Holy Fervor

It was difficult not to believe in resurrection today.  The temperature soared into the 70's and every Christian child in Minnesota with a new Easter outfit actually got to wear it (sans leggings, sweaters, and boots).  There was no snow.  There was soft rain last night and damp fog this morning.  There was green grass and black dirt.  There were buds on the trees and there were  birds shaking the bushes indignantly when Thisbe came stomping with her Easter basket in hand.  There were gold letters splayed across the banners at church and brass instruments braying the familiar hymns and even the most harried mothers sporting heels and dresses with waistlines. 

And new life quakes through your small body at an alarming rate.  You still can't really move in an orderly fashion but your desire to crawl or walk or do SOMETHING causes you to spasm and twist and and bend and crane.  At church your father and I tried to hold you steady but you would not sit still.  You wanted to be lifted and jostled.  You wanted to flirt with the old lady behind us and squeal at the offering plate.  You bend and straighten, bend and straighten, the entirety of your body shouting "life, life, life."

Your sister, too, has become almost manic with the sun.  She bounced on her trampoline today with holy fervor, crowed triumphant at every egg discovered, and when we asked her, after the Gospel reading, if she'd heard the ending of the story, she held up the picture of the yak she'd been coloring and said "well maybe but look at THIS."

After church, per your sister's request, we spread a blanket in the backyard and had a picnic of hard boiled eggs and baby oranges and bacon-scallion-cream-cheese-smeared Triscuits and almonds.  You ate peach yogurt and plucked at the puffs we placed on the blanket beside you.  In the late afternoon we walked to the park; you leaned forward and clutched the front of the stroller, perhaps for the view.  Perhaps to feel the vibrations of the pavement in your forearms.  Carol and Alvin came for dinner and we ate pulled pork sandwiches and cole slaw and asparagus and sweet potato fries.  All the doors were open and the light kept sliding through the room, even after we put you to bed, even as we savored a second glass of wine.

A few weeks ago a man in our town who had recently gone off his anti-depression medications left his house on a Saturday morning and hasn't returned since.  A wonderful friend of ours lost his father last weekend to a massive heart attack.  There are dear people in our lives who are living with cancer or who are learning to cope with other illnesses.  And we said good-bye to people we loved this year, Matteus.  We lost Jennifer and Graham and as we sang "And I will raise you up" today I thought of John Paul, and was so sad that you will never meet him.  For people who are close to death or to what it means to live inside death right now, I can't imagine that Easter really feels like a "win."  There are people we have lost and there are parts of our lives and ways of living that cannot be resurrected.  Death may not have the last word, but death does have some words--and those words are powerful and life changing.  We all hear those words eventually.

"The light shines in the darkness," we say.  "And the darkness has not overcome it."  We do not say that the light dispels the darkness entirely.  We say that it shines, bravely and unabashedly, in the middle of it.

This year the light of our Easter celebration was only smudged, peripherally, by darkness.  But that will not always be the case.  I am grateful for this day.  It was beautiful.  Not even death can change that.

I like this one because you're clutching a handful of your sister's hair.

I like this one because we're all kind of a mess but your gaze is captured perfectly.

My Inner Sadducee

Spring has sprung.  Blades of grass spearing the matted brown muck, ducks waddling in our yard at twilight, leaf tornadoes swirling through the heart of campus.  You can balance on your hands and knees for a few minutes if we position you just right and you're rolling front to back consistently (and you could roll back to front if you cared to).  Last weekend I got to escape to Stillwater with a few lovely female friends while Daddy attempted to feed you bottles of breast milk and formula (attempted being the key word).  This week was a blur for me--call committee meeting on Monday, Little Mermaid with Thisbe and Gak on Tuesday, a homily at St. John's on Wednesday, and a stint on Northfield's Art Zany radio show on Friday (with you in tow).  Daddy did a lot of double bedtime duty (hurrah, Daddy!).

Because I don't have a lot of blogging energy today I'm posting instead the homily I gave at St. John's and a few recent pics.  And I'm feeling grateful this busyness--though tiring--is the result of wonderful gifts in our lives--friends and relatives and art and church and community.

