The feeling of the lone Mama

At the start of this staying with the babe during the day I was terrified. I was petrified of the potential isolation, of sitting at home not having adult conversation. I had a turning point when I realized what I called loneliness had a lot more to do with uncertainty and discomfort with the unknown future. I had a slow build up to a turning point I can not pin down in time where I shook the stress of graduate school. After having family here for almost two weeks it has been great to be alone and to have time to work when Byrd sleeps. Or to sleep when the baby sleeps. I have been lusting for time to work, time to write, time to finish graduate school threads that are still dangling over me.

Today I had baby&Mama group, friends from a class, not exactly friends since we are just getting to know each other, but the hope of friends. There is a special sanity to being with other mamas. Though I feel nervous with them, in part since I want them to be my friends, in part because I am at the younger end (thirty seems now to be a young mom), and probably mostly because I am the most hippie dippie and transient, we don't have a house, we don't have permanent jobs, we don't live in a suburb, we don't have nice furniture, we don't use formula, we don't use disposable diapers. When I am with them I realize my feet are dirty from being outside in sandals. Today someone pointed out how nice everyone's toes were, how her polish had worn off. I made a note to throw on socks next time.

I was excited to see these women and their babies I have seen go from laying in arms only to sitting up on their own. I wanted to talk nothing but parent talk: sleep, naps, diapers, nursing, day care, husbands. I wanted to just listen to all this, to watch this new planet go round. Byrd was happy and playful in then in seconds was crying ready to sleep. I left quickly. He was asleep in the car in seconds and I felt so lonely. I did not want to go home and work while he sleeps. I did not want to think of what else to do with the day. I did not feel excited for time. I just wanted to sit on the floor with these beautiful women and their beautiful babies and soak up this whole parenting thing externally, to take it out of my head and see it. I felt a great regret, I felt left out as I drove home, Byrd fast asleep. I thought of circling back and carrying him in. I thought of how I could have just held him in my arms and he would have fallen asleep, how I could have sat on the coach and held him. I got nervous and jumped out of their as fast as possible. All the nerves from not seeing these new friends for a couple weeks and sensing how different I am.

Race

My recent trip to the Hmong Marketplace made me think about race, the discomfort of being different, of considering that a stranger is black/asian/white/etc and knowing that I am aware of other's race as a white woman. I make note. Sometimes I feel something along with the note, a black man walking down the street towards me can sometimes make me consider my surroundings. It is an awful feeling, to judge without thinking. I did not grow up here, I grew up in a much smaller and more diverse city. I went to grade school with lots of black and asian and hispanics. I can watch myself now and see how I am not used to seeing and interacting with so many people of color. I watch Byrd and note that he does not react to darker skin, older skin, uglier skin, beautiful skin. He is not shocked or interested. At the gym a gorgeous african woman in the day care will hold him and he is happy but seems unaware of both her distinctive good looks or her very dark skin.

In college I formed a group of friends, four of us are asian, two of us are white. We talked about race as a construct, one of the asian girls who I was closest with told me that she and I would never be as close as she was with asian friends. I remember how unfair that seemed. It was not true. A different one of these girls married a chinese-american man recently, she makes all sorts of comments about how asian men are best, it rings insincere, or like a performance, this is the first chinese-american she has ever dated. I think something about being chinese-american married to someone else chinese-american feels good to her. But it makes me, as a white friend, feel like she wishes I were chinese-american too.

