The Very Real Urge to Hibernate

Negative 24 when we woke up this morning.  59 inside the house.  Brilliant blue sky and the cold glaring down. 

You are in much better spirits, bouncing happily in your exer-saucer, opening your lips for spoonfuls of pear puree, trying to turn the knob of my nose to open my face, etc.

I am not in such good spirits.  Somehow, your father coming home from the trip felt like it should be the end of a difficult month.  But it wasn't.  The temperature is still disturbingly low.  I'm still wearing only grungy, highly washable clothing items (since you're still a snot lord).  I'm in a rather unhealthy cycle of caffeine to get me through the day and alcohol to reward myself at night.  I should have taken you walking today but somehow lugging the stroller in and out of the car, lugging my shoes and your diaper bag in and out of the car, and then circling on the grey track for the twenty minutes you allow me before beginning to fuss seemed like too much energy, too much work.  Especially because on each go-round we pass the row of treadmills and stair-masters and the co-eds with bopping ponytails and i-pod budded ears, sweating off the fat free ranch dressing they had with lunch.

Instead of walking we went to Target.  I filled the cart with boxes of Kleenex and organic baby prunes and 9M fleece sleepers from the clearance rack.  I bought a latte from the Starbucks inside and pushed you in circles and hated being the suburban mom with a Starbucks buying crap out of boredom and desperation at Target.

I feel huge and ugly and sluggish.  I feel a very real urge to hibernate.  I can almost taste how beautiful it would be.  To bed down in a nest of fur, to sleep uninterrupted until the pull of birdsong and the clash of tulips woke me in the spring.  To be gone from it all, temporarily. 

I know, too, how ridiculous this is.  Our house is warm.  We have money and jobs we love.  Kids we adore who came to us without much difficulty.  We feel safe outside after dark.  We don't fear persecution.  We have community and computers and chocolate hearts in red tinfoil.

You still despise tummy time.  You look around for a few moments and then you lay your cheek on the ground, defeated and lifeless.  This is how I feel today, sweet boy.  As though someone has put me in a position that requires a kind of strength I'm not yet certain I possess.

On the Mend

When you woke at 11:30 and 3:30 and 5:30 last night you were congested but your head also held the clamminess of a broken fever.  And though the whites of your eyes are still tinged pink and your eyelids still webbed with red veins, you are much more yourself today.  When I put you in the bouncy chair you hung there fairly listlessly, as though you were to be dragged under by some kind of current presently, but you tolerated existing in an upright fashion without being held.  Your nose only needs to be wiped every five minutes instead of every thirty seconds.  In short: you are on the mend.

Last night we ate spaghetti and meatballs by the fire.  After you went to bed, Gak and I took turns reading to Thisbe from a Magic Treehouse book:  New York, the Great Depression, a unicorn.  After Thisbe went to bed, Gak and I tried to come up with a title for my book.  We put concrete nouns from the book in one empty popcorn bowl and abstract concepts in another; then she would pull out a scrap of paper and I'd pull out a scrap of paper and the result would usually be tremendously stupid:  "Cougar Remediation" or "Yurt Grace" or "The Sacred Toaster" or "Remote Roofalanche."  Other than giving the narrative a final read and finishing up things like End Notes and Acknowledgements, I'm almost ready to send the book to my editor.  And maybe this is why the title is so psychologically difficult, because it's the last thing I get to control before the memoir is out of my hands. 

Then again, I wrote the memoir in the first place because Holden is such an impossible place to describe and I wanted to give it a try.  So, to try to sum up the place and my journey in the place and the style of the writing (poetic-funny-edgy-religious!) in a few words (that also work as appropriate search terms on Amazon!) feels impossible.  It's like trying to name your baby a year after her birth.

