why worry about the swine flu when there's Lyme disease? - or, a frog, a lizard, a tick, a fork, evolution, and a Tetanus shot

I. Eyes on the Prize

Back in March, while visiting my family in south Jersey, we made a trip to the local zoo. It was a windy, cold day and before we left we spent considerable time in the amphibian house where temperatures were more suitably toasty.

We were watching some frogs, or maybe they were toads – I admit, I don't know the difference, have no immediate plans to figure it out, and let's not even go into hedgehogs and porcupines – and I innocently glanced up at the description sign above them. It said (and I paraphrase): “Like all frogs, this species uses its eyeballs to help push their food into their stomachs, moving them down the sockets to squash the food into the body.”

Now, I've already admitted I don't know a heck of a lot about frog-toads, but you can't tell me this shit is common knowledge. I mean, what's with the casual turn of phrase “like all frogs?” This isn't “As you know, most watermelon are pink inside.” or “You're probably aware that many trees lose their leaves in winter.” Even Mike, who seems to me to know just about everything there is to know in the universe except how to play racquetball well, balks. He laughs out of nervousness, then takes a step backwards toward the turtle tank where what appear at first to be limbed stones serenely paddle.

Nature: amazing and disgusting – all in one, shall we say, swallow.

I have a theory on the reason this digestion scenario grosses us out (and, forgive me, I'm presuming you're on my side here). It is completely alien and freaking bizarre while still something we can't entirely divorce ourselves from. After all, it was only a short evolutionary what? millennium? ago that our ancestors crawled out of the pond and grew legs and lungs. We could safely still refer to ourselves, and some do, as fish with legs. In other words, whose to say one of us doesn't have an Uncle Bubba somewhere who shows off his special talents at Thanksgiving dinner, jamming canned cranberry sauce down the hatch with the help of those baby blues.

II. Blood Brothers & Foreshadowing

Over Easter weekend we spent 3 lovely days at an organic farm and wilderness preserve outside of Palo Alto, California. While we were there, we went for a hike and spotted a horned toad. Here's where I get to wow you with my knowledge of nature, momentarily at least. As you may already know, a horned toad is not, in fact a toad, but a lizard. (See, and even if you didn't already know that, you wouldn't be so surprised/horrified that you'd want to sprint away and wretch. Careful use of language, people, is key.)

As we'd begun our trek, we'd passed a group of people coming down the hill. One of the men called out to us. “Watch out for the squirrels!”

We were still taking this odd warning in when another man passed. “Forget the squirrels, watch out for the ticks! - It's high season. Don't touch the grass. Two percent Lyme disease.”

“But don't worry about that,” he'd continued making an extraordinary leap in evolutionary thought within seconds, “The important thing is the hike. Do the hike.” Fins to legs, just like that.

Our heads spinning with all kinds of dubiously helpful advice, we'd trod on until at last we found ourselves within a camera's reach of the aforementioned horned toad at which point I splayed out, belly down and shimmied through the leaves to take its picture.

We saw some ticks on the hike, but none of them bothered us, though my sweater was banished outdoors for the night to be safe.

Shortly after returning home from that visit, we received the new issue of Isaac's kid magazine which featured some common and not-so-common ways that various animals protect themselves. And that's how we learned about the horned toad. As you know, they squirt blood from their eyes to frighten away enemies.

Yeah, it might work, ya think?? Like when some poor hungry coyote gets a face full of blood. He may not even be scared so much as unequivocally offended. As in, “Dude, that's just WRONG.”

III. Flying with Flu

Just this past weekend we were in Massachusetts visiting Mike's family, staying at his parents' house.

Before we could get there though, there was the proverbial delay on the San Francisco to Boston leg complete with all the Bostonians storming the desk, blackberries blazing, getting their east coast in an uproar as if that would fix our broken plane, so eager were they to be in an unsanitary enclosed area with strangers from around the world.

When we did board, two hours late, there was an older Asian couple with no English in our seats. Mike adeptly motioned that they were perhaps meant to be on the other side of the aisle and they quickly moved. It took a bit to notice that the gentleman seemed unwell. Several sneezes into our 5 ½-hour pleasure trip, I turn to Mike.

“So glad Captain Swine Flu was sitting here before he was sitting there. Not that it matters, we're all infected now.”

“He sneezed like twice,” my husband replies.

“It was more than that.”

“Four times?”

“That's enough.”

“That lady's cute,” Mike says.

“Huh?”

(Mike points to the man's wife sleeping curled into a ball across the aisle.)

“Oh, you mean Mrs. Swine Flu? Adorable.”

This partner of mine is easily charmed. Could explain how he ended up with me.

IV. Progress Goes Tick, Tock

Our stay at my in-laws (or, as I like to call it, the Church of Our Mother-in-Law of Perpetual Motion) included a trip to Northampton, of course, an afternoon in the new kids' museum in their town, much time delving into Grandma's basement for Isaac, a ride in the wheelbarrow driven by Grandpa, a raucous game of cards, and, naturally, the extended family gathering. This one wasn't as extended as some of them can get. It was mellow, with cousins to chase and bocce ball to try out. Then, at some point, someone, I'm gonna say it was my darling son, suggested a walk in the woods.

It was a brief, uneventful encounter, marching through oak leaves and pine needles trying not to step on the ladyslipper orchids. Just enough time for Mike and his sister to lament the way the trees have been thinned over the years, more and more houses visible.

We soon returned to the g-parents' sun room and the feeding frenzy. Sometime after the dips and veggies and before the pineapple upsidedown cake, Mike's sister discovered a tick on her neck. Ew. In 20 years in those woods, Mike claims, never a tick. Things evolve and, when you least expect it, changes snap into place. Still, somehow, we think evolution only happens to the other guy.

V. Continental Drift & Making Evolutionary History

Despite delays on the Mass Pike due to construction (thanks for the advanced warning, not!), we made it to the airport with a healthy amount of time to spare, but not so much that we'd be sitting around the gate forever.

We were happily planted on the shuttle bus from the rental car place to the terminal, when I began to wonder why my sunburn of a week ago was beginning to hurt all over again...

(Inward Scream) ... “Mike, I have a tick!”

“Okay. We'll take care of it.”

He's supposed to say that. He has no idea if we can “take care of it.” How? Where? Ew. Ew. EW. It's been there a day. I'll die of Lyme disease. I want Isaac to know I tried. There's a bug eating my side!!! I need a hospital, not a plane. But anyway, we'll crash and a tick will be the least of my problems, except that my body, amazingly preserved, discovered after the human race has evolved into furry robots, will be examined and I'll be on the front cover of National Geographic with a tick in my side and they'll discuss – through the computers implanted in what used to be their knees – the quaint nature of ancient parasitic organisms. I HAVE A TICK SUCKING MY BLOOD AND I WANT TO VOMIT!!!!!

There it is again – that evolution of thought. Quick as lightning. Don't be left behind.

We go to the newsstand and ask where we can buy tweezers. We can't buy tweezers, they won't pass security.

We go to the nail salon and ask if we can borrow tweezers. (Try this; people REALLY like you when you do.)

We go to information and ask where the medical center is for the airport. Really far. Our plane leaves in an hour.

We go to the gate and ask if they have a first aid kit...uh, tweezers...a tick. “I'll check the plane,” she says. Finally, hope. “I'd be wigging out too, if I were you.” Compassion.

She returns with the dullest pair of plastic tweezers I've ever seen, and an alcohol wipe. “Thank you.” (I'm going to die.)

Mike and Isaac are buying a sandwich. I walk in circles while people speed past me, onward to a future I'll never know.

“Did you get it?” It's not my husband's voice. It's an unfamiliar voice behind me. Again, “Did you get it?” I turn and see the crew from the plane – the ones who must have procured the plasto-tweezers. “Yes.” I smile. “Did it work?' “I haven't tried yet.” “Well, good luck!”

Mike and Isaac return with my last meal. We retreat as a family into the 3x5 baby changing room, conveniently located near our gate. We are armed with 1) Neosporin 2) three packs of travel Advil 3) one alcohol wipe 4) dull plastic tweezers 5) one child's fork 6) a Bandaid

“Isaac, why don't you tell Mama a story? You're a good story teller.”

“Like what kind of story? I don't really know any stories.”

Mike is digging around in my side with the tweezers.

“Isaac, TELL Mama a STORY.”

“...”

This is the child who could keep his preschool class enraptured with tales since before he turned 3, who would create scenarios that regularly fooled his teacher and even made me believe I might have forgotten that in fact we did ride inside a giant spinning wheel.

“Isaac, honey, maybe you could sing me a song.”

“Yeah!”

“How about the continents song.”

“Okay! I'll sing it over and over again.”

“Per- OW!-fect.”

“Nort-America, Sout-America,... uh...What's dat odder continent?”

“Europe, Isaac, Europe!”

It was about this time that Mike began scurrying frantically around shouting, “I need the fork! I need the fork!”

David Sedaris has an essay called “Old Faithful.” It's a story about the love of his life. It's also a story about lancing a boil. Well, Mr. Sedaris. I see you one puss-filled lump on your tailbone, cured in the bathroom of your hotel room, and I raise you one embedded tick, gouged out in an airport baby changing room with a kiddie fork! Let's just see who the famous writer is NOW!

“That's the best I can do,” Mike sighs. “The pinchers are still in there.”

“This is so disgusting.”

“You'll be fine.”

“You don't know that.”

“I do.”