For seventh grade I started at the local public school, I had been at a small semi-private school that was mostly italian-american. I was the only jewish kid. There were a handful of black girls in every class. I was friends with everyone, it was a small school. I learned that race was meaningless. That we are all created equal. That people who thought one race was better than another were bad. My local public school was 98% minorities (according to the no child left behind reports). They had divided the class into two groups and you had all the same classes and classrooms as your half. All the white kids with college educated parents from the neighborhood were in one group, I was in the other. I made friends with cambodian girls with slicked back ponytails that hung down to their waist. They had long names that no matter how many times I asked I could not pronounce, they gave me short names to use, like Mimi. We sat together at lunch and I felt very other. I saw the white girls in their vintage bohemian cloths walk by my table and I wondered how I would ever meet them too. The first gym class I changed my cloths, but noticed that most people did not do this. We played kickball inside the large gym, there were probably seventy girls so most of the time we just waited in line for a turn to kick the ball. It was really boring. The gym teacher sat in a chair, he looked bored or asleep. I slouched against the wall. A tall black girl with huge breasts came up to me when I was about ten people from the front of the line for kicking, "You just get back at the end of the line, if you kick that ball I am gonna kill you." I looked up at her, I was short and skinny, no one had ever talked to me in that way before. At my sweet private school I had lead a fight for the kickball field for girls. The boys in fifth grade had taken over the field and told us girls we could not play, we inserted ourselves into the game, this boy Matt once stood real close to me and told me, "Girls have no power." I pushed his skinny ass down and he fell into the mud. Our fifth grade teacher tried to have a class discussion about sharing the field. I was called a feminist, boys complained about why did us girls have to make a fuss over this. Anyways, in the end girls and boys alternated days or something like that with the kickball field.
So here I was, a new student, twelve years old, in this old gym with ceilings about three stories up, nine people in front of me to bat before I had to make a choice. The gym was a cavernous wicked feeling space. I thought about Julie of the Wolves when Adena King, the tall black girl stood over me, "If you go up to kick, I will kill you." I tried to radiate my calm, to not show fear, this alone, I thought, will be powerful enough for her to walk away, to protect me.
I went up to kick the ball, I got to second base. A short squat girl came over to me and told me Adena was gonna kill me. Adena came over as I stood on second contemplating third, she told me her last name was King, "Do you know what that means to us black people." I knew what King meant, peace, change, strength, standing up for what you believe. I am now married to a person with the last name King, though he is white. It made me a little sick to think of changing my last name to the one this leering tall girl held over me as a symbol of violence and anger.
After gym class the teacher came over and told me to be careful and do what those girls said. I went home and did not want to leave. Each morning I lay in bed refusing to get up, I cried. I did not want to go to this big dusty building and have six foot tall girls beat me. I remember my step-mother coming in after about a week of this, she said, "So what are you gonna do now, just lay in bed?" That struck me as a good point. What was I gonna do. So I got up and went to school after that. I say the same thing to myself now sometimes, "What are you gonna do self, just lay in bed." My parents had me moved to the seventh grade group with all the other middle class white kids, all the middle class white boys wanted to date me since I was new. All the girls wanted me to be their friend. Adena never bothered me again. I never went in the locker room or changed for gym, I sat against the wall instead and talked to my two best friends, we called ourselves the "Chuck Chicks" and wore all different colors of converse with our cool vintage outfits. We were friends with girls of all races, but we did not see the black/asian/hispanic girls outside of school. I saw girls fight, rip clumps of weave-in hair out, throw each other down stairs, carve their initials in the other one's neck. If someone were to come up to me again and tell me not to kick I did not know what I would do, I probably would not kick. I had learned fear. I knew that when a tall black girl with huge boobs tells you she is gonna kill you it at least means she might pull out a good chunk of hair, cut you with a knife, or throw you down the stairs.
In college I worked as a residential advisor (except at Brown I was called a woman peer counselor) and we talked about race. Racism was defined as something white people could do, but not something other races could do. Only when you are in the position of power can you be racist. I tried explaining what my middle and high school were like, I was told I was wrong. Adena was not racist because she was not really in a position of power in the greater world. Only I, the white one, the entitled one, had the option of being racist, explained Kena the asian-american woman who ran the residential advising program. I had learned my lesson from Adena,instead of insisting on kicking the ball I just sat against the wall, talked with my friends, and held my tongue.

cold weather

It is mid August and cool. The day will heat up, but this fresh morning, wearing my slippers and a long sweater, there is a nurturing I have missed in my skirts and tank tops. My feet dirty in my sandals, my skin sweaty and burned. There is something I have lacked recently. I might take a hot bath with Byrd today. Soak up all the hints of autumn.

I want to go to the movies!

