars, food like the kind they sell at the 7-11 down the block from your dorm at 2 a.m. while you're studying for your midterm on Skinner.

And I'm okay with that. It means at least something I learned stuck.

wanna-be writer approaches the literary journals on a recent bookstore browse

Even before I get close enough to touch them, I sense their disapproval, covers closing tighter around their pages.

I'm at the door of the clubhouse trying to read the list of rules hung on the branch outside.

Their back covers read like inside jokes I don't get. Their tables of contents dare me with a smirk. The fresh, new poetry dances this way and that on the pages, never stopping too long in any one column, on any one thought. But more, the bright white leaves are heavy with prose, glossy with art, the verse ducks and weaves as I flip through, so as not to be fully discovered.

The only reason they are letting me sit at their lunch table is so they can make fun of me later. And I tap the books once, twice, on the heel of my palm, thinking, miserable, awkward, before replacing them in their slots – all the prom queen's court lined up on the float – and walk away. It is my only chance at salvation.

everything he needs to know...

Check off another lesson learned.

Mike was cleaning out the garage yesterday when Isaac grabbed an empty plastic container and while simultaneously demonstrating announced to no one in particular, "You take junk, and you put it in there, and you close it up!"

books

So it needs work aesthetically, but what I want to say is there. To the left. My newest bit on my sidebar. "What We're Reading."

the elephant cake

Today is Isaac's third birthday. Happy birthday to my not-so-baby. And happy birth day to me.

This day marks an enormity of change I am still coming to terms with, and still, I look outside and the world moves along in its routines as if nothing special occurred at all. I admit to feeling a bit disconcerted.

If I were a normal person, an eloquent blogger, or a mother in line with the social mores of other mothers, this is where you would find a long entry filled with irresistible pictures that began “Dear Isaac” and waxed on and on about all the ways my son has brought joy into my life over the last three years. I am none of those things listed above, however.

What I am on this day is overly emotional, sick with a head cold, and pissed as hell at my husband, again.

In three years, I am no closer to knowing how to deal with tiffs or blow ups or any other form of argument. In trying not to traumatize my son, I attempt not to fight in front of him which usually means I hold things in and then, we... what? discuss it rationally in all that free leisure time we enjoy by ourselves? Yeah, right! I add it to the last three things that I wanted to choke him for and it all bottles up until I'm ready to chew through steel. And it's not as if there are not fewer arguments after you have a child, there are more, MANY, MANY MORE. Should I name some topics? No, I won't bother, the list is long and tedious, let's just suffice to say we fight about how to fight too.

What makes me maddest of all is that if I want to resolve anything, I will have to be the one big enough to bring things up again because darling dear is fond of the method by which you just wait quietly until such a time as things die down on their own, when your sweet wife lets things go and begins to look at you without glaring and speak to you without gritting her teeth. Men are chicken shit.

Besides the little party we gave Isaac on Monday at home, they celebrated on his real day today at preschool with his friends there. Mike and I were invited to attend the ceremonies, for which we provided a cake - Isaac's second homemade cake in three days, baked and decorated, of course, by his father. Anyone who knows three-year-olds can tell you if ask them a question about what they want , you will get myriad answers over time. Isaac wanted strawberry, apple, chocolate cakes in shapes ranging from rectangle to jungle animal.

His newest request as of bedtime last night was a chocolate elephant. “Okay,” Mike pronounces nonplussed.

A few minutes later he shows me the plans he's drawn up on paper. In a carefully measured engineering feat, my dear husband has designed an elephant out of a single round cake pan. The real thing came out well, like every other bloody thing Mike does.

So at preschool today, after we watched some games and took some pictures, the kids all sat at their places for cake. Isaac's teacher passed me the knife to start divvying it up. And as I looked down, there is was again, staring right at me, the elephant in the room.

snow

“We have to be on our best behavior,” Mike said solemnly. “Isaac might remember this forever.”

We were on our way toward the southern entrance to Yosemite. We had voluntarily left our sunny, 60+ degree weather of California's central coast to drive three hours to snow. Is there no end to parental sacrifice?

“What are you talking about?” I asked my husband for the hundred-millionth time over the last three years.

“Well, I remember when I was three and my parents took me to play in the snow.”
I just nodded. I didn't bother reminding him he also has memories from when he was still in a crib because he is an UNNATURAL FREAK.

On the phone, the hotel had told us there is a snow park between them and Yosemite. Armed with two different friends' recent stories of visiting such places, we had visions of gliding along on rented snow shoes while pulling Isaac on a sled and watching kids of various ages toss snow balls between ice forts and try their hand at snow boarding. Awesome. We were set.

We drive through the town of Los Banos - past Olinda's Restaurant, Johnnie's Cleaners and Rooney's Liquors, and toward the town of Oakhurst and Danny's Pizza. (I don't know if any baby name books take this into consideration. If you want to help shape your offspring's commercial destiny, think about what name you pick. “Olinda's Pizza” just doesn't sound appetizing somehow, and “Johnnie's Restaurant” makes my arteries clog just musing on it. And, well, I don't think Quinton will be going into business at all, or if he does, he'll hide behind names like “Second Street Grill” or “West End Jewelers.” But, as usual, I digress.)

After sleeping for the first hour and a half of our journey Isaac woke up in order to spend the following hour and a half craning his neck and whining desperately “Me can't see the snow!”
After a wrong turn that cost us about 40 minutes more of this charming predicament, we landed at our Comfort Inn where the woman at the desk has no knowledge whatsoever about the snow park except that it did in fact exist.

It's late so we save the park for tomorrow. For tonight, we head up the hill just far enough until suddenly and miraculous snow begins to appear at which point we pull over and venture into it. At first Isaac is enthralled. Then, he becomes fearful, afraid he will sink too far into the snow and refuses to walk any further without being carried. I am slightly deflated by his reaction, but also accustomed to his odd anxieties and short-sighted sense of adventure.

