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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Scenes from around the table, part 2: the job

This is the second in a series of posts chronicling our last holiday season before baby arrives -- as they say, life is never the same afterward, so in the interest of capturing a few snapshots to remember this time, here are some jottings from moments that have lingered with me over a multi-destination Thanksgiving week.

Dinner is over and Marketing Sis and I have sent our mother up to the game room for once to play mahjong with Troubadour Dad and the boys. Usually, two of us girls must play with Dad and D while she cleans up, but this year, with N at the table, we have enough leverage to convince Mom to take the night off and leave the mess for us. "I'm not comfortable with this!" she calls over her shoulder as we all but push her toward the stairs. "This is Mom's job!"

"We're going to have sister time!" we tell her. She exhales forcefully but can't budge our united front.

We tackle the pile of dirty dishes, voices low so we can try to monitor the conversation from the other room. It's the first time we've ever left our men alone with our parents, and we can't help eavesdropping a little. Nothing much drifts down at first, but soon Dad's customary heckling and a few good-natured retorts begin to carry over the clack of the mahjong tiles. Marketing Sis and I exchange grins. They're doing fine.

"It's nice that N offers to help in the kitchen," I say -- he's been in and out during the day-long preparations, which, I've noticed, has kept Mom a little calmer than her usual self during major holiday meal assembly. Not that the extra hands have reduced the burden that much -- Mom's not the best at multitasking and delegating -- but the presence of this new person has tamped down some of her testiness that ordinarily emerges, particularly when she's dealing with the challenges my food allergies present for her. The presence of D, no longer a novelty, doesn't force her to be on better behavior anymore. I wish in some ways that it did, but I suppose it's also a sign of acceptance into the family that my mother doesn't keep her company face on around him as much. I also wish my mother were just less high-strung, but I've learned over many holidays that that's just not who she is.

"N's good about that, making himself useful," Marketing Sis says. "He knows it's easier on me." She doesn't say it directly, but I know she's referring to the family dynamics, not the cooking. When our parents are happy, the rest of us can be happy. If that means preventing Mom from getting overwhelmed in the kitchen, so be it. I'm certainly relieved that the day's culinary feats are over. While my mother has insisted on making as much allergen-free food for me as possible, the extra stress it causes her puts me on edge the entire time she's at it. There have to be clean zones and cross-contamination prevention measures and recipe alterations, all of which make her ill at ease. If she makes a few mistakes, she suddenly gets defensive and begins tossing off comments about how difficult or inconvenient my food limitations make her process -- even though I've insisted that she doesn't have to include me in the meal plan since I'm perfectly able to cook for myself.

But again, it's Mom's job, my mother insists as she assembles the next day's menu.

The control freak in me understands, though just barely. She needs to feel she's taking care of me, but her taking on the task creates more risk, which runs counter to her intent. If only she could understand that, I think to myself as the dish pile slowly dwindles.

The boys have helped haul out the Christmas tree, so we also plunge into decorating while Mom is occupied. Normally, we're not home to help until practically December 25th, if not after, and the tree remains bare or Mom has to trim it entirely on her own if she doesn't want to hear our cries of mock distress when we see the naked plastic branches upon our arrival. I reach into the first of many boxes and come up with a tray of tinsel puffballs that could almost pass for cat toys. Their strings for hanging have long since fallen off -- the ornaments are older than my sister -- but we aren't deterred. Each armed with a handful of the soft, nearly weightless sparklers, we launch them overhand at the tree, where they happily lodge in the branches.

Marketing Sis flings a puffball with particularly mischievous gusto, and I am reminded of how we are still, despite our taking over for Mom, the kids in the house for a little longer, with our own variations for doing what Mom would. Next year, we'll be trying to decorate the tree with a ten-month-old underfoot -- a little boy who will be old enough to crawl and possibly even stand, hands reaching and grabbing for everything. What kind of mom will I be then? I wonder. Not one like my own, I imagine, but not totally unlike her either. I won't be throwing ornaments for sure, lest the baby get his hands on the more fragile baubles and try to follow our example. I can just hear my mother scolding us for giving him the idea -- or is it my own voice in my head, warning me off before she can? I can't tell. But for now, I shrug the question off and enjoy the game. My best shot hits its target from a distance of six feet.

A shout comes from upstairs followed by groans -- someone has won a particularly good hand -- and then my father calls down for one of us to bring him a peeled orange, his usual evening snack. When my mother asks for one too a moment later, I know we've done good work -- she's let go enough of her Mom mindset to let us do what she ordinarily would, instead of abandoning the game table to take care of the request.

I assemble a tray for the players, leaving our own entertainment to step into my mother's role once more. I'm glad to do it -- and glad for this in-between space, where I can still shift from Mom to daughter to mother-to-be.

For more from this series, please click here.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Scenes from around the table, part 1: boys in the house

This is the first in a series of posts chronicling our last holiday season before baby arrives -- as they say, life is never the same afterward, so in the interest of capturing a few snapshots to remember this time, here are some jottings from moments that have lingered with me over a multi-destination Thanksgiving week.

For the first time in three decades, I will not be with my parents and sisters for Christmas. D and I made the decision last year to begin alternating the winter holidays with our families to make travel less hectic and the time we spend with each side more enjoyable. This year, Christmas falls to his kin, so Turkey Week is for mine.

Even if it's our last Thanksgiving before parenthood, it promises to be quite different from previous gatherings, if only for a few changes already anticipated around the table. Marketing Sis, the youngest of us, is bringing her fiancé to our parents' home for the first time, and Dr. Sis, the one between us, is slated to work the holiday in Boston while we congregate in the Texas panhandle. Then there's me, a week into this baby's final trimester. I'm guessing the familial anticipation for this much-wanted grandson/nephew will be hard to miss during our stay.

Dr. Sis's unavoidable absence aside, I'm looking forward to having a different sort of holiday as D and I wait in Denver on a layover Thanksgiving morning. Not counting the grandson/nephew, we will be three couples instead of three daughters, my parents, and my husband. Somehow, that balance feels better to me than that of holidays past, where as much as D has been part of the family, he's still also been that solitary in-law and we as a couple have had trouble reminding my parents that we are a couple.

I suspect too that my father will appreciate having the fiancé, whom I'll just call N, to even out the gender ratio while the women in the house are extra focused on all things baby-related. Don't get me wrong -- my father was so excited about becoming a grandfather that he told practically everyone in his town within days of receiving our news, including the random woman cutting his hair. But baby shower plans are understandably less interesting to him, especially since my mother and sisters are keeping them traditional -- female guests only.

N and Marketing Sis will be on our second flight, so D and I watch for them, taking guesses at what my sister, who has a passion for fashion, will be wearing. "Fuchsia scarf for sure," I say. "And either jeggings or a bold-print skirt."

"Don't forget the knee-high boots," D adds, smiling at my own sneaker-clad feet.

As much as I wish I were wearing my favorite boots to dress up my jeans and cardigan, Seattle's heavy November rains and the panhandle's occasional freak snowstorms are not suede-friendly, so I've left them at home. And the bright red and purple scarf I've chosen to add color to my otherwise neutral-toned top is folded into a pocket -- it is in the mid 60s outside, and the terminal, heated against more wintry temperatures, is oppressively warm, threatening to dissolve even the most smudge-proof eyeliner into a streaky mess. Only I didn't put any on this morning, figuring it would smear anyway while I was trying to sleep on our 5 a.m. flight. I know I'm going to feel plain next to my sister. But comfort, especially while traveling, is harder to come by these days, so I remind myself that I can always change when we get to Texas. Though most of what I've brought is still hardly designer label and the thought of putting on makeup when I'm already melting has little appeal.

It doesn't matter, I tell myself. In a few months, when you'll just want to be able to shower in between baby feedings, you'll laugh at yourself for even thinking about any of this.

It's true, but the thought intimidates me. I may be the least feminine of all the women in my family because of my stubbornly practical streak (and my tendency to balk at fashion's price tag), but it doesn't mean I like the threat of getting plainer with motherhood.

I'm jolted out of my thoughts momentarily as N, a tall, blond analogue of D, arrives, scanning the rows of low-slung vinyl for us through sleepy-looking eyes. We wave. My sister is nowhere in sight -- must have had a line at the restroom, N says -- so we begin the customary exchange of flight-related chit-chat while we wait for her: did you get out on time? run into any weather? sleep at all? Both D and N are Midwesterners from the same hometown, so I'm not worried they'll run out of conversation, but I do observe N surreptitiously to see how at ease he is. With the two of us, pretty relaxed. The stutter he's always had, which I imagine gets worse with nerves, is minimally apparent. I wonder how he'll do around my parents, though. For his sake, I am glad that D has already gotten them used to having a son-in-law around. Not that my parents were uptight, exactly, on D's first holiday with us, but a boy? Under their roof? (Never mind that we were married already.) How much do we feed him? What do we offer him for entertainment? What do we talk to him about? Will he understand and respect our customs even though he isn't Chinese? All questions that my parents asked me in some fashion before our arrival that Christmas six years ago. I'm not sure if D picked up on their anxiety then, but I knew it was there and felt somewhat responsible for keeping him from treading into any territory that might turn their worries into disapproval. I wonder if my sister has given N some pointers, as I once gave D, for navigating the family landscape. After our own experience, I find myself feeling a little protective of their well-being as a couple, even though I know they will have to find their own way with my parents.

When Marketing Sis finally appears, D and I are right on all counts -- scarf, boots, and skirt -- but I hardly have a moment to laugh about this before she is homed in on her nephew, a hand on each side of my abdomen. "Hi, baby," she croons, as if she's been talking to him like this for an age, even though this is the first time she has seen me since I got pregnant. "Oh my god, your boobs look fabulous!" she says to me.

"Thanks ... ?" I say. I'm not at all surprised that Marketing Sis has no qualms about announcing this at full volume, but I leave a mild note of did-you-really-just-say-that-in-public in my response for the benefit of N, who, to my amusement, seems intent on pretending he hasn't heard a thing. He may be comfortable with us, but girl talk at its most physical is still an untouchable arena. ("He'd like to hang on to the delusion that we shit gold and rainbows," Marketing Sis once told me.) I, on the other hand, am more thrown by the ease with which my sister lays her cheek against my belly while telling the baby that she is his aunt -- I'm not used to having people touch me this way, as if the so-called bump is there expressly to be rubbed -- but I'm over it in a second. She is my sister. We've slept in the same bed half-naked before, so this is actually less intimate. And it's totally endearing to listen to her falling in love with a baby she can't even see yet.

Our flight is announced. Marketing Sis gives the baby one last pat and then we're headed down the jet bridge, into the promise of a Thanksgiving that will be like no other.

For more from this series, please click here.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A night at the Lo-Fi

On Saturday, it rains for the first time in 80 days, bringing an end to the Indian summer Seattle has held on to for weeks. In spite of the chill, though, I've put on a light cotton dress and the peep-toe slingbacks I've been wearing to swing dancing lessons with D. Tonight's adventure: Soul Night at the Lo-Fi, a self-advertised "performance gallery" whose reputation everywhere else on the web suggests a live-music dive club.

Zoe, a woman nearly my age whom I do volunteer editing and photography for each Friday at the Humane Society, has invited us to come out with her for this event. I have no idea what we're in for, but I figure it's a good opportunity to practice our new dance skills and get to know Zoe outside of work.

We arrive at a building whose front entrance is more board and graffiti than door, at least from what I can make out through a light drizzle and the smoke from the next-door bar patrons leaning against damp brick. Zoe is nowhere in sight, but a girl sporting a cherry-red dye job fading to pink catches the lost look on my face. "Lo-Fi's in there," she says with a grin, jerking her head toward the gaping entryway to her left. I text Zoe, hoping she's already inside.

"Getting liquid courage down the street if you want to join, be there in 10!" is the reply. Alcohol's out for me, so rather than waste time, D and I head straight in. It's only 10 p.m., but these days, I'm usually in bed before 12. Better to take advantage of our chance to dance while I've still got energy.

We know none of the music that the deejay is playing from real vinyl in the dim front room -- barely 25' by 25', 12' by 12' if you count only the space walled off for dancing. But the beat is familiar and I signal to D that it's good for triple swing, even if it's not swing music. Though it takes a moment for us to find our footing, we're soon rocking and twirling around the floor, the smell of baby powder rising from under our heels. "Zoe told me they sprinkle it on the boards!" I shout above the thumping bass.

The room's not nearly full yet, so we get in several good spins under the magenta lights as the details of the rest of the space slowly come to my attention. A dive it is: no seating except a single banquette at one end of the floor and a bar wedged into a corner near the entrance. It's loud and dark and hard not to trip on the ruts in the floor, but I'm happy on D's arm -- as long as we're dancing, I don't worry that I look totally out of place here, even if I feel that way. Even before we became parents-to-be, I was never a late-night club-goer.