Anyway, today was filled with more skating, a new board game, a luxurious hour for Mama at the coffee shop and then the Long Wait for Daddy's return from Man Camp.  The Long Wait was preceded by the Long Drive.  Bright sun, sinking temps and the wind gusting faster and faster meant that some portions of 35W resembled the inside of a cloud, some resembled a haunted house with fog machine, some a mountain ridge (clouds rolling over the back) and some parts the sudsing portion of the car wash.  Meanwhile, my wiper blades were stuck in a vertical position, further obscuring the already hazy view.  And since the roads were bad everywhere, the Man Bus was about 90 minutes late.  As another wife described it on Facebook, the polar vortex of weather approaching Northfield is nothing compared to the polar vortex of the wives waiting for their partners to return.  You and Thisbe were ecstatic to see your father.  I was rather proud that I didn't hurl any loose objects at him as he entered the house.  But he had a great time.  And I am glad he had a great time.  And I am glad that you are well again.  KNOCK ON WOOD.

We Get Knocked Down / But We Get Up Again

Sickness still.  You were awake from 2:30-3:30 last night.  Then up again at 4:30 and 5:30 and finally, 6:30 when we came downstairs and watched the sky lighten through the trees.  By that time your face looked like a mucus war zone, flecks of snot crusted all over your cheeks, mucus glistening in your eyebrow. 

Luckily, we drove up to Minneapolis yesterday so Gak and Ampa are lightening the load considerably: offering Thisbe long baths and pink goggles, holding you for considerable lengths of time in the steamy bathroom, throwing in two different loads of laundry today when you vomited over your PJs, Mama's PJ's, your blanket, the couch, and the easy chair.  We were all pretty worried about you this morning.  I spent some time Googling meningitis and cursing Man Camp.  But after Tylenol and a nap you perked up a little.  Ate without puking.  Offered a few smiles.  Showed a demonstrable interest in a squirrel wind-up toy.  Swatted at my hair.  And then, after an hour, promptly fell back asleep. 

On Wednesday and Thursday and Friday I was pretty chill about the whole baby-being-consumed-by-a-virus thing.  We even (rather stupidly) let you observe your sister as she attempted to ice skate yesterday.  Gak held you (bundled considerably) near the edge of the Linden Hills rink while Thisbe struggled to stand and then move in ice skates.  Being Thisbe, she refused to use the plastic ice trainer (that kids can hold on to and push in front of them while learning) and instead fell and fell again, yelled or cried at me when I tried to help her, and glowed triumphantly when she managed to shuffle across the thirty feet of ice between where we started in the middle of the rink and where you and Gak were watching.

Then we came home and sat at the small table and drank hot chocolate from tiny plastic goblets.  We built a fire and Thisbe unrolled a beach towel in front of it and Gak and Thiz and you and I ate Davanni's pizza and salad with marinated artichoke hearts while the snowflakes kept sweeping down outside.  It was quite lovely.  (Tempered a little by the concern today that my Norwegian, laissez-faire attitude about babies and winter weather has given you pneumonia). 

Snot Camp

Daddy throwing a pot of boiling water into the frigid air to demonstrate how it turns into snow and vapor.  Only this is before the water has left the pot.  But you can see his puffy Man Camp parka.

You're still sick, poor sweet boy, and we've been living in the land of your snot for the past few days.  Thin, watery snot, thick green snot, snot laced with threads of blood, saline-crusted snot on your cheeks, hard brown boogers gumming up the insides of your nostrils.  We've been using the Nose Freda (a device with a tube to literally suck the snot directly out of you--no, the snot does not get in the suck-er's mouth) and of course cloths and Kleenexes and wipes.  The worst is when you're too clogged up to nurse so you take a few gulps and then release the nipple, panting and gasping, before trying again.  Your fever comes and goes.  When it seems to make you miserable, we've offered Tylenol, but--though you still smile and fiddle with objects--you look wan and watery-eyed and off kilter even with the medicine in your system.

Grandma Dot came for a visit yesterday.  She walked and bounced you while I worked at Blue Monday and then she did Ariel puzzles and played Legos with Thisbe.  We ate soup with ground turkey and tomatoes and kale, dense multi-grain bread with brie, baby carrots, and tangelos for dinner.  Heart-shaped chocolates and pistachios and cocktails after the kiddos went to bed.

