rainy thoughts

I have been reading emails from friends. And friends of friends. And friends of friends of... Well, you get the idea. I put out a call to my peeps for anyone with information, connections, or personal experience with Tetralogy of Fallot and what I got back has left me dazzled.

So many people went out of their way to try to help us. So many words of encouragement, from all the crazy corners of my life. The poets and the doctors; the lawyers, the teachers, the pray-ers and the skeptics. I love you all. Thank you.

Any of you who've followed this blog over time may have gathered that our Isaac -- from here on out to be known as "our first-born," just because it amuses me and feels charmingly cliche and like something I'd never say, ever -- is a rather intense little person who demands a great deal of our time and attention. And while he is still that and in all likelihood will always be that, Isaac our first-born has been doing a fabulous job of busying himself lately. In fact, he never stops being busy. Ever.

One of this favorite things these days is cutting out snowflakes. You know, the fold the paper and snip holes kind. And while I might object somewhat to this premature winter filling my windows, considering I'll have a real, New England winter on my hands before you know it, I can't help but be charmed by my son's creations which include his very best writing.

Bundled into the center of his snowflakes are conglomerations of the words he can spell without thinking too hard, so that they usually say things like "IsaacMomDadRhysCatLove." And I take them from him and think, yeah, pretty much, that's it.

The authentic snowflakes are still a ways off for now, gratefully, but weather has been unusually rainy here these days. Downpours several days out of the week seem common.

Both my boys were born in the pouring rain. There is a sacredness to rainy days. I have always thought so. There is something to gain from the darkened scenery, the baptism of garden and asphalt alike.    

All I can do is just move through this time with Rhys. Move slowly through.

Everything wants to be the rain.
The yellow maple leaves
pinging against the walkway
gather first to fall in a gold sheet
of sound. The dry grasses
bending in the wind
thirst to be like the rain --
how it can calm the most hassled
day, put us softly to sleep.
The traffic on the highway --
especially the traffic -- puts on its best
mimicry, longing as it does
to be instead the beat and whoosh
of contemplation that is the rain.
And as the rain streams now, down
the windshields of rush hour,
it does not mock or scold its proteges,
does not deny them their allegiance
as it might, but simply continues, steady
in its example.

murmurs

Imagine that you are delicate enough that the quarter-inch square stickers for the EKG they made you do left bruises behind on your velvet skin. Imagine now that you are so delicate that two hours under florescent lights, the ringing of phones, shuffling of folders left you so exhausted you slept the rest of the day and night, waking only briefly here and there to eat. Try hard to imagine it. Do. Because we are all that delicate.

My Rhys has been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. He will require a corrective procedure, likely open heart surgery, before he turns six months of age.

I wasn't surprised somehow when they heard the murmur. Not that part. Not the murmur. A month ahead of schedule he moved down that canal red with blood and love and into my arms, a floppy doll, quiet as I leaned in and whispered my greeting, praying he'd stir, rally in the dark room of hope. And then that beautiful heart had something extra to say.

Metaphors are real and I will not apologize for them. I am a poet for a reason. And it is not to talk prettily about spring. My boy's heart came with a space most of the rest of us don't have; it is more open than the average person's and sometimes, because of this, he cannot catch his breath.

“What a perfect little being,” the barrista says staring at my baby bundled in his carrier. “Yes,” I answer, “Yes, he is.”

It is a new world. Always new. Imagine.

what it means to have two

The other day Rhys' milk blister was back posing as a perfect tooth dead center on his upper lip. And since I've spent the last two weeks with the baby asleep on my lap reading Captain Underpants books to Isaac, it reminds me of a buck tooth – specifically the buck tooth of Sulu the Bionic Hampster. Not something the average mother normally says about her newborn.

photo could be better, took it on my phone.

I know I'm supposed to be goofy in love and showering everyone I know with photos of the most beautiful being ever produced, and most of the time I'm like all kinds of ready to call up Anne Geddes and be in her face with “Do you have a flower pot?? 'Cause do I have a baby for YOU.” But sometimes I look at my new son and I see Sulu the Bionic Hampster, and I want other mothers out there who spot mutated rodents from juvenile chapter books in the images of their children to have somewhere to put their feelings. I'm here to tell you, it makes you no less of a mother. It just makes you a candidate to write a blog.

peaceful waters

Rhys is four weeks old. Today is his due date. Time is like water -- rushing, rushing.

This morning is one of those mornings when daylight enters the room to reveal two adults completely and utterly defeated by the smallest of beings – barely 7 pounds now – lying asleep on the bed between them, looking all of the miracle he is, any strains of the Midnight Devil we came to know hours before vanished.

Sleep. If only. Our 6-year-old is hungry, and we might have to feed the cat, too, although so far she's caught herself a mouse and a bat (!) for her time in the house.

It's the stage way before smiles and giggles, before clutching toys and eating toes. It is the stage when, if their eyes are open at all, they stare past you and over your shoulder with a great suspicion, tiny brow furrowed into deep gorges, mouth pursed. The question in the air is clear enough: did someone make a mistake? pull the parachute cord over the wrong cloud? Who ARE these people??

Last night, Mike and I tried to discuss our goals for the long weekend. The project list is too big to write down. The house is too much of a mess to start anything. I wanted to hear about floors being sanded, lamps being purchased.

“I think we should be patient with each other,” Mike says.

“What?”

“Patient.”

“What??”

“I think we should be patient with each other.”

“We're not being patient with each other?” I ask impatiently.

“No.”

Wake me up when you've got some goals, dude.