“Use the insurance money to send Isaac to a good Montessori, will you?”

VI. La Vita Dulce

The whole plane ride, my side is killing me. The next morning we drop Isaac off at school as if everything were normal, and there wasn't a foreign body lodged in my skin. Then we drive to Doctors on Duty.

I've sat in that waiting room a handful of times before including one Christmas Eve when Mike's calves swelled up like beach balls, red with poison oak. It's been six years since I was there myself. I know this because that's what the woman at the desk tells me after a brief look at her computer. I don't remember the cause, but I do remember the doctor. An affable Italian whose name, it turns out, is the very one slotted into the “on duty” space this morning as well.

When I'm called, I make Mike come with me.

If I didn't already know this doctor, I might suspect he'd pull a Monterey Police Department move and go all woozy when he read the “reason for visit” on my chart. Back when we first moved to the West Coast, Mike was out of town for work and my mom was visiting. Around 3 in the morning, we heard a scratching noise coming from the extra bedroom. I entered to find a young possum attempting to get the hell out through the closed window. Long story short, the police came and when I told the tall, solid, uniformed gentleman standing with a frown at my door the problem, he lost all sense of stoic professionalism, literally crumbled, and began to whine. “Awwww, maaaaaaan! I hate those things!”

But this aging 5-foot nothing doctor was not afraid of a tick, nor, I suspect, a possum. We talked about hiking, ticks, Italy. After extracting the pinchers with real metal tweezers, that didn't hurt nearly as much as Mike's operation (go figure!), he ordered a tetanus shot and a couple pills he said I “didn't really need.”

The tetanus shot (which STILL HURTS) was probably the best idea yet – though we never 'fessed up to the fork.

Isn't modern medicine wonderful? We've come so far.

sharing my man

We're deplaning in San Francisco from our Monterey puddle jumper and a woman with a foreign accent and shocking red hair approaches my husband.

"Do you swim at the Sports Center?"
"Yes."
"Friday nights?"
"Yes."
"THAT'S where I know you from! I kept saying to myself, 'Where have I seen that man before with no clothes on?'"

There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza

Once, in a previous rental, we had to have some plumbing done. My landlady was a rather suspicious person. And a little crazy. She lived half a continent away from our place, thank god, but insisted we call her and have her on the phone while the work was being done. I dutifully phoned when the workman arrived. “Does he look smart?” she asked. I held the receiver away from my ear and folded my hand over my face, my head hung, then returned it to the crook of my neck. “Very,” I told her. Perhaps she thought I could peer into the bathroom and spot the hint of a diploma tucked into the crack above his jeans. Or maybe she kept one of those ancient metal instruments in the shed that measured the size of a skull. I had just never noticed it there next to our box of Halloween lights and my upstairs neighbor's hibachi.

There was no doubt she was a nut case, with more than a small margin of elitist thrown in. At least, that was my view at the time. Then today happened. And the washing machine repairman happened, who arrived an hour earlier than we'd agreed interrupting my jet-lagged son's attempt at a nap and stared into the tub of grey water standing in my washer to ask, “It won't drain?” and her question seemed pretty relevant.

I could surely win the crazy landlord contest. But this time, we lucked out. The couple that owns our house seem normal, pleasant even. We send each other Christmas cards. Things are good. So when Simon told me his buddy didn't have time to come until Monday, I was okay with that. And then when he told me, no, wait, he can make it after all, at 4:00, I said great.

I had just finished reading Isaac a nice relaxing tale of fast-running meat-eating dinosaurs, when the banging began. The religious peddlers have nothing on this guy – pounding on the door like the place was on fire. I could have easily ignored him. Denial is something we carefully cultivate in my family. But then Isaac got all whiny-ass on me, “Mama, I don't like that noise!” What noise? The sound of a forest of logs being repeatedly pummeled into the castle door? So I was forced to get up and let him in.

I showed him to the culprit in question and informed him I needed to return to my child. That's when he came out with his brilliant statement about the lack of drainage at which point I confirmed for him the issue and promptly closed him in the garage. He called me out again, twice. The first time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out and the second time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out. That second time would have been about when I stepped backwards in bare feet into a pile of fresh cat vomit. Nap was so far going well.

After we parted with the joy of knowing that Monday we'd see each other again, I miraculously managed to get Isaac to sleep with reassurances that on Monday he could watch the “worker guy” fix the bloody machine. Before drifting off, Isaac wanted to know how we'd get the water out. “With a bucket, (Dear Liza).” “Then we can water the plants with it!!” he announced. And I knew right away. I'm raising an optimist. He has his father to blame for this.

So there I was, wasting a perfectly good nap time scooping water into a bucket that, yes, had a hole in it as it turned out, and tossing it into the backyard which by now was decorated with my family's underwear since the wind had blown down the clothes hanger containing the load of laundry that had had the misfortune of getting stuck in the cycle that never ended. That never ended. Never ended. Never ended. Ended. Ended. Ended...

In Defense of the Only

Here's a scene from my past:

“Time for another one,” my mother-in-law quipped as I strapped my 2-year-old in his carseat to head back to the airport and our home on the opposite coast.

“Oh, no,” I said firmly, disabusing her early of any idea of a swelling brood of new grandbabies populating any nest I was to be in charge of.

She gasped. “He's going to grow up ALL ALONE?”

“All alone,” I confirmed, kissing the wretched island of a boy on the forehead and shutting the door.


There is much talk and even more tacit agreement among parents and non-parents alike that one just isn't enough. They turn out selfish. C'mon, everybody knows that. Spoiled. Not to mention, they'll miss that close relationship with another sibling when they're older. This is just common knowledge. Right? I mean, word on the street is a sibling is the “greatest gift you can give your child.”

Yawn. Sorry. That was just me, tiring of the standard line of thinking, weary from continually pressing my face up against the glass of the Status Quo Shoppe. I'd like to propose something radical – the idea that just maybe, being or having an only child isn't so bad after all.

The duos and trios and foursomes have had their due, and clearly there are many advantages to these tribes. Now let's examine – a little differently – the singleton.

Allow me to first err on the side of sanity. When I got pregnant, my first thought wasn't “Whew! Now I'll have two more hands to help on the farm!” Things moved more along the lines of “I only have two hands and no family close by and how am I going to raise this child without help?” Add subsequent human beings to this daily craze of isolation and death-defying speed? I chose no.
One child means if that child needs to nap, he gets to. And when one child is napping, mama can relax. One child is not hauled off to big sister's field hockey game or little brother's doctor's appointment, spinning along in the car from one thing to the next that's not about him.

I also firmly believe that single-child homes build social skills. You may think this counter-intuitive. However, one child, in the safety net of the home can successfully practice and see reflected back through modeling, manners, sharing, and other basic social interactions since they get to do these things with parents. No, no parent is a perfect model of any of these, but for those of us that are conscious parents, we at least have the chance to present what we want them to see on our better days.

Experimental play has greater possibilities for the only. I can let Isaac do things and carry his imaginative ideas further than I ever could if there were a younger sibling crawling around, for reasons of safety or just chaos control. We don't worry about small pieces, and I know that I can handle one child “cooking” with water, granola, and anything else I'll let him have at the kitchen table, let's say, but if it were two or three? I fear the mob.

There is great value in focused attention and uninterrupted solo play, as well. Celebrated writer John Updike, whom we lost just two months ago, said, "I'm sure that my capacity to fantasize and to make coherent fantasies, to have the patience to sit down day after day and to whittle a fantasy out of paper, all that relates to being an only child."

But I believe the greatest gift – if I can steal a phrase – gleaned from the social puzzle that the only child enjoys is bigger even than those pieces. He/she knows early on the necessity of reaching beyond our own home to people we have to work a little harder to know. Circumstances create the opportunity for them to reach out for connection. What could be a more important a skill for our world today? What could be more basic in terms of human need? Connecting with and appreciating connections with others is one of the most dire needs we have, something we will work toward all our lives. My kid has a jump start.

Remember that “wretched island of a boy?” Since he doesn't have to compete with anyone else for time, attention, food, or toys, our primary work is about hearing each other and connecting with other people.

I'm the first to admit that the young only child is a challenge for the parent who is asked to play on a continual basis – speaking hypothetically, of course (eh-hem...). And it's often at those times – when my boy is begging for a play date that can't happen, or I'm having to decide whether to sit down and play demolition blocks or try to have a moment with my own thoughts – that I question my wisdom. But I also know I'd not do anyone any favors if I went through the infant stage again with another baby. I was not good at it. I did not like it. I'm not supposed to admit that. Too bad. It sucked. And here we're right back in the sanity argument. I think my son deserves a mom who knows her limitations and can stay on the sunny side of them.

Besides, those fabulous siblings? You don't get to choose them. And despite parents' attempts to write a rule book on this, there are surely no guarantees about siblings becoming best buds as adults. All of us can think of multiple examples of siblings we know or we are that don't share this rumored unbendable bond.

I grew up the youngest of four. With eight years separating me and my closest sibling, however, to a large degree I experienced the situation of the only child. There is no doubt that I didn't always prefer it. I have memories of unwelcomed alone time and of times when I pleaded futilely with my oh-so-grown-up sisters and brother to play with me. And I also learned the value of reflection, solo play, and the immensity of inner worlds.

I entered the larger world with a better understanding of my own inner world. To this day, there is nothing I value higher than connecting with others.