Matthew 22:23-33

The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh.  Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.”

            Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.  And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is God not of the dead but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it they were astonished at his teaching.

I know that here at St. John’s your focus this Lenten season has been on Grounding.  When Pastor Pam asked me to speak, she mentioned that because I write a lot about parenting, about the mess and dirtiness of that particular world, that I might talk about the relationship between grounding and parenting.

And indeed, the world of my children is a world that does not generally permit me the airy, writerly musings in which I dwelled before my lovely offspring entered the landscape.  A few nights ago for example, my rambunctious four-year-old daughter chucked a throw pillow at the living room window as hard as she could.  She narrowly missed my laptop but managed to bring down the curtains and the curtain rod in a cataclysmic-sounding clatter.  Rather than apologizing, my daughter accused me of hurting her feelings with my “mad face” and then stormed upstairs with Dog Do, her unfortunately-named stuffed companion. Meanwhile, my 8-month-old has regressed in his sleeping habits, refuses to roll over, and has developed some kind of rash on his face. He enjoys screaming while I feed him and pooping in the bathtub. This is my ground, my dirt, my patch of earth.

And if a parenting guru, someone I knew was TRULY all knowing in the behavior of children, descended from the clouds, my questions would begin like this: Do you think we’re paying too much attention to Thisbe or not enough attention?  Should I try to address how she feels or am I coddling her too much?  Should I have let the curtain rod incident go?  Is it OK to have a mad face? Should I let Matteus cry it out? Should I have him tested for allergies?  Which Northfield kindergarten do you think is the best fit for Thisbe? Is screen time OK? How much?  Which shows?

I could go on like this for days.  Decades, maybe.   I can’t go on Facebook or open an Atlantic magazine without someone telling me how certain kinds of parents, certain parenting techniques are failing our kids.  We’re too protective.  We compliment too often.  We’re too involved.  The accusations come fast from all angles and so, for a type-A but not naturally gifted parent who tends toward anxiety and fears too often the opinions of others—well, I spend a lot of time obsessing about something over which I ultimately don’t have that much control.

And so you see, I’m actually a Sadducee at heart.  In today’s Gospel, the Sadducees ask a question that entirely misses the point. The passage begins with the Sadducees coming to Jesus and declaring that there is no resurrection.  They then ask their rather superfluous question about marriage and heaven-wives. Though some would probably say that they’re using the detail-oriented question to catch Jesus in the act of being wrong about the whole resurrection issue, I see the situation slightly differently.  I see the Sadducees using quibbly questions to cover up their anxiety about the bigger matters, about resurrection and life.

I think we do this all the time.  At least I do.  I do it with parenting but also with my marriage.  I do it at work, with my comparisons to colleagues.  I do it with friends and siblings and neighbors.  I obsess over the small questions and concerns.  I do this for two reasons:

1. Because thinking about the little questions means that I don’t have to think about the big questions.  The truth is that these quibbly questions about parenting veil bigger questions about parenting and love and what it means to be human. My real questions as a parent don’t really have to do with sleep schedules or tantrum prevention.  They go more like this: Do I know how to love? Do my children love me? Am I worthy of their love? Of God’s love? How do I make sure my children know they are always worthy of love? Will God truly care for them if and when I can’t? If I die, will they know I love them?

2. So I ask little questions to cover up my anxiety about the big questions.  I also obsess about the little questions because the answers to quibbly questions offer clear direction about what exactly to DO.  If I want to give my baby a good life I should feed him organic sweet potatoes or nurse him until he’s twelve; if I want my daughter to be a strong person I should use the word “leader” instead of “bossy” and let her watch Disney on Tuesdays—but only if we discuss the inherent misogyny afterward.  I’m addicted to parenting articles because they provide a clear action plan.  I like a clear action plan.

When Jesus finally gets around to answering the Sadducees question he says, “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”  The Sadducees offer an either/or proposition and Jesus says, “neither.”  The kind of answer the Sadducees are looking for misses the point.