In the newly installed shower one of the two shower curtains that circle the claw foot tub is printed with a colorful world map – a long-ago gift from my sister, Rita. Due to geographic and stylistic considerations, as I stand in the respite of hot water, I spend no time looking at, for example, Australia or, as it turns out, the Arctic Circle, which is shown in detail in a callout much below its actual latitude. Instead, while I bathe I am regaled with décor such as Greenland and, particularly, the upper regions of Canada where I study the many fort towns with bemused curiosity.

There are Forts Nelson, Norman, Simpson and Smith – your garden variety embattlements. Then Fort Reliance and Fort Resolution that have a bit more to say about the state of things. Among all these is my favorite: Fort Vermillion, which bounds forward in my imagination, its brilliant colors streaming, its watch towers vibrant in wild shades of red. And through it all there is the Peace River, holding down the waters of hope that everyone will quit it and just get along. 

Excuse me, but did you just say the word 'casserole'?

blueberry muffins
homemade ketchup
homemade pesto
and the topper – a brown rice casserole.

This is the current list of things we've been greeted with my our new neighbors. We seem to have landed in some kind of wonderland of friendliness, not to mention, victory gardens.

Also worth noting is that we seem to be surrounded by Californians. The wives on both sides of us are California natives, the diaper service lady called Arcadia home before moving east, the mailman hails from Santa Rosa, the young couple running the groovy farm in the next town just moved out here the month before we did from Santa Barbara, the woman across the street lived several years in Palo Alto. Curious.

In my first couple weeks in the house, which of course were also my first couple weeks with a newborn, I have not been able to get out and about and meet these west coast transplants with good community habits. I am quite secluded in my tiny room filled with a collage of straws, washcloths, ibuprofen, pillows, and a squalling infant they say is mine. My sequestered existence only deepened when Little Guy, being pretty little, was not able to eat so very much, and I ended up with badly blocked milk ducts, near mastitis, that culminated in the precipice of delirium and a 103 fever on my birthday. (This child crowded into August, for goddsakes, when every other event in our lives happens. He knows how to find the party.)

Milk Duds? exclaimed Gerard.

Ducks! I shouted. Milk Ducks!

-- from Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore

When I complained I'd never get out to see anyone, that I felt like a ghost, here but not really here, Mike suggested putting on a long, black veil and walking slowly around the lighted porch at night, just to add to the mystery and mystique, charge up the rumor mill.

There are many, many things I have no memory of in my life. Many, many of those many, many things relate to the early days of being a mom. But there is one thing I remember with keen clarity. It took nine days for my nipples to stop being ripped apart and feeling like they were on fire. Nine. Not eight, not ten. This time was no different. Nine. Though there was a space in which I dreamed of a shorter penance.

I heard through the grapevine that my next door neighbor was a lactation consultant. She was also, as it turned out, on vacation. We waited in great anticipation for her to return.

When did my life turn into an Alanis Morissette song? I moved in next door to a lactation consultant...who was on vacation...in CALIFORNIA.

Obsessed with someone I never met, the days ticked on and my tender nipples scabbed. Until one day, Mike was looking out the kitchen window and, adding on Mike's inability to remember anyone's name, you get this conversation--

Mike: Hey! There's Tim...

Me: You mean Todd?

Mike: Todd is putting car seats in the car; maybe he's going to pick up his family...You should go over and ask him if Natalie...

Me: You mean Cynthia?

Mike: Cynthia's coming home today.

Me: 'Hi, Tim-Todd. I'm Kitty. Is your wife Natalie-Cynthia coming home any time soon? Because I'd really love to show her my boobs!'

Won't you be my neighbor?

The deed to the house arrived in the mail and I set it on the changing table.

The weather added to my insular existence; rain just kept coming. There was nothing to do but wait for it to stop and heat up the casserole.

family portrait

must update that sidebar.

 

notice the steps we're sitting on go nowhere. entries on more of such charms of the new house and more baby-related life coming soon. also notice surrounding us are some of the succulents I dragged 5,000 miles on our cross-country trip. they make me happy. those wacky boys pictured have also been known to do same. 

Rhys' Birth Story

Hi, we were just in your store and I think we left a large, neon green rubber snake in your bulk section.

Did you say rubber snake, ma'am?

I'm afraid so.

This is how my labor started. Sort of. But let's back up to the morning of August 4.

I was excited to have just brought over that morning from our temporary Massachusetts accommodations of most of the summer to the new house, our house, what I needed to stay the night. It would be our first night all together there. It was also our 10^th wedding anniversary, one I had always believed we'd celebrate in Monterey with lots of friends.

But things were not where I could have ever anticipated them to be 10 years down the road... The POD was unloaded and sitting empty at the end of the driveway. The correct gas company had been summoned after a dumb misunderstanding that had us paying for someone's gas at this address in a city called Waymouth, MA – not where we live. That morning we'd interviewed a doula about the possibility of staying with Isaac during the birth. She seemed nice, if not ridiculously young and beautiful. Isaac had two days left of summer camp and while Mike attempted a stab at work, sitting with his laptop on the porch, I walked the third of a mile into the small town center, headed for the bookstore and lunch at my favorite cafe.

It was hot, but not exceedingly so by summer 2011 standards. I was having some contractions, but nothing exceedingly unusual by summer 2011 pregnancy standards.

I was happy. This simple walk. Time to myself. Time to try to take in that this was my space now. This unfamiliar neighborhood with the old growth trees and peace flags.

When I returned, Mike informed me that my mother-in-law and his aunt were coming over to wash the windows. As they like, I thought, and toppled over on the couch, exhausted. The women of Windex arrived and conquered, exclaiming all the while about how I walked “all that way!” into town.

Suddenly, it was late already – 4:30 – and I had yet to get to the grocery store. I felt like crap by now, but compelled to work on the shopping list. Isaac decided he was coming with me and so was his green snake.