Recently, we visited friends who have a single child – a daughter about six months older than my four-year-old. We hadn't seen them in three years and the kids didn't know each other at all. Immediately after walking in their house, our friend's daughter announced, “I have lots of toys!” She waited, wide eyes fixed on my Isaac. The tone of the statement was not gloating, nor was it that kind of arbitrary information that kids frequently offer. It was quite clearly an invitation. During our stay she shared readily, and when we said goodbye, presented Isaac with her largest teddy bear to borrow when he left.

Certainly every child has his or her own personality. Some might even say that this little girl's eagerness was a sign of loneliness. However, I have another take on it. What if even as children we regularly had to reach out to the larger world to find the kind of strong connections that sustain us?

In the end, of course, we deal with whatever we are handed.

But just here, just this once, may we hail the only, who thrives perhaps not despite his circumstances, but because of them.

It's a big world out there.

the making of a vegetarian

Here's another book post that was just too big for the sidebar.

For Isaac's birthday last month, our sitter got him the book First Thousand Words in Japanese, a picture dictionary, essentially. Isaac is obsessed with it. We must read it at any nap and every bedtime. "I can't find the 'kai,'" he'll say at the beach scene, searching diligently for the boat oar. We don't put the oversized purple volume back on the bookshelf anymore. It just lives by the bed.

It has also become an unlikely forum for discussing the inevitably complicated world of food choices. We've come across the butcher on the professions page, and the various kinds of meat on the food page. Isaac studies them with the ultimate in consternation, or, some days, simple curiosity or confusion.

We are vegetarians. Let me revise. Isaac and I are vegetarians and although Mike hasn't eaten any meat to my knowledge for years, he rejects the title. Whatever. The only animal product that Isaac consumes is fish oil vitamins. For now, it is easier to break with our morals on this one point and get some important stuff in him.

Even more interestingly, our sitter is a vegan. And yet here we are, among the bikes and boats of the book, the scenes from the countryside, the living room furniture labeled in Japanese, stuck on a couple pages that provide us with a new education and, can I also say, just a bit of torment for parent and for child.

Here are a few of the encounters we've experienced lately:

Day One: Professions

We open the book to where Isaac and his dad left off the day before. It's the professions page. Before I can get started on anything, Isaac zeros in on the butcher slicing ham. Pointing he looks up at me and reports seriously, "Pig."

"Hmm, yeah, pig."

He stares at the picture, not ready to move on. We are quiet.

"That would be ow-y for the pig if it got cut like that."

"Yeah, Iz, I think it would be."


Day Two: Food

"Pig," Isaac announces pointing at the ham.

"Chicken," he says, mashing his finger into the picture of the headless, roasted bird.

His dad beat me to the punch again.

We look at the whole page - the words for toast, rice, honey, circling back again and again to the meats - Isaac's choice. He insists on calling the ham "pig," which is fine with me since I have this crazy idea about honesty.

My kiddo is in deep contemplation, then, "Mama, maybe they eat the eyes too."

"What do you think, Isaac?"

"I don't know," he says accompanied by a troubled look. "Probably before they caught the pig, the pig tried to run away."

"Hmm."

"But they just had a gun and they shot the gun at it."

"What do guns shoot?"

"Candy, mostly."

"Hmm. So what do you think of all that?"

My heart nearly breaks waiting through the pause, heavy with what is maybe the weightiest thing his four-year-old mind has had to sort...

"I think it's not very nice."

Donald Hall

Here is a link to an audio interview I did last month with poet Donald Hall. http://www.trashotron.com/agony/Current/Current_Podcast_Audio.html
If you go back to the homepage, at least today, there are also a couple additional intro paragraphs.

dollar store book part II

I'm still reading this book and laughing so hard I could rupture something.

What you need:

Photocopier
Scissors
18- or 20-gauge tin
Rubber cement
Aviation snips
Drill and drill bits
Jeweler's saw
File
Abrasive scrubbing pad
Hacksaw
2 feet of copper pipe
Soldering gun or propane torch
Spray enamel
Large glass jewels
Scrap of red glass
Epoxy glue

...If you're like me, maybe you're looking at this list thinking "What You Need...to Escape Alcatraz?" In fact, it's all you need to make a whimsical cat craft for your garden, silies!

the dollar store and messing with the parent market

This post was originally going to be part of an updated books sidebar for the blog, but I quickly realized it needed its own post.

File it under Lessons from the Dollar Store. There are always reasons. There are always reasons something is being sold at the dollar store, for a dollar. The end.

We may credit Obama for re-inventing hope, but truly, people, it's been there all along. So full of hope is the human race, that time after time, we *hope* the spatula we buy at the dollar store will not break in the first week we have it. We *hope* the socks we get there will feel like cottony clouds and outlive the tired feet they cradle.

File it under people screwing with the market niche for parents.

Perhaps it goes without saying that Mike and I have little time together these days, that the precious few dates we get, we must savor, revel in, that the average day sees us say not more than a sentence to each other that doesn't involve our offspring and ends us in exhausted heaps. This would clearly explain why we found ourselves recently, together, without our son, at the Dollar Store. As part of this intimate and fulfilling journey, we discovered a book. It's called Making Crafts from Your Kids' Art by Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader. We debated over it. Hemmed and hawed and wondered if we'd employ the know-how hidden within the colorful volume, until we looked at each other and exchanged those fateful words: “It's only a dollar!”

Come to find out, there was a reason.

My first clue was the lists of things you needed for each project. Some started out with things like

graphics software program
color laser printer

Whoah. Hold up. Um. Well, okay. I guess. I mean, which graphics program? Nevermind, 'kay, sure. Then, just to reassure you, the list would continue this way

scissors
glue

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. I get it. Well, heh-heh, can't do much without a computer these days, can ya? And look, here we are: scissors and glue, ah, the comforting world of crafts. Then it would go on to

color photocopier

Whaa? Well, you say, still wanting to make sense out of what you've come upon, no problem. That's what those monster stationery stores are all about – I can just pack up my scissors and glue and head on down to the self-serve color copier! I'm with the program. No sweat.

In following projects, however, certain items would steal my balance without warning. Beside things like “paper” and “Popsicle sticks” came other things, like band saws, or, plain metal lunch boxes. Huh?

Things really heated up once I got to the “picture sweater” - a child-sized sweater stitched with the charming landscape your child drew and signed with her name. It wasn't so much the items on the list that got me, but what wasn't mentioned. The list of what to have goes something like this:

simple sweater pattern
yarn
knitting needles
graph paper
colored pencils

She forgets to kick in that you might also need THE ABILITY TO KNIT.

In keeping with its good cop/bad cop attitude, the book departs from the sweater to show how to get your kid's drawings onto normal-ish things like wrapping paper and post cards. Then it comes out with this one: the clay tile project. I'll reproduce the actual list of “ingredients” here followed by my editorial comments.

What You Need – sadly, I can't quite recreate the cheery font of this line.

Photocopier – alright.
low-fire red clay – can manage.
rolling pin (optional) – got it.
fettling knife – no idea what this is, but reasonably confident I could find out.
Plastic – uh...? more direction, please.
Slips, in colors to match the artwork – like the kind we used to wear under dresses? I hope the artwork is white, black and taupe.
Paintbrushes – with ya.
Pencil or sharp tool – this causes me some nervous laughter, but, okay...
loop tool - ??? I might still have that plastic loop for making cool ponytails that I bought years and years ago from the “As Seen On TV” store.
low-fire glazes – okay, there is likely a source for these around.
Kiln - WTF?????????????????????????

I could go on to other examples, but I think you probably get the idea. This chick's next book is going to be titled Walk To Anywhere In the World! (If You Have the Time).

Not the freaking apple again

(After eating orange almond cookies and reading an article from the NY Times about “greatness” in poetry that was a front to simply weep over the ol' boys club of letters.)

Kitty: “Boys suck. They're mean, they're bossy, and they smell. They want to control everything; and they make war.”

Mike: ”They tried to make cookies, but apparently they made the wrong kind and so they decided to make war instead.”

K: “Who makes cookies without chocolate?? So, you're telling me that all the ills of the world are because women nagged men who in turn felt like they couldn't get things right and so lashed out?”

M: “Pretty much.”

K:”Nice, hon, nice.”

Mmm

“Do you wanna see my M I made now that I'm 4 that's even gooder than the Ms I usually made when I was 3 and 11 months?”

birth-day

"Mama, I'll STAY four tomorrow too, right?"

"Yes, Isaac."

the bizarre bits of the moment

Isaac's grandmother always wants to hear about the goofy things he says. Isaac quotes are very much in demand. At this stage – on the precipice of the fourth anniversary of his arrival among us earthlings – the volume of amusing – or not – goofy things he says is such that I really couldn't keep up if I tried.

I admit to becoming one of those parents who, when her child informs her that the frisbee in his hand is really a magical strobe light that sends streams of stars toward other planets, is wont to reply with phrases like, “That's nice, honey.” and go about my business. Because, honestly, it is the rare occasion that I am not required to do something with the magical strobe light myself, or when I am free to roam the house without being accosted in some way by said strobe, or that I'm not begged to make various and sundry stuffed animals speak about their impressions while watching stars shoot off into the galaxy, so that if he wants the washing machine to be a volcano from which explosions of lima beans erupt every 12 hours, except when he presses this special button that only he can see located atop the refrigerator and he must wear Daddy's socks on his hands to protect himself from excess applesauce – a natural by-product of this whole phenomenon, I'm all for it, just let me drink my tea; I'll clean up later.