The next morning everyone at the hotel's continental breakfast crowds the waffle makers in their goofy pants that come up too high and swish-swish as they walk. They have important places to go. These are snow people.

We ask the new clerk behind the desk about the snow park which, by all accounts is a mere 20 minutes away. She also claims to know nothing. By now, Oakhurst hospitality has us in the palm of its hand. We blush with the warmth of it and head out.

The conditions are perfect: the sun is shining, the roads are completely clear, there is only snow where there is supposed to be snow – glistening among the trees, on the rooftops. We pass an inn with a large sign outside it that says “Vegetarian Menu.” Our lunch, post snow, is in the bag.

Then comes the sign that reads “Snow Play Area 2 miles.” In only a few moments I expect to see a Disney Land of snow appear on my right. Kiosks of fried food and piles of those saucer sleds, each in a rainbow of colors. And finally, there it is – except it's another sign, “Snow Play Area 1 mile,” with an arrow that points off the road and up the hill. “CHAINS REQUIRED” another sign reads. Well, obviously they mean when (as my son would say) “'now coming down from da sky.” We start up.

About three-fourths of the way we encounter some ice on the road, but it's no big deal. And then, ah, at last, our resort paradise...A meadow. Goat Meadow, to be exact. Goat Meadow Snow Play Area. Which is, a meadow. Nothing more. Nothing less. A couple SUVs were unloading sleds and kids and boots. There was no piped music, no fried food. There were a few snowmen leftovers and trees. And there was snow.

“Okay! Let's go!” I chime, not letting on to Isaac that I was completely counting on a lodge with a fire, or at least an ice rink and some cocoa.

This snow is packed down at least and Isaac loses his fear of sinking in. He requests to build a snowman with his dad while I pull the old, flattened carseat box out of the trunk to attempt a sled. After a while some people take pity on us and lend us their real sled. Isaac goes down a little hill with me once and pronounces himself all done. He returns to his snowman. I take the damn sled and do a few runs myself. We putter about, take another family's picture and then decide it's lunchtime.

I'm feeling proud of us and how we made the best of things, how we got our boy to the snow he's talked about for months, how no one yelled at anyone else, how I'm completely comfortable with this being Isaac's forever memory, as we start our 1-mile descent to the highway.

Not far into it we have to stop. There's a truck in the way. Mike gets out to see what the issue is. -- A backup has formed coming up the hill because the big-ass four wheel drives can't fit by each other without sliding. The ice I thought would be gone in the noon sun is still there and it's causing problems for the burly men with Harley tees and chains on their tires, and, by extension, us. They are trying to convince the people on their way up the hill to back up again to no avail.

Half an hour goes by. Men get in and out of their trucks. No one moves. I mention to one of the men sliding by that I saw the sheriff's pick up parked at the top. Okay, he says, he's off to go get him. Next thing you know, the sheriff's truck appears in our rearview mirror. Saved? ... It loses traction and slams into the Honda behind us, almost causing a domino effect. Another half hour goes by.

We could stay here for days if we needed to. Our car is chock-full of food. Not to mention clothes – piles of it, clean and dry, none of it worn. I packed for a different family, a different child – one that would roll in the snow and giggle when he sank up to his thighs, who would beg to take one more sled ride before we left. But this is Isaac, the kid who, at the first strike of the Taiko drum screamed and climbed his father in terror, then had to be carried out of the theatre to watch the first half of the show on a TV monitor in the lobby before going home to bed. Even when he counts something a good experience, there's the sense that enough is enough. He returned from swimming with his dad not long ago with the excited announcement, “Mama! Me go down the slide!” followed quickly by “Me never doing that again!”

The men, who are once again, convened outside on the ice, my husband included, (Oh, how they must love their job of being men. Doing men things. Talking men talk. Folding and unfolding their manly arms.) suddenly break apart and head to their separate vehicles. “What? What is it?” I ask, peering out of the homestead and straightening my bonnet. “We think we heard an engine start.” Mike stations himself behind the wheel. When suddenly, the smallest Who down in Whoville started to sing:

“Me haffa go poopy, Daddy.”

“Can you hold it for a little while?”

“Michael.”

“Well this is the kind of thing that makes things go. When things start moving, they start moving, if you know what I mean.”

“Michael, take the child in the woods.”

Reluctantly, he does. So at least Isaac's memory of the snow will not be pooping in his pants.
By the time they get back, we are moving as promised.

At the bottom, trucks are parked everywhere. Why isn't anyone leaving? Another ranger is there and he approaches the car. “I need your license and registration.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're the ones who caused all this!”

“What???”

“No chains.”

Strangely, like most of us when we are falsely accused, my husband has trouble sticking to the charge at hand, but instead, as if defending his supposed guilt blurts, “The sheriff didn't have chains either!”

“Four-wheel drive.”

I wonder if this man always talks like this, in short, accusatory phrases, this sheriff of Mariposa, this sheriff of Butterfly.

He continues to make his rounds, notifying others of their crimes, and when he returns to collect the license and registration, he seems cheery, empathic, even. Perhaps he is heartened by the thought of his badge number on all those citations. “Current insurance?...Okay! No problem! I'll be right back.”

No problem! I'll be right back with your fine!

I say this out loud of course and the other sheriff, the one with no chains and four-wheel drive who slid into the Honda smirks at me.

“Why we stopping?” Isaac wants to know.

“We're going soon, honey. First we have to wait for the nice officer to give us a ticket.”
At last we are free of it all and headed below 6,000 feet. We are still buoyant about the vegetarian lunch place, but as we approach the turn, a woman waves us down. “He's stuck. He's sliding.” She points to a giant four-wheel drive about 100 yards ahead.

“Thanks! Don't say another word.”

But the Who had this to say: “Me want to go back hoooome.”

holding out hope

It's hard to live in this world.