Last night was our second anniversary. My family had finally all left around four in the afternoon. We sort of had a date earlier in the day. My brother dropped us off at our canoe that had been stranded from high winds the day before. We paddled across Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun. My family was going to meet us at Lake Calhoun to go for a walk. We have wheels we put under the canoe so we can walk with it. Walking the canoe is amazingly similar to walking a dog. You just pull lightly and it follows, you watch that it is crossing the street and still behind you. As soon as we crossed the bridge to Lake Calhoun I knew we should have circled Lake of the Isle's a few times. The wind was too strong and we were making really good time. It was like the wind had a hand under our canoe and was pushing us towards our waiting family.
That was our date.
Once everyone left we were exhausted. Completely tired out. Family sprawled across your home, each on a cell phone or a lap top, their foreign debris scattered about, extra beds filling up what are normally common spaces, it is not something you recover from with sleep. We did not know what to do so we set out for St. Paul with Byrd. We went to the Hmong Market Place: http://www.hmongtownmarketplace.com/
http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/June-2009/Capital-Grills/
http://www.citypages.com/2008-05-28/restaurants/hmong-market-is-a-rare-food-adventure/

We were in search of ribs and giddy with the freedom of the family now gone. In the car I could not stop thinking that I wanted to go to a movie. I wanted to veg out. After the long couple of weeks of different family members visiting I could not stay at home any longer (the worst part of the family visit was being trapped in the house with them or in the back of the house while they slept or were up late). I wanted to be out and I wanted to just completely let go. For a moment I came up with a plan that I would first take off and go see an early movie by myself. There is no question that Byrd in the movies is a terrible idea. So first I go, then Robin could go by himself afterwards. Robin suggested I go to a movie with a friend this week, but if I have the chance to socialize why sit in a dark movie?! I have never been to the movies alone. But there is something so delicious now about alone time.

Robin, Byrd, and I explored the Hmong market. The highlight was watching the green papaya salad making. Two women stand side-by-side, each has a gallon size wood mortar and pestle. They slice tomatoes and long beans into the mortar, they squeeze limes, they spoon sugar and salt and tamarind sauce and a thicker goopier brown sauce into the mortar. They throw in handfulls of dried peppers. There is a crowd around this stand though the rest of the market is empty. I feel tall. The group of Hmong women come to my shoulder. Byrd sucks the edge of a cold plastic bubble tea cup. The women pound away. I want to ask someone for directions, I want to ask what the difference between Thai and Laos salad is. I want to ask about the amazing ribs I have heard of (I only see congealed meat, some of it clearly innards floating in thick greasy broth). Part of me hesitates to ask because the place feels so foreign I feel that no one speaks english. I know most everyone here speaks english, but it feels like they dont. I hesitate to ask because it feels like we have intruded with our pale skin and height to this market community. I hesitate to ask because there is something so rude about gaining entertainment by walking into someone else's different but interesting world. So we stand and watch batch after batch. When the crowd has thinned and we are up I stumble, unsure what minimal words I need to say. Medium spicy, Laos style. I watch her scoop and cut and squeeze and pound. The woman hands me a forkful, I taste and approve of the salad, like it is a wine. I love this most about the experience. Tasting and approving. The interaction with the cooks. The sense of inclusion in the experience.
We take our salad to the cathedral and look out over Saint Paul. Byrd crawls around us and over us. We talk and laugh and feel good and free. The air is cool and the coolness is a great relief. At the end of the night I feel content. Robin is everything I want in a partner. I am so glad we decided to have Byrd and not wait for some more opportune time when we have more money, more career stability, more adultness. And in the car on the way home I still harbor this secret desire to be sitting alone in a crowd in the dark of a theatre. What stangeness there is to our hearts and souls. How do you recapture exhaustion? I am going to check movie listings.

What would you do

Your sister has moved to your city, you are not sure if you had anything to do with drawing her here. She sublets a place near you, but when her cat tries to take on Vicious the permanent cat at the place she moves into your sunroom. This is the place your baby usually practices crawling. Your apartment is small so now when you feed the baby in the morning you can watch your sister snore in her bed. Your sister is a year older, she is very cool, she wears $300 shoes and short skirts. Her braless free nipples make your milk filled breasts sink even lower in your nursing tank.