Zoe, of course, doesn't know I'm a hopeless homebody, but I wonder if she'll figure that out this evening. I almost didn't want to come, but hers is the first invitation I've received from someone I've met on my own -- not through D -- to do something social since my move to Seattle three years ago. How did it take you so long to start making friends? I think, though I know the many answers. Thesis. Health problems. Working from home. And now, with this baby on the way, I'm facing yet another easy reason not to get out there. Is this what I'm going to give up for good in a few months, I wonder, the chance to hang out with people who still do things like this?

Suddenly Zoe's grabbing my arm, pulling me into a hug. I'm surprised and pleased -- we've never even shaken hands before, but obviously, the vibe at the animal shelter is far removed from the one here tonight. Zoe's also slightly tipsy, but only enough to get her loosened up. She takes me by the hand and all but hauls me toward a long, narrow hall at the back of the room that D and I have initially missed.

"Photo booth," Zoe says, pointing out the curtained machine at the end of the corridor, and then we're in a second room, larger than the first, but not by much. Two more deejays spin records on a raised platform while the crowd, three times as dense, bounces in close, sweaty approval. Zoe's husband of three months and two other women from the shelter emerge from the chaos -- Shona, who also works with Zoe, and Lane, who runs the volunteer program that got me involved at the Humane Society to begin with. We shout introductions all around as a couple wearing rubber horse-head masks squeezes by. They are the only people in costume, but no one finds it odd. Apparently, anything goes here.

Zoe gets down to the business of dancing right away, skinny arms flying in bold-print spandex sleeves. After a while, we take turns partnering up -- Zoe prefers to lead, so I gamely grab her shoulder -- and wiggle around as much as we can among the rest of the knees and elbows. D and I attempt a few moves and end up doing them in half-time for the safety of others, which cracks us both up. In the crush of bodies, we can do no more than step in place -- so much for practicing.

After an hour, I can feel myself beginning to wilt from the heat, but I don't want to leave yet. The group's completely at the mercy of the music and hasn't yet taken a break where we can -- what, chat? Where in this hole-in-the-wall could we do that? I'm starting to rethink my expectations of getting to know anyone on this night when I realize Zoe's waving me toward the photo booth. "Everybody in!" she insists, and suddenly I'm backed against her husband while chest to chest with Shona. I have no idea who is sitting behind us on the narrow bench and Zoe, wedged at the very front of this sardine can, is hollering for singles to feed the machine, which D hands through the curtain. He tries to poke his head in too but can't even get his nose past the burlap. At the first flash, we pose, if attempting to get somebody's -- anybody's -- face in frame can be called posing.

It's funny, but I'm not sure it's fun, the homebody in my head says. Shut up and just go with it, I tell her. We tumble out into the hall and wander back to the dance floor. Lane, purse over one shoulder, grabs my hand and I lead her for half a song before we break into a new configuration under the push and pull of the rest of the bodies around us.

Within twenty minutes, I know I'm fading for good -- I'm bouncing without actually picking up my feet and D can tell. He takes my hand and nods toward the exit. "Let me say goodbye to Zoe," I say. I try not to feel a little defeated. By what, I'm not totally sure: my body, my introverted tendencies, both? Whatever's keeping me from the joy of the moment.

Zoe sees me inching toward her and points at the door. "I'm too hot!" she says. "Let's go get some air!"

Perfect timing, I think. Now I can at least thank her at normal volume for inviting us to come. Shona and Lane follow us outside, where the cold drizzle is suddenly welcome and pleasant.

Zoe shows us the strip of photos she's rescued from the booth. Shona laughs as she peers at one of the shots. "Is that my drink?" she asks, pointing at a tumbler that takes up a good portion of the frame.

"Is that my nose?" Zoe asks in return, indicating a smudged shape right next to it. Then she points at my face, just visible toward the top. "You should keep these," she says, grinning. "Of all of us, you actually look cute in this one!"

I peek at the image and snort -- I'm bug-eyed, mouth open, mugging into the camera with hair sticking out in five directions. But it is spontaneous. I take the photo strip.

Shona checks her phone for the time. "I gotta go get the kids from the in-laws' soon," she says. "My husband's working the night shift on a barge."

"Seriously?" I say. "Crazy hours." We start talking about working night jobs, including my stint as a copy editor in Texas, which leads us to how D and I finally ended up together there after commuting to see each other during college and my first job teaching in New York. Zoe, a native of Queens, asks where I'd lived in Manhattan and we bemoan the rent increases from year to year. And suddenly, we are chatting, the stories running like water from the Lo-Fi rain pipe.

We gab our way through a quick half-hour, gradually getting chillier, but I don't mind shivering -- this is what I'd wanted all along. But couldn't you have gotten here without all that came before? the homebody in my head asks. I let the question go. Then D taps me on the shoulder. It's late for both of us.

"Glad you made it," Zoe says, and I can tell she's not just being polite.

"Me too," I say, thinking of the photos and grinning for once at captured chaos. "See you again soon."

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Making room

"My mom wants pictures of us," D says, phone in hand, as he strolls into the living room where I'm curled up on the couch next to a dwindling ball of rusty orange wool. He's just finished telling his parents our latest news: their grandchild is going to be a boy.

I cock an eyebrow at him and break the rhythm of the knitting needles in my fingers. The baby sweater I'm working on is growing by inches, like the belly I've been getting used to having in the last few weeks. The latter's fairly compact and rides low and in front, round enough for our cat to rest her chin on it when she cuddles up on my knees but not so big yet that she can't get comfortable. For me, though, all the stretching my body's doing to accommodate this baby's second-trimester growth spurt actually hurts. I drop my palm to the curve under my navel to massage a sore spot and receive a tiny kick in return.

"From the neck up, right?" I say, offering what I hope D will take to be a half-smile, though I'm really trying to hide my irritation at his mother's request.

"You know she wants to see what you look like," he says gently.

"Mm," I say, but without commitment.

I don't mind my new shape, which is something, given how self-conscious I've always been about my body since high school. It's taken a decade and a half to make peace with my non-pregnant figure -- right at the median ideal weight for my five feet and four inches but short in the neck and torso, slightly thick in the waist, and uneven in the hips thanks to moderate scoliosis. But this recent shift in appearances is different. I'm happy to look like a mother-to-be -- at least, while all the rounding is localized to my midsection. Arms, face, and butt appear to be keeping their proportions for now.

A belly shot for her though? The hair on my neck bristles.

Because of personality differences, I've never wanted to be close with my mother-in-law, as much as she wishes we were -- she's never had a daughter and has always desperately wanted one. So much, she confided in me a few months ago, that she ended up having more children than she'd expected to want just because of that hope, which never came to be after four boys.

I wish I could say I felt somewhat guilty, listening to her admission. But her repeated attempts to foster a closeness I don't desire have felt, over six years, anywhere from pushy to downright suffocating. Most recently, even before we told her I was pregnant, she made a trip to Seattle to look at real estate. "I've got to convince D's dad to move us out here when he retires in a year or two," she said. "I want to be no more than twenty minutes away from you guys, so we can see each other all the time."

Fortunately, D's dad, who'd rather keep the house they have in their small Midwestern town and travel the world nine months out of the year, isn't sold on the idea yet.

Of course, since she learned she was going to be a grandparent, D's mother has been calling and e-mailing more than ever -- going on about the baby clothes she's already made in bright patterns (i.e., garish ones, knowing her taste), offering us the 20-year-old car seat she's saved since her last son was born (hello, new safety standards?), giving advice on managing nausea and fatigue (how about just not calling while I'm taking a nap, which could happen at any time of day?). And it takes everything in my power not to tell her to leave me alone. To let me share this time of planning and preparing because I want to, not because she's forced her involvement upon me.

"I know you'd like her to back off, but I think she just wants to feel included," a friend commented not long before we learned the baby's gender. I'd reached the bounds of my patience that day -- D's mother had told me that she'd knitted a pretty newborn hat for the granddaughter she was hoping we'd provide.

"Having to include her is exactly what's putting me off," I said. Never mind her renewed girl-hunger, the root of her overeager attempts to get closer to me.

"I'd find a way to let her think she's part of the action," my friend suggested, "but within limits you can be okay with. Give her a project whose outcome you don't care so much about or tell her exactly what you'd like to have. Otherwise, she'll just keep doing what she's doing."

I know it's good advice -- D's mother has never been one to give up, so giving her concrete requests on what to make or purchase to focus her runaway nesting instincts will help occupy her in less irritating ways. But letting her ogle my pregnant belly? Completely out of the question.

*

This post was inspired by a prompt from Mama Kat's weekly Writer's Workshop. Check out more stories and essays by clicking the button below!

Mama’s Losin’ It

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Calling all savvy shoppers

I know, I know. I said I'd be more active now that I'm feeling better. It wasn't a total lie, but yes, much of the activity has been more elsewhere than here. I suppose if you could have seen the state of the Troubadour house at the end of 17 weeks, you too would have wanted me to deal with that mess first. So that's what I've been doing in the last month (when not also planning four major trips for weddings and holidays that all have to happen before we get to 36 weeks, but that's for another post).

Fortunately, I had some help with the cleanup. Our laundry room has a new resident -- a much-needed washer to replace the cantankerous 15-year-old one that came with the house, one that refused to drain every third use and would only take loads half its capacity because it was so badly unbalanced (broken ball bearings may have been the culprit). In one day, I did five rounds of serious laundry that would in the past have amounted to thirteen -- ten initial loads plus about three rewashes for the ones that didn't empty during the rinse cycle. And we wonder now why we didn't make the replacement sooner ... ! Forgive me for going on about this, but I'm in love.

The baby gear industry, I suspect, would like me to fall equally head over heels for about 10,000 other products it's been informing me of daily. (You don't want to see my inbox.) When the influx of ads and offers began, we'd already started the process of researching the items we'd need to have ready for February -- a place for baby to sleep and a car seat are the only large-scale absolute necessities -- but the lists of other stuff the industry would have us believe we can't live without are a bit overwhelming. I'm doing my best to ignore the propaganda, but I do take recommendations from anyone who's actually a parent. What did you find was really worth having around in those first months? What, in the fog of sleep-deprivation joys of new parenthood, did you love/swear by/thank yourself for buying?

Feel free to go into as much detail as you'd like. Of course, the name of the product with a simple thumbs-up like the one we got from our baby at Tuesday's doctor visit will also suffice.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Knitting therapy

The scene: the living room, hour unknown. Balls of yarn populate a plastic bin and wicker basket within arm's reach of the sofa while an assortment of knitting needles -- some metal, some bamboo, and even some plastic -- poke out of the bin at various angles. Scattered over a nearby coffee table are empty Jolly Rancher wrappers, the only sign that a human has been in the vicinity. The only other sign of life is a white cat with black patches who sleeps at one end of the couch on top of a pair of scissors, a two-pack of large tapestry needles, and a tape measure that bears her tooth marks.

A small pile of knitted garments in soft unisex pastels lies at the other end of the sofa, camouflaging a larger heap under a blanket. Slowly, the pile and blanket shift, disturbing two infant-sized sweaters, a hat, and six tiny pairs of socks. As they tumble aside, one Troubadour peers out from beneath it all, the beginnings of another sweater clutched in her fingers.

Is it safe to come out yet?

Okay, it hasn't actually been this bad, but it's been close. One cannot eat pie all day to counteract 24/7 nausea. (Or you can, but I suspect it would be only so effective.) So for most of the last 16 weeks, I've been -- you guessed it -- knitting like a woman with a yarn obsession.

I didn't expect it to be as helpful as it's actually been. But, with the occasional Jolly Rancher to help stave off the worst of the morning sickness (less calorie-laden than the aforementioned alternative), knitting, which I can even do lying down, has worked. At least it's kept me from thinking about throwing up while feeling like throwing up. Anything for relief, right? The psychology of nausea is half the battle, I say.

I'm happy to say the green haze I've been seeing and smelling through has lifted significantly in the last week. Life before pregnancy hormones -- or something like it -- is there, just over the horizon! I can't wait. And, I suspect, neither can D, who has been trying extremely hard to get me off the sofa for my own good. "I'm supposed to encourage you to exercise," he reminds me every so often. I think I laughed at the idea the first time -- and then gagged.

Now that I'm on the mend, I am actually of a mind to get more active -- here and elsewhere -- so stay tuned! I've missed this space. For now, though, I'll leave you with a picture of our kitty, who has been taking full advantage of my company. She also seems to like my knitting -- I promise this shot wasn't posed.


Saturday, July 21, 2012

It's not dessert if I eat it for breakfast

They say the first trimester feels the longest because you're dogged day and night by morning sickness.

They weren't wrong.

But they also say it's a good sign of your baby's health. So here I am, just past the 10-week mark, still feeling quite green but happy to say it officially: we're going to be parents.