I think that about catches us up to the opening telephone conversation.

After I got home, I reluctantly mentioned to Mike that the contractions felt different – a little rise to them. He looked downright frightened, but tried to cover it quickly. “You're not having a baby tonight, are you?” “Uh, nooooooooo,” I told him. Still, I thought it best to call the midwives.

When Isaac was born, our midwife, Maggie, barely got there in time. Two weeks early, a day before the home visit that would have saved Maggie from having to search blindly in the middle of the night for our apartment, Isaac shifted into position for exit. Then, an hour after she got there - wham, blam, thank you, ma'am, Isaac was out. Done. “Huh. And I thought you were going to be a pain in the ass,” Maggie marveled at me afterwards. “Thanks, Mag. Thanks a lot.”

Consequently, my midwives here drilled me with precautions about calling early when ANYTHING felt different. So I called. Their advice? Get in the bath and drink a glass of wine. Reason number 904 to hire a midwife and skip the doctor route.

If it's real labor, it won't stop the labor, they told me. If it's not, it will relax things.

I lumbered up the stairs to put Isaac to bed while Mike returned to our former place of residence to retrieve Emily cat. With Isaac was out cold, Mike hadn't returned, so I drew a bath as instructed.

When we first came to look at this house – second on our list of showings we'd lined up the day after crash landing in Massachusetts, I spotted a neighbor outside across the street. Mike was chatting up the realtor about furnaces while I slipped out the porch and over to the woman standing knee high in Queen Anne's Lace. We discussed the area a bit, the ages of the kids on the block and how she used to live in Palo Alto (CA). She seemed quite friendly and I was heartened.

Before I returned to actually look at the house we'd come to see, she lowered her voice and leaned in closer. I hear there is only one bathroom in there, she told me conspiratorially. Ooh. Neighborhood gossip. I liked it.

It is true that our new house has but a single bathroom. But neighbor lady only had part of the scoop – the bathroom had a beautiful claw foot tub...and no shower. No shower. It's an old house. It's a house CHOCK full of poorly orchestrated do-it-yourself projects. Over the last century, it's been added to, half-ass renovated, and (sort of) updated prior to putting it up for sale. But no one saw fit to add a pipe dripping warmish water from above. Mike's comment: “In a hundred years, no one wanted a shower?”

There is now a shower in the one bathroom. It only took a hundred years and one week. Imagine what we can accomplish from here. Anyhoo, let's return to that day – Rhys' day..Oh yeah, HIM! Was I writing about the birth of my son somewhere here? Or actually, let's return to the day before Rhys – OUR day – our damn anniversary...

I got into the claw foot tub that still lacked a shower and waited for my husband to get home. Seemed appropriate for an anniversary protocol. The claw foot tub ROCKED by the way. It was deep and comfortable and even in early labor and late pregnancy, my enormo-belly protruding out of the water like a great volcanic island, felt super.

Mike got home with Emily and a bottle of Riesling called “Relax” and we proceeded to the porch. Like the bath, the wine was great. However, neither seemed to stop the contractions which only intensified and prompted another call to the midwives around 10:30pm.

Mike was still looking wary of this whole thing, worried about how early the little person seemed to want to make his appearance.

By 11pm the first midwife arrived and though she talked about us getting a few more hours of sleep and coming back after setting up a few things “just in case,” she never left.

Now picture, if you will, boxes. Lots of boxes. Not much else besides boxes.

And picture, if you will, Mike and midwife ripping through boxes looking for all the supplies we needed for the home birth while mama sweated and groped for the occasional hand to hold.

Sometime shortly after midnight the second midwife arrived and joined the hunt.

Although just as quick, labor with Rhys was completely different than with Isaac. A different that was indisputable, but difficult to define and no less dramatic. Kind of like the earthquakes that shake vs. the ones that roll. Why do I sense that this metaphor will serve me on a variety of occasions as the boys grow up?

I was getting no relief between contractions because of the pressure of the bag of waters, which had never broken. It was an amebic pain without any clear signals about when to push or what to do at all. I will tell you that, sadly, I had nothing interesting to add to the lexicon during these intense hours. You'd think I'd be coining new expletives or - at the very least - cursing my husband. But my most oft used word was “Ouch” with a couple “Helps” sprinkled in. I was about a million degrees and demanding to be fanned, demanding attention that took my attending trio away from their continual search for more stuff they thought they needed for me to have this baby, but other than that, I was just slightly more whiny than usual as far as I recall.

I never quite found my rhythm with the labor. It was just too fast. The medical term is precipitous. The end came as a surprise to me. I could have had five minutes or five hours to go by then, I had no idea. But on the very same daddy-built bed as his brother arrived six years earlier, at 1:10am, on August 5, just clear of our anniversary date, Baby-baby, aka Rhys, entered the scene. 

Mike woke up Isaac just before his usual wake up time in the morning and told him we had a surprise for him downstairs. Having gone from excited about witnessing the birth to (after watching a couple birth videos) unsure if he really wanted to deal with all that, Isaac was not disappointed to have slept through it. He was very pleased to meet his brother, however, whom he (and the rest of us) continued to call Baby-baby.

Who knows what comes ahead of what. Did the walk “all that way” help bring on labor? Or did I walk all that way because labor was already in the works? Did Rhys come early because of all the craziness we endured during the pregnancy, or did I worry from week 18 that he would come early because I intuitively knew something?

Rhys was born at 36 weeks – just at the cut off of when I would be allowed to have him at home. This birth would have majorly sucked in the hospital. Everything about it would have signaled emergency to a hospital staff. My fitful, amebic pain would have had to be contained within a sterile cot and restricted by a monitor – several monitors. They would have taken him away from me. Suctioned him with machines.