The whole difficulty with Jesus is that he offers the deep answers but he doesn’t usually provide us with specific details about how to enact these answers ourselves.  Jesus says that we are worthy of love no matter what. That we are forgiven.  That we are called, always, towards life abundant and that we are charged with offering signs of that abundant life to one another.

But unfortunately, we are called to decipher the answers to the specific questions ourselves.  Today’s Gospel lesson reminds me, as a type-A Mama trying to figure out the messy details, that these truths, about resurrection and unconditional love and life abundant must always be the answers behind my other answers.  That as I make my way through the messy terrain of parenting and marriage, through friendship and citizenship and even academia, that the source of any answer I offer should be grounded in God’s abiding and eternal love.  This should be the first ground I teach my children to walk upon.  This should be the earth from which their sweet complicated beings grow and bloom.

Dot came for a visit!

With Gak before the Little Mermaid.  Your sister is fully costumed.

These are good women to know.

I want to gobble you up on an almost hourly basis.

Coming Out of the Gray

In Northfield, the temperature is finally veering toward the abnormally warm today.  For one day.  But for this one day the coffee shop is a-bustle.  Students bend over notebooks, sporting Birkenstocks and newly pedicured toenails; families shuffle in with mud clinging to boots and shoes, the kiddos pressing their faces to the glass refrigerator door, pointing out Oranginas and fruity sodas.  Your father wants to put in paving stones this afternoon while the earth is pliable.  I'm on my way to a meeting at church, a mock interview to prepare us for how to really interview potential new pastor candidates.

We have been to Florida and back.  Thisbe was the happiest of all of us I think.  She swam in a heated pool with a waterfall, made sandcastle after sandcastle on the beach (and then pressed the plastic figures of Anna and Elsa and Ariel into the impressionable walls), played mini-golf, rode on the shoulders of uncles and almost-uncles, fed giraffes, played dress-up at the Naples Children's museum, watched Frozen for the fourth time, laid out her clothing carefully in her room that was actually a closet, collected bits of dried coral and gingerly toed dead sea slugs, and just generally had a grand time. 

Somewhere over Georgia

"Look, Mom!  A hat without ear flaps!"

Watching "Frozen" with Auntie Agnes and Greg

You, on the other hand, became steadily less pleased with the world as the week progressed.  Maybe it was teething, maybe it was exhaustion or a growth spurt or over-stimulation, maybe it was too many people or the absence of familiar objects or the desire to move and the inability to do so--who the hell knows.  But by the end of the week you needed to be held almost constantly in order to stem the tide of shrieks.  You woke more and more often at night and were less easily pacified.  Letting you cry it out is one thing back at home...it's slightly different when there are a band of relatives to disturb in addition to your parents.  On Thursday, when you woke at 5:45 and wouldn't go back to sleep, I bundled you into the stroller, cap on your head and pink striped beach towel cocooned around you, and set off in the pitch black 55 degree air.  I ate a cinnamon roll and drank a latte at the cafe while you sucked on an indestructible baby book and attempted to nurse the nose of Mr. Bear.  You've been slightly better since our return but you are still prone to flapping your arms like a tethered pigeon and shrieking for no apparent reason.  You still don't roll, still don't utter consonant sounds, still prefer an expression of stoicism to one of glee.  When placed on your belly you fuss and raise your butt in a half-hearted Jane Fonda exercise move.

Refusing to roll down the Rolling Hill at the Children's Museum

After you and you sister wake up from your afternoon naps, we'll go outside.  I'll push you in the stroller and we'll gulp in the warm air.  Thisbe will wear her rubber frog boots and experiment with the tonalities of mud stomping and slurping.  Dada will putter with paving stones or dead branches or the broken car window.  We'll eat an unimpressive meal from the crockpot (something involving frozen stew vegetables and chicken and a gravy packet) and if I remember we'll attempt to make a Lenten centerpiece with felt and burlap and a candle holder from church. 