At times, it is hard to accept that this is the only world I have to hand to my child. Yet, the world holds out hope, though in the oddest of ways.

It is not the same way we hold out hope. Not like crossing its fingers and praying - “maybe this time...” It's more like hope is a carrot the world tied to a stick. It leads us around as we bump into furniture, conflicting philosophies, paradoxes beyond our comprehension. We follow the carrot of hope because what else can we do? There is no other path but to starve.

The world holds out hope in the form of soft, rolling green hills, the kind people compare to women's bodies, and the way the horses standing on those gorgeous hills look so terribly, terribly sad.

Its hope looks like walking past the day laborers in front of the 7-11 still waiting at noon on a Friday, men with dark hair under ballcaps, cowboy hats, hoods, half of whom are sitting on the curb scratching lottery tickets. The oddest of ways.

The little yellow plane glides magnificently, tilting on its dragonfly wings, then zips over the highway and back toward the fields. It is magic in the sunlight. And it is only then that I see the trail of white begin, as it rains poison onto young leaves, and the world holds out hope in the oddest of ways.

There is Isaac, peppering his Valentines with stickers of black cats and pumpkins. There are no rules, no borders. His freedom rushes at me like a gust of wind that steals your breath and I have no conscious memory of ever feeling that free, but I must have. I must have. So I long for it, reach back blindly, groping, hope to bump into it in the dark of the day.

a funny thing happened on my way to CA

The other day I was talking on the phone to a friend. A friend from California. We started laughing, cracking up about some dumb thing. It was a joke that pretty much made fun of both of us, grabbed up each of our idiosyncrasies and ran for the goal posts. I noticed the moment (because I notice everything; I’m a writer and) because it was unusual, this moment.

And that’s when it hit me. I don’t laugh here.

When I complain about how I miss my friends or how besides the fact that I love where I live, for being somewhere nine and a half years, we still have hardly any close friends, no one that shares our daily muck, what I’m talking about to a large extent is this absence of inside jokes, HUMOR.

Here’s my disclaimer about how I think California rules and I am the first to ponder groovy inner paths, visit retreats featuring meditation halls and yoga classes, and use the word Zen as a verb. But, people, circling toward nirvana is sometimes just not funny. Look, I’ve got west coast in me - my guests threw granola at my wedding, for goodness sake! Okay, so maybe it was a little tongue in cheek (although my father-in-law who has no excuse because he’s from Massachusetts thought the honey-coated seeds in a little satin bag placed in his hand were a snack, but that’s another story all together). Actually, now that I think about it, I think the granola could have been the last really funny thing we did since moving here.

A couple years ago in a writing group I was in we were critiquing a poem I’d brought about my pregnancy which included the line “the child inside me…” One woman’s helpful comment was that the line was ambiguous because people might think I was really talking about my “inner child.” My response? ONLY HERE, FREAK. ONLY IN THIS SPACE. (AND WHEN I SAY SPACE, I WANT YOU TO FLUTTER YOUR HANDS ABOUT YOUR HEAD TO INDICATE YOUR AURA, THE OTHER AURAS INTERACTING WITH YOUR AURA AND THE COSMIC ESSENTIAL BEINGS OF ALL CREATURES, WHATEVER PLANE THEY MAY BE ON BECAUSE WE WISH THEM ALL THE BEST ON THEIR PATH.)

And believe me, I do wish you all the best on your journey, but if you are going to wear THAT HAT for the trip, I am GOING to make fun of you along the way. It’s just that, for now, I seem to have forgotten how.

I wrote a blog about my bi-coastal ambivalence before – here it is. I’m not trying to say that the east coast is funnier than the west coast…exactly…but let’s just review the data. What if “Seinfeld” were set in California? Would it have been as funny? We’ll start north and move down my state –

Seinfeld in Sacramento? (I can’t think of a more humorless place.)
in San Francisco? (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”)
in Santa Cruz? (I don’t see George with a belly button piercing, but it might be funny if you were smoking that weed you got growing in your back yard.)
in L.A.? (The liposuction episode was cut early on.)
in San Diego? (Perpetually beautiful weather and a strong military presence. Not. Funny.)

A mom walks into a bar. Aw crap, no.

A mom walks into her therapist’s office. Definitely not funny.

A mom walks into her therapist’s office drunk. Ah. Now that has potential.

My current job of mom has things in my funny world all screwed up. While the stuff that comes out of a three-year-old’s mouth is some of the funniest material you will ever hear, you spend your day trying NOT to laugh so you don’t scar the kid into thinking you’ll mock his every thought.

Then there’s the other stuff they say – the stuff you want to sell them into hard labor for.

AND the OTHER, OTHER stuff, the stuff of the world that breaks your heart or pisses you off royally because you are a mom and you need to protect this child and the deeply magical qualities he is made of and you are appalled that others would do things to compromise his present state of wonder or his future, whatever that holds, and so you walk around with the figurative keys in one hand ready to gouge the eyes of anyone challenging you while the other hand is lotion-soft and there to cover the eyes of your baby in order to block out unwanted stimuli. As you can see, there isn’t a lot of time left in the day to be funny.

We passed Measure R (just one more endearing thing about my adoptive state, any election is fair game to get the general public to vote on every freakin’ thing someone ever called out in a town meeting). I hope the cops are happy. It means money for them. And although I would have preferred to have lit dollar bills on fire and shoved them up the asses of my local police force, I voted in favor of this measure. I can forgive the satellite station no one ever goes in or out of that’s surrounded by gang graffiti, oh sure. And the fact that there are never any fewer than three cops parked at the local coffee joint doesn’t bother me a bit, I just jimmy around the billy-clubs to get to the stirrers. No problem, boys, really, you make me feel all warm inside knowing you’re close. But then I got the mail one day…

There was a half-sheet color glossy plea for making our town better that featured a photo of one of the parks with glass in the fallen seed pods and paint jobs from the 1960s and another – my fave – of police in flak jackets aiming large automatic weapons into a house. Right away, I grew sympathetic to their cause and, obviously, I left it out on the coffee table so my two-year-old could pick it up and know who the good guys were. I wish the word MORONS had more syllables, so when I yelled it at the top of my lungs I could kind of yodel for extra effect.

