Control in the Block Room

Your sister has been having a little bit of a tough time lately.  Even at school.  A few days ago she had to be taken away from the art table because she was so adamantly instructing every other child about appropriate color choices.  On the following day she was so intent on directing the exact pattern of a game in the block room that she ended up in a face-off with the teacher, arms crossed over chest, back against the wall, full-on dress up garb, refusing to move.  Teacher Sarah took her to the kitchen area for a quiet conversation.  She told Thisbe that the only person she really needs to worry about is herself.  That all of the other kiddo will worry about their own selves.  And then the teacher said (and this is what kills me), "Thisbe, we just want you to feel happy inside" at which point Thisbe broke out into huge, heaving sobs.

It is hard not to feel this as a huge fail in the parenting department.  In part because our daughter so deeply needed for someone to tell her that her happiness was important.  And in part because the whole control thing?  Well, I am definitely the don't-splash-the-bathwater-all-over-that's-too-much-paint-on-the-brush-at-one-time-why-don't-you-wear-different-pants-it's-cold-out-sit-down-while-we're-eating-please-don't-stand-on-your-head parent.  I really, really love control.  Or the appearance of control.  Or rather, not attempting to control things causes a great deal of anxiety for me. So when Teacher Sarah suggested that Daddy and I model the kind of behavior we hope Thisbe will enact I thought: "Duh" followed by "Shit."

Letting go of control completely, while a nice thing to do on a beach in Marin, high and wearing a howling wolf T-shirt, isn't really reasonable as a parent.  I guess it is if you want your child to write a memoir called "The Glass Castle" later on, but most parents try to control some parameters for their kiddos in order to keep them safe or to teach them something.  I mean, car seats and cribs are fairly "controlling" devices I suppose, but most of us agree they're necessary.  And I don't always know what separates unnecessary (crazy?) control choices from pragmatic ones. 

But I suppose that all of this, what Thisbe is learning, what I am trying to learn myself, is preparing us for everything that happens to us and to those we love over which we have no control.  Like how over on the other side of town our friend David has been diagnosed with cancer.  David, who is the husband of our wonderful friend Jennifer who died last fall.  This diagnosis feels unfathomable, awful, completely out of control. 

When I asked my wise friend Trish "what do we do in the face of something like this?" she talked about sacramentalizing the ordinary.  And maybe this is an important act because control is so caught up in our own will and desire, our own vision of how things should be.  And it's easy to spend all afternoon with your back against the wall in the block room, wishing with all your heart that the world was behaving differently.  But then, of course, you miss the world as it is.  And you miss getting to join your friends in the game.

The Sofa Table

Today you and I and Grandma Gail traveled bravely to Lakeville to the Hom superstore to look for a sofa table.  I feel like a sofa table is the kind of piece of furniture that you aren't even aware exists until you turn 35.  But now that I am indeed 35, I go shopping for sofa tables.

Heavy white sky and snow wisping across the road.  Everything else a brittle brown stalk or a downtrodden building.  Everything glum.  Unwashed hair.  Sweet potato smeared on the collar of my fleece.  You in blue stripes and Dot's knit booties.  Gail in her white poof hat and Ugg-ish boots.  And seemingly no one else in the Hom superstore.

You found the Hom superstore fascinating.  So many colors and textures.  Furniture everywhere like hulking leather beasts.  Lamps with dangling faux crystals, rosemary-eucalyptus candles, throw pillows with birds or swirls or silky white hair.  And when you grew bored of the newness you simply bent your head forward and focused on sucking the front of the Baby Bjorn.

I found the Hom superstore exhausting.  I think because when you walk into someone's home there's always a moment of adjustment; you take in the color of the rug and the placement of the furniture and the texture of the blanket thrown over the back of the couch.  Spaces have a sense of presence and though I realize we're never consciously thinking about what this or that knick-knack MEANS I do think that we're absorbing the aesthetic somehow.  So I find walking through 50 different staged living rooms in the span of 15 minutes to be rather overwhelming.

I did however love the expression on the showroom employee's face when she leaned over the couch on which Grandma Gail and I were sitting and came face to face with my naked boob.  She immediately backed away as though she'd found a scorpion singing Raffi songs but then you could see (SEE!) her think "I should act like this is no big deal, right?  Right.  No big deal" and then she came back toward us and mumbled something about "were we finding everything" at which point you stopped nursing so you could watch her and she got a full glimpse of my nipple hanging out of the side of your mouth. 