We still have a few weeks to go until trimester No. 2 begins (and hopefully with it, some relief from all the nausea and a stronger sense of security about the baby's well-being), but after Monday's ultrasound, my OB reassured us that all is well. So Monday night, we told our parents and siblings our good news, which means I can now share it here. And apologize for being completely absent for all of June.

The living-room couch has been my best friend for the last month; the kitchen stove, not so much. Poor D has been resorting to microwaved hot dogs as a primary source of protein for work and occasionally dinner. Until just last week, every time he'd light a burner to do more, the cooking smells would overwhelm me. Fortunately, some odors are slightly more tolerable now, so we're creeping back toward more nutritious fare. This is all relative, of course. You're reading the words of someone whose staple foods have been gluten-free shortbread, sunflower-seed butter, and brown-rice pasta since the beginning of summer. Maybe some strawberries too.

Our wedding anniversary fell during a week when I was still fairly averse to much kitchen activity, but I was determined to make something to mark the day. What, given the generally beige trend in the acceptable menu, does one prepare as an appropriate offering for such an occasion?

Peach pie.

All of the women in my family adore this dessert, whose original recipe comes from a friend of my mother's who served it to her early in her pregnancy with my youngest sister. It was, as my mother puts it, one of the first things she can remember being able to eat in spite of her morning sickness.

Pie crust is like shortbread, right? I thought, running the flavors through my mind. And strawberries, peaches -- both had that sweet-tart ambrosia thing going on. This could work.

Of course, the original recipe for my mother's beloved pie was not gluten- and dairy-free, so I had to come up with an approximation of it. The one below is more like a tart (i.e., a pie with no top crust), adapted from Flying Apron's Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book by Jennifer Katzinger.

Open-faced peach pie

Crust:
1 1/2 c brown rice flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 c plus 3 tbsp palm oil shortening
3 tbsp agave nectar
1 to 2 tbsp cold water

Filling:
4-5 peaches, peeled, pitted, sliced into thin wedges
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp tapioca powder
1/3 c agave nectar (can be cut in half to reduce sugar if desired)
1 tbsp lemon juice

To make crust, stir together flour and salt in large bowl. In another bowl, stir shortening with large spoon until softened (should not take long as palm oil does not need refrigeration and will already be at room temperature). Add flour mixture slowly, stirring until incorporated. Add agave and water, mixing until soft dough comes together. If dough is dry, add additional water 1 tbsp at a time until dough is smooth. There is no danger of overmixing since this dough is gluten-free and will not become gummy.

Dust portable work surface, such as a large cutting board, and hands with brown rice flour. Turn out dough onto board and dust with more flour. Roll dough into 11-inch circle (or larger if your pie dish is of greater diameter).

Turn pie plate upside-down on top of dough. Invert board so that pie plate is now beneath the board and crust drops into pie plate. Press dough down, shaping accordingly to fill completely. Fix tears by gently pressing or pinching dough together. Par-bake crust 15 min. at 375 F.

To make filling, combine peaches, cinnamon, and tapioca, tossing gently until peaches are well coated. Add agave and lemon juice and toss a few times more. Place peach slices in very tight concentric rings over crust. Pour any remaining liquid over fruit.

Bake on bottom rack of oven at 375 F until filling is set and peaches completely cooked, about 45 min. Check pie at 25 min. for browning and tent with foil as needed to prevent burning. Cool slightly before slicing.

Makes enough for a week of breakfasts (now my go-to choice for starting a queasy day off right better), plus a slice or two in there for an excited father-to-be.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Slow-growing roots

We're about to kick off three months of intermittent visitors -- one set, if not two, every few weeks until September -- so a heavier-than-average round of house reorganization is in progress chez Troubadour to make it easier for guests to navigate our de facto B&B, where everyone's on a different waking and eating schedule. The combination dining table and mail sorting station? Strictly for meals now. I have my eye on some hanging baskets that will become the new magazine/catalog/grocery-circular file. Catch-all kitchen cabinets? They're getting cleaned out and repurposed for specific uses. My favorite is the coffee cabinet that holds various types of beans and everybody's preferred sweeteners -- no more hunting for the raw sugar (my mom's choice) in one place vs. the white sugar (D's mom's choice) vs. the Equal (my choice) in another.

It's finding just the right home for the little things. Even though we've been in this house for three years, it only feels like we're really settling into it now that we've had some time to make it our own in these small ways (or bigger ones). I guess we're slower than average.

Speaking of which, I think our irises that we bought four years ago -- the bulbs we started in planters on our apartment balcony when we had no permanent place for them -- have finally decided that they like their new residence in our front flower bed. All four of them, which you might remember we named, have bloomed this spring. It's the first time we've had every plant blossom.

Say hello to ...


Ralph


Tessa (whom you've met before)


Carmen


and Lolita.

In his count last week, D found a total of 80 buds from all of the plants combined. He'd estimated we'd see no more than half that! I'll take it as a sign that settling in slowly is just fine.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

All the time in the world

The little red barn we're looking for is tucked within an industrial park just outside Portland.

"Huh," I say, peering at the GPS to make sure it hasn't led us astray. For two midwesterners, the idea of a barn brings up images of rolling fields and long gravel drives under great expanses of sky with hardly another structure in sight. Instead, this building sits on a tidy asphalt parking lot -- a small one at that -- minutes off a local highway lined with warehouses and strip malls. But this is the place: Bob's Red Mill, an intermediate destination on our way to Oregon wine country. We're at the beginning of a much anticipated getaway weekend that happens almost to coincide with our dating anniversary -- 13 years.

Our first date isn't exactly at the front of my mind as D pulls into the parking lot. That night, three weeks before our high school graduation, we caught an early movie and dinner at a diner in the same plaza. Then, arms around each other, we stood on the sidewalk -- rather, I balanced on the curb, D on the blacktop one step down -- for 45 minutes while other restaurant patrons came and went. We'd hugged, but neither of us quite wanted to let go afterward. So there we were, arms loosely draped over shoulders and waist, as if we'd been doing this forever and could keep right on going until time ceased to exist.

Time is on my radar so many years later on our way into Bob's. We've gotten a late start from Seattle, and the wineries we're hoping to visit, still some 40 minutes away, will close soon. I don't want D to miss out for what is really just a grocery trip, but it is our only chance to stop here this weekend before we continue on to the B&B we've booked.

"There's no hurry," D says, reading the worry in my eyes as I check my watch. "Let's go find you some goodies, okay?"

The cherry-bright storefront trimmed in white and the honey-colored timber bracing the roof from within gives the entry a quaint feel. I expect checkered tablecloths and butter churns, ladies in big aprons, hay bales. But instead, there are aisles of shelves lined with dry goods packaged in colorfully labeled cellophane or brown paper. All of the store's grains are ground and packed in the company mill down the street -- hence the industrial park. I scan the hanging signs. Gluten free, one of them reads in clean-lined capitals. This is why we've come here.

I've been experimenting for months with alternative baking since the end of the elimination diet, sifting through allergy-friendly cookbooks from the library for recipes I can adapt to my new normal. Our new normal. D's gone almost completely gluten-free at home to help keep our kitchen a clean zone. Among other replacements for conventional flour, ground garbanzo beans have been an excellent discovery, but the bags at our local grocery store are tiny, enough for two or three little loaves of bread at best. Enter Bob's, which sells in bulk. Normally, we'd order from the company by mail, but since we're passing within such a short distance this weekend, we can't argue with the savings in shipping by picking the goods up ourselves.

We find the bean flour. And the brown rice flour and gluten-free rolled oats, items that have become staples in our pantry. D pulls the largest sacks from the shelves and hefts them into a cart with ease; each lands with a satisfying thump. Our cargo may be on the order of cents per ounce, but I feel suddenly rich. In this space, I'm a baker with options again rather than somebody who has little reason to walk down the flour aisle at our local grocery. We peruse the other nearby novelties: amaranth, teff, sorghum, tapioca. Corresponding recipes from my recent research dance through my head, better than any sugar-plum visions.

I catch D watching me, a tender happiness in his brown-eyed gaze. I know he knows this stop is a treat for me, but to see how much it pleases him to give me time here makes my heart flutter. The look in his eyes is the same he wore so many years ago, standing on the sidewalk as the sun began to sink and we pulled a little closer to each other to ward off the dusky chill. "Seventy-five pounds," I whisper, my eyes on the flour but my mind suddenly taken over by the memory. "Pretty amazing."

And, as if on cue, D slips his arms around me, perfectly content that we are hugging in the middle of a grocery store while other customers come and go. "I know, sweetie," he says. "I know."

Monday, April 23, 2012

All according to plan

I can't believe it, but the paint job on our would-be nursery is done.

We had a few interruptions in March -- birthdays to celebrate in the first week, out-of-town guests in the second, and a visit to D's parents to prepare for -- and the trip itself took out the first week of April. But the new face on the room is finished: primed, painted, molded, caulked. Now all that's left is to clean up.

For many reasons, finishing this room was much more satisfactory than completing the previous one. We were so burned out the first time that I think all we could manage when we'd finally hammered the lids back on our paint cans was to close the door behind us, mumbling obscenities as we trudged away. I don't think I even bothered to take the "after" shot to post next to the "before." Don't get me wrong -- we were happy that the room was no longer an eyesore, but it was a guest bedroom that we weren't going to use on a daily basis. It was a lot of effort for not a lot of immediate return.

This room, though -- we're hoping it'll have plenty of use in a year or so, if we're lucky.

The thought has been on both of our minds as we've slowly erased the evidence of previous tenants in that once cave-like space. The dark, dreary blue that covered the walls when we moved in was also swiped on the ceiling, smeared on the door frames and baseboards, even spattered on the window -- a careless job that made for pain-in-the-ass repairs, which we'd already had to do in the other room with much trial and error. We didn't have the skills to remove the baseboards for recoating, so D resorted to using a painter's taping spatula to shove old sheets under the baseboard edges followed by pieces of corrugated cardboard, all to shield the carpet while I painted over the damage. It was maddeningly slow. But with every drop of blue we obliterated, the room felt cleaner. Lighter. More and more the nest we've wanted it to become.

Transforming the room has also been unexpectedly meditative. Because we haven't taken extended breaks (on the order of months) in between phases of painting, there's been a rhythm to the process as we've worked our way around the room for each step, like the repetitive circling of wanderers in a labyrinth. And with each turn, we've talked about what we remembered from childhood, what made home feel right. The colors in a favorite blanket, the books we particularly liked to have on our shelves. We'll never know what these things might be for our own children, of course, until they discover all this themselves, but the walls are ready. Down to the seams around every door.

On our final afternoon of work, as D circled the room for the last time with brush in hand, I had to laugh. He'd pulled out a fine-tipped model from his days of taking watercolors on vacation with his parents to capture landscapes, birds, and bugs on paper. Now, he was dipping the brush in a tray of pale green latex paint, dabbing with painstaking strokes at imperfections along his caulk line. The tiny featherings of white paint that had bled through our taping job when we'd applied the last coat on the molding were in no way visible to me, but he wanted everything to be flawless.

"No baby will ever notice," I teased.

But D just grinned. You wouldn't want him to, his eyes said to me as he reached to place his last stroke.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A plot summary

Three weeks ago: discovered student plagiarizing by copying synopses from Wikipedia instead of writing his own.

The next day: received apology from student by e-mail with admission of wrongdoing and plea for "a second chance."

The day after that: replied with acceptance of his apology and a note that we would discuss his actions further on his return from spring break. Requested that he complete his assignment for our next tutoring session so that we could begin examining his real writing in order to make improvements.

Yesterday: received new writing from student. Checked Wikipedia and found work was still copied nearly word for word -- but this time with a few phrases substituted.

WTF?

Let me be the first to say the design of the assignment is flawed -- if I were in control of the curriculum, I'd ask the kid to do much more than write synopses of the books he's reading, precisely to prevent this kind of easy textual pilfering, but my boss is pretty married to making him develop this summary-writing skill before any others.

But after the kid's use of his "second chance" to do that? And his total lack of remorse during our session yesterday? I'm starting to think his apology was rather disingenuous. You know, fool me once, etc.

So why do I feel guilty that I'm pissed about all this?

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Learning the hard way

C. Troubadour: "February, where have you gone?"

Feb: "To the hardware store."

Yes, after recovering from our first job repainting and installing trim in one of our guest bedrooms, we decided it was time to tackle bedroom No. 2, our would-be nursery. There's no imminent need for it yet, but we figured I'd be more help working on the room now rather than later, when paint fume exposure will be a larger concern ...