This morning Daddy left for Man Camp.  Well, I think he left.  We dropped him in the parking lot of the Quarterback Club; half an hour later, when we drove by again, he was still standing there.  Daddy and twenty other men, big puffy jackets, hiking boots with laces untied, skis like piles of kindling.  All of them standing around, drinking coffee from chrome-bright insulated mugs.  They are all supposed to be on a bus headed north.  They are supposed to ski or snowshoe with mammoth packs on their backs to cabins with very few amenities.  Where they will bond?  Or sing invented, drunken verses to Kum-Ba-Ya? Or where the combined scent of their body odor will form a mythic and terrifying beast?

Your father has been working his butt off.  First his book manuscript, now J-term.  Almost every night he spends at least two hours on further grading or prepping after you and your sister have gone to bed.  So he really deserves this weekend.  Deserves to get away from papers and thinking and sinks filled with dirty dishes and snotty noses and student e-mails and relatives and familial meltdowns.  He deserves to get to burrow into a sleeping bag for as long as he likes in the morning, to pump frigid air through this chest, to slice clean tracks into the snow and to hum Aquavit down his throat late into the night.  But I'd be a big fat liar if I didn't also mention how his departure is tainted with just a little bit of jealousy.  Or, a lot.  Given how often you're still nursing, I couldn't leave you for 48 hours right now, and even if we could work it out somehow I wouldn't really feel comfortable doing so.  Still, it's hard to see him go off like some sort of untethered individual.  Someone who can hover through the next two days thinking only of his own needs.  Whose fleece, while likely reeking of sweat, will be free of baby snot.  Who will get to have uninterrupted conversation after uninterrupted conversation.

I'm glad for your father.  He needs this and deserves it.  But deep inside the yawning maw of January, I need 48 hours to be an untethered individual too.

Captive Body, Catapult Brain

 
Sky can't decide what it wants today.  Clouds a filmy pashmina with blue breaking through.  You woke snotty and irritable this morning.  Temperature of 102.4. By mid-morning Tylenol had brought it down to 100 or so.

But we skipped baby yoga.  And Nanny Barb cancelled on us for both today and Friday.  So there's been a lot of stillness here.

We sat in the rocker for a long time.  Looked out the window.  Brown oak leaves skittering across the snow.  The snow itself pockmarked, dead plants like spindles poking through the crust.  Three pine needles on the white window sill.  The skein of a spider web pressed to the pane itself.  A crusted yellow scab of something on the knuckle of your left pinky.  Below your fine hair, patches of cradle cap like tiny drips of wax. A glass jar with a few forgotten jellybeans: four purple, one yellow, one white, one pink, one black.  The cold sound the jellybeans made against the glass.  The endless wiping of trails of slime--onto a kleenex, onto a burp cloth decorated with turquoise elephants, onto a baby wipe, onto the collar of my hyacinth fleece.  Your temple against my jaw.  Kisses along your hairline.

Then, in the other part of my brain, there are the things to do, to consider, to remember, and this place feels like a lottery ball, whooshing ping pong balled numbers in a perfectly contained storm.  An index to finish for one book, a title needed for another.  Two courses to plan.  A manuscript to check for errors, for the incorrect use of CAPs, for facts and images communicated correctly, cleanly.  Texts to send to friends.  The Chicago Manual of Style to master.  E-mails to send about courses and birthday parties and childcare.  A grocery list and three important thank you notes that need to be written (Becky and Charlie, one is coming someday, I promise). The logistical detritus of the everyday that whirrs and whirrs, that will not be still.

We are a slow chaos, Matteus, a kind of half-paralyzed tsunami.  We are two striations of cloud colliding in the equivocating sky.

Consistent or Die

Yesterday I was sick and failed to blip.  Luckily, Grandma Gak showed up to care for you.  During the time she was here you slept for 2.5 hours.  Then I brought Thisbe home from school and Gak juggled the both of you, starting up the Little Mermaid soundtrack and helping to anchor the corners of Thisbe's tent forts while simultaneously bouncing your snot-faced little self.  Gak took Thisbe out to dinner and gave her a bath while Daddy took on the complete care of you after a fairly grueling day at work.