I had a good mind to get my mama bear on, march into the station, and drag them around by the ears, maybe even scold them for not washing their hands and eating their veggies.

The truth is though that goofy things happen all day and while a day that regularly includes wiping poop off a small human’s butt has the potential to be simply hilarious, those friends are missing, the ones who get it, who aren’t consumed in wiping poop off other small humans’ butts, or who are and can crack a joke as the small human runs off still poopy and sits on the new couch. All in all, the key seems to be to have someone to share the joke with.

almost three

Okay, there have been better shots of the hair, but despite the fact that someone riding by us on the bike path yesterday called my son "princess," I'm not in favor of cutting his hair and either is he. I like it long. And it'll get longer, much to his father's dismay.

Thank you, Robin, for this picture.

blog roll

Okay, send them my way. The blogs. Recommend me a blog or two, not more than two for now, please. My mother has scolded me for having no blog roll. (Okay, I admit, I had to ask her what a blog roll was.) Send me your favorites and I'll check em out. I'd like more cross action on this durn thing. If anyone is out there...?
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In other news, it's election day here in CA. But then, as we all know, CA doesn't have a corner on that market today. I tell you, I was bursting with pride when I arrived at the church across the street - my voting hub - and found that American flag duct taped to the bricks outside. We went back to paper ballots apparently. I can't keep up.

In California, if you don't belong to a party like moi, you are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary but not the Republican primary. Not that I'm out there begging to pick a Republican, but the law could have interesting implications.

The Republican race feels like choosing a teeshirt color. (This is CLEARLY HYPOTHETICAL, BECAUSE WE WON'T ULTIMATELY CHOOSE ONE IN THE REAL ELECTION THIS TIME, RIGHT? RIGHT????) At first, it's harmless. There they all are, an amusing rainbow. As a pack the bold or weird or ugly balance each other. Some are eliminated off the bat -- army green or some pukey lemon green color that looks horrible on you (Giuliani...), but then you realize that one will have to stand without the rest, one will have to be everything you need. And while you thought the teal blue shade was mildly interesting in its own right (Romney), now you feel panicky, like that can't be the one and maybe you should pick a standard staple color like white (McCain), even though you have a closet full of those at home already. It's all so confusing and you liked it better when you felt like you owned them all, standing there in the store staring at the display, before you'd have to think about it for real, out on the streets of life.

what? are ya made of sugar?

Okay, look. I really can't take this any more.

I mean the way my brain is slowly but surely melting away to nothing. Ever since the dawn of parenthood my identity has been irrevocably shifted to - I still don't know what, my sensitivities have been heightened to unmanageable levels (Just saw Persepolis. It's amazing and torturously heartbreaking), and I can't spell for shit. Door nob? Door NOB? What-the hell-ever.

I'm dissolving.

It's been raining here for weeks. Truly, I can't quite believe there is that much rain to rain. Not that I'm complaining. We need it and it's good to write to and sleep to and it goes well with the hibernation of winter/introspective time of the year. I'm just worried that with everything else I have going against a semblance of self, the rain might be the final straw and I'll just melt away completely. The onlee traise of me lefft will be my jurnal floting in a puddel.

witness

Often, what I want more than anything in my day is a witness.

Someone around who understands the juggling act if not first-hand, then from just off to the side, who stands apart from the think-on-your-feet decisions and sees. Someone who can answer my husband with something less than murder in their eyes when he asks, "Why are you so tired?"

Someone to witness the clever ways I talk my child into brushing his teeth while getting myself dressed and writing a check for the rent. Doing a phone interview standing at the washing machine in the garage while Isaac naps. (Our house is so small and he is such a light sleeper, I'd wake him up anywhere else.) The lessons in everything from social protocol to neuroscience that spring from our book reading, water playing, phone ringing, daddy waiting, internet searching, cat vomiting, insane making days.

Luckily for you, you aren't that witness, and nor can I report my day minute by minute. But here is a moment in time, or, a mountain of moments all come together. I call it, My Coffee Table, An Inventory.

-- one hair tie
-- two newspapers
-- the alumni newsletter from my grad school
-- box of tissues
-- fliers for our neighborhood association
-- a door nob
-- Buddha by Karen Armstrong
-- The Sunny Side: Short Stories and Poems for Proper Grown-Ups by A. A. Milne
-- three stuffed dogs
-- a matchbox car
--Found Magazine
-- a Christmas card from Mike's college friend with a picture of him, his wife, and his FIVE daughters
-- a pressure gauge
-- a suction cup
-- a can of pink Playdoh
-- Offbeat Overnights: A Guide to the Most Unusual Places to Stay in California
-- How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch
-- brochure for toddler gymnastics
--"Important Voter Information" for the California Primary Election
-- Day Hikes around Big Sur by Robert Stone
-- an inflatable fire truck
-- a purple seahorse magnifying glass
-- a paper hat
-- a paper cutter
-- a paper clip in the shape of a cat

Come by anytime. We'll have a cup of tea and I'll tell you about my day.

D and D

There are some men in this world for whom the question "Did you play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid?" is unnecessary. The answer is obvious. Recently, I was attempting to joke about one of these men with my husband, who is also one of these men.

Over the last three years, I've gotten lulled away from the "a boy?!?!" feeling I had when I was pregnant. And then, something like this occurs.

Mike: I can't wait to play D and D with Isaac!

Me: Oh, god. You have a nickname for it. You really want to drag my baby into that world?

Mike: It's that or memorize baseball stats - blehck!

Me: Those are the choices for you as males?

Mike: Well, we don't know any Nascar people.