I made D promise that we would establish a schedule for this project so that it wouldn't drag itself out over 19 months as the first did -- nearly as long as it took me to write my thesis -- and I'd say we're actually sticking to our plan. Perhaps it's because we've learned some useful lessons from our (many) mistakes in the previous round -- among them, don't leave your painting tape in place until after the paint has dried and don't use the same tape for multiple coats. (The tape becomes very difficult to remove and can peel your carefully applied paint away with it!) Perhaps, too, things are moving along because we now know our tolerance for such work and are pacing ourselves better to avoid burnout. Whatever the case, the topcoat on the walls is done, and beautiful lengths of crown molding are now laid out in our garage, waiting to be cut to size with a special saw we borrowed from one of D's coworkers. Color me amazed! (And thank goodness we won't be using our earlier method for the cutting.) If we can get this room finished by April, I will be ecstatic.

I am, however, much less delighted with the progress I've been making with one of the students I tutor each week. (Oh, right -- remember that job I took a few weeks before Halloween? That's the other thing occupying my time these days.) The student in question has been my charge since my boss handed him off to me in mid-October -- she'd been working with him before that point -- and, per the curriculum she's set up, I comment on grammar and content in weekly reading summaries she assigns him to write on books of his own choosing (in this case, mostly sci-fi/fantasy). I have my own opinion about the merits of making a kid parrot back what he's read without asking him to do more with it, so I'd asked him in recent weeks to answer some additional analysis questions. And I started to notice that the writing style he employed for that extra portion was distinctly different from that of his "reports."

Teachers, I think you know where this is going.

Yesterday, hoping against hope that I'd find nothing, I checked each and every one of the assignments the kid had sent me from October onward and discovered they'd been drawn, word for word, from Wikipedia, which offers handy little synopses on every single book he's read.

What, I ask you, is the point of paying a tutor to help you improve your writing when you don't present your real work for her to critique?

Logic puzzles aside, I'm now unsure what to do for this boy. I reported the problem to my boss, of course, who confronted the student's parents. A thorough apology from their son was in my inbox within the hour. But in terms of my next steps with him, I'm wondering what position is best to take.

I want, above all, to be effective in guiding him out of this mess. Believe it or not, he is the one who sought out a tutor for himself (yes, he -- not his parents), and he has his heart set on getting into an Ivy League school. Clearly, something complicated is going on in his I-want-it-and-I-don't behavior toward getting extra help -- but how do I get him to understand (and tell me) what that is? I haven't a clue yet. All I do know (from my own experience teaching in Iowa and in other places) is that plagiarism is rarely the result of laziness; it's more often an act of desperation. Whatever is making this kid anxious enough to seek out a tutor but balk at having her give him real assistance is at once intriguing, disturbing and, above all, saddening.

Thankfully, I have a little extra time to think about options for addressing all this as we won't be meeting for two weeks while this kid is traveling with his family. So teachers, parents, anyone who sees this as a gigantic teachable moment -- what suggestions do you have?

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Baby steps

"Would you like to hold the baby?"

It's a simple question with an ostensibly straightforward answer: yes or no. But I'm caught off guard. Lana, one of the friends D. and I are having dinner with, doesn't let on that she's noticed as she bounces her four-month-old daughter gently, but it's too late for me to cover my hesitation. Lana's husband, absorbed in conversation with the men at the other end of the table only a moment ago, glances my way with interest. I suddenly wish I weren't sitting directly across from him -- or anyone -- where the blush rising on my face is impossible to hide.

"Sure, if you want me to," I say, regretting my word choice instantly. If you're okay with that is closer to what I'd meant to convey, not this noncommittal, indifferent-sounding reply. I'm actually dying to hold this baby, to feel what an infant feels like in my arms. But the last half-hour of conversation with Lana has been all about her new-mother anxieties -- finding the right nanny, enrolling her daughter in infant-level music and dance classes, even teaching her how to use sign language. "So the baby can express her thoughts even when she's preverbal," Lana explains. A budding helicopter parent? Maybe a little. Later in the evening, when the baby is asleep in her stroller, Lana will keep one hand on her chest to make sure she's still breathing. "I'm freaked out about SIDS," she'll say.

While I don't quite get the reason it's so urgent to put a non-ambulatory child in a dance studio, I understand this last concern and, given the newness of motherhood for Lana, the instinct to hover. Which is why I initially resisted asking to hold this little girl -- I didn't want to add to her mother's worries. If it were your baby, I tell myself, you'd be obsessing about the germs she'd be exposed to from strangers. I've picked up that tendency from my own mother, always conscious of what my hands have handled before I touch anything that goes near my eyes, nose, or mouth. Unfortunately, as much as I don't want to become her, I suspect this particular disposition will be hard to suppress when it is my turn to be a parent.

And when will that be? I wonder. D. and I are at minimum several months from trying to start our own family because I'm still recovering from food allergies that played havoc with my immune system while they went undiagnosed. After spending most of the previous year systematically identifying the culprits that were making me sick and eliminating them from our home, I'm much closer to feeling at my best again, but after putting off our plans for the three years I'd been inexplicably, constantly ill, waiting even just a few more weeks for my body to heal feels hard. Suddenly, I'm unable to keep my eyes off this infant sitting happily in her mother's lap, the perfect embodiment of everything I've been trying not to want more and more as the delays have continued. Or so I think. There are still days when I'm not sure if my reasons for wanting children are motherly in nature or more rooted in the desire to have a family of ours, different from my family of origin or D.'s. After spending recent holidays with both, we are both readier than ever to make the idea of us -- whatever that may be -- more distinct.

Maybe because Lana is keenly observant -- and knows some of our story -- she can see all this in my gaze. Or I'm just doing a terrible job of hiding my longing, which, in my mind, sometimes borders on the unseemly. Either way, when Lana offers the baby to me, I feel exposed, embarrassed by the possibility that she's picked up on the thoughts I'd rather keep private. These breaches -- spillovers, really, of emotion I can't quite hold in -- happen so much more easily these days. I am as tender-skinned as the oncoming bundle of arms and legs I reach out to take.

The baby is unwieldier than I expect. Perhaps, because the only living thing I've held in the last year and a half has been our cat, I expect her to have a different center of gravity -- or at least some such sense of mass in my lap. But so quickly does she try to change position, arching her back to see what's behind her from this new perspective, that it is all I can do to keep her from launching backward, her head too close for comfort to the table's wooden edge. I turn her automatically to get her out of harm's way; still, she wriggles in her purple-footed pajamas, curious about everything but me. To my relief, she doesn't seem alarmed to be in a stranger's hands. Do I let her explore? I give her some room to peek over her shoulder at D., seated to my right, whom I don't dare to look at -- I won't be able to bear it if he's laughing at my predicament. I know my inexperience is showing, but I don't need the one person who knows how emotionally complex the idea of motherhood is for me to be amused when I am anything but.

I know I cannot know this baby's habits or anticipate her movements as her mother does. I remind myself of this as a less rational part of me waits for her body to feel less foreign in my arms, as if those storied mothering instincts every woman is supposed to possess might relax me, give me the knowledge of what to do next. To feel next. Because isn't that what I'd wanted to find out? What I might feel in this moment with not my hands but my heart? As much as I haven't wanted to admit it to myself in recent months, I fear, with every pang of desire for motherhood, that I don't have the capacity for it. That my heart isn't built to love a child -- which holding this one, I hope, will disprove.

Of course, this test is fundamentally flawed for the same reasons this baby feels so strange to me: she is not mine. Still, that less rational part of me insists on searching for just an inkling of motherly response, whatever it believes that might look like. Delight in her impossibly round cheeks? The irresistible urge to tickle her belly? Anything but this mode of intellectual observation and analysis I keep reverting to -- I'm apparently unmoved by cuteness. I let my gaze drift from the baby toward the half-eaten dinners on the table, not from disinterest but discomfort. To look at the baby directly is to torture myself with the expectation of feelings that refuse to surface. What must Lana be thinking of me? I wonder. Now that I'm past my initial panic over protecting her daughter from injury, my stoicism in the face of something biologically designed to melt me with its pheromones must look unnatural if not outright bizarre. I might as well be holding this infant on the end of a ten-foot pole, I think, afraid that if I look down, I'll find out that it's true. I stare obstinately at my water glass, desperate to find something to distract me until I can compose my interiors and hand this baby back to her mother without completely revealing my disappointment in myself. I don't want Lana to see the letdown in my expression and misinterpret it as distaste.

I don't realize I've taken the baby's hand in my own, gently massaging her palm and fingers as I do our cat's paws. It is habit, almost like manipulating a worry stone -- our cat inevitably hops onto my knees whenever I'm seated at the kitchen table, and after some time, we settle into this position. Suddenly, I'm aware that the baby's fingers are gripping mine. With surprising force, the baby pulls one digit to her mouth and gums it, exploring the texture of my skin. A pause. She draws her prize back out, looks at what she's tasting, adjusts her grip, squeals. Before I know it, she's got a second finger in her other hand, a look of satisfaction on her wide-eyed face.

There, a voice in my ear whispers. And then it is silent again.

Is that all? I ask, though I already seem to know there is nothing more to be said as the tension I didn't realize I was holding in my shoulders eases. I look again at Lana's daughter, who cannot get enough of her new discovery, reaching for a third finger, a fourth. My body relaxes more.

I am not suddenly enamored with this baby or babies in general -- and, to my relief, I no longer expect to be. But I understand what my heart wished to feel as it waited for my mind to get out of the way: connection. To know that it is possible.

"My hands are clean," I reassure Lana as the baby grabs for a knuckle.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Mother knows best

On New Year's night, the final evening of our holiday visit, my mother and I are the last ones standing in the kitchen. D is in our room down the hall getting ready for bed, and my father, after a weekend of being on call, is sound asleep. We keep our voices low so as not to disturb them, but my mother, finally alone with me, makes her whisper more purposeful.

"You know, now that you've changed your last name, ours will be lost forever in your family."

Before this visit, D and I agreed, should anyone start to ask me about my health -- a challenging subject, given all the questions we still have and the skepticism we often hear from my family about the kinds of testing and treatment we've pursued -- that I would go find him, bring him into the conversation, so that I would not have to defend our choices alone. I don't expect an attack from the angle my mother takes, though, as she scrubs at her wok with her hard little hands. Leaning on the granite by the sink, I am suddenly vulnerable. I can tell she's been waiting to talk to me on my own.

Where is this coming from? I wonder. And why now, five years after my name change became official? Maybe my mother is thinking of the family we've wanted to start for so long but have held off on because of my health, how our children will bear only D's name instead of his and my father's. Or it's my writing, the essay I had published in the fall but never mentioned until this visit. I used a pseudonym as it was, unwilling to place my name, maiden or married, on the work -- because the subject was so difficult for me to write about, much less discuss, I didn't want anyone to find me just yet for further questions.

I wouldn't have brought up the essay had my mother not pressed me so hard to find out what I was really going to do with my life instead of tutoring as I have been. What are your goals? she'd asked.

"Putting something together that I actually believe in publishing," I said, which, without a detailed plan attached, was an only somewhat satisfying response. Whatever my mother's reasons now for raising this other concern about lost legacies, I feel her disapproval like a blast of west Texas wind carrying the smell of cattle ranches from the next town down the highway.

I know I shouldn't respond -- there can be no good outcome from midnight conversations about family differences -- but so much of my writing is tied to this very issue, the knots in our relationship I am forever trying to untangle by examining them, sentence by sentence. I've chosen to be published under a pseudonym not just to give myself privacy but also to protect that process of personal and relational inquiry, taking on a persona whose name won't be recognized by anyone who knows my family. This way, I can write without fearing their real-life loss of face. Not that I expect my parents' friends to read the kinds of literary journals I'd submit my work to, but in this electronic age, I am searchable, linkable, forwardable, potentially viral.

My writing persona, regardless of her name, needs protecting too. To use either of my surnames is to be who they imply I am: wife, sister, daughter, with everything those identities carry with them. Not that I wish to deny those aspects of my life experience, but I am more than all that. I am other thoughts and questions and indeterminacies that do not yet know how to bear up under the labels automatically bequeathed or contracted to me. For now, then, it is easier to shed these names temporarily and just be me, with a pseudonym as a neutral placeholder where it would be inconvenient for someone to address me simply as "she" or "you."

But that's not the answer to the question my mother is really asking on this night.

Why couldn't you have kept our name? It's a loaded question because it immediately implies that I did not choose as I should have (consider why did you change your name for comparison). The differences are minute, but words and meanings are my territory; I can't help being attuned to the subtexts in my mother's query even if she doesn't realize they are there. Why the clannishness tonight? I'd like to ask in return. I glance inadvertently toward the guest bedroom, confused by my mother's sudden coolness toward my husband. I'm hurt on his behalf.

And then it all comes out. Suddenly she's on to our financial arrangements (joint), our career decisions (too much in favor of D's advancement and not mine), even our past marital problems (the particulars of which she can only guess at since I don't share them -- and she is, of course, largely off base). It is all I can do to parry with fragmented sentences in the face of this onslaught. "You give him too much control," she says at last, still at a whisper but eyes blazing, angry for reasons I can't fathom. Do I just run?

I wish I had.