The weather in Florida was lovely, but it was a kind of boozy happiness: imbibed quickly and resulting in warm and fuzzy feelings for a limited amount of time.  Today is happiness for real, the happiness that comes after you have waded through grief or cold or loneliness.  The kind that feels earned rather than bought. In Naples you could see, on the skin of the tanned and weathered crowd, how the days there just keep unfolding into nests of predictable warmth and ease, a permanent blur of sun and shimmer.  Here we know spring as tempestuous and fickle.  Sun and then snow and then warm and then ice again. 

Oh Spring, you changeable vixen!  You equivocating ingenue!  You budding sociopath!  Your strip tease is endless but we will wait.  Wait and wait. Until the gray fades into a distant point. Until green burns our eyelids down.     

The Making of a Man

 It's officially spring and the weather is appropriately bipolar.  Today it's 45 degrees and when the sun appears life is glorious.  Thisbe runs with her coat unzipped, her hands holding the front corners open like wings.  When the sun is out the eye moves to the patches of grass, to the glint of light on the rivulets in the gutters.  Each inch of dry pavement is beheld with glee, each naked finger an act of grace.  And then the clouds come and it's still 45 but instead the wind finds the corners of the lighter coat, slides inside the cuffs and chills.  Gray stipples the hulks of snow and the grass is dun, the trees still skeletal.  No wonder it is the time of year where we remember death on Friday and resurrection on Sunday.

You are in full force darling baby mode and we dote on you continually.  You have two teeth making their slow slice through the lower gum line and you devour slurries of prunes and apples and peas and mangoes and kale with a variety of enthusiastic grunts.  You're an expert at sitting and blowing raspberries but you still fail to roll or make consonant sounds.  Crawling is a distant continent.  But as long as you have a full stomach you are generally a happy boy, content fingering backpack straps or testing the texture of a jar lid with your tongue.

You are far more sensitive than your sister.  If your father sings too low a note or bangs a rhythm on the kitchen table too loudly your face crumples in distress.  If you're left alone in a room or (lately) taken away from me you squeal unhappily.  But your sensitivity to sound has also proved useful.  Though we've now weaned you of night feedings (can I get a "Hallelu--" oh, wait.  maybe not so much during Lent) you still sometimes wake at 5:00 or so.  Then Dada goes in and turns on a classical lullaby CD and within a few minutes you sway back into sleep.

But this sensitivity in you, this part of who you are and who you are becoming--well, it's the first time I've really had to face that I (and others) think of you in a gendered way.  Specifically as a boy and thus as someone for whom being highly sensitive might prove to be a problem in the future.  If you were a girl, our culture would chalk all this behavior up as "shy" and "sweet" and well within the realm of the ways girls should behave.  But each time I hear you cry at a loud sound or buckle at my absence I am torn between deep love at the emergence of this part of your personality and worry that the culture you live in will view this behavior as weakness rather than as strength.

Your sister, meanwhile, faces a similar problem.  Teacher Sarah had to tell me at our very first conference that I shouldn't use "bossy" to describe my daughter--that she was showing leadership skills and though she needed to learn to manage these skills, they were nothing to roll my eyes or shake my head in embarrassment about.  Indeed, there's even a campaign rolling through the internet right now called "Ban Bossy"--Sheryl Sandberg's attempt to promote leadership in girls.  Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) I worry way less about Thisbe's fierce, intense, and strident personality than I do about your more attached, sensitive, and observant one.

And I wonder (and I'm going to try to say this without weirding you out too much) if it's more complicated with you because I have both a practical/rational version of what makes a wonderful man and then I have a biological/sexual version that stems from my own experience as a woman.  The first, much more PC version is all about sensitivity and kindness and compassion and intelligence.  That version of myself cares not a whit if you excel at athletics or know how to wield a hammer.  PC me is glad to buy you a doll to cradle and muffin tins to fill, glad to paint your toenails purple and purchase princess paraphernalia for Halloween.  But then there's the Un-PC me who, truthfully, has never been attracted to a man who was my height or shorter, who likes watching a man's body kick or throw or race shirtless down St. Olaf avenue, who is turned on by authority and strength.  And maybe un-PC me is just a product of social conditioning.  But maybe un-PC me is a product of biology too.  (If I wasn't lazy I would link to a bunch of articles that suggest this hypothesis).