I know, these years go too fast, and I'm a terrible person for not cherishing more every nano-second. I'm okay with that. I excel at being a terrible person.

But, still, to save myself, if that's still possible, in the eyes of a few, and for the sake of his grandmother, I will leave you with this: Instead of a dream last night, Isaac reports that he had this song quietly playing in his head:

Twinkle little star.
An octopus fell into the mud.
He found water under the mud.
Hippo, hip-hip-hip-hippo.
Hip-hip-hippo.
The lion knocked down a building.

If you ask really nicely, I might upload the video covering an expose on wildebeests. Maybe. If I'm feeling in the mood to embrace the moment.

patterns

we thread the needle
of our cars down
the crowded streets
sewing the neighborhood
in exhaust, stitching ribbons
of hurry. Behind us,
our children strapped in
for the ride didn't ask
for this pattern.

Isaac in the hood

I am reminded again and again by my small person that nothing has a value until you place one on it.

Lately, when we get in the car – at 7:50am, say, to drive the mile and a half to preschool, Isaac has taken to asking us me to turn the radio up and open the window. As he explained, he's seen other people do this – Kanye West blaring from their low riders – and he, too, would like to share his music with folks who happen by.

What you must know, however, is that Isaac's favorite stop on the local radio dial is the R&B and Old School station. This means that as our Mazda 3 hatchback cool-mobile heads down the hill, we are rocking out to tunes like the Four Tops' “Ain't No Woman Like the One I Got,” Al Green's “Let's Stay Together” and that all time favorite of the cruisers bad beats - the Temptations spitting “My Girl.”

Sometimes when I sing along Isaac will ask me wide-eyed, “How did you learn that? How do you remember all those words?” I start to explain how we absorb what is around us. How we have almost unlimited capacity to learn. But then, this seems a redundant lesson.

My son is nothing if not generous. And why shouldn't he share the meaning he makes of this insane world with same?

Weather's great. Don't wish you were here.

William Stafford was one of those people who exuded serenity. One of those people who when you heard him start to speak, your shoulders left their place next to your ears and traveled back home. By all accounts he was kind and gentle and onto to some kind of portal to the self. He is one of those people I often find myself longing to meet, though he's been gone some 15 years.

One of Stafford's writing habits was to get up before anyone else in the house and write a poem, every day.

There is a video that was made with Stafford and Robert Bly called "A Literary Friendship" in which Stafford describes a period of time when his then-young daughter started getting up with him. Naturally, this defeated the purpose of getting up early for him. He solved the problem in a very Stafford kind of way - not by telling his daughter to go back to bed or by altering his routine, but by getting up earlier and earlier each day until he was up at something like 3 am and the child finally couldn't manage to join him.

Whenever I get up, Isaac's mama-radar goes off immediately and there he is next to me. Every time, every bloody time. I have a piece of poem in my head and there he is; I want a cup of tea in the dark fog to collect my thoughts, here's my baby; I have a revision nagging at me and think I'll get a jump start on the day's short work hours -- good luck to me with the King of Questions sidled up beside me.

Today, it was 5:45 am, and I couldn't sleep. All I wanted to get to was reading this article and I would have been satisfied. But somehow my quietly snoozing boy who'd been sound asleep since 7:30 pm last night after a tearfully napless afternoon was sitting on my lap before I could even make it to the website.

I am not William Stafford. Nor, you may have noticed, do I possess his infinite supply of patience and acceptance. And I'm just gonna take a wild guess here and say that patient healing soul or not, when that man got his ass up at 3 am, he didn't also have to make breakfast and haul his kid to school 4 hours later. I'm just going out on a limb here and say that his wife picked up the non-writerly slack in the family.

It has been one of those weeks. The kind when I want to send my family postcards from a lovely nook of country - very far away. The afternoons are too long and I guiltily find myself wondering if that new "Bob the Builder" DVD has come in at the library yet. It is the Only-Child week - the kind of week where I tell myself "See, this is what you get!" and my singleton dances on my every nerve, from atop his throne that happens to sit right at the center of the Universe.

It is a vicious circle I live with -- The more I need space, the more my son senses something and clings. Isaac is very similar to me emotionally. I understand his moods and his reactions and his needs - and they drive me batty. Some might call this pay back. Sometimes I call it part of the learning. But that's just the William Stafford in me talking.
-----------

Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.

No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held

for awhile. Some dove somewhere.


Been on probation most of my life. And

the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments

count for a lot--peace, you know.


Let the bucket of memory down into the well,

bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one

stirring, no plans. Just being there.


This is what the whole thing is about.


-- William Stafford

if I had a hammer

Barn's burnt down--
now
I can see the moon.
--Masahide

When we first moved to California, we got an apartment that was a good apartment, one that we felt lucky to have landed – both because of the housing crunch at the time and the fact that prior to that we were living in a tent. Should I have to mention we had no jobs? – and me, the about-to-be-grad-student, with no prospects for getting one.

We stayed in that apartment for 5 and a half years. Longer than I can remember staying anywhere for quite some time. At about the five-year mark, I got antsy. Maybe we should move. I was aided in my thought process by a rat-bastard property manager that was dumber than mud and with whom I had multiple heated arguments. Most of them involved some invasion of privacy and loss of garden. We were renters in a majority owner-occupied condo complex and enthusiastically ignored. I've written poems about this experience. They aren't pretty.

Mike wasn't so sure about the move. I couldn't explain in any real terms why (besides the manager) I wanted out. It just seemed like maybe it was time.

After getting really ripped one night at the bar around the corner and complaining loudly about each of our neighbors as I gripped Mike's arm while teetering along the path back to our place, we decided it might indeed be that time.

We found a new place and voila! the move was on. Two months later our new landlord called to say she wanted her house back. And so began our next 5 years – move after move after move. My friends hauled away furniture while I lay curled on whatever soft thing was left, queasy as all get out, 6 weeks pregnant. Then, for Isaac's first two birthdays we celebrated by moving. If we refer to something in the past or if we look at pictures, Isaac will ask whether it was in the old house, the old-old house, or the old-old -old house.

Nowadays, we talk about the possibility of having our very own house some day. Of buying one or building one. When I first brought up the concept of buying a house, Isaac went pensive for a long time, then came the questions: “How will we get it home? Will it fit in Auntie Bridgett's truck?” Since then, my boy has moved along with us in our dream. Sometimes he'll tell me about how when he gets bigger we'll have lots of trees in the yard. And lots of grass and lots of garden. He'll show me just how crazy he'll run around when we have all that space. He speculates on how many pomegranate trees we will have in the orchard.

Not one to dismiss his history, however, Isaac has also started to talk about the time when he can come back to this house, “when this house is old.” Despite the fact that we have many fond memories accumulating in our current locale, pretty much all of Isaac's conscious ones, and are about to celebrate – imagine – his third birthday in a row! in this same house, he, quite frankly, can't wait to knock it down.

Demolition as high on his list of interests as building, he describes to me in detail the demise of our hearth and home. The windows is his room are going first, or, some days, the front door. BAM! SMASH! Down it will come – WHAMMO! Crumbling into tiny pieces under his direction and ambitious agenda. And then this wall, and the bathroom that mama's always hated anyway – VROOM! CRUNCH! All of it razed. He'll be using his current tools – sturdy colorful plastic numbers our friends Barb and Chris got him when he turned one, plus the piece of oak branch he uses for a jackhammer.

When I first arrived in Hungary in 1994 to take a job teaching English in a secondary school, a woman who remains a friend to this day, Anna, toured me around the city. It was an odd kind of circuit. Every so often, she'd point and say something like, “See that spot over there? There, where there's nothing. That's where the Lenin statue was.” “There?” I'd try to confirm, never sure I had the right spot of nothing picked out, scanning the plaza or bus station or street corner. “Yes,” she'd say, “There. Just there. You see?” “Uh-huh,” I'd say, not wanting to be disagreeable.

While the metaphor doesn't carry over so smoothly – our house is not a Lenin statue, not a representation of oppression and loss, sometimes you have to get things out of the way to move forward. Even things that aren't obvious obstacles. I'll admit I've started to fantasize about when this house no longer stands – in the figurative sense – hoping (because we're allowed that emotion now) that this will be the last one we can't paint the walls of, the last one we look at on moving day and say, “Why wasn't it ever this clean when we lived here?” Maybe it's no Lenin, but it's one in a line of rentals, a line of not-ours. Maybe the last one.

updated book sidebar

Well, after too long there is an update on the books - of sorts. For some reason my links aren't showing up as links in my little paragraph, but they work if you click on them. So, should you want to know more about the Etruscans, Donald Hall, and/or Frank Gaspar, just click on their names where they are mentioned over to the left there.

O-yeah

This past weekend, between the rainstorms and the bouts of illness, we managed a very cool, very fun O-Par-tay. We came together to continue the celebration. O-shaped pizza, O-shaped bread stuck with “O” candles, donuts, apple rings, and other O-licious snacks abounded. We played Six Degrees of Separation from Barack (in these parts lots of Leon Panetta references) and BUSH...GO! - the Bush Bingo game, where I called out Bush quotes instead of numbers to the amusement and horror of all participants. Our living room was strung with flags of various nations to symbolize our re-entry into the world community. Floating Obama heads greeted guests who donned various forms of Obama-wear.

While it all starts to sound a bit like idol worship, we were really going more for kitch. And, of course, joy – sheer joy.