Cornered by so many accusations, I lash back. "My marriage isn't like yours," I spit. "The choices we've made have always been ours -- not just D's or mine."

The argument deteriorates from that moment. I've found the bruised places in her heart, and everything she throws at me from then on is more of the irrational -- which I don't recognize until long after I've met her barb for barb. I am terrible at refusing to engage.

That is what I need to learn, though, because the boundary that marriage establishes between me and my parents is a necessary one. Like my decision to use a pseudonym to separate my writing persona's role from the roles I have to take on in real life, my decision to limit the information I provide about my married life when my mother asks is protective -- young marriages, like young writers' identities, have weak places, foundations that need work. The protection that such a boundary affords as D and I contemplate starting a family of our own has never been more important.

But the price of maintaining that boundary is clearly something I didn't completely anticipate. If anything after this ambush, I've learned that much of what my mother thinks of my marriage is what she assumes about it, perhaps based on her dissatisfaction with her own, because I've left her with little real information to take its place.

Still, some of her last words to me on New Year's night tell me that the alternative -- sharing it all to prevent so much misunderstanding -- will be more costly. "We'll never be able to have a heart-to-heart," my mother says, "because you won't let me be honest with you."

As long as her idea of a heart-to-heart is for me to accept unconditionally her opinion on anything I share, I'd rather keep the details to myself.

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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Scenes from around the table, part 2: the job

This is the second in a series of posts chronicling our last holiday season before baby arrives -- as they say, life is never the same afterward, so in the interest of capturing a few snapshots to remember this time, here are some jottings from moments that have lingered with me over a multi-destination Thanksgiving week.

Dinner is over and Marketing Sis and I have sent our mother up to the game room for once to play mahjong with Troubadour Dad and the boys. Usually, two of us girls must play with Dad and D while she cleans up, but this year, with N at the table, we have enough leverage to convince Mom to take the night off and leave the mess for us. "I'm not comfortable with this!" she calls over her shoulder as we all but push her toward the stairs. "This is Mom's job!"

"We're going to have sister time!" we tell her. She exhales forcefully but can't budge our united front.

We tackle the pile of dirty dishes, voices low so we can try to monitor the conversation from the other room. It's the first time we've ever left our men alone with our parents, and we can't help eavesdropping a little. Nothing much drifts down at first, but soon Dad's customary heckling and a few good-natured retorts begin to carry over the clack of the mahjong tiles. Marketing Sis and I exchange grins. They're doing fine.

"It's nice that N offers to help in the kitchen," I say -- he's been in and out during the day-long preparations, which, I've noticed, has kept Mom a little calmer than her usual self during major holiday meal assembly. Not that the extra hands have reduced the burden that much -- Mom's not the best at multitasking and delegating -- but the presence of this new person has tamped down some of her testiness that ordinarily emerges, particularly when she's dealing with the challenges my food allergies present for her. The presence of D, no longer a novelty, doesn't force her to be on better behavior anymore. I wish in some ways that it did, but I suppose it's also a sign of acceptance into the family that my mother doesn't keep her company face on around him as much. I also wish my mother were just less high-strung, but I've learned over many holidays that that's just not who she is.

"N's good about that, making himself useful," Marketing Sis says. "He knows it's easier on me." She doesn't say it directly, but I know she's referring to the family dynamics, not the cooking. When our parents are happy, the rest of us can be happy. If that means preventing Mom from getting overwhelmed in the kitchen, so be it. I'm certainly relieved that the day's culinary feats are over. While my mother has insisted on making as much allergen-free food for me as possible, the extra stress it causes her puts me on edge the entire time she's at it. There have to be clean zones and cross-contamination prevention measures and recipe alterations, all of which make her ill at ease. If she makes a few mistakes, she suddenly gets defensive and begins tossing off comments about how difficult or inconvenient my food limitations make her process -- even though I've insisted that she doesn't have to include me in the meal plan since I'm perfectly able to cook for myself.

But again, it's Mom's job, my mother insists as she assembles the next day's menu.

The control freak in me understands, though just barely. She needs to feel she's taking care of me, but her taking on the task creates more risk, which runs counter to her intent. If only she could understand that, I think to myself as the dish pile slowly dwindles.

The boys have helped haul out the Christmas tree, so we also plunge into decorating while Mom is occupied. Normally, we're not home to help until practically December 25th, if not after, and the tree remains bare or Mom has to trim it entirely on her own if she doesn't want to hear our cries of mock distress when we see the naked plastic branches upon our arrival. I reach into the first of many boxes and come up with a tray of tinsel puffballs that could almost pass for cat toys. Their strings for hanging have long since fallen off -- the ornaments are older than my sister -- but we aren't deterred. Each armed with a handful of the soft, nearly weightless sparklers, we launch them overhand at the tree, where they happily lodge in the branches.

Marketing Sis flings a puffball with particularly mischievous gusto, and I am reminded of how we are still, despite our taking over for Mom, the kids in the house for a little longer, with our own variations for doing what Mom would. Next year, we'll be trying to decorate the tree with a ten-month-old underfoot -- a little boy who will be old enough to crawl and possibly even stand, hands reaching and grabbing for everything. What kind of mom will I be then? I wonder. Not one like my own, I imagine, but not totally unlike her either. I won't be throwing ornaments for sure, lest the baby get his hands on the more fragile baubles and try to follow our example. I can just hear my mother scolding us for giving him the idea -- or is it my own voice in my head, warning me off before she can? I can't tell. But for now, I shrug the question off and enjoy the game. My best shot hits its target from a distance of six feet.

A shout comes from upstairs followed by groans -- someone has won a particularly good hand -- and then my father calls down for one of us to bring him a peeled orange, his usual evening snack. When my mother asks for one too a moment later, I know we've done good work -- she's let go enough of her Mom mindset to let us do what she ordinarily would, instead of abandoning the game table to take care of the request.

I assemble a tray for the players, leaving our own entertainment to step into my mother's role once more. I'm glad to do it -- and glad for this in-between space, where I can still shift from Mom to daughter to mother-to-be.

For more from this series, please click here.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Scenes from around the table, part 1: boys in the house

This is the first in a series of posts chronicling our last holiday season before baby arrives -- as they say, life is never the same afterward, so in the interest of capturing a few snapshots to remember this time, here are some jottings from moments that have lingered with me over a multi-destination Thanksgiving week.

For the first time in three decades, I will not be with my parents and sisters for Christmas. D and I made the decision last year to begin alternating the winter holidays with our families to make travel less hectic and the time we spend with each side more enjoyable. This year, Christmas falls to his kin, so Turkey Week is for mine.

Even if it's our last Thanksgiving before parenthood, it promises to be quite different from previous gatherings, if only for a few changes already anticipated around the table. Marketing Sis, the youngest of us, is bringing her fiancé to our parents' home for the first time, and Dr. Sis, the one between us, is slated to work the holiday in Boston while we congregate in the Texas panhandle. Then there's me, a week into this baby's final trimester. I'm guessing the familial anticipation for this much-wanted grandson/nephew will be hard to miss during our stay.

Dr. Sis's unavoidable absence aside, I'm looking forward to having a different sort of holiday as D and I wait in Denver on a layover Thanksgiving morning. Not counting the grandson/nephew, we will be three couples instead of three daughters, my parents, and my husband. Somehow, that balance feels better to me than that of holidays past, where as much as D has been part of the family, he's still also been that solitary in-law and we as a couple have had trouble reminding my parents that we are a couple.

I suspect too that my father will appreciate having the fiancé, whom I'll just call N, to even out the gender ratio while the women in the house are extra focused on all things baby-related. Don't get me wrong -- my father was so excited about becoming a grandfather that he told practically everyone in his town within days of receiving our news, including the random woman cutting his hair. But baby shower plans are understandably less interesting to him, especially since my mother and sisters are keeping them traditional -- female guests only.

N and Marketing Sis will be on our second flight, so D and I watch for them, taking guesses at what my sister, who has a passion for fashion, will be wearing. "Fuchsia scarf for sure," I say. "And either jeggings or a bold-print skirt."

"Don't forget the knee-high boots," D adds, smiling at my own sneaker-clad feet.

As much as I wish I were wearing my favorite boots to dress up my jeans and cardigan, Seattle's heavy November rains and the panhandle's occasional freak snowstorms are not suede-friendly, so I've left them at home. And the bright red and purple scarf I've chosen to add color to my otherwise neutral-toned top is folded into a pocket -- it is in the mid 60s outside, and the terminal, heated against more wintry temperatures, is oppressively warm, threatening to dissolve even the most smudge-proof eyeliner into a streaky mess. Only I didn't put any on this morning, figuring it would smear anyway while I was trying to sleep on our 5 a.m. flight. I know I'm going to feel plain next to my sister. But comfort, especially while traveling, is harder to come by these days, so I remind myself that I can always change when we get to Texas. Though most of what I've brought is still hardly designer label and the thought of putting on makeup when I'm already melting has little appeal.

It doesn't matter, I tell myself. In a few months, when you'll just want to be able to shower in between baby feedings, you'll laugh at yourself for even thinking about any of this.

It's true, but the thought intimidates me. I may be the least feminine of all the women in my family because of my stubbornly practical streak (and my tendency to balk at fashion's price tag), but it doesn't mean I like the threat of getting plainer with motherhood.

I'm jolted out of my thoughts momentarily as N, a tall, blond analogue of D, arrives, scanning the rows of low-slung vinyl for us through sleepy-looking eyes. We wave. My sister is nowhere in sight -- must have had a line at the restroom, N says -- so we begin the customary exchange of flight-related chit-chat while we wait for her: did you get out on time? run into any weather? sleep at all? Both D and N are Midwesterners from the same hometown, so I'm not worried they'll run out of conversation, but I do observe N surreptitiously to see how at ease he is. With the two of us, pretty relaxed. The stutter he's always had, which I imagine gets worse with nerves, is minimally apparent. I wonder how he'll do around my parents, though. For his sake, I am glad that D has already gotten them used to having a son-in-law around. Not that my parents were uptight, exactly, on D's first holiday with us, but a boy? Under their roof? (Never mind that we were married already.) How much do we feed him? What do we offer him for entertainment? What do we talk to him about? Will he understand and respect our customs even though he isn't Chinese? All questions that my parents asked me in some fashion before our arrival that Christmas six years ago. I'm not sure if D picked up on their anxiety then, but I knew it was there and felt somewhat responsible for keeping him from treading into any territory that might turn their worries into disapproval. I wonder if my sister has given N some pointers, as I once gave D, for navigating the family landscape. After our own experience, I find myself feeling a little protective of their well-being as a couple, even though I know they will have to find their own way with my parents.

When Marketing Sis finally appears, D and I are right on all counts -- scarf, boots, and skirt -- but I hardly have a moment to laugh about this before she is homed in on her nephew, a hand on each side of my abdomen. "Hi, baby," she croons, as if she's been talking to him like this for an age, even though this is the first time she has seen me since I got pregnant. "Oh my god, your boobs look fabulous!" she says to me.

"Thanks ... ?" I say. I'm not at all surprised that Marketing Sis has no qualms about announcing this at full volume, but I leave a mild note of did-you-really-just-say-that-in-public in my response for the benefit of N, who, to my amusement, seems intent on pretending he hasn't heard a thing. He may be comfortable with us, but girl talk at its most physical is still an untouchable arena. ("He'd like to hang on to the delusion that we shit gold and rainbows," Marketing Sis once told me.) I, on the other hand, am more thrown by the ease with which my sister lays her cheek against my belly while telling the baby that she is his aunt -- I'm not used to having people touch me this way, as if the so-called bump is there expressly to be rubbed -- but I'm over it in a second. She is my sister. We've slept in the same bed half-naked before, so this is actually less intimate. And it's totally endearing to listen to her falling in love with a baby she can't even see yet.

Our flight is announced. Marketing Sis gives the baby one last pat and then we're headed down the jet bridge, into the promise of a Thanksgiving that will be like no other.

For more from this series, please click here.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A night at the Lo-Fi

On Saturday, it rains for the first time in 80 days, bringing an end to the Indian summer Seattle has held on to for weeks. In spite of the chill, though, I've put on a light cotton dress and the peep-toe slingbacks I've been wearing to swing dancing lessons with D. Tonight's adventure: Soul Night at the Lo-Fi, a self-advertised "performance gallery" whose reputation everywhere else on the web suggests a live-music dive club.

Zoe, a woman nearly my age whom I do volunteer editing and photography for each Friday at the Humane Society, has invited us to come out with her for this event. I have no idea what we're in for, but I figure it's a good opportunity to practice our new dance skills and get to know Zoe outside of work.

We arrive at a building whose front entrance is more board and graffiti than door, at least from what I can make out through a light drizzle and the smoke from the next-door bar patrons leaning against damp brick. Zoe is nowhere in sight, but a girl sporting a cherry-red dye job fading to pink catches the lost look on my face. "Lo-Fi's in there," she says with a grin, jerking her head toward the gaping entryway to her left. I text Zoe, hoping she's already inside.