I have no qualms about raising Thisbe to be intense and sassy and bossy--I mean AS A LEADER , in part because shunning some of the feminine "virtues" has worked pretty well for me.  I am all of those things and though there have admittedly been a number of romantic dry spells in my life--I've loved and been loved by incredible men (most notably your father, of course). 

But the bespeckled, soft-spoken, spongy, overly-sensitive guy?  I was never attracted to that guy.  He was always the friend I tried to set up with a single female friend...right before both the friend and I chose instead to date the inappropriate guys who couldn't speak in complete sentences but ran ultra-marathons.  Obviously with your father I managed to find a wonderful combination of both sensitivity and strength, of typical masculinity and the ability to listen without being an asshole.   And I hope for that combination within you--though I think it's unfair for me to hope for anything at all.  I'm called to love you for who you actually are not who I think you should become.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry if I fail you on this front.  It's so easy to blame OUR HORRIBLE SEXIST CULTURE for pushing kids to be something they're not.  It feels decidedly more unsettling to realize that my own biology and identity as a heterosexual and sexual being might get wrapped up in how I raise you, in the subtle ways I reaffirm or question your behavior.  It feels, in fact, like Freud is gleefully haunting the edges of this post.

In this season of little deaths, I would like to practice burying the expectations I have for you that come from a place other than complete love and grace.  Those that come from my insecurities or cultural pressure or those that are weirdly entangled in my own sexual psyche. 

Birth is, in part, the act of catching the being as he or she emerges.  And this is the great blessing, of course: that you are mystery and so the act of catching is repeated each day, our hands open and trembling to receive your screaming, messy, beautiful life in whatever shape it comes.

  

Ash Wednesday With Hives

An inch of new snow last night now rapidly deteriorating in the sun.  Patches of ice at intersections turning soft.  25 degrees feels like almost spring.  The raven on the branch outside is almost a robin.  Then he turns and he is a robin, breast a tawny orange instead of red, brown wings looking a bit rumpled and thin, very much the absent-minded professor who hasn't had time to iron.  Last night we went to Thisbe's school for an art show.  She showed us her work: a newspaper hat painted gold and topped with silver star and white rose; a drawing of Ariel standing upright on her tail, fins split and splayed at the bottom; faces drawn big and close, swirls in between and a caption "a party at my house"; a spindly house with windows and roof, a line of blue sky, our names etched into the siding.

Your face is a mass of red welts.  Your body is spotted red.  Fever of 101.5.  We're on day 15 of your cough and runny nose, an ear infection in there somewhere, another doctor visit to check your wheezing breath sounds.  You might be allergic to amoxicillan.  Or this might just be a virus passing through you.

It's Ash Wednesday, a day that some winters comes as a relief.  We are here in the darkness and cold anyway so why not think about sin?  Why not fast and pray?  Why not circle a little around our limited mortality?  But this year it feels unfair.  My eyes hurt from trying to find each small bit of animal motion in the treetops, from searching too long for spring in the brightness of the snow.  On a day where the winter feels like it's finally offering slivers of resurrection it seems brutal to march over to church and be marked on the forehead with a smudge of ash.

And your sister is fighting some kind of demon of her own.  She speaks to us in whiny, bossy, uncompromising tones and when we ask for kindness, for please or thank you, she goes ballistic.  "Get me my cereal/turn the CD on/I will NOT put on pajamas!" she shrieks.  Or she tries on "I won't do that.  I just won't.  You can't make me." And then she looks at me, red-rimmed eyes, crossed arms, tears.  Teacher Sarah says all parents get it sooner or later, we're just getting it sooner.  And love now, in her case, seems to be firmness, seems to be holding a solid boundary, devoid of emotion as possible.   It's our fault a little that she's in this place.  After your birth, and more recently in the midst of sickness we've bent over backwards to shower her with attention, to make sure she knows she is loved via kisses and kindness and hot cocoas at Blue Monday and special dates with Mama and on and on.  We forgot, a little, that sometimes loving your sister means saying "no."