And if I ever had any doubt whether Isaac will remember these days, it is drifting ever-so-constantly away. My evening culminated this way:

(post-toothbrushing) “Mama, know why I did extra spits? For Mr. Obama. Cauz when we brush our teeth real good hearts pop up on his shirt. Like it just goes through the computer and prints out. And the hearts say, 'We're really glad you're here. We're really excited you're president now!”

"...we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"

Ahh. Welcome, friends, to the other side. I feel as if we've all just walked through a magical forcefield and now, firmly planted in the land of Hope, we can start down the path in front of us.

President Obama...wait, I'm just gonna say that one more time, cause I want to... President Obama, also said that the road is a long one.

Indeed, the poetry revolution got off to a slow start yesterday. While I thought there were lovely moments in Ms. Alexander's poem, I'm not clear why she had to read it as if each word stood at its own bus stop in her throat, their rides all running behind, popping here and there out of the crush of commuter traffic. Two million people in front of her who now think of poetry as revealing itself in jerky syllabic fits and starts. But I'm glad she was there.

Furthering my frustration, however, was my discovery, upon visiting my local public library to request they post on their board a flyer for the upcoming poetry reading in which I will be a co-feature, that only free events can be posted on their board. Apparently a suggested donation of five bucks that might, if we're lucky, cover copying costs for the flyer they're planning on tossing disqualifies my reading and denies the citizens of my town knowledge of a locally-grown cultural happening. But I see their point, what with the glut of poetry readings everywhere, the overwhelming lineup of literary spectaculars, the performing arts soup we swim in every day here in my less-than-metropolitan home arena, I guess they had to draw the line somewhere.

my ESL degree comes in handy

Isaac and our next door neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, have what you might call a symbiotic relationship. She likes to give out chocolate; he likes to eat chocolate. Creatively subtle conversations about how we like to limit treats, my dental bills, our family history of diabetes, haven't really made an impact.

I get complete agreement, but ultimately, what she as an 80+-year-old widow who never had children of her own and is an ocean away from her Austrian family likes to think of as “once in a while” and what we as parents having to share close quarters with a scheming sweet-tooth wielding almost-4-year-old consider so, are different.

She piles treats into my arms, onto holiday plates. Things she's made (lemon bars. Mmmmm.), or things that her niece in Salzburg has shipped over for her favorite aunt: “Schoko-Bananen” - chocolate-covered banana-flavored cookie things (barf), or the squares of German and Austrian chocolates shot through with almonds and hazelnuts.

The other day Isaac was digging in the front yard speculating on which kind of dirt might keep away the gopher while I ran in the house for something or other. Before I could get back out, Isaac came barreling in to tell me that “Mit Johnson wanna know if I can hab a tookie, tauz me wortin so hard.”

I sighed, resigned. “I suppose so,” I told him. And out he went like a flash.

A minute later I came back out and found Isaac and Mrs. Johnson in deep discussion. “He can't have a cookie?” she called to me with great umbrage.

“He can have one,” I corrected, surprised.

“He said you said 'no.' Okay, let me get him something.”

...

“Isaac, did you tell Mrs. Johnson I said 'no?'”

“Me toad her 'poze toe.'”

“'Poze toe?'”

“Yeah, you said, 'Poze toe.'”

“Oh, yeah. I guess she must have heard you say 'no' instead.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding thoughtfully, “Tauz Mit Johnson speat Wing-gwish dit-went-wy den us do.”

“She 'peat Wing-gwish,” he added again generously, “jut dit-went.”

“Yeah, that must be it, Iz.”

inaugural poet

I've been waiting...Yes, there will be one!

Elizabeth Alexander.

Isaac's Quotes of the Week

To Daddy:
“You're furry. How'd you get so furry?”

To Mama as she puts on tights with a pattern of thin criss-crossed lines:
“You're gonna dress like Spiderman?!”

Conversation at the Frog Pond:
“Mama, how far ducks can fly?”
“I'm not sure, Isaac.”
“Maybe you could make it up.”

Racing himself down the path at the Pond:
“Ready, set...or not set... GO!”

To Mama during imaginary play involving Bob the Builder and a dreidel (and my personal favorite):
“Otay. 'tend Bob cel-da-bwates Han-a-ttah... ”

neighborhood vignettes

I.
I want to write about how my heart clunks to the ground and everything inside me goes all fidgety when I pass the chain link of Broadway dressed in popsicle wrappers and fast food bags. How my breathing goes ragged and my eyes hurry to the stop sign, the bus stop bench, anywhere else, but it's everything – plastic-coated wire defining yards of sand and rocks, planted in broken clothes hangers, soda straws, losing lotto tickets.

II.
I want to write about how my heart fills to capacity each morning before 8, when I see, along the trash-strewn sidewalks, the same two women – or sometimes three of them – walking - slowly - like there is all the time in the world. One limps profoundly and leans on a cane, all are dressed in long skirts and hats, the colors plums and wines, or chocolate brown and gold. In the crooks of their arms, they carry their pamphlets and books of dire predictions. They are beautiful in their mission, and I often regret politely shooing them away from my own door when they come. Sometimes we talk about the garden.

III.
I am in my car on Fremont. Beside me on the seat, a bottle of blue pills because I'm allergic to penicillin and the root canal is tomorrow.

It takes longer than it should to notice the singing. And just as the light changes to green, I turn and see him – a man of 50 belting out the blues, walking home through the Safeway parking lot. We have just enough time and his smile lights up the darkness of his face, of the night air all around him, and we wave and wave like little kids before I drive on.

IV.
If you are far enough up in the turn lane, you can see the giant cypress, its glory framed perfectly by the freeway overpass. Behind it, sand. I would do anything to rescue it – lonely bit of beauty – but I need it there too much.

What's the job, Bob?

I know, he looks innocent enough, doesn't he? But this little man has invaded my home.

Right now, we are using the stuff-pack-after-pack-of-cigarettes-in-their- mouths-until-they-can't-wait-to-quit-smoking method.

Put down the phone, the CPS need not be involved. I haven't started Isaac smoking. But I have been letting him watch his library Bob the Builder DVDs until he actually turns them off himself and agrees to come outside with me. I'm doing the best I can here in the trenches.

Now, should I be offended that the "female" trucks are named "Lofty" and "Dizzy?"

Lists at the New Year

There are so many:
top 100 whatevers of the year that's passed,
famous people who have also passed,
or the worst:
personal resolutions.

There they are.
Hopeful.
Insidious.
Bulleted or numbered.
Not even sentences!

All that wasted space beyond

organize garage

and

take up tai chi

Our optimism getting the best of us,
one after another, items machine gun us
with their righteousness, pound us with all they are
that we are not, yet. Like a whipping
with so many beautiful scarves,
hand-painted colors at our eyes,
delicate fringe at our feet,
softest silk at our throats.

Happy New Year!

May your year reflect joy.

another Wednesday morning

Welcome to the last day of the retrospective "December Flashback" series. And, it seems, the last day of 2008. Whoooooooosssshhhhhh!! (That was time going by.)

I'd like to thank you for your patience with my glance backwards -- sounds like I'm Lot's wife, really it was more a constant craning severely wrenching the neck (besides, you already know I'm the Mike's wife and while I'm working on building a mythology around that, it hasn't made it into history yet. For one of my favorite poems - "Lot's Wife" by the fabulous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, click here).

The twelve days of flashback have been brought to you by KitnMike Productions, various brands of biodegradable laundry soap, and the letter K.

I am so very grateful for my small band of readers. I am a writer -- which means nothing if I don't have readers. So, thanks.

This is a brief one that also touches on a kind of gratitude. It's from 2006. It's called "Wednesday mornings."

Many good wishes for you all in the New Year.

only two days left!

...of 2008 *AND* the Fetal Positions December flashbacks.

[Make "Wayne's World," finger rippling, wavy hand motions here. And suddenly ... we find ourselves in...]

2004.

The end of the year brings on much contemplation, goal-setting, and other vices. I am often talking about community, and it started early in my blogging career. I am often wondering if this place or where else is the right place for us to live, and it's only intensified since getting pregnant. In the 2004 entry "does size matter?" both of these topics are batted about. And here are a couple pictures that go with the entry - Mike and I on Catalina Island, circa baby in belly.

you guessed it - we're still going backwards

The flashbacks today are in honor of my sisters - both of whom sent Isaac presents that arrived today.

For my sister Rita, from December 2006, I bring you "Dr. Duck." Aunt Rita came through with - among other things - Isaac's only gift book this year, a very funny one featuring a grumpy and clever duck called Thump, Quack, Moo: A Wacky Adventure.

And from December 2007, here's "slippery slope" for my sister Ruth who went all crazy-aunt on us and sent Isaac running wildly in circles with a real live train set. She's complained in the past about not being able to send Isaac things like lollipops because we are bizarre and don't often offer random colored blocks of teeth-wrenching sugar to our child. She'd be pleased to know of Isaac's first candy cane this year, though it was blueberry - he hates mint.

Speaking of teeth wrenching...The gifts showed up amidst a very busy schedule and a dental diagnosis I hoped never to hear -- R-O-O-T-C-A-N-A-L. (Hey! How YOU spending your Tuesday afternoon this week?? Bet you'll beat ME.) Isaac was pretty happy to come home from having to hang out at the dentist's office and play with new stuff.

f-f-f-f-f-flashback

A pair of old entries today that lean on contemplation and, to some extent, melancholy.