Your parents wanted your sister to move to this city since she has not found a husband in your hometown. You found a husband here afterall. She is not getting any younger they say. Her long blond hair as thick and smooth as a high school cheerleader. It is eerie to think she could go through menopause in ten years or less even. When you were teenagers she used to take any cloths you had that were as stylish or more so than hers and keep them in her closet. You did not understand but were just happy that she liked something about your taste. Your mother and father would have you exhibit dress up cloths for events to her for approval. If she wanted your cloths that was pretty clear approval.

Your husband is out of town the night your sister comes over shaken by the near threat of Vicious. It is summer and hot and the two of you were panties and thin tank tops. When you dress to leave the house you feel your milky breasts sink even lower as you compare your elastic waist shorts and baby food stained t shirt to her sexy summer dress that looks two sizes too small but still sexy.

When your husband is returning you realize you do not want the sexual frustration of your sister on her hunt for a husband and probably more so for a baby daddy in your living room. You do not want your leaking breasts pinned up next to her nipples showing through the thin material of the halter top she made for herself.

You sit on the coach with her the night before he gets home, she is being nice, very nice, talking with you. You wonder if you are wrong, imaging things. But then you remember in high school when she had a car and a license and you had neither since you were younger. You needed to get to work a mile and a half away and it was raining hard. The sky was dark like night even though it was ten in the morning. You asked her for a ride. Lightening flashed out the window, "No," she said. "But it is raining, why wont you give me a ride," you asked. "Because I dont feel like going out," she said. And you walked in the rain. You can not think of a single time she has redeemed herself for this wet cold Saturday morning. For you arriving at work drenched. So now, fifteen years later you feel just as stuck in the situation. As if that morning never ended. You tell her your husband feels sick and you need her to go back to the sublet with the panther-cat. Her cat can stay here, you do not have visions of the cat smiling up at your husband in this city of potentially available men. Your husband is one thing you do not want her approval on. You remember a saying about how we are all really just children inside, the saying was meant to reference our imagination and fun loving goodness, but you have an eerie sense of your own capacity for pettiness. That this will be with you as an old lady, in the next life, in the spirit world, written under your skin, "I won't help you."

love

I have not known how to close emails with my mother. the mother who bore me and who I lived with until i was five. The mother who was always angry. The mother who told my siblings in what order she thought we fell for intelligence. I was not near the top. The mother who told us our father was a horrible person even though he actually raised us. And on and on and on. On the phone too, I dont know how to close off, what to say to end things. I close off with love to my mother in law, i appreciate parts of her, truly, but I cant stand her overall. So why not just say it to my mom. I test myself, what if she dies suddenly? What would I feel. I try to guilt myself into admitting love or try out contrast to see if I can make something budge inside me. When I was pregnant I found neutral territory with my mom over our bodies. Her body a sort of guide to what my own might be like. Her care for my physical well being was aggressive almost. Confusing. Somehow I now just sign off with love because it is simple. I dont know exactly what I mean by it, but if I use it I dont have to question why in the same way as if I dont use it.

Why I write

At each stair step coming of age: graduating high school, graduating college, marriage, birth of my first child, I dive deeper in. The need to write a calling that pulls me forward, that ties me closer to myself. My writing self grows stronger as I grow older, it is like growing a tail that I trail behind me, sometimes I use it to feel the way ahead, to sense an area I can not turn to look at. I work as a scientist, pour my heart into my infant son, the tail all the time fit neatly through a little slit in my lab coat, my nightgown, my swim suit, my party dress, my lacy play cloths, the indent just above my ass. The tip of the tail is a pen, forever scribbling the way some people narrate in their head to Jesus, or a distant admirer, or a movie star.
I only hope that the scribbles made by my tail later receive the attention and love of my pen and paper to be remembered, nourished, acknowledged.