And, really, what else would a baby skipping four weeks of gestation need more than just to be held by his mama?

“This is your new uterus,” one of the midwives told me sweeping her arm around the small room we'll eventually use as an office while discussing what special considerations this little preemie would need. I took in the boxes labeled things like “Isaac's books/toaster/Mike's diplomas,” thought about the pantry with its grimy thumb-tacked contact paper put up sometime between Watergate and Flashdance, and swallowed hard.

But as the sun entered the non-shatterproof glass on the window with the broken sash and chipping lead paint and spilled luxuriously across the fake wood vinyl flooring in the dining room just outside the “nursery” door, I knew it was the start of a new day.

1 in 80,000

Only one in 80,000 babies are born "in-the-caul." That is, still in all or part of the amniotic sac. The caul itself was very valuable through history as a lucky talisman and people who were born in this way were said to have special powers that help them see through the "veil of life," powers of premonition and clairvoyance.

Introducing

...four weeks ahead of schedule...born healthy and perfect...in-the-caul...at home, while his big brother slept...on the first night in our new house...
...just on the other side of our 10-year anniversary...the boy everyone was sure would be a girl...

RHYS XAVIER
5 lbs, 15 oz.
19.5 inches
August 5, 2011, 1:10 am

Rhys = of Welsh origin, meaning "boldness," "enthusiasm"
Xavier = of Basque origin, meaning "new house"

(pronounced Reese ZAY/Vee/Er)

everyone's happy on closing day

Meet the latest challenge in Emily's life.

Lucy.

As you may be able to divine, Lucy is a ferocious beast, ready to maul my poor girl the minute she gets the opportunity. She's all fang and slober and malice. She's...okay, she's a pile of depressed fluff because her family left her here while they go somewhere in Maine I can't pronounce. She took one sniff of cat from about 10 feet and ran the other way. The problem, however, is that Emily is oblivious to her power over this other animal. We are staying on the second floor, Emily's food and litter pan are in the basement, and in between there's...

Lucy.

And here she was thinking she was queen again. Sure, she smelled the cat that used to live here, up to just a few weeks before we arrived. Oh yeah, didn't I mention in my "the living and the dead" post a couple back that even my poor cat had to live in the shadow of death? Our host's cat died two months before we got here. He's buried in the backyard.

Times are tough, BUT! It's August. It really turned into August, like I never thought it would. Soon, these posts will include news of a house - our house! It's almost too much to believe.

August 1st = Our closing date. And everyone's happy on closing day, aren't they?

Here's the picture I have -- a bar, lots of dark wood, the TV monitors tuned to the Red Sox game but muted, the bartender drying out glasses or cutting lemons, a few couples eating at the surrounding tables. Now, over in the corner, near the waitress station, there are the realtors - ours and the seller's, their arms around each other, swaying. And what's that they are singing? "We're in the Money," I think. Their words are slurred a little, the shot glasses in their hands tilting out some of their moonshine. Before we pan away, several "Iloveyoumans" can be heard exchanged.

Oh! And look! There's the home inspector. He's given up the knee pads and the rubber shoe covers; he's looking sharp in a pressed white collar shirt open to his navel -- is that a gold medallion resting on his chest?? -- and he's leaning in toward the bartender, tracing his finger around and around the rim of his beer glass. I think he just licked his lips.

The loan officer from the bank is looking gooooood tonight. My oh my, I wouldn't have though she had it in her, but damn if she's not got that fishnet thigh wrapped around the pole on the stage in the back of the room. What would the underwriter think if she could see her now??? And she's stuffing hundred dollar bills in her own garter belt! Wow! Where could all that money that have come from?

Our lawyer is there, too, and, aw, gee, this is a little embarrassing, he's stripped down to his boxers and he's climbing up on the bar. He seems to be twirling his clothes around his head and gyrating his hips while occasionally letting out whooping noises and sucking down his vodka tonic."Easiest money I ever made!" he shouts over the jukebox (Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive") and then rocks his air guitar. And of course the paralegal is standing nearby, his right hand man. He just called for another round for the bar on Kitty and Mike!!

Parrrrr-teeeeee, Baby!

So raise a glass tonight, wherever you may be. It's on us.

Maggie

In most human cultures, birth is a social event not a potential medical emergency... - Geradine Simkins

When I left Monterey, one of the fabulous friends I left behind was my midwife, Maggie. She is an incredibly unique soul -- hilarious, insightful, grounded in layers of experience, politically and otherwise courageous, an amazing artist, an oasis of comfort.

She "caught" Isaac, as they say, and I wish very much she could be here for this baby. I got to spend the first trimester and a half with her.

She is one of the midwives featured in a new book called Into These Hands: Wisdom from Midwives, edited by Geradine Simkins. It is a compilation of the stories of midwives over the age of 50 who have been practicing for at least 25 years, how they came to be what they are and why they do what they do.

I miss you, Maggie!!

the living and the dead

She has two rhythms now

Another heartbeat

Almost too delicate

To dance to.

-- Taelen Thomas

My friend and colleague, the ineffable Taelen Thomas, wrote that for me spontaneously when he found out I was pregnant with Isaac back in 2004. He wrote it on an index card while we stood off stage together at the performance poetry show I was hosting at the time. I doubt he remembers it. But I always have, and when we were packing and moving I found the card. It's now taped up in the van; it traveled across the country with us, a new dance its purview these days.

As confused as I sometimes become about our decision to have another child, there is a need. It's large and small and touches many circles that don't always touch each other. I think it's safe for me to write with philosophical wonder about some things that have driven me to distraction in the last 5 weeks in Massachusetts because very soon we will actually be in our own house and I won't have to deal with it as my daily reality anymore.

