While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Rock me mama: Growth and change in 2014

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I started this post a couple weeks ago and my intentions were to discuss the ways in which I think I’ve grown as a person, a mother and a journalist. I also intended to discuss the ways in which I think Joe has grown as a person, a father and a journalist. I thought this would be semi-interesting to at least four people.

I intended to share some of my brilliant and ghastly time management strategies, as well as some of my brilliant and ghastly potty training strategies.

I thought I’d tell you that Henry regularly uses the toilet, but since he also regularly bites other humans, throws close-fisted punches and flings chewed food on myself and the dog I wouldn’t say he’s 100 percent housebroken yet.

I thought I’d tell you we got a new dog.

Folding him into our life has helped fill a void and mend an ache. After months of huffing Cubbie’s favorite blanket in an attempt to bring him back, I washed it today for the first time with a load of sheets.

I thought I’d tell you that after a year of hustling as a freelancer, work is starting to happen with as much surprising regularity as Henry’s good potty days. This month I filled my calendar with so many projects and assignments I had to turn down work.

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How I made peace with letting my dog go

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It’s been 10 whole days since Cubbie left this world. Sometimes it feels like 10 whole seconds. Other times it feels like 10 whole years. I’m not sure I want it to feel like either.

Grief is weird. Sometimes it crushes you. Sometimes it numbs you. I knew with Cubbie it would crush me. I’ve logged far too many hours with this wide-eyed rotund creature to not feel heartbroken by his death. I was as they say, obsessed.

I’d have it no other way. He was my best friend on four legs, my office manager, my confidante, my softest spot before Henry and my most loyal companion before Joe.

In the end, he loved Joe as much as he loved me and I will forever remember my husband kissing his warm, still face in those heavy moments after he was euthanized. I will forever remember Joe’s grief, because there was no other person on the face of this planet who loved Cub as much as I loved Cub. The first half of Cub’s life was spent on my lap. The second half was spent on Joe’s.

Our sidekick is gone, robbed of time. In December he would have turned nine – 63 in dog years.

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Cheer up sleepy Jean

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What has got me so emotional right now? Could be 100 things. Could be the fact that I’m listening to a long, slow cover of The Monkee’s Daydream Believer. Suppose it could be something about the lyrics.

I could hide beneath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings.
The six o’clock alarm would never ring.
But six rings and I rise,
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes.

Could be the heartbreaking realization that my beloved dog is not getting any better. He’s blind now. He spends his nights panting and grunting. Pacing. Begging for more food and more water because the drugs he’s on make him more hungry and more thirsty than his usual ravenous self, which means he has to go to the bathroom ALL THE TIME.

I carry him down the stairs. I carry him up the stairs. At 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. I’m outside with bare feet guiding him to a tree so he can pee. Sometimes this reminds me of when he was a puppy and I used to carry him down my apartment steps because he was still too little to do them on his own.

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The view from here

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Two days before it was scheduled to be shut down, I took Henry to the St. Pete Pier so we could bid farewell to our favorite ailing tourist attraction.

Like most Bay area residents, I’ve known for years that this old landmark would soon be demolished. I also knew that once I had my son I would regret having not made memories with him on the old pier before a slick new pier one day opens in its place.

The fate of the Pier has become a hotly contested subject. I refuse to discuss the pros and cons of its replacement design, The Lens, out of sheer exhaustion. I’m tired of hearing about it. When it comes to CHANGE I’m as much a fan of progress as I am a curmudgeon, so I’ll refrain from offering what would likely be an uneducated opinion.

However, this fact remains true: the Pier’s infrastructure is falling apart, its concrete pilings, if left alone, would crumble into the bay. Studies revealed 10 years ago that the aging destination with its smattering of kitschy gift shops and empty restaurants wouldn’t survive another 20 years of saltwater erosion, never mind an impending economic blow.

When this news became public fodder in 2010, I added the Pier to my biking route. When Henry arrived in 2011, I added it to my running route. Knowing it would close before he’d be old enough to remember it, I decided to take him there often – always by foot or by bike.

Save for a handful of brooding old men drinking coffee and reading the paper, the food court inside the Pier’s dated building was usually vacant in the afternoon. Often it looked like Henry and I were the only people to order an ice cream cone for hours. In order to get the attention of the proprietor of the ice cream stand, I’d have to rap on the freezer doors and shout, “Yoo hoo! Anyone here?”

I once caught the guy asleep in a chair.

I wondered which was crumbling faster: the Pier’s infrastructure or its business.

