A whole lot of work

Every morning, when I see the bottom of my coffee cup I get angry inside. You'd never know looking at me that I feel volcanic over this last sip of coffee, but there is definitely a fiery, eruptive rumbling present within. Hot coffee feels like one of the few relaxing comforts in the day, no matter what other stress or frustration is occurring simultaneously. I used to work in an office where, every day around 2 p.m., someone would stop whatever she was doing to make a pot of coffee. Then we all stopped to fix a cup, and the ritual and comfort of that afternoon coffee made everyone seem slightly drunk. I wish I could drink coffee all day long without disturbing Desmond's sleep pattern.

I've decided that it is criminal that women are expected to return to work six weeks after giving birth. Criminal and the antithesis of humane, moral treatment of children, women and families as a whole. A woman I've been working with on a freelance editing project told me that her first child was born in the Netherlands, where a nurse came everyday for a month to help her, and that in Germany, where she is from, women get ten months maternity leave with 2/3 of their salary paid. Nothing about those benefits seems like a luxury. They just seems fair and sane compared to the insanity of going back to a job in six weeks as if nothing has drastically changed in your life.

Yesterday I checked in on my neighbor. She is two weeks into being a mom. At one point, she looked at me, her eyes tired and slightly shell shocked, and said, "It's a lot of work." And I could tell there was so much going on that she didn't know where to begin explaining. I just nodded and understood in a way I never could have before.

I was panicked and distressed at the time, but now I am grateful I could not find a full time job before I gave birth, even if every penny of Chris's salary gets swallowed up by bills. This too shall pass. In the meantime, I get to adjust to being a parent, learn how to manage my time so that I can be a productive individual and a mom too (and there's quite a learning curve), and most of all, enjoy this little person we created. It is a lot of work, and it is surreal.

This morning I listened to him cooing and sort of grumbling in his crib for fifteen minutes. The grumblings got louder and I went into his room expecting him to be near tears. But he was just looking at the giraffes and parrots and other animals on his blanket and making boy noises. So I put away his laundry, fixed my coffee and did a few other chores. He played with toys and talked to the animals in his crib for over thirty minutes, which made me love him more than I did last night when, kicking and screaming at the top of his lungs, he fought his sleepiness while Chris and I, hungry and exhausted tried to console him.

I look at job postings every single day during his first nap. I have yet to find a single job that seems more necessary (to the world or our basic survival) and desirable than caring for Desmond, no matter how overwhelming it gets at several points during the week. This is the only job I can handle at the moment. I never knew I'd feel this way, but I do and I've decided to embrace that feeling and all of the spit up, piss and slobber without shame.

Nervous or neurotic?

I'm trying to decide what the difference is between an appropriate level of nervousness and simply neurotic. My birthday is coming up, so I asked my cousin if she can watch Desmond on Saturday night while Chris and I see a movie. Today I went online to purchase tickets and saw that the movies I want to see play at times that will mean leaving the house before I get Desmond down for the night. I'm sure my cousin, a grown woman who is also a pediatric nurse at a children's hospital, can handle rocking a 4-month-old to sleep and putting him in his crib for the night, but the idea of it made me so anxious. Voice ringing like a siren in my head at seeing movie times: Desmond will freak out  he is not comforted to sleep in exactly the way that I comfort him and he will stay awake howling all night, feeling miserable, sad and abandoned. So I bought tickets to a later movie that I'm not as interested in seeing. So much for keeping my perspective and staying level.

Will you be my friend? (It sounds desperate written out like that.)

In fourth grade, during recess, a girl walked up to me while I was on the swings. She asked, "Do you want to be my friend?" I was taken aback; I remember that. I have no idea how I responded to her request, but I hope I was open and kind. I suspect I was not. I don't remember us becoming friends.

