While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

In thanks of this

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It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’ve got about 15 minutes until Henry wakes up, so let’s see what I can do with it.

Really, there’s too much to say. There’s always too much to say, so I’ll do what I always do and thank the higher powers and the lower powers and the super powers and the not-so-super powers for everyone and everything that makes life so beautiful, so raw and so fun.

Since this window is brief, I’ll focus on one thing, a recent development.

My son has started to give me kisses. Nothing lifts me like this does. Nothing. When he sees me from across a room, he’ll give me this look. It’s a cross between What Can I Break and What Can I Climb. If I’m perceptive enough to catch him in the middle of these two thoughts, I’ll throw my arms open and he’ll spring into my embrace, landing at my chest like a wild animal returning to its mother after a long hunt. Sometimes he turns his face to mine and plants a slobbery kiss on my chin, or my cheeks, or my forehead, or my glasses. Sometimes he’ll just stand there waiting for me to kiss him. This rare exhibit of patience astounds me.

I kissed a lot of boys in my day, but nothing prepared me for the joy of being kissed by my 18-month-old son. Joy is an understatement. It’s surreal actually. When you take the time to live in it, the heaviness and the lightness of the moment can spin you around. It’s essentially a flash, a spark in your day, and the more he does it the more you take it for granted.

It’s one of those feelings that as a writer I’ll never accurately describe. It puts into perspective the things that matter and the things that don’t. It wipes away the difficulties of motherhood. It conjures up in you the hopefulness of youth, the wisdom of adulthood, the profound sense of love that fills a body with warmth and gratitude. So much gratitude.

And then Henry turned one.

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Happy birthday darling.

Your mom has so much to say about you.

But she’s tongue-tied and love struck,

with just one thing on her mind.

I love you. I love you.

And love you so much.

The (low) key to my heart

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Me and the Mr. are featured on my gal pal, Meg’s blog: Mimi + Meg.

It’s just a little Valentine’s Day post, a gift-y guide kind of thing, designed with Meg’s super snazzy touch.

Upon reading what I wrote I was struck by how utterly unglamorous we are.

Really? Our “couple time” is spent watching Wipe Out and eating french fries? Where’s the ROMANCE? The RAPTURE? Rummy? RUMMY? Ah well. At least there’s champagne and face cards. On especially steamy nights, we use our Golden Girls deck. You heard right. The cards came with the show’s 25th anniversary DVD collection.

Anyway. Let’s forget our lameness for a second and return to Meg.

Damn girl was profiled in The Washington Post last week. How sweet is that?

Keep up the excellent work, my trendsetting friend. Your dogged ambition, excellent taste and clever design skills are paying off. You deserve the recognition.

Now. Any advice on how I can get the Lance featured in the St. Pete Times (ugh, name change) Tampa Bay Times?

It’s not like I don’t know anyone in the newspaper business.

—

PS. Wedding photo by ubackdrop.

The forest through the trees

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[ A little baby bliss goes a long way. ]

Swinging in this tree, in this backyard, with this little boy on my lap takes me back to a place I’ve not been in awhile.

It takes me back to my childhood, to the days I spent lounging in the sun, reading Alice In Wonderland, climbing old trees and performing front handsprings for passing cars. It takes me back to a trampoline and the poetry I wrote about lilacs, reckless dreams and young love. About why and where and how I would become a writer one day when I grew up.

I don’t know when I grew up.

Sometimes I catch myself looking in the mirror with Henry resting on my hip, our reflections bouncing back at us. His round face and his round eyes patterned after mine and Joe’s and all the family members that came before us.

I look in the mirror at this baby with the big eyebrows and the big grin telling me that I’ve grown up. And I think: what and how will you grow up to be?

Sometimes I beat myself up about things. About not achieving enough. It irritates Joe. He likes to point out that I’m the kind of person who can’t see the forest through the trees.

He’s so right.

I’m the Little Picture Girl and he’s the Big Picture Boy.

But now we’ve got this baby and he’s got us wrapped around his pinkie finger. He’s turning the big pictures and the little pictures inside out and upside down.

We created him using nothing but biology and now the world is different. Or at least it’s different for us.