Me: You guys are pathetic, simply pathetic.

fact

I can just look at my little boy and know unequivocally that he does not belong to me.

Sometimes I wish with great ferocity that he did, and other times I'm so relieved he doesn't I can barely keep from weeping. But either way, the fact remains.

I knew it early on, maybe even from the moment they placed his slick, pink body on mine, that although he is my son, he is a soul apart from me with his own gifts and purpose.

I am writing this down now in case there is a time I forget it, when I try to steer him toward something that is my challenge and not his, for when I am hunched over from trying to carry his pain. Even when I want it to be different, maintaining this clarity is helpful, dare I say, calming.

NPR blows it

Exactly one year from today, I will be having a "Mess With Texas" party, celebrating whoever and whatever is elected instead of the Neanderthal that's dragged his knuckles around Pennsylvania Avenue for WAY too long.

I needed to come out of blog hibernation on this auspicious date to register just how tired I am of the media's snide attitude toward Dennis Kucinich. I'm not naïve enough to think he'll win any elections in 2008, but he's the bomb and thank god he's out there and maybe someday he'll be president and why does everyone feel like it's okay to treat him like a child?

Here's the latest evidence – an interview on National Public Radio's “On the Media” in which Brooke Gladstone could hardly contain her contempt. Just listen to her questions and her tone. MSNBC broke their contract with Kucinich, barring him from a recent Democratic debate in Nevada. Period. Contract broken. Nevada Supreme Court ruled in favor of MSNBC. Kucinich claims MSNBC – owned by GE – might not want him up there talking about a nuclear free future, a stop to war. Could he have a point? Uh, YEAH. DUH.

When I looked up the link to the interview for this entry, I was at least heartened to see that the people who left comments on it seemed to agree with me that the questioning was offensive.

Look, NPR, we're all human, but don't blow it on me now. Are we ready for an African-American president? Are we ready for a woman president? Blah, blah, blah. Who the hell cares. The real questions are: Are we ready to treat each other with Dignity and Respect? Are we ready for Peace?

shadow life

It was a Saturday morning. The boys were at the dump, of course, and I was enjoying a leisurely shower without anyone barging in announcing on my behalf “All done! All done, Mama!”

Exiting the bathroom, I was jarred by a pounding on the door. Emily Cat and I both jumped and ran for the bedroom to wait it out. I figured it was just the usual – someone selling tamales or strawberries or Jesus. But the pounding came again. I peeked out to see a uniformed officer in the window.

Mr. Police Man is looking for someone who used to live at this address. He flashes me a wanted poster. Do I know him? Is he family?

This is not the first time I've fielded questions about people I've never met, but into whose shadow we have stepped. Back four addresses and three years ago, the place we lived was staked out while the cops determined whether we were telling the truth as to our lack of connection with the former tenant. (And that was the town where the cops are really bored – a source of panic in certain situations. Check out this flashback entry.)

Then there are the phone calls which have superseded our physical address. We've had our current number for two years now, but the creditors for the unfortunates who had it before us still call. Their tone is skeptical, as in, “You mean to tell me this is not the right number?” Dude, back off.

We are living just a step behind these lives that did not bask in a glowing spot light, but dashed off into the bushes to avoid a search light. They're just silly coincidences, I'm sure. And yet, I can't help but dwell (stick with what you do best). Is my family's association with criminality cool or creepy? (Lines are open; vote now!)

Isaac is very much in the stage where “pee-mans” are there to help people. He's not so up on the bad guy idea. He associates police with ambulances and fire engines which arrive to emergencies like when someone “goes boom down,” as well as their other official duties of delivering people to the “ha-iple” when they “no feel weal dood” and putting out “wires.” Isaac also often confuses police cars with taxi cabs. This worries me slightly, and so I feel like a police car camped in front of our house again could be a good thing – really seal the deal on the difference.

I'm not sure he'll get the chance to focus on cop vs cab, though. I think our link may be weakening. In this latest encounter, while standing in my doorway in a bathrobe before I even started shaking my head at the grainy black and white of a stocky bald man, the officer seemed to give up. He dropped the hand holding the paper as if it were weighted with cement. “Sorry to bother you,” he mumbled, and turned on his shiny black heels.

obit

Central Calif. -- Midday on Tuesday, The Squash lost its two-month battle to be completely consumed, landing in pieces in the compost pile of its Central California home and quickly being covered by a layer of sycamore leaves. It is survived by a gunky, rusty-orange-colored ring on top of the washing machine. Plans for a memorial service are pending. In lieu of sending flowers, the family has asked that you eat all your vegetables.

Dear Santa,

Me 'mall bi-ickle no hab pedals. I want... (You should ask Santa nicely, Isaac) I would wike a bi-ickle wid pedals go real fast and a fire hat. I want a baby doll shirt come off. No come in house. Mama drive meet you and get da presents.

Love, Isaac

we all have our heroes

Some kids write letters to Santa. My son has some concept of the man, though he clearly prefers the reindeer. No, instead, Isaac is obsessed with the mailman – uh, postal carrier - the man who TAKES the letters to Santa. Rock breaks scissors, paper covers rock, brown knee socks beat velvet red suit every time – look it up.

He can't identify an elf to save his life and sometimes he forgets what a chimney is. But the very idea that you put things out at the mailbox, someone comes to collect them, then they are delivered to the houses of people you specify is pure magic in his eyes. He wraps presents for his friends (i.e., items he finds in his room) and leaves them out by the mailbox. I've gone running out to rescue various books and CDs and from the rain, only to have to hide them from Isaac.