A poet colleague recently said that sometimes what got her through the early months of mothering (new baby, no real time to write, unfinished housework everywhere, job responsibilites encroaching, etc.) was saying to herself: this is impossible.  To admit freely that the kind of balance she dreamt of simply would not happen for a while.  That it was literally impossible to do it all. 

So much of my frustration these past few months has come from "ifs."  I would have time to write IF the kids weren't constantly getting sick.  I would have been in a more pleasant mood today IF my husband had opted to serve something other than leftovers on his one cooking night this week.  The house would be a lot cleaner IF we hadn't had that blizzard.  And on and on. 

Another writer friend wrote a wonderful post about lent today.  I especially like Lenten Approach #3.  But I think maybe what I need to give up this year is the possibility of having it all.  The idea that under certain circumstances I could currently be a great mother/writer/teacher/wife/friend/citizen all at once.  I am tired of failing over here, within the American myth of the possible.  So tonight I'll offer up (likely with a hive-covered baby strapped to me and a four year old whining about how her cross itches) my dream of perfect balance and complete fulfillment.  And I will pray that leaving that longing behind makes room for a different kind of possibility to enter.

The Red, Plastic Ring (or Let it Go)

A blizzard whipped through Minnesota on Thursday and Friday.  Schools closed, windshields turning into blank pages, vegetation frosted and heavy, cars swishing their rear ends at stop signs.  Inside our house, wadded Kleenx on the end tables and couch arms, on top of the microwave and beside the laundry basket on the carpet.  The good news is that no one is desperately sick.  The bad news is that we all seem to have the same cold--runny nose, cough, sluggish, crabby--so at any given moment, snot is always being wiped from someone's face. 

We all went to Target today.  Thisbe rode standing at the front of the cart.  I bought a latte at the Starbucks inside and I was so incredibly happy when they offered me a small red, plastic, ring that you can attach to your cart to hold your coffee cup.  What an amazing invention.  Thank you, whomever did that.  (I also give thanks for the lovely friend who had Thisbe over for a playdate yesterday when school was closed.  And for the fact that both you and your sister are currently napping.  AND--also renewing my faith in God--for Bethel's Parents Night Out from 3:30-7:30 today.  Hallelujah.)

While I shoveled the eight inches of sow, your father took photos.  Which was especially cruel considering I only seem to have one leg.

Your sister seems to have lost all the coping mechanisms she learned over the past year.  I said she couldn't have cheesy noodles for lunch and she burst into tears.  Daddy said he wouldn't move the small IKEA table for her until she asked nicely (rather than commanding) and she burst into tears.  When she asked for a second PBJ sandwich and I told her she had to finish her hard boiled egg first she burst into tears.  (Well, actually, first she said, "FINE.  THEN I WILL MAKE THE SANDWICH MYSELF."  and I said, "OK, go ahead" and she screamed through her squinty bloodshot eyes "BUT I CAN'T MAKE THE SANDWICH MYSELF.")  Meanwhile, after not pooping for a week, you released a BM of epic proportions.  So much of it was on your back and so little in your diaper that it truly seemed like you'd released the poop out of your 10th vertebrae (T3 vertebrae?  I don't know what I'm talking about).  But I had to balance your naked body on the edge of the sink while Daddy washed your back.  And over the shirrrrr of the water and the screams emanating from Thisbe's room, the sound of the Frozen soundtrack, (Kristen Bell singing "love is an open DOOOOORRRR!!!") which we bought at Target because, well, fuck.  I give up.