Today I feel much better but the temperature has plummeted: negative 22 when we woke up.  Cold coming through the plaster of the walls and around the edges of doors and windows.

I carry you on my hip now more and more (rather than facing you directly out front) and your new hair is coming in soft and blond.  Sometimes the day feels like a series of attempts at posing you, like a Gumby figurine: feet down and hands out in the exer-saucer, prone on the floor with toes raised, legs dangling and fists in mouth in the Bjorn, knees bent/elbows tucked nestled into the crook of my arm, C-curve of spine bent over your own toes while sitting on your bottom, and finally the dreaded cobra pose of tummy time.

You are happiest when you have your sister to watch or when an adult bends over you during a diaper change, a face inches from your own, eyes to eyes, full turning of attention into you.  You become more yourself during these moments--you babble more, you laugh when I nibble your fingers, you pinch gleefully at the skin of my cheeks.  You become differently alive under a direct and focused gaze.

And I guess here I should insert something about how with computers and cell phones and televisions and i-pods and our culture's shrinking attention span--woe is me!--that we don't spend enough time offering this gaze, this kind of looking, to our children.  And that's probably true.

But what I find more disturbing is perhaps how rarely I turn this gaze toward anyone else.  There's something about looking at you, Matteus, about looking at any baby, I suppose.  I am waiting for an emergence, for tiny changes and shifts.  I am expecting growth, am eager to be in awe of the tiny glimpses that show me who you are becoming.  I understand, of course, that it's not realistic to be this dotty with love for the barista at Blue Monday.  Indeed, I could probably get a special restraining order of some sort if I waited around for too long, trying to hold her gaze with the expectation that her true self would emerge.

But oftentimes when I listen to adults, I am listening for information.  For the flight time or the punch line.  Or I am trying to get the emotional gist of the story to offer appropriate expressions of compassion, horror, disbelief, humor, etc.  Sometimes I miss seeing the person because I'm too busy listening to what the person is saying. 

Sometimes I fail to recognize, too, that the adults around me, including those I think I know the best, are also changing.  There's something about becoming a parent that makes me feel called to stability.  The gurus of parenting advice admonish adults to be firm ground.  Unmoving, unshakable, static.  The steady sun for ceaseless orbiting.  Consistent or die.

As the child of divorce, I understand this advice.  Certainly parents are the main builders of the world their children dwell inside.  But I wonder if mid-life crises, if adultery and expensive cars and gambling addictions are born of feeling consistency as a call to sameness, as directive to shun or ignore our own need for growth and our own desire to mark that growth outwardly somehow.

Or maybe there's a part of me that, after shaking a rattle in front of your face for hour after hour in the sub-zero temperatures of early January, wonders if I am changing at all. 

Ha Ha Manhattan

Well, sweet boy, both you and your sister were feeling better today.  Well enough that we could go for a walk in the glorious sunshine, everything turning to slush and sparkle.

But mostly it was another quiet day.  We danced to Elton John.  Thisbe decorated a paper bag cover for her Bible.  It now has fake jewels across the front and says "Thisbe" (you can decide for yourself what the implications of that might be).  Your sister ate numerous bit of bagels with melted butter; you unenthusiastically swallowed a few spoonfuls of pears.  I tried to tempt you into rolling over using a Little Mermaid glow wand.  Thisbe dressed you in sunglasses and a baseball cap and spun the exer-saucer in circles.  She stood on her head on the couch and scissored her legs while Daddy and I counted slowly to eight.

There's bread pudding in the oven.  I didn't have rum so I soaked the raisins in a combination of whiskey and Heering.  Daddy is at a planning meeting for Man Camp.  On Friday he's skiing off into the woods of Northern Minnesota with 20 other men, a bunch of alcohol, and likely no deodorant.  I'm watching Bridesmaids on TV, definitely one of my top favorite movies of all time. The women are on the plane on the way to Vegas right now, one of the best scenes in the film.  So instead of saying anything of note I'm going to pour a drink and laugh.  Because sometimes it's important to choose alcohol and hilarity over meaning and purpose.  You'll learn this in college, if not before.