Isaac is particularly obsessed with getting presents to his friend Adam. He asks us if Adam will be here for Christmas. He wonders aloud what Adam might need, if he has a plastic cow already or if he'd like a garbage truck. I hedge, tell him Adam has everything he could want. As hard pressed as he is to take in this one holiday, I don't know that I can gather my energy to explain another just yet. You see, there are things Isaac doesn't know. There's information he's missed. When all the other little kids were gathered around the menorah at Adam's latke party, my kid had to go pee.

spoiling the surprise

When Isaac was quite small, an acquaintance mentioned to me that she always opened all of her boys' Christmas and birthday presents sent from relatives ahead of time to monitor what they got. It sounded a little extreme at the time. But when boxes started arriving the size and shape of a gun rack from relatives you wouldn't put it past, I wondered if maybe she was on to something.

slippery slope

Isaac was singing this to himself while we were getting ready for school this morning. Couldn't make this stuff up. (NB: He's never had a lollipop.)

“I wanna wowipop. I wanna wowipop.”

“I need a wowipop. I need a wowipop.”

“I want wotsa wowipops. I want wotsa wowipops.”

“I wanna be a wowipop. I wanna be a wowipop.”

tomorrows - full of possibility

“Jindoo bells, jindoo bells, jindoo all way!... Mama?”

“Yes, Iz.”

“Sing 'Jindoo Bells.'”

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open slei-eigh!”

“Mama?”

“Yes, Iz?”

“Me no been dat sleigh.”

“You've never ridden in a one-horse open sleigh?”

“No. Me daddy tell me no go on dat sleigh.”

“Your daddy has told you not to go on that sleigh?”

“Yeah.”

“If you say so, Izzy.”

“Mama been dat sleigh?”

“I have not been on a one-horse open sleigh lately, no.”

“Me daddy tell you no go on dat sleigh?”

“Well, I don't think Daddy so much forbade me from going on a one-horse open sleigh as I have just not really seen one around. I'm sure if I saw a one-horse open sleigh, Daddy would be okay with me going on it.”

“Dat sleigh have wheels. Um, um, and horsey pull it. Um, and it white. And blue and orange.”

“Thanks, Iz, I'll be on the look out.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, honey.”

“'morrow me ask Daddy me go on dat sleigh. He say yeah.”

“You're gonna ask Daddy if you can go on that sleigh and he'll say 'yes'?”

“Yeah, 'morrow.”

“Sounds like a plan, buddy.”

visitation

Friends of mine often send me links to blogs they think I'd groove with, which I appreciate. But they usually include in their recommendation lines like “You probably already know about this one” - as if I spend my many free hours grazing about in the thousands of mothering blogs, reading until satiated with diaper woes and preschool epiphanies. Really, I only ever read two public blogs regularly, mostly out of habit, I think, and sometimes for other reasons I'm not completely sure of. They are wildly different from each other – one caustic and cynical, the other dreamy and laden with reverence.

A couple months back each of the blogs posted news about pregnancies – in one case a sad loss, in the other a thriving fourth-month-old fetus. In both cases, the pregnancy was planned and hoped for.

It all settled in me to extract a thought I had never paused on before, that something in me was still in the midst of full-on grieving. I grieve for the loss of opportunity to move into pregnancy willingly, to know what it might be like to have chosen to have a child and to have celebrated that choice. I grieve for the woman who might have walked hand in hand with her partner into this sleepless tumult, this joyful insanity. I wonder what she would have dreamed about, what she would have written. I envy her freedom, the lightness in her voice when she woke for the third time in the night to go pee and murmured to her husband, “What were we thinking?”

She is regal like a queen as she approaches questions from the other side of pregnancy; she is giddy like a child as she naively believes she can know the answers. – What will we do about work? Childcare? Discipline? Her excitement at finding out she is going to be a mother threatens to fell me with its dangerous optimism.

Sometimes the pain of not having her, of not being her, overwhelms me. My breathing goes shallow. I feel old and broken. Lost.

Facts are strangely compassionate in their cold truth: I cannot be her. And emotional images are what sustain us: There is a silvery ghost of a woman who visits me now and then, like someone long dead, someone with something to teach me.

squash update

I recently passed the Squash. I hadn't noticed it in a while. But there is still was, on the washing machine in the garage.

It was surrounded by bags of ribbon and wrapping paper. Trying to lay low and blend into the holiday commotion, no doubt. When I looked closely I saw it had spawned a soft spot on one part of it orange eyeball. Not good. It seemed like it might gets oozy soon. So, I did what anyone in my position would do. I moved the bags of ribbon.

it followed me home, can I keep it?

“You’re going to have them trim the top of the tree?” I ask warily.

It is four years ago. My husband and I are standing with our latest landlord in the courtyard of what will be our home, staring skyward at a crooked-trunked tree with a shaggy mane that every once in a while gently sweeps the upstairs window of my neighbor’s apartment with a fan of silver-green leaves.

“You can’t kill those things,” my landlady is saying in a way that makes me wonder if she’d rather it weren’t true. “Wacked off the top last year and before you know it…” She waves her arms above her head, flapping and wriggling like a child portraying a tree in an elementary school play.

“Well, I love trees,” I tell her. She laughs. “Ooooohhh – kaaaaay,” she says.

The house I’d rented before that one, I’d picked based to a large degree on the beautiful live oak that grew in the corner of the yard and that we named Jack. I left the apartment before that because the property manager had a proclivity for chain saws and constantly referred to “evening out” the branches of the oaks in front of my patio that rose from grey trunks I likened to elephants’ legs and counted on to steady me as I wound willy-nilly through six years there, a grad-school thesis, my mother’s cancer diagnosis, my wedding.

When I was little, I planted a maple tree seed. It grew. We moved it from New York to New Jersey and again from the first Jersey house to the second. It’s still there. It’s my tree. Any time it would come up in conversation as “Kitty’s tree” my sister would roll her eyes. “Oh my God. Would you shut up about the goddamn tree already?”

The quickest and surest way to stab me in the heart is to cut a tree down. My apologies to the thousands of people who cut trees for this blasted Christmas holiday, but I can’t stomach it. I don’t care if it came from a “tree farm” – something I find to be a perverse notion altogether.