The day he was born was unlike any other day of my life. I can’t explain it. Everything looked strange and beautiful. Things I had seen one million times looked as they did the first time I saw them. Businesses we passed on our way home from the birth center, places I had entered dozens of times, looked brand new. The air smelled exotic. The traffic lights glittered. The sounds of cars and birds and airplanes were louder than ever before.

You know how you feel when you move somewhere new? Or when you’re on vacation and you pass through a place you’ve never been? How your senses are heightened and your brain feels sharper than it has in months or years?

That’s how I felt in the days following Henry’s birth.

I felt like I was on drugs. The high was so beautiful and intoxicating. It felt just like floating – yet I was in some of the worst physical pain of my life.

In those early days, the very tough early days of wrapping my head around the fact that I had brought a person into this world, I did something I don’t do often.

I saw the forest through the trees.

This week, while swinging in the backyard with Henry on my lap, I saw it again.

The sun was slicing through the oak leaves. The air was cool for the first time since March. The church bells were dinging and Henry was giggling.

We swung this way for an hour. Back and forth, back and forth. Me and Henry just looking at the forest through the trees.

Happy anniversary love.

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Tonight my husband turned to me and said, “I can’t believe we have a baby.”

(I was balancing a wobbly, but standing Henry on my legs.)

“I know,” I said. “It’s weird huh?”

“Yeah I had no idea when we spoke for the first time over a Pac-Man Bubble Bobble game that I would have a baby with you.”

“If I told you we’d be making a baby the night we met, you’d have run for the hills.”

“You’d have run too.”

“Yup,” I said.

“That was the beauty of the situation,” Joe said. “Neither one of us was trying too hard.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t out combing bars looking for my babydaddy.”

“And I wasn’t like Cute Girl. Must get her number.”

“No, I got your number.”

“And I gave you a baby.”

This day two years ago today I married Joe. Happy anniversary darling. I love you like a computer nerd loves Pac-Man Bubble Bobble, which means more than you will ever know.

Pregnancy Confession No. 10

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[I underestimated the 4th trimester.]

I have a big, dumb confession to make.

I (foolishly) thought I would write a screenplay on my maternity leave.

I (foolishly) assumed not working would free up more time for writing. I figured I would spend my days in a glowy haze writing as Henry slept. I pictured myself perched contently at the computer knocking off scenes during uninterrupted stretches of newborn sleep.

I pictured Henry waking from his afternoon slumber, myself sailing from computer to baby like a modern-day Donna Reed. I pictured myself tending to my motherly duties — nursing, diapering, rocking, singing and cooing to my little lamb — as if these things are as predictably routine as brushing your teeth.

Silly rabbit.

I underestimated the fourth trimester; this period I’m in now: the early weeks and months of motherhood, of baby development.

The first time I heard someone mention the fourth trimester I was newly pregnant and blissfully naive.

“Fourth trimester?” I choked. “There’s a FOURTH trimester?”

I was filled in by a woman in my neighborhood who had just given birth to her first baby, a hairy boy who at the time was nestled in a purple wrap tied elaborately across her chest; a baby barnacle clinging to his mother’s bosom.

“Yeah,” she said wearily. “The baby adjusting to life outside the womb. You adjusting to the baby.”

Oh yes. The fourth trimester. Cute.

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When words fail: a movie for my baby

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Writer’s block is a funny thing. Whenever I come down with an especially paralyzing case, I usually end up funneling creative juices into something else. In this case, I made a movie. (I also painted and redecorated our bedroom, but that was because I was inspired by how AWESOME the king’s lair, ie:  The Baby Cave, turned out.)

For Henry at two months is a compilation of short video clips shot in the weeks before and after Henry’s birth. It illustrates everything I’ve struggled to articulate lately.

It’s 12 minutes long, which might seem ridiculous given that Henry can’t sit, speak or crawl. Yet with the proper music and edits, the seemingly mundane life of a newborn suddenly becomes much more enchanting.

You might be asking yourself how shitty diapers and curdled puke could possibly be enchanting.

Well, I’m here to tell you the magic happens in the breakthroughs in between; in the moments of joyful firsts and simple (yet herculean) milestones that sneak up on you when you’re knee-deep in life-altering muck. They make the diapers, vomit and sleep deprivation all worth it. You hear parents utter this nonsense all the time. Now that I’m a parent I can tell you it’s clichéd, but true.