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A ripe old moment

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|| Note: This is a post for my Opa, whom I’ve written about many times in the past. (See The pitfalls of downhill roller skating or While my Opa was sleeping, or Dies ist Opa.) He died Jan. 6 after suffering for several years with Alzheimer’s disease. He was a jovial, outgoing sprite of a man whom most people describe as a character. He spent as much time creating life stories as he did telling them. Even at his foggiest, he could captivate a small audience, albeit by then most of his tales were wildly embellished or completely untrue. When it became clear that his star in this world was fading, I began the subconscious process of squirreling away memories — both significant and slight. The one you’re about to read falls under the second category. I’m not sure why it floated to the surface. Memories are like dreams sometimes. When they roll in you must abide. ||

A memory: I’m seven, maybe eight years old. I’m holding a coffee can that has two holes punched through the tin. An old shoelace is knotted through each hole to form a kind of coffee can necklace. It’s hot out. July, maybe. I’m in Upstate New York, wearing purple jelly sandals and a tank top. My arms are browning under the midday sun. My tongue is stained with blueberries.

I hand the coffee can to Opa.

I loop it around his neck like I’m crowning him with a gold medal after a long race. It dangles against his chest like a clumsy locket. Inside the can is motor oil, or at least I think it’s motor oil. It’s thick and black and Opa won’t let me touch it.

“Dees is dirty stuff,” he says, as he plucks a beetle from a raspberry bush and drops it into the can.

I trail closely behind him. My sisters too. The air smells like grass and manure. The breeze is subtle, but my hair is fine and flies away easily. We’re in my Oma’s garden, a large unshaded plot divided into neat rows of cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes and berries. We’re inching our way through bushes, my sisters and I, our shadows following Opa’s shadow, our legs burning from thorn pricks.

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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.

The middle ground

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This is Henry when he was four months old. He couldn’t crawl and he couldn’t sit. He was nursing every few hours and puking every few minutes. He was smiling. Always smiling. He did that pretty frequently pretty early on, which I took to be a good sign.

My baby will be happy, I said.

And boy was I right. When he’s happy, he’s really happy. When he’s frustrated, he’s really frustrated. He exists in a perpetual state of One Extreme or The Other.

Sometimes he’ll hang around in The Middle. When he’s in The Middle you’ll know it. He’ll bring you a book and in his most civilized babble, ask you to sit still with him and read.

He likes to flip the pages on his own. Usually he turns to a picture of a cat, or a dog, or a truck. Each time he’ll identify these creatures as “lights.” Everything is a “light,” or as he likes to say it, “ite.”

My kid loves the light. Airplanes are repeatedly identified as “ites.” Dogs are ites. Squirrels are ites. The garbage truck is an ite.

Henry aches to be in the light every second of every day.

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In the shadows of a supermom

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Every day I try to be more like my mother and every day I fall short.

She exudes goodness. It follows her like a pretty scent on a warm day.

I’ll never be as good.

My mother’s goodness can’t be learned. It doesn’t come from reading self-help books, practicing yoga or going to church. It’s inherently selfless and unaware. It’s ingrained in such a way that my unassuming mother would never laud herself for possessing such a redeeming character trait.

If she’s reading this right now — even if it’s alone in her house in the afternoon hours before my father comes home from work — she’s probably blushing. She has red hair and a freckled complexion that easily flushes.

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fine & dandy

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I’ve decided I’m just gonna write.

I wanted to write about Father’s Day, but my concentration is shot.

So instead I’m going to write about whatever comes to mind when I open my head and let it rain thoughts.

Or drizzle thoughts, for that matter.

Lately, in the space where I dream in color, there’s been fleeting gray-scale distractions, the stuff of life. The stuff we all have to do that doesn’t count, but adds up. Teetering piles of laundry. Baby food diced into pieces. Work. Words. Interviews. Gas to get. Coupons to cut. Dishes to pass and dishes to scrub. The sound of Henry waking up. The sound of Henry falling asleep. Shallow breathing. Deep sighs. Sips of air. Millions of baby alveoli wiggling like underwater coral.

Henry sleeping. It’s peaceful of course, like how the house used to sound before he was born. Except it’s not the same. Everything hangs in a delicate balance contingent upon naps. When he’s breathing deep, I’m breathing deep too.

I used to stare at his chest and wait for it to rise and fall, a neurosis that has all but disappeared now that he’s gotten older and less helpless. I used to picture his respiratory tree surrounded by a forest of pink tissue.

That’s the actual medical term for it, respiratory tree.

(Even science is poetry, the ultimate poetry, which is funny because I always considered science to be depressing. Then again, poetry can be depressing too.)

Ooo, but the sound of my son breathing is unlike anything I’ve heard before.

It fills me with a red, warm emotion so primal it can’t be communicated in words. His breathing puts into perspective the things that tug at my sanity and self-esteem.

In the company of his tiny, rhythmic exhales, everything else is a cloud of big white nothing, a dandelion head after it’s flowered, a silver ball that scatters its seeds with as little as one puff of air, until all that remains is a stem so strong you can tie it into knots and wear it as a crown.

 

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.