In the past, Mike and I have tried buying small potted trees that someone shaped to look like the perfect triangle, only to have them reveal their true nature later, stretching out their pine needles all lopsided and unhappy. One such tree (Mel) is now planted on city property. We watered him religiously for the first year he was there. He’s grown to five times what he was when we made him suffer the indignity of tinsel. We visit him regularly. He’s never asked to come home.

Mike had been hinting about a tree all weekend. I’d said okay, we’d try again. Something small, something potted.

He leads me over to a fat four-footer – twice the size we had been imagining. It has a nice shape. Looks Christmassy.

Outside, a worker is guiding a chainsaw through the trunk of one of the unfortunates – though it’s already been harvested to die, he makes a fresh cut so it’ll soak up more water in someone’s living room before being left on the curb to brown.

Mike is circling the potted tree. It’s branches seem strong. “It’s nice,” I tell Mike noncommittally. “It’s big.”

He calls Isaac over to see how high he can reach on it. “Almost to the top!” they both lie.

“What kind is that one?” I ask casually.

“A rdwwo,” my husband mumbles looking off into the distance.

“Pardon me?”

“A redwood.”

“A REDWOOD?? ARE YOU NUTS??? What are we going to do with a redwood?”

“Hang ornaments on it?”

“Michael.”

“Yes?”

“And where do you propose we plant a redwood after Christmas?”

“It won’t take up that much room. They live 800 years, how fast can they grow?”

I might as well have been standing next to the bathtub, a baby crocodile thrashing in the bubbles while he promised, “It won’t be any trouble, really.”

Becoming a mother has brought me more responsibility than I think I can shoulder. I haven’t slept in almost three years. Even while I was still pregnant, I posted a raving blog (you, Kitty, naw, go on) that talked about how some days the only reason I get up is because I feel guilty about leaving the blinds down for the plants. I once left the SPCA crying because there were no kittens I could foster. I take my commitments all too seriously and my dear husband knows it.

Do I have to tell you we have a redwood in our living room? This real estate collapse better keep on keeping on, cauz we need to buy a house with a BIG ASS yard for my new tree.

'Tis the season

"Do you like parties, Isaac?"

"Not so much. Widdle bit."

good instincts

Have you seen the ads on Yahoo? There are little cartoon people lined up and the tag line is “Train to Be a...” Each little face takes an occupation: Social Worker. Graphic Designer. Health Care Manager. Accountant. Bounty Hunter. Whaaa? Is this one of those things that they throw in to see if you are paying attention? Like when Mike wants to know if Isaac is asleep yet and Winnie-the-Pooh starts asking Piglet whether he thinks the other candidates are picking on Hillary because she's a woman or because she's ahead?

But now, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite game of speculation: What Will Isaac Be When He Grows Up? (roar of cheering crowd)

- That guy who used to bring all the exotic animals on the talk shows. Think Johnny Carson scrambling away from his desk as someone in a beige zoo-keeper's shirt and safari hat suggests that the unusually large rodent clawing through his notecards really likes it if you scratch him under the chin. Isaac's new favorite game is called “Hi.” I have to hold one of his stuffed animals (the Carson figure) while he introduces his other animals to me one after another. Take his sting ray for example. (Yes, my son has a stuffed sting ray.) “Oh, hi. Wook my wings. I wap, wap wap my wings in the o-ton. Biiiiiiiiiiig wawa. Touch my tail. Me have eyes, see?” etc.

- I've decided that stage or movie director isn't nearly as bossy or hands on as Isaac would require in a profession. I think he'd do better as a permanent guest on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” specializing in that game where two people act out a scene but can't move until another player moves their limbs and bodies for them.

- and finally, I may be out on a limb here, but I'm feeling reckless today: poet.

Of course, as off the beaten track as Bounty Hunter may be, you still would never see one of those little faces promising to train you to become a painter, folk singer, stand up comic, poet. One must supplement.

Isaac loves to tell us about his dreams. “Me had deam 'bout, 'bout, 'bout...Mama, me had deam 'bout...oranges!”

I am not concerned in the least that his “dreams” have to do with the first thing his eyes light on. On the contrary, it shows good poetic instincts. Start from where you are. There is a story in the daily details.

“Where going, Mama?” Isaac asks as I head out to my monthly poetry hosting duty.

I answer the same way I always do. I bust out, “I'm going to host a POETRY reading!” making sure to light up like an all-night drive-thru.

“Me too??” he begs, jumping up and down.

Train 'em young.

it won't die

I have a list of blog ideas that hope to write on in the next couple days, but I think first I owe you a Squash update. Yes, I'm talking about THE Squash.

Well, the pumpkin muffins that were scheduled for the day after the initial entry on the Squash didn't materialize, but they did come to pass a day or two after that. The thing about the Squash is, it doesn't go anywhere, it's like the dishes, or your fourth grade teacher at the front of the room folding her hands against the rambunctious bodies ready for recess saying “I can wait.”

The “Fluffy Pumpkin Cookies” that Katie sent a link to happened too (Thank you, Katie.). We have entertained ideas of pumpkin bisque though none has happened yet, because really, we have nothing else to do with our time but manage large winter vegetables.

As serendipity would have it, a list appeared at Isaac's Montessori for parents to sign up to bring something toward the Thanksgiving meal the kids were going to prepare for us. I saw it as my ticket to ride. I snatched up the clipboard and hurriedly wrote my name next to “Pumpkin – enough for two pies.” Mike cooks down two enormous pans of the stuff and when it is all over, the clock reads midnight and the damn stuff was only enough for a single pie. We supplemented with a can of pumpkin that's lived in the cabinet for quite some time, making one if not two of the last moves with us.

With hopes high I head for the garage to see how much the giant orange lump has shrunken. It looks exactly as it has for days. “I used the hunk in the frig!” Mike explains.

At the pre-school meal, I try to explain to the other parents about the Squash as they eat tiny slices of the custardy dessert, but they only nod briefly and turn to tell their three-year-olds to put their shoes back on. They just don't understand my pain.