My baby giggled today for the first time. It happened while I was playing THIS movie for him. We were dancing to the last song, an infectious little ditty by Lykke Li called Dance, Dance, Dance.

His giggle was so adorable it didn’t sound real.

“Henry!” I squealed. “You found your laugh!”

I was hoping he’d do it again, but no amount of prompting seemed to spark another one. I guess I’ll just have to wait for it to occur as it occurred the first time: organically and delightfully without warning.

—

PS. The shot of me dancing was taken during a senior citizen pool party at my grandparent’s mobile home park in Nokomis, Fla. Talk about fortuitous sunbathing! You can thank Joe for capturing it.

PPS. Music by Norah Jones (Man of the Hour), Grizzly Bear (Two Weeks), Scott Matthews (Eyes Wider Than Before), Van Morrison (They Sold Me Out) and Lykke Li (Dance, Dance, Dance)

Rain, babies, coffee and sleep

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This is scattered and I’m OK with that.

I know I’ve been lazy in the Lance department and I’m fine with that, as well.

I’ve been figuring out this mommy thing. Letting it run over me like warm water. Letting it settle into my bones like old age. Letting it hit my synapses like a drug. Letting it happen to me. Letting it be so special that even I, a writer, can’t put it into words. Not yet.

It’s bigger than me. Bigger than Joe. So enormous and so significant that I can’t pin a fancy word on it. You understand I’m sure.

I’m in the thick of it; staring at my kid, his perfect fingers, his big pink feet. They look like his father’s feet. They look like my feet.

His toes curl when he’s angry. His eyes widen when Joe plays the guitar and his brow furrows when he’s cold.

I still can’t believe I made this.

That we made this.

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For Henry, four days after Mother’s Day

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Dear Henry,

Up until now, I’ve refrained from writing you a letter on The Lance. I know a lot of blogging mamas do it, but I’m kind of an old-fashioned letter-writer. One day I’ll set you up with a pen-pal and you’ll understand.

What’s there to say today?

Well, to start: I’m not centering the text on this letter. In my last post, your father asked that I opt for a left paragraph alignment. I’m sure you appreciate the readability. Your dad, he’s so fastidious.

If you take after him, you’ll be far more articulate than your mother. You’ll be grounded and rational. Thoughtful and smart. You’ll have a voracious appetite for music, politics and social science books. You’ll be a good cook.

If you take after your mother, you’ll have your head in the clouds 90 percent of the time, and in that space, you’ll run wild. Just remember: while it’s frustrating to be a dreamer, you’ll grow to appreciate the escape. Because no matter where you are, you’ll always have an out.

And just when you think you’ve lost it; when you’re fretting about passing a final exam, or paying your bills, or saving for retirement, you’ll pull out the dreamer card and though it’ll do little to solve your problems on earth, it’ll put things into perspective in that ambiguous ether that gives Buddhists peace.

At 29, if there’s one piece of advice I can give you, it’s this: I’ve met people who have it all and I’ve met people who have nothing and what I’m learning as I get older is that the path to fulfillment isn’t measured in stock dividends.

I can’t imagine what the world will be like when you’re my age, but I’m confident there will still be poetry books, good music, hot coffee, ballpoint pens and people howling at the moon.

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Pregnancy Confession No. 6

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[My husband keeps me sane.]

I've heard that some women can't stand their husbands
when they're pregnant.

Not this woman. 

As independent as I think I am.
As strong.
As determined.
As tenacious and scrappy.

I'm afraid I'd be a tragic mess without Joe.

I don't tell him enough.
How happy I am that I married him.
That I chose to have a baby with him.
That he chose to marry me.
Have a baby with me.

How grateful I am for his unconditional love.
Because believe me, there are moments when I wouldn't love me.
But he does. And he tells me.
Over and over.

How grateful I am for his kindness.
His compliments.
That he tells me I'm beautiful.

Even as I get bigger and crankier
and dismiss every ounce of his flattery
and crinkle my nose at the mention of beauty. 

Still he tells me I'm beautiful.
And in moments of solitude, I think of that.
And in moments of frustration, I think of that.

And I think
Damn girl, you're lucky to be so loved.

And I think about my son.
How lucky he is to have a father
who sets his head on my stomach and says

"Hello in there.
How you doing?
If you can hear me, kick me in the face.
It's the only time I'll allow it, so do it while you can."

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