I do remember that her name was Amy and she was adopted. I remember aching for her when she was teased about this matter. Though I never teased her myself, in the grade-school hierarchy of desirable friends she was among the flawed. I must have rejected her invitation for friendship, perhaps a greater cruelty than teasing. How could I have been any higher than she in social status? I was alone on the swings, not with a playmate. She must have noticed and thought, there is a girl who, like me, needs a friend.

Yesterday evening in the grocery store, I think I may have been asked for the second time in my life, "Do you want to be my friend?" This woman, who looked exactly like the kind of person I might be friends with, walked up to me, a fat baby strapped in a carrier against her chest.

"Your baby has the most beautiful eyes," she said.

"Thank you."

"How old is he?"

"Three months." She stood waiting for me to take her cue. "How old is yours?"

"Five months."

I returned her initial compliment and made appropriate googly faces at her boy. The woman lingered.

"What's his name?"

"Desmond," I answered. I thought that would be it for our grocery store chatter, that it was time to go back to perusing cheeses.

"This is George," she responded. "Is Desmond your first?"

This was beyond a quick compliment from a stranger in a grocery store, wasn't it? Yet I was reserved. It was part-shyness, but I also didn't want to seem desperate or crazy--not like her--a woman who actually seemed perfectly nice. Should I have exchanged numbers with her, I wondered after we parted ways. I saw her again a few minutes later when I went to checkout. She was in another line, already at the register. After I payed, I looked for her in the parking lot, imagining I might chase her down and admit, "I don't know anyone in Austin who is anything like me and also has a new baby! Do you want to trade numbers?" But she was nowhere.

Why was my immediate response to again be taken aback and to judge her as desperate or crazy? Why couldn't I identify our commonality? Certainly it was not because of playground politics. I guess I wondered, who does that as an adult, asks a stranger to be friends? Would it have been too weird to channel fourth-grade-Amy and--my heart open to the possibilities--and say to the stranger eager to converse, "Yes! Let's be friends"?

Soup

A few of my friends emailed to encourage and reassure me after reading these last few entries. So I also realize I must sound like a really sad and desperate new mom. I need to say that I hope people can pick up on humor in what I've written thus far, with the exception of that "Overwhelmed" entry. The day I wrote it, I'd recently returned from my first plane trip with Desmond. I had a horrible sinus infection and I'd gotten him sick too. It was a humbling and frustrating moment to realize that even when I'm sick and exhausted and all I want to do is curl up and sleep away my illness, I've got to attend to another human being.

My oldest sister, who was here for Desmond's birth and to shepherd us through our first week with him, told us repeatedly, "Just wait until he's three months. It gets so much easier." That I have finally made headway on a freelance editing job I took on before Desmond was born and that I am finding the time and energy to get back to blogging is testament to this. The successful traveling has helped too (no tears from Desmond during either plane ride!).

I'm feeling good and grateful about a lot right now, including the first meal I've cooked since giving birth. For the past three months, we've either eaten meals others have cooked for us (and we're lucky for that) or Chris has done the cooking (exhausted after a night up and a day at work), or we've had take out. But no more!

I've been longing for Desmond to give me one 1-hour nap and a 2-hour nap instead of three 1-hour naps. Yesterday, he did it! That first hour I'd been doing as many brief chores as I could in anticipation of his waking, and then the hour ended and he didn't wake. I thought, "Huh, what else can I get done?" and did a few more quick chores. Then he still wasn't up, and I wondered, "Should I wake him?" Then I thought, "No, fool! Cook dinner! Fast." I have never peeled, seeded and chopped a butternut squash so quickly. And I got the onions, ginger and garlic chopped and sauteed just as fast. I added the squash to simmer just as Desmond woke for his feeding and play time.

After he ate, I set the cooked squash aside. The dogs, Desmond, and I pulled ourselves together for an evening walk. This time I managed to pick up the dog poop. I felt stupidly proud. By the time Chris got home from work, I'd added stock and cream to the squash, pureed the mix, and butternut squash soup was on the stove. I felt like I could breathe easily.