I am still in search of my "gathering of grandmothers," though I first wrote about it while I was pregnant, back in 2004. I wasn't the kind of person who was knocked over cold by the difficulty of parenting. It is just as difficult as I imagined.

And I came into it in a way that may be different than your average Mommy n Me enthusiast. The other piece for today is from last year; it's titled "visitation."

on the eighth day of flashback December, my blogger friend gave to me...

...an entry from December 27, 2004 - pregnancy days. Days of speculation and indigestion. Days of apparently enough time to write lots of blog entries.

"Virtual fears" is one in which you get to listen in on another bizarro adventure with raccoon poop, Mike and Kitty in conversation and the encroaching world. Well, with that recommendation, what are you still doing reading this?? Click the link for goodness sake!!

today's December flashback

December 2006 seems to have had a plethora of entries (as opposed, for example, to 2005, which has exactly one, perhaps I'll link it next week).

The day after Christmas with all of its anti-hype can leave one feeling off-center -- something akin to waking from a dream, remembering only half of it, or the geographic details but not the motives, or the emotional ebb and flow but none of the faces. Last night I dreamed -- my friend Mary, a cliff, a small town diner. It was interesting and I want to go back and finish the story, but that's not likely; it's gone.

Parenting too gives me the sense often of vague, unfinished scenes... Probably because the constant whining I endure makes my brain foggy and every flipping scene I enter -in fact- go unfinished. But enough with the analogies...

Here's an entry from December 14, 2006 entitled "dream states."

flashback December - 2004

Merry Christmas, all!

Here's one that put the "fetal" in Fetal Positions. It's from 2004, when I was still pregnant, and I'm cheating just slightly because it's actually from November 30 -- so much for my own rules. I'm going to guess that it may be a little different than other Christmas Day blogs... Here is "What Child Is This?"

(Please note that the grilled cheese link in that one no longer works, sorry.)

Santa's sleigh and variations on Rudolph in the key of wacky toddler

Here's Isaac's version of Santa's sleigh. The role of Santa this year will be played by Bear. The sleigh is constructed from Emily's cat bed and his stuffed animals - some of which are toys in the sleigh and some of which are playing the part of reindeer.

Isaac is fond of the reindeer, which, as you may be aware are also known as caribou.

While we were in Seattle we visited the zoo. Not my favorite activity, but there we were. Isaac talked constantly beforehand about seeing the lions. He rushed us through the elephant pond, the bats, the flamingos to get to the lions. He wondered aloud if the lions would be roaring.

When we finally made it to the lions, they were in plain sight. A male and female put on a little show for us, teasing each other. Here it was, my son's dream come true. A zoo volunteer crouched down next to him. "Are the lions your favorite animal in the zoo? Have you been waiting to see the lions?" Isaac considered the woman for a long moment before stating solemnly, "My favorite animal is a caribou."

Christmas Eve flashback

It's Christmas Eve 2008. But wait...

F
L
A
S
H
B
A
C
K
!

****************It's Christmas Eve 2006********************

The entry is called "warm wishes."

more flashback December

Two more holiday-ish entries of the past. We're in 2007 again -- which is known, alternately, as "just last year" and "a whole year ago."

Isaac's begun the begging -- The poor, tortured soul MUST open his presents RIGHT. NOW. So, I thought of this entry from December 22, 2007 called "spoiling the surprise."

And for the tree enthusiasts out there, from December 12, 2007, this one called "it followed me home, can I keep it?"

Reduce, reuse, recycle ... your blog entries. Cheers.

why poetry gets a bad rap

I just received this as an email from the local children's museum. My goodwill toward men is not thriving at the moment. I could say more, but maybe I shouldn't. I think the "poem" speaks for itself.

It's holiday time, ho, ho, ho!

A time to reflect, a time to grow

Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, they

Teach about giving every day

Read this poem all the way through

Then think about what you'd like to do

Scholarships, the Wheelie Mobilee, exhibits, all

Need lots of funding-please answer the call

MY Museum is open and operating and we are happy as can be

If you haven't seen the place you must come by and see

Your support is needed 'cause this year will be a big one

Happy Holidays to all... we wish you joy and tons of fun!!!

flashback December #3

Welcome to another edition of FLASHBACK DECEMBER. Today I have two for you.

One from this very day last year -- Isaac's letter to Santa. Here is the one he dictated this time around:

--------------------
(Dec 18, 2008)
Dear Santa,

I want a fire truck, please, a big one. And a dinosaur set. And a big, scary dinosaur walk by itself. And a little toy rocket ship. (My pleas to inquire as to Santa's well-being, or the weather in Lapland go unheeded...) A monster truck that makes sound but not drive by itself, and tall. (My comments about caring and love being more important than toys are actively ignored...)

Please go to the red church and mama gonna go get the presents for mama and daddy and Little Boy.

** Mama? What you guys want?

Hi, Santa, it's Mama. I would like socks and warm tights - brown and black and white, please, or you can be creative. And I'd like the chance to exercise more and I'd like to live closer to the farmer's market.

** How Santa gonna bring you exercise?
Well, Santa might whisper in your ear while you're sleeping, 'Isaac, tell Mama you want to go for a long walk and stay in the stroller.' So then you can do that and you get to be one of Santa's helpers. That's part of how Santa's magic works. What do you think? (Puzzled look, then:)

And you can send anything else you want the elves to make.

Love, Isaac
-----------------------------
It is notable for his father and I that there is zero mention of the wooden car track he talked non-stop about for weeks and that we killed ourselves to find for him and did.

Isaac recently declared that he was sure everything wrapped under the tree so far was a dinosaur set. Clearly, he has not spent enough time with my mother-in-law to understand that the only gift she buys anyone ever is a piece of clothing eight sizes too big. I once predicted that thanks to his grandmother Isaac would be the only freshman in college wearing Thomas the Train sweatpants. Being disappointed in your gifts is a long-standing tradition that I'm proud to be able to pass down to my son.

The other flashback entry for today is called "It was a typical morning." It's from 2006. Isaac was not quite two at that point. It gives a peek into a few things of the day, including Isaac's relationship with caretaking and his animal friends.

It's quite relevant for the current moment, at least by comparison, since we are hosting something of a menagerie at our house these days. There is a fruit box upside down in our bedroom - home to one of Isaac's stuffed dogs, complete with water and food bowl. There is a fluffy orange turtle held captive in a box in his room, with a bowl full of "lettuce" (foam shapes). And lastly there is Pork-key-pine. Pork-key-pine is half of a pine cone that's housed in a Godiva chocolate box lined with a blanket and fed cereal whenever his keeper demands his servants (that'd be us) refill his tupperware lid.

Hope you all are cozy and warm and not harried and cold.

flashback December installment #2

Happy Solstice. Happy Hannukah. Happy 40th Birthday, Mike!

No one would guess that my even, calm husband arrived all blue/emergency C-section.

Today's Flashback December entry was an easy pick. A Mike's birthday entry. It comes from 2004 - while Small Boy was still in belly (and not yet the snotty-nosed, over-tired kid currently screaming and crying as I type this) and my mind was a puppet at the mercy of the cruel Fates of preggo insanity.

I have many memories associated with trying to bake Mike birthday cakes, including locking myself out of the house on the coldest day in Monterey in 10 years and mistaking the ice on the ground for glass (hopeful west coast transplant that I was).

This year's cake memory hasn't happened yet. Isaac and I are going to try out an orange cake with chocolate frosting after nap. As usual, I really don't know how I'm going to pull it off. In the kitchen, I lack confidence and usually most of the ingredients as well.

Anyway, the 2004 entry is called "and eat it too."

Flashback December

Introducing: FLASHBACK DECEMBER!

Over these last 11 days of the month/year, I'd like to invite you to take a stroll down Fetal Positions' memory lane. Each day I will be linking to a post from December of 2007, 2006, 2005, or even 2004 - yes, I go back that far, ladies and gentlemen! to when the fetal positions were truly fetal and there was no Isaac as we know him today.

Maybe it's nostalgia with the end of another year, maybe it's inspiration from receiving the daily Writer's Almanac emails and all their historical tidbits, or, maybe it's just that I'm completely lazy and out of new ideas. Think of it as the ghost of Decembers past. Whatever the impetus, let FLASHBACK DECEMBER guide you into 2009!

We'll begin with this one from December 18, 2007. It's titled "tomorrows - full of possibility." It's a conversation between myself and a not-yet-three Isaac centering around the topic of a particular sleigh.

Enjoy! (And you'll have to do that squiggly line, dreamy screen thing yourself.)

pen name perhaps?

It's that time of year again -- the time of year when despite the choices I made 7 years ago, all of my husband's family, high school, college, and work friends send us Christmas cards addressed to us under the same name - his.

"What if you have a FAMILY??!!!" they pleaded when the news originally made the rounds. What indeed. Has it stopped us from having a family? No, clearly, Mr Isaac wanted to be born despite many other much bigger obstacles than a name. Are our dance parties in the living room something lesser because I didn't go all around the world twice to try and get my driver's license changed?

Everyone from in-laws to bank tellers chastised me about keeping my name when Mike and I got married. And to them all - a very spirited middle finger.

This is the season of festive frolicking and deck the yadda yadda. So, while the mailbox overfloweth, calling out to a non-existent personage, I've decided to stop flipping out about it (well, almost). I try now to think of it as my gift to all of them.