Tongue in cheek

It is really special to get to stay at home with my baby. Really special. My mother tells me she cannot understand why anyone would have children if they were not going to stay home with them. I silently remind myself she is from a different generation. I do have envy my husband his office stories, the bus ride, seeing what people do as they walk down Hennepin Avenue, watching people pick their noses on the bus or ease dropping on their phone conversations. It is hard to pick up on new styles at home. There is not much reason to get dressed, but I do, I hear that it is healthy. Usually I just wear a tshirt and panties until about noon, but then I pull cloths off the top of the pile. Not that many of my cloths fit me, I figure why put them in the drawers. The dresser is really a time capsule.
As I was saying, it is special to stay home, if you doubt that just search for Christian mom blogs on Google. The first week of babies life I watched the baby, I heard they grow so fast you don’t know what happened, well, I thought since I am in this special position I can actually watch. Baby smiles at me, my heart melts, I smile back. After a few weeks I have not seen growth, but sometimes I pick him up out of the crib and I swear he has gained five pounds in his sleep. It is really exciting when the baby gains weight; I delight in his chubby thighs and arms. It is almost equally exciting when I loose weight. I wish I could grab a handful of flesh off of me and stick it on the baby actually, since that is sort of how it works with this whole milk production thing. It would be easier if we were made of clay, we could skip the latching on, cracked nipples, let down reflex and just transfer bits of me over to him.
I stopped watching to see baby grow, I have been busy. I am learning the language of parenting. These words usually come in pairs, a descriptor and a noun, like miracle blanket, sleep sack, attachment parenting, double diaper, cloth diaper, disposable diaper, swim diaper, jogging stroller, bike trailer, sore nipples, sleep schedules, supervised crying, focal feeding, self soothing, inappropriate sleep habits. And then the singular cute words: nook, binkie, pacie, onsie, footie, romper. I am sure my old friends do not mind that I forget words in the middle of a sentence or even forget what conversation we are on. They nod and smile as the flood gates come down and I start talking about diaper blow outs and rashes behind baby’s knee. With my new mom friends we just exchange the parenting language, “Double diaper, uhh huh.”
“No way, I use disposable diapers.”
“Do you let her cry it out?”
“Never, I do the no-cry-sleep-solution.”
“Let me grab a footie suit and his bink and we wil be ready!”
Sometimes parent language borders on prickly territory, “You still nurse your four year old?”
“You quit nursing after three months?”
I like to ask questions, in part I know I am self focused and I cant remember the conversation half way through, and I need these new mom friends to practice my new language on, so I keep asking about them. Nursing, formula, solids, biking with baby, travelling, strollers, I just smile and ask, I can’t remember the answers anyways so why get upset. This is such a special time, none to waste on judgement.

writing a novel

I am working on a novel.

I am working on an idea to suggest to the textile museum to make fabrics or wallpapers with botanical microscopic images.

I am working on an essay about how we learn through creating or learning new languages that connect actions (words) to senses. How I cook not to become a chef but as part of learning the language of food. How I learn how to learn this way.

I am working on a story about a doctor who picks other people's flowers in the dead of night. she grew up without much money. gets arrested. she grew up carrying groceries home by hand to feel the weight of what they would eat, she carried gallon of milk. her husband has to bail her out. not a story where she goes from one emotion to another, but more a reflection of how a doctor gets to be in jail in the middle of the night. Doesnt matter what you have, how much money, sense of need is ingrained, or sense that what is out in the world is up for grabs is ingrained.

I had coffee with friends yesterday and we were talking about a friend of their's who writes. "He wrote a novel,"JB said. "was it good?" I asked. "Not really, it was the typical mostly autobiographical first novel." JB said. My novel is largely autobiographical. I have already used some of the format and plot elements in other stories now. Maybe I dont need to write this story anymore, I think. But it is my monkey mind of doubt. It is the story i started. I also think it doesnt matter what you write about it is how you write about it. One of the main characters is basically my college self, but I am trying to develop her by giving her an occupation I have to research (cheese making), and making her older and changing the setting from literal Providence, RI to a slightly re imagined Providence (a big greenhouse where Prospect Park is).

With this novel I am at the border between an idea and reality. And at the border there is a wall of doubt and self defeating thoughts.

I would like to think JB is wrong. Autobiographical novels have many pitfalls, but it is how one does it not that it is autobiographical.

Here I go............! Zoom!