Hunger

At your six month check-up you were in the 25th percentile for weight, the 50th for height and the 75th for head circumference.  You still can't (or won't roll) though you relish lifting your legs high into the air and bringing your heels down with great force.  You like to suck on the strings of my fleece hoodie.  When you nurse your upper hand is always reaching--to touch my lips or chin or hair, to feel the texture of my sweater or cotton shirt or bare skin.  You get distracted from nursing now and often fling your arm out and turn your head mid gulp to see what your sister is up to.  Your main form of communication is blowing raspberries or shrieking, you have yet to discover how to say "buh" or "ma" or "da."  You cry when Daddy or I hand you to Nanny Barb and put on our coats to leave.  You smile often but are slow to laugh.  You observe.  Measure people.  Bounce.  You still wake once a night to eat but you also devour solid foods during daytime hours; fruits are your favorites.  You tolerate sweet potatoes too, but on the three occasions I tried to feed you peas you blew them all over the kitchen.  

Perhaps most telling, especially as I think about you compared to your sister at this age (which Daddy always cautions me not to do) was your response after you bit my nipple for the first time.  Thisbe did so as well, around six months, and it took me by surprise.  I told her, rather sharply, "no!" and she released the nipple, leaned back, and gave me a huge, shit-eating grin.  When you bit and I told you "no!" you released the nipple, leaned back, stared at me in shock--and then your face crumpled into sobs.  You are far more sensitive than Thiz--loud sounds, separation, a sharp tone--all of these can move you to tears.  And also, the thing I keep forgetting to say somehow, is how incredibly smitten we are with you. In addition to all the facts I've listed above, you're also the gooey abstractions: sweet, delightful, darling, handsome, etc. etc. etc.  We love you to pieces.

February we love far less.  The weekend made me want to staple my eyebrows.  Daddy and I were home both days, all day, with both of you.  And I feel incredibly guilty that I did not enjoy that time very much really at all.  I played Eye Found It with your sister and Daddy played Legos with her; Daddy took you for a walk in your snowsuit and I held you while I stirred the boiling noodles and the bechamel sauce; I bought yogurt and a pork roast and hummus at Cub, Daddy attacked some ice dams on the upstairs widow's walk; Thisbe decided to sleep without her pull-up and promptly wet the bed; Thisbe developed a 100 degree fever and red spider veins across the whites of her eyes; Thisbe performed a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon-twirling dance while singing "Part of Your World"; you bounced in your exersaucer, shrieked or didn't shriek in your high chair, ate sweet potatoes and apples and peaches; Daddy took Thisbe sledding, Daddy took you to church; I gave Thisbe a bath, washed the sheets, folded laundry; we read Aladdin, Lions at Lunchtime, Afternoon in the Amazon; Thisbe watched Peter Pan and Daddy and I watched Sherlock and Parks and Recreation and a little of the Olympics; Daddy wrote a course proposal and I read Hass' essay on Images.  

I think my favorite moment of the weekend was the fifteen minutes where Thisbe and I lay together on the couch.  She was stroking Dog-Do and I was stroking her hair.  We were half-listening to you and Daddy playing in the next room, half watching the fan orbiting the ceiling, half enjoying the sun glancing off the snow and onto our faces, half thinking our own thoughts.  Thisbe finally said something about the globe sitting on the top of the bookshelf.  Only she didn't call it a globe, she called it "that earth ball" and I liked that.  The pale green of the walls and the red, wool tartan blanket over us.  That was nice.

I love you and Thisbe and Daddy so very much.  I am lucky not only to have you but to have had the privilege to choose this life, the one I'm in.  And I keep choosing it, every day, because it still remains the life that I desire.

But there is something about this time that also makes me want to staple my eyebrows, that makes me sometimes think, when I am alone in the car, of just continuing to drive, onward, until I reach a large body of water.  There is something about this time that makes me feel suddenly old, that makes me feel angry at the friends my age who have chosen not to have children and who suddenly look incredibly vibrant and rather smug about all the freedom they have stuffed in their pockets.  I choose this.  I choose this.  But there are parts of me, parts that like to write and run and read and sit and stare at the ceiling fan, and these parts have been put aside for the moment.  These parts are getting hungry.  Ravenous really.  

We are blessed with gobs of support.  Blessed beyond measure.  Still.  Some days I feel like I am feeding everyone and longing, desperately, to be fed.