It's that time of year again, when I become, just for a season, for the sake of an envelope, the person they desperately want me to be.

the library

Depression sets in right away:

Rooms full of books. Anthologies, theses, too many of everything. I can learn anything I can dream of; visit any world I want to. I hate that. How exhausting. What pressure.

Think about all those hours alone, writers writing. It's enough to drive a person to the medicine cabinet.

I can get lost here. Suffocate. No one would know where to look. Greek mythology? Large print? Self help? Sci Fi? The mind bends.

I bob up on the crest of a wave - magical realism, young adult fiction - then go down again. They say a person surfaces three times before going under for good, but I'm not sure I have that long. The shelf of "Best American Poetry" 1998-2007 is lined up in front of me, a firing squad.

Office Holiday Party: The Charity Auction

So you go to your husband's office holiday party with your unnapped child and think you won't stay long. But two hours later you find yourself standing guard behind your pick at the auction, while your child sways, closer and closer to the floor and complains loudly about the lack of a dessert table. The beer is good and free and you think that if this goes on much longer, you're right there with him.

You think it's sweet in a weird sort of way, the middle-aged man with salt and pepper beard hawking his bid on the dance lessons. He looks actually nervous, as if he's already won the lessons and they were to a middle school dance in a gymnasium, his palms sweaty, heart in his throat, object of his affection across the room in a pink cable knit sweater.

You glance over your shoulder to be sure no one is thinking of outbidding you on the tiny styrofoam cups someone artfully turned into ornaments in the shape of an octopus in a Santa hat and a jellyfish that lights up. Suddenly, you realize the man in the salt and pepper beard at least has love on his side... you? And in the light of the jellyfish, you see what "weird sort of way" really means.

PS - books sidebar is updated.

PPS - to be fair to us, they aren't just *any* styrofoam cup ornaments - those styrofoam cups were taken to the bottom of the ocean on a remote underwater vehicle and shrunk down by the depth.

I didn't make this up

Median income in Monterey County, California = roughly $34,000
Median price of homes for sale in the city of Monterey = $1 million

The Simplicity of Travel

Choice of clothes – from among a few things in a bag.
No trinkets from your own home lying about, the room
gratefully devoid of personal memories. You need do nothing
about the phone call you didn't return before you left. Your alibi
is secure. Your cat is taken care of and will not jump
onto your head at 5 a.m. because she is far away and without a map.
You take artistic pictures of lamp posts in downtowns where
you are not recognized. To eat in restaurants, pay the check,
and walk away. To board buses whose destinations
you are unsure of that fill with people who could care less
you are there, who place dripping umbrellas under their feet.

It is here, the point at which you leave the bus and step out into
the busy street that looks like nothing you have learned
to take for granted, that travels as fast in one direction as the other,
that your faculties will fail you eventually, and so,
you will look around for someone; it will be someone laden
with closets and drawers full of clothes, who is haunted
by the phone call she didn't yet make today, who has forgotten
her umbrella on a bus, whose cat waits at home for her,
hungry and sharp-clawed.

You must open to her as if the knots unfurling within your neck
and shoulder blades would to roll out toward her like a golden rope.
And she, turning in your direction as you hover - almost imperceptibly -
above the sidewalk next to the lamp post - just this morning it stood
invisible to her knowing eyes - will respond with the help you need,
with more, in fact, than she thought herself capable. Though she isn't sure
if the amber light is coming from you or the lamp, she feels warmer
suddenly and the air around her smells uncluttered, and she will do
anything, anything you need.

Portland and Seattle trip - Part I

What's two and a half years between friends?

Isaac and Pacifica got to know each other again.

More on our trip to come...

Reading: it does a body good

Updated the sidebar for books.

Nevermind that a visit to an ofrenda (an altar) at our local Mexican bakery to explain the Day of the Dead to Isaac, sent me scurrying away again when front and center there was a hunka-chunka, bleeding crucifix and I worried the first up-close exposure my son would have to violence and gore would be from that grand and troubled tradition some call Christianity, Day of the Dead is another matter and quite cool and now there's a book to prove it.

My own literary adventures come - as always - with questions, questions, and Alice McDermott has me particularly baffled. "After this" I'm going back to short stories and poetry.

I find it interesting that there are always summer reading lists -- Now, in the cold and rain and snow is when we should be curled up with a pile of books. Go forth and be literate. And send me your recommendations!

making pudding

“I bet a BABY can't even DO this,” my three-and-a-half-year-old says about everything he does these days.

At birth, I stared into his blue eyes, wise and startled, and didn't know who this creature was who came from me. Now, I stare equally perplexed at who he's grown into, seated between my husband and I at the breakfast table like a hungry stranger we took in off the street.

The old games no longer work for getting him to brush his teeth, for getting his shoes on. And too often he wriggles out of my hugs – busy.

Making pudding with his dad he's eager to share the result, and I am called into the kitchen to taste. I watch as he spoons a bit of chocolate from the pot and carefully wipes off the drippy bottom on the side, holds it out to me. His own mouth, ringed in brown, opens in a mimic of mine, his phantom bite, his nurturing way, helping me to swallow it all.

reflections on last night

(Note - I added just a couple more tidbits to yesterday's blog, too.)


Conversation among strangers at the Monterey Farmer's Market:

Person 1: New Hampshire!
Person 2: Pennsylvania!
Person 1: Pennsylvania?!
Person 3: Ohio!
Person 1 & 2: Ohio!!??
Person 3: Florida!
Persons 1, 2, & 3: Woooooohoooooo!
------

At the victory party at the Golden State Theatre in Monterey (free and open to the public), the mood was obviously joyous. We were allowed again to be in love with people we didn't know. We hugged each other and laughed.

There was a countdown to 8 pm – the close of the polls in California. Boy, if I've ever felt left out out here in the west...time differences, philosophical differences...last night I was proud. Right after that countdown, we looked up at the screen and two things happened simultaneously: the shape of California flashed a beautiful shade of blue on the map and our 55 electoral votes rung up for Obama sending him over the 270 mark he needed to win. The cheer in the room was a couple decibels louder than my ears could handle.

Around 8:30-something, I pulled myself away and zipped home in time to hear Obama's speech. Even though I had been craving communal company, now I wanted my family.

There were fireworks going off in our neighborhood. When I got home, Isaac was already asleep. But then, a couple minutes in, he woke up somehow.

For a few precious minutes we were all together, watching, Mike and I teary, Isaac in my lap. I didn't care that Isaac might not understand most of what was being said. I was confident he could and should hear any/every word, knowing how much it meant, knowing no one was going to shout “Drill! Drill! Drill!” or anything else offensive or frightening.

Maybe he'll remember something from last night. Maybe, even, it'll be one of his first memories. Maybe he'll carry that indescribable feeling with him. This is one of the ways we find out what's important.

The camera focused on a sign held above the heads of the crowd in Chicago.

“You know what that sign says, Isaac, huh?”

For an instant he forgets the weighty sleep pulling on him.

He straightens in my lap, smiles at his own big boy smarts. “Obama!”



And finally, from Pravda, the online version of the Russian news source: "...in choosing Obama, the people of America have opted to come back into the international fold. Welcome back, friends! "

the election in review...

– an abridged collage of words and events from my tiny corner of the world.

"Three-year-olds for Obama" Parts I-III.

I.) It rhymes with Mama and Llama and Drama, all things my boy loves. (NB: McCain rhymes with Pain and Strain and Insane.)

II.) If only I wasn't alone when Isaac approached the Obama/Biden sign in the front yard and, moving his fingers slowly across the letters, sounded out “O...BA...MA.”

III.) An election year alphabet.
A is for the Audacity to hope, where anything should begin.
B is for Biden, okay, I can live with him. And Bruce, all the cool cats hang with him.
C is for Change, not the kind you put in tip jars.
(Look, Isaac is going to wake up from his nap soon, so pick a letter and send me yours!)
---------
On a trip to the farmer's market I encounter a man holding up a McCain/Palin sign. The shocking sight of it triggers some kind of shadow symptoms of tourette's disorder in me and without thinking, while no more than 15 feet away, I shout at the guy, "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING??!!"
---------
Setback in my meager campaign to do something-for-god's-sake. I hand deliver a registration form to a mom (of three) and Isaac's preschool. She fails to return it by the deadline. Three children unspoken for. I mourn, and then realize I live in California and well, she can get away with it this time, at least on the presidential level.
---------
Meager campaign limps on, pointing out to a poet friend who's second poetry collection is set to be published early next year, that his planned title of "A Bridge to There" conjures unwanted associations. He hadn't caught it. He consults other poets and ultimately decides to change it. He thanks me most sincerely.
---------
Meager campaign finds new steam again. On the phone with my hair dresser this morning, making an appointment. We've spoken already about how she's registered for the first time in her life and she's voting for the O-man:
“Did you vote yet?”
“I have to vote today, huh?”
“Girlfriend...”
“I've never done this before! Where do I vote?”
“It depends where you live.”
“How do I find out?”
"Did you get a sample ballot?"
"I don't think so."
“Can you get on a computer?”
“I don't know. I can try...”
“Give me your address, I'll find it for you right now.”
---------
On the eve of the election (uh, that's writer talk for “yesterday”), I'm chatting with my almost 82-year-old neighbor, Mrs Johnson, a white woman married for 57 years to a black man. She is sweeping leaves from our tree out of her yard. She never says his name. Instead she says, “I hope he makes it. I hope he makes it. He's young. He has a lot of energy. There's so much prejudice, maybe he can do something. I hope he makes it. All this prejudice all around...” And at that, she purses her old lady lips and grips her broom more tightly, then swings it out, as if to sweep away what's distasteful.
---------

By this final week, Mike and I had become junkies. He catches me on the computer reading up on Obama via Wikipedia after Isaac's in bed. We discover his birthday is the same as our wedding anniversary. Mike continues to study the stats.