"Getting liquid courage down the street if you want to join, be there in 10!" is the reply. Alcohol's out for me, so rather than waste time, D and I head straight in. It's only 10 p.m., but these days, I'm usually in bed before 12. Better to take advantage of our chance to dance while I've still got energy.

We know none of the music that the deejay is playing from real vinyl in the dim front room -- barely 25' by 25', 12' by 12' if you count only the space walled off for dancing. But the beat is familiar and I signal to D that it's good for triple swing, even if it's not swing music. Though it takes a moment for us to find our footing, we're soon rocking and twirling around the floor, the smell of baby powder rising from under our heels. "Zoe told me they sprinkle it on the boards!" I shout above the thumping bass.

The room's not nearly full yet, so we get in several good spins under the magenta lights as the details of the rest of the space slowly come to my attention. A dive it is: no seating except a single banquette at one end of the floor and a bar wedged into a corner near the entrance. It's loud and dark and hard not to trip on the ruts in the floor, but I'm happy on D's arm -- as long as we're dancing, I don't worry that I look totally out of place here, even if I feel that way. Even before we became parents-to-be, I was never a late-night club-goer.

Zoe, of course, doesn't know I'm a hopeless homebody, but I wonder if she'll figure that out this evening. I almost didn't want to come, but hers is the first invitation I've received from someone I've met on my own -- not through D -- to do something social since my move to Seattle three years ago. How did it take you so long to start making friends? I think, though I know the many answers. Thesis. Health problems. Working from home. And now, with this baby on the way, I'm facing yet another easy reason not to get out there. Is this what I'm going to give up for good in a few months, I wonder, the chance to hang out with people who still do things like this?

Suddenly Zoe's grabbing my arm, pulling me into a hug. I'm surprised and pleased -- we've never even shaken hands before, but obviously, the vibe at the animal shelter is far removed from the one here tonight. Zoe's also slightly tipsy, but only enough to get her loosened up. She takes me by the hand and all but hauls me toward a long, narrow hall at the back of the room that D and I have initially missed.

"Photo booth," Zoe says, pointing out the curtained machine at the end of the corridor, and then we're in a second room, larger than the first, but not by much. Two more deejays spin records on a raised platform while the crowd, three times as dense, bounces in close, sweaty approval. Zoe's husband of three months and two other women from the shelter emerge from the chaos -- Shona, who also works with Zoe, and Lane, who runs the volunteer program that got me involved at the Humane Society to begin with. We shout introductions all around as a couple wearing rubber horse-head masks squeezes by. They are the only people in costume, but no one finds it odd. Apparently, anything goes here.

Zoe gets down to the business of dancing right away, skinny arms flying in bold-print spandex sleeves. After a while, we take turns partnering up -- Zoe prefers to lead, so I gamely grab her shoulder -- and wiggle around as much as we can among the rest of the knees and elbows. D and I attempt a few moves and end up doing them in half-time for the safety of others, which cracks us both up. In the crush of bodies, we can do no more than step in place -- so much for practicing.

After an hour, I can feel myself beginning to wilt from the heat, but I don't want to leave yet. The group's completely at the mercy of the music and hasn't yet taken a break where we can -- what, chat? Where in this hole-in-the-wall could we do that? I'm starting to rethink my expectations of getting to know anyone on this night when I realize Zoe's waving me toward the photo booth. "Everybody in!" she insists, and suddenly I'm backed against her husband while chest to chest with Shona. I have no idea who is sitting behind us on the narrow bench and Zoe, wedged at the very front of this sardine can, is hollering for singles to feed the machine, which D hands through the curtain. He tries to poke his head in too but can't even get his nose past the burlap. At the first flash, we pose, if attempting to get somebody's -- anybody's -- face in frame can be called posing.

It's funny, but I'm not sure it's fun, the homebody in my head says. Shut up and just go with it, I tell her. We tumble out into the hall and wander back to the dance floor. Lane, purse over one shoulder, grabs my hand and I lead her for half a song before we break into a new configuration under the push and pull of the rest of the bodies around us.

Within twenty minutes, I know I'm fading for good -- I'm bouncing without actually picking up my feet and D can tell. He takes my hand and nods toward the exit. "Let me say goodbye to Zoe," I say. I try not to feel a little defeated. By what, I'm not totally sure: my body, my introverted tendencies, both? Whatever's keeping me from the joy of the moment.

Zoe sees me inching toward her and points at the door. "I'm too hot!" she says. "Let's go get some air!"

Perfect timing, I think. Now I can at least thank her at normal volume for inviting us to come. Shona and Lane follow us outside, where the cold drizzle is suddenly welcome and pleasant.

Zoe shows us the strip of photos she's rescued from the booth. Shona laughs as she peers at one of the shots. "Is that my drink?" she asks, pointing at a tumbler that takes up a good portion of the frame.

"Is that my nose?" Zoe asks in return, indicating a smudged shape right next to it. Then she points at my face, just visible toward the top. "You should keep these," she says, grinning. "Of all of us, you actually look cute in this one!"

I peek at the image and snort -- I'm bug-eyed, mouth open, mugging into the camera with hair sticking out in five directions. But it is spontaneous. I take the photo strip.

Shona checks her phone for the time. "I gotta go get the kids from the in-laws' soon," she says. "My husband's working the night shift on a barge."

"Seriously?" I say. "Crazy hours." We start talking about working night jobs, including my stint as a copy editor in Texas, which leads us to how D and I finally ended up together there after commuting to see each other during college and my first job teaching in New York. Zoe, a native of Queens, asks where I'd lived in Manhattan and we bemoan the rent increases from year to year. And suddenly, we are chatting, the stories running like water from the Lo-Fi rain pipe.

We gab our way through a quick half-hour, gradually getting chillier, but I don't mind shivering -- this is what I'd wanted all along. But couldn't you have gotten here without all that came before? the homebody in my head asks. I let the question go. Then D taps me on the shoulder. It's late for both of us.

"Glad you made it," Zoe says, and I can tell she's not just being polite.

"Me too," I say, thinking of the photos and grinning for once at captured chaos. "See you again soon."

*

I'm linking up with Just Write this week. For more stories and essays, click the button below!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Making room

"My mom wants pictures of us," D says, phone in hand, as he strolls into the living room where I'm curled up on the couch next to a dwindling ball of rusty orange wool. He's just finished telling his parents our latest news: their grandchild is going to be a boy.

I cock an eyebrow at him and break the rhythm of the knitting needles in my fingers. The baby sweater I'm working on is growing by inches, like the belly I've been getting used to having in the last few weeks. The latter's fairly compact and rides low and in front, round enough for our cat to rest her chin on it when she cuddles up on my knees but not so big yet that she can't get comfortable. For me, though, all the stretching my body's doing to accommodate this baby's second-trimester growth spurt actually hurts. I drop my palm to the curve under my navel to massage a sore spot and receive a tiny kick in return.

"From the neck up, right?" I say, offering what I hope D will take to be a half-smile, though I'm really trying to hide my irritation at his mother's request.

"You know she wants to see what you look like," he says gently.

"Mm," I say, but without commitment.

I don't mind my new shape, which is something, given how self-conscious I've always been about my body since high school. It's taken a decade and a half to make peace with my non-pregnant figure -- right at the median ideal weight for my five feet and four inches but short in the neck and torso, slightly thick in the waist, and uneven in the hips thanks to moderate scoliosis. But this recent shift in appearances is different. I'm happy to look like a mother-to-be -- at least, while all the rounding is localized to my midsection. Arms, face, and butt appear to be keeping their proportions for now.

A belly shot for her though? The hair on my neck bristles.

Because of personality differences, I've never wanted to be close with my mother-in-law, as much as she wishes we were -- she's never had a daughter and has always desperately wanted one. So much, she confided in me a few months ago, that she ended up having more children than she'd expected to want just because of that hope, which never came to be after four boys.

I wish I could say I felt somewhat guilty, listening to her admission. But her repeated attempts to foster a closeness I don't desire have felt, over six years, anywhere from pushy to downright suffocating. Most recently, even before we told her I was pregnant, she made a trip to Seattle to look at real estate. "I've got to convince D's dad to move us out here when he retires in a year or two," she said. "I want to be no more than twenty minutes away from you guys, so we can see each other all the time."

Fortunately, D's dad, who'd rather keep the house they have in their small Midwestern town and travel the world nine months out of the year, isn't sold on the idea yet.

Of course, since she learned she was going to be a grandparent, D's mother has been calling and e-mailing more than ever -- going on about the baby clothes she's already made in bright patterns (i.e., garish ones, knowing her taste), offering us the 20-year-old car seat she's saved since her last son was born (hello, new safety standards?), giving advice on managing nausea and fatigue (how about just not calling while I'm taking a nap, which could happen at any time of day?). And it takes everything in my power not to tell her to leave me alone. To let me share this time of planning and preparing because I want to, not because she's forced her involvement upon me.

"I know you'd like her to back off, but I think she just wants to feel included," a friend commented not long before we learned the baby's gender. I'd reached the bounds of my patience that day -- D's mother had told me that she'd knitted a pretty newborn hat for the granddaughter she was hoping we'd provide.

"Having to include her is exactly what's putting me off," I said. Never mind her renewed girl-hunger, the root of her overeager attempts to get closer to me.

"I'd find a way to let her think she's part of the action," my friend suggested, "but within limits you can be okay with. Give her a project whose outcome you don't care so much about or tell her exactly what you'd like to have. Otherwise, she'll just keep doing what she's doing."

I know it's good advice -- D's mother has never been one to give up, so giving her concrete requests on what to make or purchase to focus her runaway nesting instincts will help occupy her in less irritating ways. But letting her ogle my pregnant belly? Completely out of the question.

*

This post was inspired by a prompt from Mama Kat's weekly Writer's Workshop. Check out more stories and essays by clicking the button below!

Mama’s Losin’ It

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Calling all savvy shoppers

I know, I know. I said I'd be more active now that I'm feeling better. It wasn't a total lie, but yes, much of the activity has been more elsewhere than here. I suppose if you could have seen the state of the Troubadour house at the end of 17 weeks, you too would have wanted me to deal with that mess first. So that's what I've been doing in the last month (when not also planning four major trips for weddings and holidays that all have to happen before we get to 36 weeks, but that's for another post).

Fortunately, I had some help with the cleanup. Our laundry room has a new resident -- a much-needed washer to replace the cantankerous 15-year-old one that came with the house, one that refused to drain every third use and would only take loads half its capacity because it was so badly unbalanced (broken ball bearings may have been the culprit). In one day, I did five rounds of serious laundry that would in the past have amounted to thirteen -- ten initial loads plus about three rewashes for the ones that didn't empty during the rinse cycle. And we wonder now why we didn't make the replacement sooner ... ! Forgive me for going on about this, but I'm in love.

The baby gear industry, I suspect, would like me to fall equally head over heels for about 10,000 other products it's been informing me of daily. (You don't want to see my inbox.) When the influx of ads and offers began, we'd already started the process of researching the items we'd need to have ready for February -- a place for baby to sleep and a car seat are the only large-scale absolute necessities -- but the lists of other stuff the industry would have us believe we can't live without are a bit overwhelming. I'm doing my best to ignore the propaganda, but I do take recommendations from anyone who's actually a parent. What did you find was really worth having around in those first months? What, in the fog of sleep-deprivation joys of new parenthood, did you love/swear by/thank yourself for buying?

Feel free to go into as much detail as you'd like. Of course, the name of the product with a simple thumbs-up like the one we got from our baby at Tuesday's doctor visit will also suffice.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Knitting therapy

The scene: the living room, hour unknown. Balls of yarn populate a plastic bin and wicker basket within arm's reach of the sofa while an assortment of knitting needles -- some metal, some bamboo, and even some plastic -- poke out of the bin at various angles. Scattered over a nearby coffee table are empty Jolly Rancher wrappers, the only sign that a human has been in the vicinity. The only other sign of life is a white cat with black patches who sleeps at one end of the couch on top of a pair of scissors, a two-pack of large tapestry needles, and a tape measure that bears her tooth marks.

A small pile of knitted garments in soft unisex pastels lies at the other end of the sofa, camouflaging a larger heap under a blanket. Slowly, the pile and blanket shift, disturbing two infant-sized sweaters, a hat, and six tiny pairs of socks. As they tumble aside, one Troubadour peers out from beneath it all, the beginnings of another sweater clutched in her fingers.

Is it safe to come out yet?

Okay, it hasn't actually been this bad, but it's been close. One cannot eat pie all day to counteract 24/7 nausea. (Or you can, but I suspect it would be only so effective.) So for most of the last 16 weeks, I've been -- you guessed it -- knitting like a woman with a yarn obsession.