Since we've arrived I feel like we've been infused with the dead. We are staying with someone whose long-time partner is critically ill with cancer. We get updates several times a day after her visits. An understandable obsession of hers these days, death and dying are also what we are regaled with stories of as she sits out the heatwave in front of the newspaper. A couple killed in a car accident. “Isn't it terrible??” A priest who shot himself. “Can you imagine??” A life apart from this black-shrouded barrage of facts? I hope I still can.

Then, amidst other more removed deaths – someone's daughter's husband's father, a guy who used to go dancing with so-and-so... – that we nonetheless hear about often and in detail, a couple weeks ago, Mike's uncle passed away.

We mentioned in casual conversation that we have promised Isaac a bunny for his 7^th birthday next year and he's very, very excited. “We used to have a bunny,” our host started. “A cute, black and white bunny. It lived out by the shed. Until one day a raccoon came – I think it must have gotten in through the top of the hutch...” You get the idea. Isaac and I sat shell-shocked at another blood-strewn tale where once there was just a furry pet.

The apparent “serendipity” of death, if you will, has reached such a fevered pitch that even the most seemingly innocent interactions steer in dangerous directions: “Have you ever seen a June bug, Isaac? Look, it's too fat to turn over again from its back!” “There are ants eating it,” my son informs her, taking a closer look, “It's dead.”

Even when we arrived here was curious timing. It was the same weekend I flew in to Jersey last year for my mom. The one-year anniversary of her death on June 19 came 2 days after we got here and continues to shadow me.

As you may or may not imagine, being pregnant, in a new town, grieving, buying a house, blah blah blah blah blah, has brought on more than one meltdown to this poet's constitution. At one point, Mike said, “Do you think you can ask your mom for help?” To which I snapped “NO! I'm tired of dead people. I've had enough of dead people!”

Of course I want her to walk with me, but at the same time it's especially painful right now. And of course the dead and the living can be in conversation, but even Persephone got to come the hell back from the Underworld for part of the year.

It is time for life. New life. Why do you think I am so addicted to farmer's markets? It's about abundance, a coming to fruition, displaying beauty, Demeter restored.

In a few weeks I get to hold the new. I get to feel brand new life, right there in my arms. And I remember this much, the wave of hope will be bigger than all the rest of this. It's time to clean things up, sweep away the June bugs. 

“Don't pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living.” - Albus Dumbledore

Bay-buh-Bay-buh

If I were to post a wanted ad for friends, which I indeed need in my new home, I might require a quality that I can't quite put my finger on the name of. Rather, let me tell you a story that might illustrate it.

One day Isaac and I were at the children's museum and I happened to run into a good friend of mine, Alicia, with her twin girls who were probably about four at the time. All involved were please by this chance encounter and after the kids had had their fill of playing restaurant and hospital, we headed out together to a taquería close by.

Waiting for our food at the booth, Alicia pulled out of her purse a copy of Gabriel García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I've been trying to read this,” she said simply. “I brought it along in case.” I have always had a deep respect for Alicia; we have fun together; we can talk about all kinds of things; we were friends before we had kids; we've stayed friends after having kids; she has wrapped her mother world into her preexisting one. Unflappable, she acknowledges the changes motherhood has brought to her life while maintaining her interests, her poise, and her personality.

And in that moment, when I saw the book, not only did I again fall madly in love with her, I understood on some level without a name how it was we came to be such good friends. Anyone who carries One Hundred Years of Solitude around hoping to catch a moment when her twin preschoolers are occupied long enough that she might read a line or two? These are my people.

I no longer have the option of having people meet me pre-kid(s). That's an interesting space for me to ponder.

I can remember when Mike and I first arrived in Monterey and I began my graduate program. It weirded me out slightly that everyone meeting me was meeting me as part of a couple. It was particularly odd seeing how Mike and I were very new to coupledom at the time. We'd taken off together after knowing each other not all that long at all and we had no idea where this thing might go, or if it might just die a quick and dirty west coast death.

I am still relatively new to motherhood and now I will become new all over again. Different baby. Different phase. Different rules. But soon, people passing me on the street will just see the ladywiththebaby. The mom. I have yet to reconcile completely with my mother identity, but in some kind of insane apprenticeship, I've decided the best way to get there is to try again.

We call the baby “Baby-Baby.” Since Isaac will always be my baby, the logic goes that this one must be Baby-Baby. Isaac has somehow shortened it recently to sound a bit like Elvis, lip curled: “Bay-buh-Bay-buh,” he'll pronounce. Our Vegas star will be here in another month or so.

I wrote so much poetry during the time I was pregnant with Isaac, and I've basically written close to zero in the last eight months. I feel the desire to get some out about this pregnancy before it's over, before the new little one appears. It will be the last time I carry a child like this, from within the intimate space of blood and darkness. I am cautious of what things the power of another being will shift in our lives, just as I am also enamored of him/her, protective, mama-bear-hormone in love. My belly protrudes into the world as a tease to me, a taunt representing the directions out and away.

Soon, Mama, I will have the ability to move out there. I will move away from you. I will leap unprotected and you will be lucky to capture the trail of my laughter as I go.

Matt of Matt's Garage

Some of my more faithful and astute readers may recall a passing reference I made to a bar in Iowa called Glenn's – the same one where I was harassed by the pig farmer for my dietary choices – in which I state that the owner's name as Jerry. This didn't seem all that odd to me since I had already under my belt the experience of the garage where the majority of work for the Van had been done before we left for our cross-country trip: a place called “Just Andy's,” the owner, none other than Pierre. I was getting used to this trend, until I met Matt.

Our Mazda 3 hatchback was waiting for us at my in-laws' house when we got to this side of the country. It was not a tearful, joyful reunion as I've always hated that damn car. If you have nothing else to do and want to read about how it entered our lives, be my guest. Here's the back story of why we needed to get it. Here's part one of shopping for the new car. Here's the Mazda deal.