My love for Desmond is so very big. It feels good to be at the point where I can enjoy it more thoroughly, even with a bad day here or there, and even though I find myself wondering if I'm doing things "right."

By the way, this entry is brought to you courtesy of Desmond's second consecutive day of taking a 2-hour nap. 

What to wear

I've decided that yoga pants, a T-shirt, and sneakers are perfectly acceptable to wear seven days a week. What not to Wear TV folks, come talk to me when your day revolves around a 3-hour schedule that consists of breast feeding, bottle feeding for forty minutes, playing with an infant for an hour (singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and "On the Road Again" over and over, dangling toys in baby's face, cheering him on during "tummy time," "reading" picture books, intermittent diaper changes), and then trying to get him down for an hour nap as fast as possible so that you can, in that hour, do any combination of the following: eat a bowl of cereal, shower, pay bills, make and eat a sandwich, do dishes, laundry, nap, vacuum, give dogs much needed attention, get on the computer to buy more formula and wipes, research day cares, work on the freelance project you took on before baby was born, search job postings and/or write a cover letter even though you have no desire to go back to work. And when you hear baby making noise ten minutes earlier than he is supposed to (Aren't you entitled to the full one-hour nap?), you will beg under your breath, "Please don't wake up; please don't wake up." He will let out a wail, and you will look down at yourself in those yoga pants and that T-shirt, remember that you made it out of your pajamas that morning, and say, "Damn, I look good," before you begin the 3-hour cycle again. I am learning that part of being a good mom means being forgiving of myself where and when I can.

It's a cold, crappy world

This evening, miserable as it was outside, the dogs needed a walk. I needed a walk. Desmond needed to be exposed to the elements. We'd all been shut in the house and isolated from the world for too many consecutive hours.

I am a responsible dog-walker. When I walk my dogs I bring along plastic bags. I pick up their poop, stinky, slimy as it may be. But in the 38-degree, dimming day, pushing the stroller with one hand, steering the dogs with my other hand, plastic bags crumpled in the pocket of my swollen jacket, after the dogs stopped to do their thing, I looked around and walked away like a teenaged shoplifter with a brand new lipstick tube clasped in my hand. My heart didn't even speed up as I pushed the stroller off and steered the dogs toward home. It's like I was a dog-shit-leaving pro.

It had been enough effort getting myself out of pajama pants and into jeans, socks, sneakers, a sweater, a down jacket, then bundling Desmond in socks, pants over his onesie, more pants over those pants, booties over his socks, fuzzy hooded bear coat, setting him into the car seat, setting the car seat into the stroller, shoving a blanket over him, then getting leashes onto the dogs and those empty plastic bags into my pocket. Out in the winter cold, no hands easy to free, it felt like performing that one last responsible act would be impossible. Sorry neighbors.

Overwhelmed

Tomorrow my son will be three months, which means he is officially no longer a newborn, but an infant. I never new there was a marked distinction until I saw it on the internet yesterday.

Overwhelmed is a word that has been in my vocabulary too much lately. I feel overwhelmed, still. There are still days, like yesterday, and probably today, when I don't make it out of my pajamas. I constantly feel as if I don't know what I'm doing or wonder if what I'm doing is "right". I look at job postings, because I need to find one, but I feel incapable of writing a clear, articulate cover letter. My brain feels like mush. Taking Desmond out on a walk in the evening feels like a major accomplishment. If the dogs come along, it is an even bigger accomplishment.

I don't know how women who go back to work at six or even twelve weeks manage. At the same time, I don't think women who go back to work soon after having a baby would know how to manage at home any better than I do.

And this is all that I have it in me to write at this moment. I'm sick today, as I was yesterday, so my mind is even mushier than usual. Rest while baby rests. Here I go.

Lessons from my mother

I have been thinking about my mother today.

When I was fifteen, she underwent triple bypass surgery and avoided the heart attack that was on its way. Nine years later, when I was twenty-four, she suffered a massive, debilitating stroke. Nine years after that, she died.

