as evening fell, we cleared the already clean air

Last night I came home so tired. I taught nine classes and then stayed late moving piles of books around. My plan was to come home and pass out, but when I walked  in the door my sweet family breathed new life into me. We celebrated our Friday by going out for hamburgers and ice cream. Ramona showed us how she can ride her bike with the training wheels and then Brian and I sat in the back and watched her pick flowers and talk to a caterpillar.

I put my arms around Brian. "People are getting my blog posts about you wrong. My mom is worried about us. She's worried about me", I fret. 

He said, "I know the difference between you just being yourself and you trying to hurt me. I know you love me." 

And I relaxed. And enjoyed the light and the air and our sweet little girl. Because he trusts my heart. So I can too.

Writing it while it happens opens you up to disaster. This life made of loving people has so many folds to it. I think I don't want to get it wrong, but more than that I want to feel the entire thing with my heart. I don't want to be afraid. Afraid you will get me wrong. 

a love letter, sort of

I had a small wedding and while it was a very nice day, it wasn't the best day of my life. The best might have been the day he discovered my heart was broken and went about fixing it. How often does someone take the time to stop and fall in love with you? To stop in their tracks to fix you?

I will confess that about 30% of the time I could really go for an affair. Sometimes I'd chew off my arm to escape my life. I yearn for the time before I had so much to lose.

How can I keep from bashing him on the head with a bag of oranges? How can we live this sometimes boring, awful, loveless life? How can we do it? How can I make it through my thirties without blaming him for it all? How do lovers remain?

I listen to The Violent Femmes as loud as I can and remember the way he was before I ruined him. Before I piled the house and kids on him. Before I convinced him my happiness was to be chased at all cost. 

Somehow it is not entirely his goodness that keeps me. The way he is an excellent father. The way he comes through when we are broke. The very good man he is. Somehow I know it's something else. It's something else.

wish you were here

I've acquired quite a taste for a well made mistake - Fiona Apple

This morning, as I was driving to school, I had to confront the fact that one of my most tangible memories did not actually happen. I think of it periodically, always during a touch of heartbreak. I crossed the back of the fine art building of my college. You were walking from the street. I see exactly how baggy your clothes were fitting you at the time. You wore a blue hat. We ran to each other, I am not kidding. And it is not exaggeration to say my heart exploded.

This might not have happened. I think I stood there alone. Making you up.

The summer I got married, I re-read all the Little House books. Now, I'm pregnant and while I wait for my baby, I've been reading The Savage Detectives and last week I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. These suit a craving I have, a craving for angst. And a deep craving for the past. Reading about these young poets reminds me of reading On The Road when I was a teenager. Then, just as now, I had no nightlife. No freedom. I can't get over how brief the period of freedom is for a woman. It's such a short time where you have your adulthood, before you become a mother and it's gone. Does it return? Does it even matter when your youth is gone? Countless times in the last few years I've regretted the careful way I manicured my twenties. Accumulated degrees, remained mostly safe, stayed home.

So, I recall the things I read and the boys I loved. I crave these things, the same as I do hamburgers and olives. I admit I dream about old loves nearly constantly. Sometimes I just dream I am walking around my college, and wake up with my broken heart. Do not shake your head at a 31 year old woman mourning her youth. You know as well as I do it is gone.

I crave a mistake. A good mom gone bad. Don't worry, it's not real and it will pass. I was made to do right.

before you were born

When Ramona was born, I was speechless. I've never been so silent in my life. The nurses handed her to me so proudly, as if to say, Look what you made! Look what we delivered so well for you! Rejoice, she is wonderful! But I greeted her with no words. I knew a pronouncment was what they were looking for. Words were not what I had for her. Words just wouldn't do.
The miracle is not that you give birth to a baby. The miracle is the love. How it comes from nowhere. How without worry, without doing a thing, it arrives right on time.

This is a trust I have in the universe. Before they are born we know nothing of them but the things we place on them. You are a boy. You kick. You are the right size. You are my second child. But I don't know you. I know nothing of you. But this time I'm not worried about the place of my heart,because I trust in the universe. I trust that I was chosen for you. I trust that you are my path.

14 more weeks to go.

science

We had a sonogram a few days ago, and despite my belief that all sonogram pictures look the same and belong in medical texts, this one is sweet to me.

Ramona is beginning to believe the story we are feeding her about there being a baby in my tummy. And she's drawing conclusions.

Last night she was inspecting the growing tummy, and turns to me in shock and asks, "Mama, is my baby brother PEEING in your tummy??"

I believe this is the smartest thing she's ever said. My mind was blown at how my small girl could construct such a rational and scientific conclusion. Then I shocked myself by explaining that, yes he is, but he's really little and it's just a little bit of pee-pee and it actually isn't gross.

One time a first grader asked me what drugs were and I said I don't know. I used to skip the part where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered with a shotgun while he stood on a balcony. I didn't think six year olds needed to know that. I've been uncomfortable with the hard stuff since the beginning of time.

But now I have my own small girl firing questions at me. Confusing and interesting questions I may or may not be able to answer intelligently. But I'm committed to telling the truth. I'm also aware these are softballs and to expect the questions to just get harder.

I can't help it. Isn't my daughter smart? Isn't my baby cute? Aren't humans kind of built to be wonderful? Let's just marvel together at nature for a bit.

reflections/angst on a book, The History of Love

he called her nova

it was the prettiest word he knew,

he called her nova

perfect for someone just like you

Allegedly, my dad wrote this. He wrote it sometime during the 70s. It was a song. A song my mother remembered, and he forgot. My mom remembered and it became my name. And this stanza showed up in a birthday card from my dad somewhere in my early 20s.

I've decided this is the way art works, and really not just the art, but also the teachings we receive. We hear what we want to hear, and we remember it in little fragments that we put together on our own. This is the way it goes.

I finished reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss last night and it has invented enough feeling inside of me to break my silence on writing about books. Before I passed it on to the next reader, I searched this beautiful book for a sentence. Something to show you why it is to read. And every sentence reminded me of my dad's song. Because this book is somehow about a name, and remembering, and how the things we write move away from us and bring us things and never give us exactly what we are hoping for.

And it's about growing old. Not just old feeling. But honestly very old. And how we don't realize this now, but a lot of us will die alone. Our parents will be gone. Our mothers will not be there. The romantic loves we have lost will be more than lost. Everyone we know, gone. And we will hope to be seen by someone.

small and large things

I had been saving all Ramona's little clothes for the last two and half years just in case we had another little girl. But we are not, and this is the last baby for me. So we get rid of them? Bin after bin of things my precious girl wore? We just give them away? I have tucked them in the basement, because I can't really deal with hard stuff right now.

I wasn't sure from where all the heartbreak came. After all, my new baby is coming and this is a time to be excited. What is wrong with me? Over the weekend I was going through my nephew's clothes. Some of them I liked, and others I didn't. I made quick piles of her things. No big deal for me. But my sister sat in desperation. Flinching every time I put something in the wrong pile. I chided her unkindly for acting crazy, and she responded, "But that's my life right there."

And those words settled into my brain. Crazy, and beautiful. That pile of old clothes her baby wore is her life? And I am just the same. I'm sad about the bins of pink. I'd be sad no matter what they looked like, because she wore them and she won't wear them again. These are the obvious lessons that come hard to moms.

How did we get to this point where a pile of old bottles, a plastic bin of onesies could become something we would point to and claim as our life? These small and large things are what will totally break our heart in the end.