I had to admit after some consideration that shipping the sucker rather than selling it was the route to take. But I wasn't going to like it. My best hope was if it got stuck in a snow bank over the winter, never to be recovered. Or its exhaust system choked with some a swarm of bizarre flying summer bugs, known only in the northeast, their infestations coming every 4.73 years. Or something that would completely kill it, forcing us to junk it and move on with our lives.

Spiteful little be-otch vehicle that it is, it was just the clutch that went, and right away to boot. Expensive enough to hurt, but extremely fixable.

We got a recommendation on a place close by called Matt's Garage and headed in. We discussed the problem with someone there and decided on a plan of action. As we turned to leave, I inquired of the man who'd been helping us his name. He gave me a funny look before answering. “Matt. I'm Matt,” he said, all but pointing to the sign on the building behind us. Oh. What was this new and magical world I'd entered where things are in fact what they appear to be??

After our first meeting and during the time the Mazda was at his place, Matt would call me often. Whenever I'd be expecting realtors, lawyers, inspectors, it was always Matt on the phone. He started every conversation the same way. “Hi. This is Matt.” Like we'd been buds for years. It always took me a second or two. “Matt,” he'd repeat. “Matt's Garage.” I hate that car. But I think I like Matt.

Pretty soon the clutch was fixed, and we were back on the road.

Then, at 8:30am my phone rings. Seems a little early even for my relentless realtor. It's my friend, Matt.

“You in possession of that Mazda?” he says, serious as all get out. “Are you anywhere near Easthampton right now??” he prompts. Having taken note of our California plates but deprived our full story, he was concerned. We were all of about a half mile away and as far as I knew the piece of shit was still in the driveway.

“We found a spot of oil on the ground where the Mazda was parked. I gotta put it on the lift.”

A spot of oil? Big flipping deal. Mister, do you have any idea the kinds of cars I've driven? A spot of oil??

“I can be there in a couple hours,” I told him still groggy.

“Okay,” he said, like he didn't really trust me to come.

The scribbles on scrap paper on my nightstand read like an amnesiac's to do list. I need a new everything, from pediatrician to bank account. I have no friends here; I do not recognize anyone around town. I get lost on the way to Isaac's school. I have no idea where to take my son on these empty, hot days before we are fully settled. But I think it's safe to cross “mechanic” off the list.

first impressions

I am now in New England where they are bringing things like maple syrup, lawn mowing, and the Red Sox to a new art form. Though I can abide only one of these past times, I am trying my best to fit in.

There are other strange things about this eastern land, for example, the weather. The rains in Monterey, wild and fierce as they are, generally contain themselves to their own season, the winter season to be exact, and we do not see them during summer. Here in Massachusetts, they come and go, announcing themselves with thunderous warnings but falling, as you'll have it, straight down for lack of ocean winds. I have not known rain like this – beginning somewhere in the heavens and dropping in vertical lines to the ground. And on those days when the clouds cover the brutal sun, people shiver and say things like “Gloomy weather!” and my thoughts of camaraderie fall away again. By contrast, they step into day after day of 90 degrees and declare it “beautiful.” Perhaps if you're a lizard and not an 8-month-pregnant woman acclimated to 65 degree summer days. Perhaps if your biggest goal is to mow your lawn and watch the Sox game.

Normally, I hate air conditioners – all that mechanical whirring to send out artificial air. But these days they are not only my friend in survival, their noise is like a cocoon blocking out the immediate world. I like it. It's why I wear earplugs on planes – not because it will stop the shrieks of the toddler two rows up, but because combined with the noise of the engine, I can close myself off from the reality in front of me and the sound and the feel become dreamlike, with a bit of the quality of being under water, and I can better imagine the angels whose wings support the metal mystery of physics through these 30,000 feet. Back in my airconditioned room, in someone else's house, hungry and not at all sure I won't get lost again on the way to the grocery store, I do not know what the angels do here yet. I am, in essence, waiting for the angels.

The trees here do not include cypress or redwood, though I'm told they throw a party in the fall. They will wow me with colors, I'm told, and for this I should celebrate them and dispense with the space in my heart for soft red bark, for canopies that enclose me but do not block the sound of waves. Where do I go to grieve this lack? They were my church.

We arrived on a Friday; it was one of those “gloomy” days. We were greeted by family who were thrilled to see us and have yet to ask us a single question about our five and a half weeks on the road. We go to lunch and sprinkler parks, the latter surely anomalies in water-starved California. We pick blueberries. We wait for our own house. We joke with the bored high school student operating the “Kiddieville” train at the park and who collects her two-dollar fare from behind iron bars. “Are the bars really necessary?” Mike asks, and she laughs in that way people do when they've discovered something about their own situation for the first time, perhaps always suspecting there was a way to articulate it.

Northampton, Massachusetts

Okay, enough of this chronicling in an orderly fashion. Here's the live scoop – we've been here for a month. Except, not really *here.* We're staying with Mike's aunt in a town *near* Northampton. I thought my fine readers deserved a quick update, and then perhaps, after this, I can get back to the charming, literary entries you've all become accustomed to. Well, the “entries” part, anyway.

Oh, where to begin?? We have not really processed the trip. We hit the ground running and with any luck may close on a house the first week of August. Just in time to unpack a box or two, rip out the hideous green carpet, then have a baby and let the rest stand in chaos for the following three years.