So, for nearly half of my life, I remember my mother in sickness. Tired, recuperating, healing, at times an insomniac, at times depressed.

That's not to say these are the only ways I remember her. They are not. Afterall, she was a whole, multi-dimensional person. I could write about the many other ways I remember her. Here is just one, the one that struck me today. Through all of these cycles of unhealth, unwell-being, my mother was never afraid of dying. "When it will be my time, it will be my time," I heard her say more than once. The tone behind those words, calm, peaceful, accepting. Not defeated, but brave and practical at once.

A former boss used to ask all the time, What am I supposed to learn from this? And if her employees were experiencing a particularly challenging situation, she would pose the question to them. "What are you supposed to learn from this?" Today I have wondered, what lesson can I take from my mother possessing a calm, peaceful acceptance of what is?

about a boy on the verge of manhood.

A year ago today, my nephew was in a fatal car crash in North Carolina. It was in the afternoon, a bright blue day. He was headed off to take a final exam. I was here in Texas administering a final to my students. The day seemed ordinary.

It is believed that his death was instant, which means we lost him on December 9. But the hospital kept his heart beating while his brain was at rest, and in that time, I saw him and said goodbye. Sometimes I see him in that hospital room, and I remember touching his face and squeezing his hand. Other times I remember his smirk and his laughter that was much louder in the gleam and smile of his eyes. Have you known someone whose laugh was as much a part of his eyes as it was a part of his sound and smile?

Chris and I were putting up a Christmas tree a few nights ago. I hung ornaments and my nephew came to my mind - six or seven years old in my parent's living room impersonating James Brown; Sean singing "I Feel Good," me and Chris watching and laughing. A bellyaching kind of laugh. Chris once gave him a copy of Santa's Got A Brand New Bag, if I can correctly remember all of those years ago. The night we were decorating the tree, I looked up and imagined James Brown's big-grinned face, his head in a santa hat, topping off our tree. I imagined Sean, tall and twenty-one, the way I wish he was today, walking into the room, seeing James Brown atop the tree, smiling his smile, laughing his laugh.

Tonight Chris and I are making the tree topper and putting it on the tree. Even as sour as the irony of the lyrics "I feel good" strike me, there is comfort I hope to take, some celebration of my nephew as a person who, at any age, could make others laugh, make our hearts shake with joy.

Originally posted on 12/11/09:

First born nephew, my sister's one child: May 12, 1990 - December 10, 2009.

On the night that my eldest nephew lay brain dead in a hospital, I lay in bed, the voice in my head speaking. Please let there be angels with Sean. Please let there be angels with my sister. Please let there be angels. Let there be angels. As if I could both hardly and only believe in their existence and in their ability to give my nephew safe passage to peace and to fill the space in my sister's hurting heart.

I have believed that my nephew was a boy on the verge of manhood. But he must have been on the verge of becoming a being more important and ethereal than a man.

Drunk Bastards

Last night we went to Antone's to see the Heartless Bastards. Chris's comment: "Erika Wennerstrom pulled a Janis Joplin."

First I was irritated and then increasingly mad. She finally asked the crowd (after stumbling and fumbling with her guitar, earplugs, mic, etc. for five minutes between incoherently sung songs), "Anyone notice I'm a little fucked up?" Somehow I felt less mad once she admitted it; at least she wasn't trying to fool us into thinking she wasn't performing well because of technical difficulties and personal preferences, which is how it originally seemed. (Apparently, she is fond of playing with a gray pick and a gray pick only.)

I kept waiting for her to throw up on stage, but we left before the show ended.

Erika Wennerstrom's voice and guitar are the entire magic of the Heartless Bastards, and I mean serious magic. Having seen them playing live and on point more than once now,  I can say that the lead trying to perform while completely bombed, or whatever else she may have been, didn't do her band, her music, or the audience any justice at all.

Thirty bucks and what could have been a cozy night on the couch both wasted, but not as wasted as Erika Wennerstrom.