“Hmm. 48? I thought he was younger than that.”

“He was. When this bloody thing started. He's been campaigning for 700 years! I mean, 21 months!”
---------
Walking into my (line-free) polling place I feel like kissing all the volunteers. I squeak, “Are we excited?” Funny thing this English language, you use it to ask questions when you know the answer.
---------
I kept reading about people bringing their 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds to the polls with them to witness history. But at our house, things were a little different. Three is not 5. All afternoon I'm one way-distracted mama...

“Isaac, let's go look on the computer and see how Mr. Obama is doing and if he'll be our next president.”

“Okay,” he sighs dragging his feet. “But THEN can we find rocks for my penguin to jump on?” (It was a rockhopper, you know.)

O-History!

The instructions on our paper ballots read:

To VOTE, connect the arrow pointing to your choice...A SINGLE LINE IS SUFFICIENT. (emphasis orginal)

But I just couldn't help making that one line a little bolder...

Yes We Can make it a Happy Election Day!

He's NOT cute

There is an update on the books sidebar again. Check out info on the book above etc.

Isaac was a ferocious tiger for Halloween - sort of. And another of my favorite books on his shelf speaks volumes about the last 24 hours...

Si se puede

The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye,
the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands.
- Pablo Neruda

The first time I remember noticing the winds was just over 4 years ago.

We had moved to a new place after 5 and a half years in the apartment where we'd landed on arriving on the west coast. We were still renting, but we were in a house now. It was stone and funky; it had a fireplace, a big farm kitchen, a deck out back. We could almost afford it.

The winds whipped through our little hamlet like clockwork every afternoon. The old oak grazed a formidable arm across the front window and released its spiky little leaf boats.

“Winds of change!” I'd joke to my husband as I joyfully sold off junk we should have gotten rid of 5 and a half years earlier. “Winds of change!”

We switched our voter registration to our new address and settled in.

Despite the winds, change didn't come. At least not the change we expected, not the kind we'd hoped for.

In that house, during all of the 6 months we lived there, before our landlord decided to reclaim it, all our plants died mysterious deaths and the studio in the back – my would-be writer's haven – remained packed with our landlord's stuff. It was also the place were I'd conceive our son.

That was three houses ago now, the “old, old, old house,” my son will tell you, from when he was just in mama's belly.

The winds have returned, I notice. And it's that time of year again.

The tree in my front yard these days is a sycamore that every day pummels the lawn with buckets of leaves like so many parachutes. Isaac pounces, and they reply with that satisfying crunch from under his sandals - finally out of place now in the full-swing of fall.

“Winds of change,” I caught myself whispering the other day.

Maybe it's that little boy, but I'm a sucker for hope. This year.

Roy and Silo say NO on Prop 8!

Consider it an supplemental bit to my books sidebar -- Yesterday at the library I unwittingly pulled a book off the shelf called And Tango Makes Three. The authors are Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. Illustrator is Henry Cole.

The story is a true one about two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo named Roy and Silo who become a couple, make a nest, and raise a baby.

****
They didn't spend much time with the girl penguins, and the girl penguins didn't spend much time with them. Instead, Roy and Silo wound their necks around each other. Their keeper Mr. Gramzay noticed the two penguins and thought to himself, "They must be in love."

****

I think I've been disappointing people lately: Like the man from the Democratic party who came to my door to let me know we can't afford 4 more years like the last 8.

"No, sir, we can't," I told him, my Obama/Biden sign not yet in the yard.

He seemed off-balance, his sail devoid of wind. "Right," I think he mumbled. "Are you registered to vote?" he spoke up again.

"Yes."

"Everyone here at this residence registered vote?"

"All but my 3-year-old, and he can sound out 'O-ba-ma' on my Obama Mama tee-shirt."

He handed me a flyer of the party endorsements and shuffled off down the driveway.

"Thank you for your work," I called, but he showed no signs of hearing.

Last night, on the heels of Roy and Silo, I got a phone call from the NO on Prop 8 campaign. (Proposition 8 is on the California ballot this November. It would repeal the right of same sex couples to marry.)

"I'm with you," I told the man on the phone. And though we bantered politely for another minute or so after that, our conversation was essentially finished before it began.

Too late I thought to ask him if he was calling just to take the temperature of things, see where people fell on the issue, or if he planned to convert me had I hauled out my Bible and vomited something about the strength of the family. The latter would be a tough job. I'd certainly like to think people can be convinced to change their bigoted ways, but over the phone at dinner time? I mean, you either shoot wolves from a plane, or you don't.

Meanwhile, I'm off to a wedding this weekend of two of the coolest women I know who've been together something like 27 years and all this debate has left me completely UNDECIDED -- about what to wear.

****

"We'll call her Tango," Mr. Gramzay decided, "because it takes two to make a Tango."

Roy and Silo taught Tango how to sing for them when she was hungry. They fed her food from their beaks. They snuggled her in their nest at night. Tango was the very first penguin in the zoo to have two daddies.

detritus in photos

Pipe cleaner spider family.

Sock Monkey Pancakes.

What? How have YOU been spending your time?

hope for the future

The other day while using the toilet Isaac began howling and crying, weeping inconsolably for minutes because ... he'd gotten some pee on the seat.

O, sweet child of vision. Bless you. May you grow to lead your kind out of the darkness.

Books and the women who love them

There's an update on the sidebar there - "What We're Reading."

I'm always reading everything or nothing. I just put one book up this time to represent the landslide I like to call my nightstand.

because men feel entitled to usurp vocabulary describing women's role in creation while in the business of gross and violent machinery

TO: Colonel George Bond , Fort Greely, Alaska

Dear Col. Bond:

I'd like you to know I took exception to the fact that you called the yellow cable that provides data to the EKVs (“Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles” which intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles) - their “umbilical cord.”

I imagine, Sir, that at one time, many years ago, your mother looked down at you, just recently freed from the connecting element you shared, that fed you and grew you month after month, and she saw in you potential in a degree she knew not until that moment.

Even the most cynical among us, when set face to face with the realization of our hopes and the reenactment of our fears, i.e. our child, the being that we may well become the closest to in the world, cannot help but be driven by a ferocity of love that has every chance of outshining your missiles by bounds so large as to remain unrelatable, and that would most certainly have something sharply unequivocal to say about your careless choice of language.

another debate

I recently wrote a letter to the editors of Brain, Child magazine. I was going to wait to see if they print it before posting something about it here, but it's only a quarterly and I'm impatient and they might not print it and if they do they might edit it (ee-gads!). So, as we are about to move into the comedy and tragedy of another debate night, here's what I said:


25 September 2008

Dear Eds:

As I write this, the two presidential candidates are preparing to debate each other in Oxford, Mississippi. While there is part of me eager for this political face-off, I find that the debates in Brain, Child are consistently my least favorite part of the magazine.

A yes/no debate, this black or white, head-to-head sparring, strikes me as - if Scott Lozier (who made some excellent points in “Should Vegetarian Parents Raise Vegetarian Kids?”) and the other dads will forgive me – an extremely male concept.

I appreciate the idea of breaking up the essays with a different kind of presentation, but I feel strongly that this is not it. We could contend that despite the duality constructed for the sake of argument, as they say, we still know that there are more than two sides to any issue and myriad experiences, emotions, and thoughts that go into wherever we land toward our goal of raising children to be healthy, loving adults. However, by displaying important issues in this all or nothing format it can be tricky to keep in mind. Those other multiple perspectives we “know” exist or the pieces of truth to be found on a side we generally disagree with, have a tendency to roll under the dresser forgotten with the cat toys and the pacifier (should babies be given pacifiers?? yes or no??).

I often feel the arguments in the debate are written poorly on both sides, unlike the caliber of writing in the rest of the magazine. The “opponents,” in fact, are sometimes in agreement in more places than not, though it's easy to miss such junctures in philosophy since the nature of a debate sets us apart from the very beginning, lands us rigid, determined to prove our point. There we are, fingers in our ears, glued to this or that side...red state or blue state.

It occurs to me that I do not necessarily wish our power as parents to reflect the higher offices and workings of our country – particularly in its currently crippled state of economic and social standing. I would much rather be part of a thoughtful grass roots rumble with its eye on a future that embraces cooperation, innovation and, most of all, conversation.

still things to smile about

I just about want to pee my pants. Order yours today!

campsite 61 – check out day

Soon you'll be home again.

All for the best, you can hardly stand it here – the stillness, the trees as quiet witness, holding your story with the rest. You can hardly stand the shivering river, the canopies of green, the fire firing bright sparks into the dawn. You can't possibly take another day of your son's joy – balancing on logs, snuggled into your neck calling “Good morning!” in the dewy chill, his mismatched layers, his blonde waves a step away from dreadlocks.

Already you can imagine yourself back at home – the hammock tied to the one tree in your yard, its woven colors flaccid against the browning lawn, your windows shut tight in the heat of the afternoon to close out the incessant car alarms. Ah. Home.

For what have I come to paradise? To put off again standing at the sink doing dishes? Release me back to my routine, where the creatures of the night are me, stumbling down the dark hall, sodden in the recurring dream of escape.