I didn't expect it to be as helpful as it's actually been. But, with the occasional Jolly Rancher to help stave off the worst of the morning sickness (less calorie-laden than the aforementioned alternative), knitting, which I can even do lying down, has worked. At least it's kept me from thinking about throwing up while feeling like throwing up. Anything for relief, right? The psychology of nausea is half the battle, I say.

I'm happy to say the green haze I've been seeing and smelling through has lifted significantly in the last week. Life before pregnancy hormones -- or something like it -- is there, just over the horizon! I can't wait. And, I suspect, neither can D, who has been trying extremely hard to get me off the sofa for my own good. "I'm supposed to encourage you to exercise," he reminds me every so often. I think I laughed at the idea the first time -- and then gagged.

Now that I'm on the mend, I am actually of a mind to get more active -- here and elsewhere -- so stay tuned! I've missed this space. For now, though, I'll leave you with a picture of our kitty, who has been taking full advantage of my company. She also seems to like my knitting -- I promise this shot wasn't posed.


Saturday, July 21, 2012

It's not dessert if I eat it for breakfast

They say the first trimester feels the longest because you're dogged day and night by morning sickness.

They weren't wrong.

But they also say it's a good sign of your baby's health. So here I am, just past the 10-week mark, still feeling quite green but happy to say it officially: we're going to be parents.

We still have a few weeks to go until trimester No. 2 begins (and hopefully with it, some relief from all the nausea and a stronger sense of security about the baby's well-being), but after Monday's ultrasound, my OB reassured us that all is well. So Monday night, we told our parents and siblings our good news, which means I can now share it here. And apologize for being completely absent for all of June.

The living-room couch has been my best friend for the last month; the kitchen stove, not so much. Poor D has been resorting to microwaved hot dogs as a primary source of protein for work and occasionally dinner. Until just last week, every time he'd light a burner to do more, the cooking smells would overwhelm me. Fortunately, some odors are slightly more tolerable now, so we're creeping back toward more nutritious fare. This is all relative, of course. You're reading the words of someone whose staple foods have been gluten-free shortbread, sunflower-seed butter, and brown-rice pasta since the beginning of summer. Maybe some strawberries too.

Our wedding anniversary fell during a week when I was still fairly averse to much kitchen activity, but I was determined to make something to mark the day. What, given the generally beige trend in the acceptable menu, does one prepare as an appropriate offering for such an occasion?

Peach pie.

All of the women in my family adore this dessert, whose original recipe comes from a friend of my mother's who served it to her early in her pregnancy with my youngest sister. It was, as my mother puts it, one of the first things she can remember being able to eat in spite of her morning sickness.

Pie crust is like shortbread, right? I thought, running the flavors through my mind. And strawberries, peaches -- both had that sweet-tart ambrosia thing going on. This could work.

Of course, the original recipe for my mother's beloved pie was not gluten- and dairy-free, so I had to come up with an approximation of it. The one below is more like a tart (i.e., a pie with no top crust), adapted from Flying Apron's Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book by Jennifer Katzinger.

Open-faced peach pie

Crust:
1 1/2 c brown rice flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 c plus 3 tbsp palm oil shortening
3 tbsp agave nectar
1 to 2 tbsp cold water

Filling:
4-5 peaches, peeled, pitted, sliced into thin wedges
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp tapioca powder
1/3 c agave nectar (can be cut in half to reduce sugar if desired)
1 tbsp lemon juice

To make crust, stir together flour and salt in large bowl. In another bowl, stir shortening with large spoon until softened (should not take long as palm oil does not need refrigeration and will already be at room temperature). Add flour mixture slowly, stirring until incorporated. Add agave and water, mixing until soft dough comes together. If dough is dry, add additional water 1 tbsp at a time until dough is smooth. There is no danger of overmixing since this dough is gluten-free and will not become gummy.

Dust portable work surface, such as a large cutting board, and hands with brown rice flour. Turn out dough onto board and dust with more flour. Roll dough into 11-inch circle (or larger if your pie dish is of greater diameter).

Turn pie plate upside-down on top of dough. Invert board so that pie plate is now beneath the board and crust drops into pie plate. Press dough down, shaping accordingly to fill completely. Fix tears by gently pressing or pinching dough together. Par-bake crust 15 min. at 375 F.

To make filling, combine peaches, cinnamon, and tapioca, tossing gently until peaches are well coated. Add agave and lemon juice and toss a few times more. Place peach slices in very tight concentric rings over crust. Pour any remaining liquid over fruit.

Bake on bottom rack of oven at 375 F until filling is set and peaches completely cooked, about 45 min. Check pie at 25 min. for browning and tent with foil as needed to prevent burning. Cool slightly before slicing.

Makes enough for a week of breakfasts (now my go-to choice for starting a queasy day off right better), plus a slice or two in there for an excited father-to-be.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Slow-growing roots

We're about to kick off three months of intermittent visitors -- one set, if not two, every few weeks until September -- so a heavier-than-average round of house reorganization is in progress chez Troubadour to make it easier for guests to navigate our de facto B&B, where everyone's on a different waking and eating schedule. The combination dining table and mail sorting station? Strictly for meals now. I have my eye on some hanging baskets that will become the new magazine/catalog/grocery-circular file. Catch-all kitchen cabinets? They're getting cleaned out and repurposed for specific uses. My favorite is the coffee cabinet that holds various types of beans and everybody's preferred sweeteners -- no more hunting for the raw sugar (my mom's choice) in one place vs. the white sugar (D's mom's choice) vs. the Equal (my choice) in another.

It's finding just the right home for the little things. Even though we've been in this house for three years, it only feels like we're really settling into it now that we've had some time to make it our own in these small ways (or bigger ones). I guess we're slower than average.

Speaking of which, I think our irises that we bought four years ago -- the bulbs we started in planters on our apartment balcony when we had no permanent place for them -- have finally decided that they like their new residence in our front flower bed. All four of them, which you might remember we named, have bloomed this spring. It's the first time we've had every plant blossom.

Say hello to ...


Ralph


Tessa (whom you've met before)


Carmen


and Lolita.

In his count last week, D found a total of 80 buds from all of the plants combined. He'd estimated we'd see no more than half that! I'll take it as a sign that settling in slowly is just fine.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

All the time in the world

The little red barn we're looking for is tucked within an industrial park just outside Portland.

"Huh," I say, peering at the GPS to make sure it hasn't led us astray. For two midwesterners, the idea of a barn brings up images of rolling fields and long gravel drives under great expanses of sky with hardly another structure in sight. Instead, this building sits on a tidy asphalt parking lot -- a small one at that -- minutes off a local highway lined with warehouses and strip malls. But this is the place: Bob's Red Mill, an intermediate destination on our way to Oregon wine country. We're at the beginning of a much anticipated getaway weekend that happens almost to coincide with our dating anniversary -- 13 years.

Our first date isn't exactly at the front of my mind as D pulls into the parking lot. That night, three weeks before our high school graduation, we caught an early movie and dinner at a diner in the same plaza. Then, arms around each other, we stood on the sidewalk -- rather, I balanced on the curb, D on the blacktop one step down -- for 45 minutes while other restaurant patrons came and went. We'd hugged, but neither of us quite wanted to let go afterward. So there we were, arms loosely draped over shoulders and waist, as if we'd been doing this forever and could keep right on going until time ceased to exist.

Time is on my radar so many years later on our way into Bob's. We've gotten a late start from Seattle, and the wineries we're hoping to visit, still some 40 minutes away, will close soon. I don't want D to miss out for what is really just a grocery trip, but it is our only chance to stop here this weekend before we continue on to the B&B we've booked.

"There's no hurry," D says, reading the worry in my eyes as I check my watch. "Let's go find you some goodies, okay?"

The cherry-bright storefront trimmed in white and the honey-colored timber bracing the roof from within gives the entry a quaint feel. I expect checkered tablecloths and butter churns, ladies in big aprons, hay bales. But instead, there are aisles of shelves lined with dry goods packaged in colorfully labeled cellophane or brown paper. All of the store's grains are ground and packed in the company mill down the street -- hence the industrial park. I scan the hanging signs. Gluten free, one of them reads in clean-lined capitals. This is why we've come here.

I've been experimenting for months with alternative baking since the end of the elimination diet, sifting through allergy-friendly cookbooks from the library for recipes I can adapt to my new normal. Our new normal. D's gone almost completely gluten-free at home to help keep our kitchen a clean zone. Among other replacements for conventional flour, ground garbanzo beans have been an excellent discovery, but the bags at our local grocery store are tiny, enough for two or three little loaves of bread at best. Enter Bob's, which sells in bulk. Normally, we'd order from the company by mail, but since we're passing within such a short distance this weekend, we can't argue with the savings in shipping by picking the goods up ourselves.

We find the bean flour. And the brown rice flour and gluten-free rolled oats, items that have become staples in our pantry. D pulls the largest sacks from the shelves and hefts them into a cart with ease; each lands with a satisfying thump. Our cargo may be on the order of cents per ounce, but I feel suddenly rich. In this space, I'm a baker with options again rather than somebody who has little reason to walk down the flour aisle at our local grocery. We peruse the other nearby novelties: amaranth, teff, sorghum, tapioca. Corresponding recipes from my recent research dance through my head, better than any sugar-plum visions.

I catch D watching me, a tender happiness in his brown-eyed gaze. I know he knows this stop is a treat for me, but to see how much it pleases him to give me time here makes my heart flutter. The look in his eyes is the same he wore so many years ago, standing on the sidewalk as the sun began to sink and we pulled a little closer to each other to ward off the dusky chill. "Seventy-five pounds," I whisper, my eyes on the flour but my mind suddenly taken over by the memory. "Pretty amazing."

And, as if on cue, D slips his arms around me, perfectly content that we are hugging in the middle of a grocery store while other customers come and go. "I know, sweetie," he says. "I know."

Monday, April 23, 2012

All according to plan

I can't believe it, but the paint job on our would-be nursery is done.

We had a few interruptions in March -- birthdays to celebrate in the first week, out-of-town guests in the second, and a visit to D's parents to prepare for -- and the trip itself took out the first week of April. But the new face on the room is finished: primed, painted, molded, caulked. Now all that's left is to clean up.

For many reasons, finishing this room was much more satisfactory than completing the previous one. We were so burned out the first time that I think all we could manage when we'd finally hammered the lids back on our paint cans was to close the door behind us, mumbling obscenities as we trudged away. I don't think I even bothered to take the "after" shot to post next to the "before." Don't get me wrong -- we were happy that the room was no longer an eyesore, but it was a guest bedroom that we weren't going to use on a daily basis. It was a lot of effort for not a lot of immediate return.

This room, though -- we're hoping it'll have plenty of use in a year or so, if we're lucky.

The thought has been on both of our minds as we've slowly erased the evidence of previous tenants in that once cave-like space. The dark, dreary blue that covered the walls when we moved in was also swiped on the ceiling, smeared on the door frames and baseboards, even spattered on the window -- a careless job that made for pain-in-the-ass repairs, which we'd already had to do in the other room with much trial and error. We didn't have the skills to remove the baseboards for recoating, so D resorted to using a painter's taping spatula to shove old sheets under the baseboard edges followed by pieces of corrugated cardboard, all to shield the carpet while I painted over the damage. It was maddeningly slow. But with every drop of blue we obliterated, the room felt cleaner. Lighter. More and more the nest we've wanted it to become.

Transforming the room has also been unexpectedly meditative. Because we haven't taken extended breaks (on the order of months) in between phases of painting, there's been a rhythm to the process as we've worked our way around the room for each step, like the repetitive circling of wanderers in a labyrinth. And with each turn, we've talked about what we remembered from childhood, what made home feel right. The colors in a favorite blanket, the books we particularly liked to have on our shelves. We'll never know what these things might be for our own children, of course, until they discover all this themselves, but the walls are ready. Down to the seams around every door.

On our final afternoon of work, as D circled the room for the last time with brush in hand, I had to laugh. He'd pulled out a fine-tipped model from his days of taking watercolors on vacation with his parents to capture landscapes, birds, and bugs on paper. Now, he was dipping the brush in a tray of pale green latex paint, dabbing with painstaking strokes at imperfections along his caulk line. The tiny featherings of white paint that had bled through our taping job when we'd applied the last coat on the molding were in no way visible to me, but he wanted everything to be flawless.

"No baby will ever notice," I teased.

But D just grinned. You wouldn't want him to, his eyes said to me as he reached to place his last stroke.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

A plot summary

Three weeks ago: discovered student plagiarizing by copying synopses from Wikipedia instead of writing his own.

The next day: received apology from student by e-mail with admission of wrongdoing and plea for "a second chance."

The day after that: replied with acceptance of his apology and a note that we would discuss his actions further on his return from spring break. Requested that he complete his assignment for our next tutoring session so that we could begin examining his real writing in order to make improvements.

Yesterday: received new writing from student. Checked Wikipedia and found work was still copied nearly word for word -- but this time with a few phrases substituted.