And that is where we are today. I'm afraid it doesn't make for stunning literature or really even a good blog read. It just is. I'm thinking of possibly carrying it around and introducing it to people as our second child, a la “Lars and the Real Girl.” Or charging it rent. Or maybe I could travel with it like the proverbial garden gnome, sending back e-postcards of the Squash at the Eiffel Tower, the Squash in front of the Colosseum. All I want for Christmas is the Squash...gone.

and you thought it was the snow

Overheard at my house today:

(sung to the tune of the alphabet song, of course)
"A,B,C, D, E, F, G,
H, I, J,...Yellow Peas."

family portrait with squash

The large green oblong thing in this picture is what will henceforth be referred to in these entries as “the Squash.” It looked cool and on a whim we added it to our pumpkin selections back in October when pumpkins were still all the rage. It weighed somewhere around 30 pounds.

From the moment we got it home, Isaac wanted to cut it open and see inside. I told him we would open it, but first let's just enjoy it as decoration.

Several weeks went by with Isaac asking every so often about cutting it open. Finally, when he asked again last week, I said okay. “Yay! Yay! Dut it o-pin! Dut it o-pin! Hurray!”

We put in our guesses on what color it might be. Isaac went with white. We ruminated about the size of the seeds. Isaac's estimate was “Big-big-BIG!” So I chopped. Bright orange and Big-big-BIG, in case you were wondering. And then came the dilemma. What the hell were we going to do with 30 pounds of pumpkin guts? A heavy veil of guilt fell over me. I could feed a small nation with this thing and here we were pretty much thinking – eh, compost pile?

Day One with the Squash: Initial dissection. Mike makes squash for dinner. “Me no like it,” concludes our son.

Day Two with the Squash: Pumpkin muffins for breakfast, enough to distribute among friends.

Day Three with the Squash: One hunk takes up half a shelf in the refrigerator, the rest won't fit at all. It sits at the fourth place at our kitchen table. “What punt-tin doing?” It's watching us with that big orange eye.

Day Four with the Squash: Trim off the dried ends and make pumpkin pie for dessert. Mmm. Whipped cream in a can. Sign me up. “Me no like it.”

Day Five with the Squash: It moves from the kitchen table to the top of the washing machine in the garage. Now we can almost forget it's there except when I come around the corner to get my shoes or retrieve the cat food, then BAM.

I feel like we're harboring a criminal, or at least a secret. An old Russian professor of mine liked to collect propaganda posters from the 50s. One that hung prominently in his office read: “ARE THERE BOLSHEVIKS IN YOUR WASHROOM?” You can see the slippery slope – squash on washing machine, Bolsheviks in washroom.

Day Six with the Squash: I throw away the bowl of giant seeds that I never dried out and are now nasty gross. “Mama, what you doing?” Nothing, son. You didn't see a thing, you understand?

Plans for Day Seven include more pumpkin muffins, praying to the gods of abundance, and carving out a ski chalet for Isaac to play in. Stay tuned.











"the eye"

day two without a nap

From the back of the car, on the way home from the store right around nap time: "Mama, why people sleep in daytime?"

just a couple o’ working stiffs

“Me go work,” Isaac announces upon mounting his rocket ship. “Bye bye.”

“Have a good day, honey,” I call while checking to see if that director or this organization chair emailed back yet, another deadline looming over my shoulder.

I am a journalist. No, a reporter. No. I write articles sometimes for the paper. I have found myself in one of those professions, like a bartender or a cabdriver. People tell me things. I am a keeper of secrets, a seer of souls.

“This is off the record,” they say.

“Well, between you, me, and the wall…” they say.

“I wouldn’t want you to print this, but I’ll tell you the real reason,” they say.

And so the things they tell me in confidence dangle like mischievous poltergeists between the lines of black newsprint.

They tell and I receive. Maybe they never knew they had these things to say until some question I managed to write down on the fly set them on a path to divulge, a route blocked with emotion. There’s a need to get it said even if it can’t go any further, like a journal entry, like a terminal degree; I understand. I have those things.

We live in a world of large, public everything. Our internal worlds – what ARE those again? What good is it if it isn’t going to reach a thousand people? a million? If it’s not on Oprah? If we aren’t shouting? If people, lots of them, don’t know about it, it must be pointless.

And yet, again and again they reveal, in the intimacy of the impersonal, in the safety of the temporary.

I have interviewed loads of people over the last year and a half. Many of them connected to events I would not have given a second look if it weren’t for my job. Some of them connected to events I actively dislike and find in conflict with my philosophical, political and moral beliefs. But at least for the time I am in their company (even if the article I ultimately write takes a different turn) I must give myself over to their point of view. And, for the twenty minutes I am sitting across from them or have them on the phone, I do. I go there. It’s something most of us can avoid, though none of us can afford to.

“Me home from work, Mama!” The rocket ship parks beside the bookcase.

“That’s great, Izzy. Welcome back. What did you learn at work today?”

sing for your pumpkins

Before we get too far from pumpkin time, and until I have the time to post something real. Here's a check-in visual with the kid.

flash forward

I arrive to collect my boy from his preschool on Halloween. They had a "carnival." Isaac is lingering on the patio where he has begun dismantling the Halloween basket from his teacher. Monster magnet. Giant rubber spider. Flying propeller thing. Playdoh. Ah. There we are. The thing you're looking for is always at the bottom, isn't it?

While I foolishly attempt to engage in adult conversation with other parents in my vicinity, Isaac spreads his playdoh on the bench. By the time I think to look back, he is throwing his face into the big old green pancake of dough repeatedly and laughing insanely at the imprint he can make.

For reasons I can't fully explain, my mind flashes ahead a couple decades to my son at college, after hours in an office to which he has earned the keys, being that upstanding workstudy individual of great character. And he is xeroxing his butt cheeks.