We have juuuuust a little going on these days: Staying at someone else's house, in the process of buying our own – talking to realtors, bankers, lawyers, home inspectors...I really can't keep up, shopping for lists of things I need for a home birth (as if I have a home), shopping for lists of things Isaac needs for school in the fall, sending Isaac to a summer program, new bank accounts, new car registration, new vets, new doctors, new dentists, new midwives, Mike working at “home,” 90 degree heat, and a dead clutch, to name a couple. (that final bit is not referring to the van, which continues to kick ass and has a twin in town somewhere we've spotted a couple times, but my nemesis, the Mazda, which we shipped and which arrived with clutch ready for the trash – story about Matt the mechanic to follow.)

I feel a wee overwhelmed. If only I were Kramer from Seinfeld and could do everything at once, no sweat. Remember the one about driving the bus and fighting off the mugger? Go here for a blast from the sitcom past: http://youtu.be/otItiZq-S5I

Maybe we'll just move on for now to a few pictures.

My son is still a goofball.

Emily is still clearly traumatized by the trip...

And misses the port o' potty.

found a cool market for my farmer's market habit.

this sculpture was labeled "Birth" - Do I need to tell you the artist is a man?

One of several favorite doctored signs around town.

Indeed. - more amusing signage.

Day Thirty-Eight: Stony Point, NY to Northampton, Massachusetts

This is it. Our final day of travel. My second cross-country drive and I still haven't made it to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis. Sigh. You don't get everything you want in this world, that's clear.

When this trip/move/uprooting/change/career slaying decision was still just a possibility, people were fond of telling me it sounded like a good idea – if we were in our 20s and had no kids. I wondered at this kind of reaction. Sooooo, the message we want to pass on to our children is stay safe at any cost? If you are unsatisfied, settle. Don't take any risks, and don't do anything hard. When we tell my mother-in-law that Mike can work remotely for his California job through the rest of the year and she says, “And then what??” I expect it. Fear is a mighty and pervasive companion. But, let me put out a mild advisory to the rest of you. Think about what drives your decisions.

As we approach Massachusetts, I grow more and more melancholy. Because trite metaphor follows me like gum on a shoe, there are storm clouds hanging in the sky.

It rained all night last night. Quiet at first, then the trees grew heavy holding too much to themselves and opened their arms to share. And the lightning came.

Isaac, who sleeps on the “second floor” of the van, under the canvas pop up part was not at all in favor of the weather. He and Mike traded places, so I had my little guy with me and in need of cuddles. Hannah – his bedtime lovey – was afraid too, he told me. His tooth was loose and he was afraid of swallowing it in his sleep. So many fears piling up, coming to roost with just this sound of water, the sky giving back.

So often gifts are misconstrued as threats, as if in each of us there lies a Trojan horse waiting to spring terror onto us. Way back in Sedona, when Emily got out and was sitting out of sight on top of the van transmission for three hours and Isaac had to go to bed without knowing if his beloved cat was ever coming back, I told him some secrets of a philosophy I'd been introduced to myself relatively recently. It was time for me to try them out on someone else. I told him that the Universe is kind and wants to help us. That there is more good than “bad” in the world.

He stopped sobbing for a moment and asked me, startled, “There is??” Maybe he believed me. I can hope. Maybe I believed me, too.


I really must thank all the friends that put us up and put up with us along the way -- Christine, Heather, Mark, Sheila & Paul, Lisa & Scott, Barb & Chris, and John. We love you guys and we miss everyone back in MRY!!

Day Thirty-Seven: to Stony Point, New York

It was in the bathroom at the Spring Gulch Campsite in Lancaster County the morning we left for the Hudson Valley that I realized just how far I was from California.

The cleaning woman began her conversation with me while I was still in the stall. It involved missing handsoap, all the times people have taken it and all the places she's found it. (On top of the light fixtures being one of the more ambitious locales.)

When I emerged, the litany continued briefly before turning toward how the president isn't doing anything about jobs, followed by how she is looking forward to collecting an unemployment check come November when the campsite closes for the season.

Following the natural flow of the conversation, she then shared with me the news about her brother's aneurism and stroke two weeks ago.

Hand soap to aneurism is under five minutes – I'd have had to put on a garage sale in California to get that kind of chit chat out of a stranger. This was another land; this was the east, where people who have never seen each other before and will likely never see each other again have been known to talk easily about birth, death, and when the hell the bus might come anyway. I know this space. This is the crowded east, where towns and people fill in the space as fast as trees. PA, NJ, NY...The familiarity wraps around me, but I am guarded.

We are en route to Beaver Pond Campground in Harriman State Park in New York. It will be our last night out on the road. It's raining and green and Emily is meowing like crazy. The views of the Hudson will surprise us with their beauty; Isaac will get his first campfire night since South Dakota; there will be a young deer continually grazing within 20 feet of our site; there will be singing frogs and the discovery by my kiddo of a rock with impressions of shell fossils we will later find out are likely the leftovers of a traveling glacier from the last ice age; we are full circle; it has been quite the prehistoric-heavy trip. Things have changed a little since then -- the highways here are narrow and fast; we will study the map hard-- if you choose one direction you will be on 287 and if you turn the other you're on 278. Stay on your toes and whatever you do, keep moving. Today, that glacier would be a muddy puddle in the blink of an eye.

Before we began, the motto for the trip was SLOW. Ironically, it was Mike that put this out there, along with how glad he was for it. The van couldn't speed. We'd have no choice but to take it down a notch. But almost six weeks later, we must go faster, faster, longer, like someone who needs to prove something because they are different. Physically, I am hating on these northeast roads, my hands constantly around my growing belly.

But I'm proud of our little van. It made it, All this way. Go, Westy, go!

Mike has done ALL the driving. I didn't expect that. I feel vaguely ashamed. But at a certain point, it's like a pitcher you want to leave in the game so he can get his no-hitter.

The rain cranks up as we fall into our last night's van dreams.