We did not buy a sofa table.  And when we got home and I showed Daddy the pictures we'd taken of possible candidates, he sweetly but condescendingly told me that those were really console tables, not sofa tables at all.  I guess that makes me 34.

Half a Wow Sound

Feeling a little blah today.  So I'll be quick about it.

You continue to strain under the effort of trying to push solid foods through your body.  When I feed you, you continually re-open your mouth for more but each time I insert the food you greet me with a face that looks like you were expecting chocolate and instead I'd spooned in mackerel.  Something like this:

Though clearly, as this picture reveals, I continually try to coax you into a more effervescent experience of food my making faces like this as I feed you:

Luckily for both of us your sister Thisbe has enough carbonation within her to send Exhaustion, Boredom, Non-Plussdom, and their Blah-pets to internment camps in Rhode Island.

Today we were supposed to pretend like she wasn't wearing fancy clothes and then, when she whipped off her robe (that's actually a prayer shawl), I was instructed to let my jaw drop and make about half of a "Wow" sound at the pure fanciness of her clothes beneath.  "Wooooo":

Otherwise

More and more you are reaching forward, out, away from yourself.

Uncle Nels is giving Thisbe a bath.  A great gift especially considering that tonight is one of the few nights Nels doesn't have to give his own daughters a bath.  He also went with Grandma Gail to watch your sister dance today.  Apparently she was especially excited when it was her turn to pretend to be a rock.

We vacuumed today.  We put Thisbe's spring coats in the basement.  We cleared books and Thisbe's drawings and car keys and cell phones and manila folders off the dining room table and set it with blue Fiestaware plates.  We ate baked potatoes with garlic slivered into the middles.  

You tasted pears.  You produced your first solid, grown-up poop.  You touched the piano keys while Grandma Gail played and sang to you.  You shoved the nose of a stuffed reindeer as far into your mouth as possible.  You gleefully raised your legs and brought them down over and over again, little exclamation marks punctuated into the carpet. 

I read over Jim's words today, his essay in our book that will be published in May.  I was supposed to be looking for errors but I kept thinking about him.  How different it is to read the words now, when he is on the other side of them.  How nice it is to hear his voice; how awful not to have his presence.

I read Thumbelina to Thisbe at Blue Monday.  I drank the rest of her hot chocolate on the way home.  I unfolded a blue fleece that came in the mail.  I listened to a message from my best friend (her child's first birthday, saying good-bye to people she loves, an upcoming move, a massage to look forward to)  I listened to other friends talk about illness and doubt.

I almost titled this "The Most Boring Post in the World," not so much because nothing interesting happened today, but because my brain doesn't seem to be working well enough to draw any significance or insight from the seemingly unremarkable.  But then I thought of Jane Kenyon's poem "Otherwise."  I remembered that I will be on the other side of these words someday too.  And, sweet boy, maybe someday mine will be the voice that you are longing to hear.

More and more you are reaching forward, out, away.

ALL CAPS

Today is warm again.  Blue ceiling of sky with clouds impishly scattered here and there, the kind of sky you might play badminton beneath.  Or croquet.  If the temperature was above 50 degrees.  Or you had grass instead of snow.  And no children.  And five or six chaise lounges scattered over your veranda.  Upon which cucumber sandwiches and iced tea were being served.  Presently.  And someone wearing a waistcoat said something to someone wearing a diamond brooch.  Etcetera.

Thisbe and her friend E had an afternoon tea party yesterday.  Thisbe insisted on candlelight and flowers.  There were also goldfish.  After tea was served the ladies fell into their usual quibbling so I told them I'd be listening from the kitchen and I would just be SO SHOCKED if I heard kind things passing between them.  There's nothing two first born children like better than compliments from an authority figure.  They like it better, it seems, then actually playing with one another.  For the next half hour I just heard loud voices from the other room saying things like, "WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ THIS BOOK WITH ME?" "OH, YOU CAN HAVE THAT FIRST" "THANK YOU SO MUCH THISBE" "YOU CAN BE ARIEL" "NO YOU CAN BE ARIEL"  Every five minutes either Thisbe or E would come into the kitchen and I would have to feign large amounts of shock at the manners being displayed.  It was a little bit like listening to a very, very bad skit for college freshman on the dangers of drinking or sleeping around. "AFTER THREE BEERS I FEEL SO DIZZY" "WHY DON'T YOU LET ME DRIVE!" "I HAVE A CONDOM." GREAT!  LET'S PRACTICE SAFE SEX."