Detour: Howling in The Van™

I've started to wonder what our trip would look like to the outside viewer if it were, for example, a reality TV show.

There'd be a lot of shots of the scene out the window from behind my head and just off center to the left. Lots of traffic cones. Lots of red rocks, replaced by grass now. So much grass. “Mowing Ahead” the signs along the highway say. I've started to wonder just how many people are kept employed by the fertile fields of green swords.

There'd be no soundtrack in our reality show since we have had virtually no music. Creeping up on 5,000 miles – number of musical hours might hit four if we're lucky, but only because John in Leesburg, VA hooked us up with some cassettes. Yes, I said cassettes. The van, might I remind you, is 30 years old – it has a cassette player, and only a cassette player. We had a sucky MP3 player and an even suckier hook up to try to get some tunes going and it usually didn't work. The precious battery life of laptops was reserved for other things, and Mike's attempt at a car charger for them almost set my son on fire somewhere left of the Mississippi. 

MP3 player/converter connection. Can I please just remind you that my husband is an engineer...

Between Monterey, CA and Leesburg, VA, our only tape was one randomly left in the van – a homemade compilation called “AIDS Ride 70s.” Any guesses at how many times you have to hear “I Will Survive” before you have zero will to survive?

One through line to our show would have to be Isaac in the gift shops of America. Isaac started the trip with his own spending money. It was money his grandparents had given him over time, tucked in Easter cards and such, plus change he'd amassed, etc. It added up to a pretty impressive sum and we told him he was free to use it on souvenirs along the way. Naturally, what I had in mind was after he'd fallen head over heels in love with some place or event, he'd just have to have a small momento – a magnet, or a little piece of petrified wood. Instead, my son walked through some of the country's greatest landmarks asking “Does this place have a gift shop?” Then proceeded to find a truck to buy. Taos: Sandpaintings? Turquoise crafts? Handthrown pottery? Wrong! Mailtruck. Carnegie Museum of Natural History: Dinosaur skeleton? Book on Ancient Egypt? Try a matchbox of a pickup towing an ATV.

And the port o' potty. That would be big. Oh, didn't I mention the port o' potty before? Must have slipped my mind. By day, an innocent plastic footstool; by night, an ugly necessity for the preggo who must pee every 10 seconds, and the boy, when it suits him. Mike, being superior to the other two members of his family in every way, does not use the port o' potty, though in a cruel twist in the hierarchy, he must empty it. There would be the scenes of Isaac almost tipping it over, the ones of Mike dragging the port o' potty bag to the campsite dumpsters; the ones of everyone's facial contortions the time we left it in the hot van for a week while staying elsewhere and then opened it once again. Is this getting too real yet?

In our reality show, which might be called, The Van™ (As in, “I'm goin' across the country in The Van, Bitches!”), I'd have to get in the confessional and talk about how many books I brought with me that I haven't cracked. Some of them I brought under the impression that I would read parts of them and use them to write broadly-based, witty commentaries on human foibles. I brought things like Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Not that I read either of these things on any regular or comprehensive basis, but I thought they'd be good for quotations and springboard material.

Ultimately, however, when I was hot, and bellified, and didn't have lots of open thinking time, I did not reach for the boys of generation Beat. I reached instead for Toni Morrison and her complex worlds of turn of the century African-American women. Who can explain this, except that boys are smelly and have cooties and Toni Morrison, when asked what book she'd bring to a deserted island, responded that she'd bring blank paper and write her own, kicks the hippie asses of Kerouac and Ginsberg combined.

Nonetheless, we have the Howl bumpersticker on the van. For those who don't know, Howl is the name of a book-length poem by Ginsberg that Lawrence Ferlinghetti (poet and founder of San Francisco's City Lights Books) published in 1957, only to be brought up on charges of obscenity from which he was later found not guilty. A recent movie called “Howl” explored the trial and some of Ginsberg's life. I would recommend it, if for nothing else the peek into 1950s American politics, though I found the whole movie interesting. City Lights is super way cool, and often a peek into current American politics.

I wrote a poem about the famous quote of Ginsberg's,“First thought, best thought” - a sentiment which 1) he knew damn well was bullshit when he said it (you should see the drafts of Howl...) and 2) has caused me great distress in working with young poets who get all starry-eyed at the mention of anything connected to the Beats and have been known to insist that their own crap verse is just perfect without any revision because, well, just look at what Ginsberg said!

While grateful to the Beats for putting down some groundwork for poetic movements, I maintain a healthy skepticism about their poetry and their general sense of craft. You can read a review I did of Diane DiPrima's Memoirs of a Beatnik here. (There also used to be an audio link, but I don't think it works anymore.) Or maybe my skepticism is aimed at the new generation of Beat worshippers. Anyhoo...

My poem (called “Redemption”) begins like this:

Damn you, Ginsberg, for ever saying it. / Damn your whole generation of social rebels / and jazzy-improv lyricists.

Later in the poem I suggest he perhaps come back from the other side for a couple days and recant, since surely eternal meditation must have changed his mind...

You could call a press conference, / broadcasting from City Lights, / Ferlinghetti seated at the table beside you, / copies of Howl piled like flapjacks and crowds/ craning to see.

Tell them you take it all back. / Tell them the angels set you straight / and you’re here to spread the word. / Explain how, besides, you’d never advocate / doing the Times crossword in pen. / Comb your beard with your fingers, well-up / for the cameras, release your flock, / Shepherd Ginsberg, to their imperfect / first thoughts, to wander home / stunned and free / to bleed all over their manuscripts, /

rivers of ink...

Who am I kidding? Poetry and reality TV? That would never fly, although those Beats had an awful lot of sex.

We still need a name for the van – please send your suggestions!