Today you got to spend some time with Grandma Gail in the morning while I worked on page proofs for a book at Blue Monday.  After your second nap (the joy of 45 minutes!) we walked up to St. Olaf and I said things to you in all caps to keep you from falling asleep in the Ergo. "LOOK AT THE TREES.  MATTEUS.  ARE YOU AWAKE?  WAKE UP.  WAKE UP."

Now I'm in bed, laptop on my lap, opting for caffeine and a gooey butter cookie and blip-writing rather than taking the nap that my body would prefer.  It's been 45 minutes since you closed your eyes and I hear a cooing coming from your room.  You're testing the quieter registers of your voice, craning your neck to watch those sound slide through the bars of your crib. 

In and With

Last night Daddy and I drank a little too much.  This is never a very wise idea but it's even less wise when you have a five-month-old at home.  Lucky for us, Grandma Gail came to the rescue this morning and entertained you and your sister until 8:30 so that Daddy and I could enjoy our headaches in the daylight instead of the darkness of 7am.  But it was wonderful to have a night out, for the music to be loud enough to drown out voices and work its way into the shoulders and ribcage and hips.  Nice to shimmy.  Everyone disembodied a little in the packed crowd, close enough to exist only from the breastbone up: the hair, the eyes, the neck.  Frozen busts melted into motion.

We gave you over to the nursery workers for the first time today in your red Choo-Choo vest and brown knit pants.  You sucked on your knuckles and watched the other children orbit and send off sparks.  Your sister wore a dress my grandma made for my cousin Emily.  White with blue smocking across the front, tiny blue dots on the collar.  Thisbe paired this short-sleeved dress with a brown long sleeve shirt underneath (for warmth), lavender tights, and silver shoes (Grandma Dythe would have been mildly appalled).  During communion Thiz dropped her silver ring and then climbed beneath my chair to try to find it.  In the process (lavender legs in the aisle) she tripped about half a dozen people en route to the bread and wine.  She also knocked over my coffee mug.  I hissed at her.  She cried.  I held her on my lap.  We sang "Go My Children With My Blessing." A photographer snapped pictures of the acolyte on tiptoe extinguishing the baptismal candle.

It was baptismal remembrance Sunday so while Thisbe was in Sunday school Daddy and Grandma and I sat in the sanctuary and heard a little bit about baptism.  In the Small Catechism Luther says that the water itself isn't powerful on its own; its the word of God in and with the water that gives it the special mojo.

I like the phrase "in and with," the idea that God is both inside and beside us, internal and external, present and presence; God washing up against both sides of my skin.

A Slough of Maybes

You were awake from 4:00-5:00am last night.  We aren't sure why.  Maybe because we got home late last night and your sleep was broken.  Maybe because you are learning to say "buh," lips forming a tight line and brow furrowed to send vibrations through that seam.  Maybe because you are trying to very hard to roll from your back to your front.  Sadly, you don't seem to realize you need to turn to your side first.  Instead you dig your heels into the ground and arch your back and shriek.  When you're in a better mood, your favorite new trick is dancing.  While on your back you move your top half side to side as though you were trying to scratch off a lottery ticket with your shoulder blades.  You wiggle your hips and kick your feet at the same time and look very much like a happy John Travolta doing Jazzercise.

We've just returned from sledding.  I made hot cocoa with steamed milk and Thisbe ate tapioca pudding with thawed berries on top.  Grandma Gail sat beside her in the breakfast nook and whisked soy sauce and peanut butter and sesame oil in a glass bowl for the pork fried rice she's making tonight.  The St. Olaf hill was slick today.  We haven't had fresh snow for ages and the snow we do have has hardened into an inhospitable crust.  The temperature was over 30 degrees and there must have been 50 people swarming over the white.  Dark bodies in snow suits turning slowly front to back as the sleds descended.  Figures trudging up the sides of the hill, over leaves and shards of broken sleds and cardboard rectangles.  We watched a girl sled directly into an adult male's crotch.  Thisbe got to ride with me and with Grandma Gail and with Daddy and even with you.  I thought that Daddy strapping you to his chest and then traveling at high velocities down a hill was unwise--but he and Gail thought I was being a sissy and so you went.  Your facial expression barely changed;

I don't think the sensation of sledding was much different to you than the sensation of being swung into the air or saddled on a hip or jiggled on our thighs.  Par for the course.

Tonight Daddy and I are actually going out on the town; drinks with friends followed by a band's CD release party.  Maybe I will wear something that isn't made of fleece and doesn't have snot smeared across the shoulder region.  Maybe we will talk about something other than nap routines and the Montessori philosophy and teeth breaking the gum line.  Maybe we will dance.