WTF?

Let me be the first to say the design of the assignment is flawed -- if I were in control of the curriculum, I'd ask the kid to do much more than write synopses of the books he's reading, precisely to prevent this kind of easy textual pilfering, but my boss is pretty married to making him develop this summary-writing skill before any others.

But after the kid's use of his "second chance" to do that? And his total lack of remorse during our session yesterday? I'm starting to think his apology was rather disingenuous. You know, fool me once, etc.

So why do I feel guilty that I'm pissed about all this?

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Learning the hard way

C. Troubadour: "February, where have you gone?"

Feb: "To the hardware store."

Yes, after recovering from our first job repainting and installing trim in one of our guest bedrooms, we decided it was time to tackle bedroom No. 2, our would-be nursery. There's no imminent need for it yet, but we figured I'd be more help working on the room now rather than later, when paint fume exposure will be a larger concern ...

I made D promise that we would establish a schedule for this project so that it wouldn't drag itself out over 19 months as the first did -- nearly as long as it took me to write my thesis -- and I'd say we're actually sticking to our plan. Perhaps it's because we've learned some useful lessons from our (many) mistakes in the previous round -- among them, don't leave your painting tape in place until after the paint has dried and don't use the same tape for multiple coats. (The tape becomes very difficult to remove and can peel your carefully applied paint away with it!) Perhaps, too, things are moving along because we now know our tolerance for such work and are pacing ourselves better to avoid burnout. Whatever the case, the topcoat on the walls is done, and beautiful lengths of crown molding are now laid out in our garage, waiting to be cut to size with a special saw we borrowed from one of D's coworkers. Color me amazed! (And thank goodness we won't be using our earlier method for the cutting.) If we can get this room finished by April, I will be ecstatic.

I am, however, much less delighted with the progress I've been making with one of the students I tutor each week. (Oh, right -- remember that job I took a few weeks before Halloween? That's the other thing occupying my time these days.) The student in question has been my charge since my boss handed him off to me in mid-October -- she'd been working with him before that point -- and, per the curriculum she's set up, I comment on grammar and content in weekly reading summaries she assigns him to write on books of his own choosing (in this case, mostly sci-fi/fantasy). I have my own opinion about the merits of making a kid parrot back what he's read without asking him to do more with it, so I'd asked him in recent weeks to answer some additional analysis questions. And I started to notice that the writing style he employed for that extra portion was distinctly different from that of his "reports."

Teachers, I think you know where this is going.

Yesterday, hoping against hope that I'd find nothing, I checked each and every one of the assignments the kid had sent me from October onward and discovered they'd been drawn, word for word, from Wikipedia, which offers handy little synopses on every single book he's read.

What, I ask you, is the point of paying a tutor to help you improve your writing when you don't present your real work for her to critique?

Logic puzzles aside, I'm now unsure what to do for this boy. I reported the problem to my boss, of course, who confronted the student's parents. A thorough apology from their son was in my inbox within the hour. But in terms of my next steps with him, I'm wondering what position is best to take.

I want, above all, to be effective in guiding him out of this mess. Believe it or not, he is the one who sought out a tutor for himself (yes, he -- not his parents), and he has his heart set on getting into an Ivy League school. Clearly, something complicated is going on in his I-want-it-and-I-don't behavior toward getting extra help -- but how do I get him to understand (and tell me) what that is? I haven't a clue yet. All I do know (from my own experience teaching in Iowa and in other places) is that plagiarism is rarely the result of laziness; it's more often an act of desperation. Whatever is making this kid anxious enough to seek out a tutor but balk at having her give him real assistance is at once intriguing, disturbing and, above all, saddening.

Thankfully, I have a little extra time to think about options for addressing all this as we won't be meeting for two weeks while this kid is traveling with his family. So teachers, parents, anyone who sees this as a gigantic teachable moment -- what suggestions do you have?

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Baby steps

"Would you like to hold the baby?"

It's a simple question with an ostensibly straightforward answer: yes or no. But I'm caught off guard. Lana, one of the friends D. and I are having dinner with, doesn't let on that she's noticed as she bounces her four-month-old daughter gently, but it's too late for me to cover my hesitation. Lana's husband, absorbed in conversation with the men at the other end of the table only a moment ago, glances my way with interest. I suddenly wish I weren't sitting directly across from him -- or anyone -- where the blush rising on my face is impossible to hide.

"Sure, if you want me to," I say, regretting my word choice instantly. If you're okay with that is closer to what I'd meant to convey, not this noncommittal, indifferent-sounding reply. I'm actually dying to hold this baby, to feel what an infant feels like in my arms. But the last half-hour of conversation with Lana has been all about her new-mother anxieties -- finding the right nanny, enrolling her daughter in infant-level music and dance classes, even teaching her how to use sign language. "So the baby can express her thoughts even when she's preverbal," Lana explains. A budding helicopter parent? Maybe a little. Later in the evening, when the baby is asleep in her stroller, Lana will keep one hand on her chest to make sure she's still breathing. "I'm freaked out about SIDS," she'll say.

While I don't quite get the reason it's so urgent to put a non-ambulatory child in a dance studio, I understand this last concern and, given the newness of motherhood for Lana, the instinct to hover. Which is why I initially resisted asking to hold this little girl -- I didn't want to add to her mother's worries. If it were your baby, I tell myself, you'd be obsessing about the germs she'd be exposed to from strangers. I've picked up that tendency from my own mother, always conscious of what my hands have handled before I touch anything that goes near my eyes, nose, or mouth. Unfortunately, as much as I don't want to become her, I suspect this particular disposition will be hard to suppress when it is my turn to be a parent.

And when will that be? I wonder. D. and I are at minimum several months from trying to start our own family because I'm still recovering from food allergies that played havoc with my immune system while they went undiagnosed. After spending most of the previous year systematically identifying the culprits that were making me sick and eliminating them from our home, I'm much closer to feeling at my best again, but after putting off our plans for the three years I'd been inexplicably, constantly ill, waiting even just a few more weeks for my body to heal feels hard. Suddenly, I'm unable to keep my eyes off this infant sitting happily in her mother's lap, the perfect embodiment of everything I've been trying not to want more and more as the delays have continued. Or so I think. There are still days when I'm not sure if my reasons for wanting children are motherly in nature or more rooted in the desire to have a family of ours, different from my family of origin or D.'s. After spending recent holidays with both, we are both readier than ever to make the idea of us -- whatever that may be -- more distinct.

Maybe because Lana is keenly observant -- and knows some of our story -- she can see all this in my gaze. Or I'm just doing a terrible job of hiding my longing, which, in my mind, sometimes borders on the unseemly. Either way, when Lana offers the baby to me, I feel exposed, embarrassed by the possibility that she's picked up on the thoughts I'd rather keep private. These breaches -- spillovers, really, of emotion I can't quite hold in -- happen so much more easily these days. I am as tender-skinned as the oncoming bundle of arms and legs I reach out to take.

The baby is unwieldier than I expect. Perhaps, because the only living thing I've held in the last year and a half has been our cat, I expect her to have a different center of gravity -- or at least some such sense of mass in my lap. But so quickly does she try to change position, arching her back to see what's behind her from this new perspective, that it is all I can do to keep her from launching backward, her head too close for comfort to the table's wooden edge. I turn her automatically to get her out of harm's way; still, she wriggles in her purple-footed pajamas, curious about everything but me. To my relief, she doesn't seem alarmed to be in a stranger's hands. Do I let her explore? I give her some room to peek over her shoulder at D., seated to my right, whom I don't dare to look at -- I won't be able to bear it if he's laughing at my predicament. I know my inexperience is showing, but I don't need the one person who knows how emotionally complex the idea of motherhood is for me to be amused when I am anything but.

I know I cannot know this baby's habits or anticipate her movements as her mother does. I remind myself of this as a less rational part of me waits for her body to feel less foreign in my arms, as if those storied mothering instincts every woman is supposed to possess might relax me, give me the knowledge of what to do next. To feel next. Because isn't that what I'd wanted to find out? What I might feel in this moment with not my hands but my heart? As much as I haven't wanted to admit it to myself in recent months, I fear, with every pang of desire for motherhood, that I don't have the capacity for it. That my heart isn't built to love a child -- which holding this one, I hope, will disprove.

Of course, this test is fundamentally flawed for the same reasons this baby feels so strange to me: she is not mine. Still, that less rational part of me insists on searching for just an inkling of motherly response, whatever it believes that might look like. Delight in her impossibly round cheeks? The irresistible urge to tickle her belly? Anything but this mode of intellectual observation and analysis I keep reverting to -- I'm apparently unmoved by cuteness. I let my gaze drift from the baby toward the half-eaten dinners on the table, not from disinterest but discomfort. To look at the baby directly is to torture myself with the expectation of feelings that refuse to surface. What must Lana be thinking of me? I wonder. Now that I'm past my initial panic over protecting her daughter from injury, my stoicism in the face of something biologically designed to melt me with its pheromones must look unnatural if not outright bizarre. I might as well be holding this infant on the end of a ten-foot pole, I think, afraid that if I look down, I'll find out that it's true. I stare obstinately at my water glass, desperate to find something to distract me until I can compose my interiors and hand this baby back to her mother without completely revealing my disappointment in myself. I don't want Lana to see the letdown in my expression and misinterpret it as distaste.

I don't realize I've taken the baby's hand in my own, gently massaging her palm and fingers as I do our cat's paws. It is habit, almost like manipulating a worry stone -- our cat inevitably hops onto my knees whenever I'm seated at the kitchen table, and after some time, we settle into this position. Suddenly, I'm aware that the baby's fingers are gripping mine. With surprising force, the baby pulls one digit to her mouth and gums it, exploring the texture of my skin. A pause. She draws her prize back out, looks at what she's tasting, adjusts her grip, squeals. Before I know it, she's got a second finger in her other hand, a look of satisfaction on her wide-eyed face.

There, a voice in my ear whispers. And then it is silent again.

Is that all? I ask, though I already seem to know there is nothing more to be said as the tension I didn't realize I was holding in my shoulders eases. I look again at Lana's daughter, who cannot get enough of her new discovery, reaching for a third finger, a fourth. My body relaxes more.

I am not suddenly enamored with this baby or babies in general -- and, to my relief, I no longer expect to be. But I understand what my heart wished to feel as it waited for my mind to get out of the way: connection. To know that it is possible.

"My hands are clean," I reassure Lana as the baby grabs for a knuckle.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Mother knows best

On New Year's night, the final evening of our holiday visit, my mother and I are the last ones standing in the kitchen. D is in our room down the hall getting ready for bed, and my father, after a weekend of being on call, is sound asleep. We keep our voices low so as not to disturb them, but my mother, finally alone with me, makes her whisper more purposeful.

"You know, now that you've changed your last name, ours will be lost forever in your family."

Before this visit, D and I agreed, should anyone start to ask me about my health -- a challenging subject, given all the questions we still have and the skepticism we often hear from my family about the kinds of testing and treatment we've pursued -- that I would go find him, bring him into the conversation, so that I would not have to defend our choices alone. I don't expect an attack from the angle my mother takes, though, as she scrubs at her wok with her hard little hands. Leaning on the granite by the sink, I am suddenly vulnerable. I can tell she's been waiting to talk to me on my own.

Where is this coming from? I wonder. And why now, five years after my name change became official? Maybe my mother is thinking of the family we've wanted to start for so long but have held off on because of my health, how our children will bear only D's name instead of his and my father's. Or it's my writing, the essay I had published in the fall but never mentioned until this visit. I used a pseudonym as it was, unwilling to place my name, maiden or married, on the work -- because the subject was so difficult for me to write about, much less discuss, I didn't want anyone to find me just yet for further questions.

I wouldn't have brought up the essay had my mother not pressed me so hard to find out what I was really going to do with my life instead of tutoring as I have been. What are your goals? she'd asked.

"Putting something together that I actually believe in publishing," I said, which, without a detailed plan attached, was an only somewhat satisfying response. Whatever my mother's reasons now for raising this other concern about lost legacies, I feel her disapproval like a blast of west Texas wind carrying the smell of cattle ranches from the next town down the highway.

I know I shouldn't respond -- there can be no good outcome from midnight conversations about family differences -- but so much of my writing is tied to this very issue, the knots in our relationship I am forever trying to untangle by examining them, sentence by sentence. I've chosen to be published under a pseudonym not just to give myself privacy but also to protect that process of personal and relational inquiry, taking on a persona whose name won't be recognized by anyone who knows my family. This way, I can write without fearing their real-life loss of face. Not that I expect my parents' friends to read the kinds of literary journals I'd submit my work to, but in this electronic age, I am searchable, linkable, forwardable, potentially viral.

My writing persona, regardless of her name, needs protecting too. To use either of my surnames is to be who they imply I am: wife, sister, daughter, with everything those identities carry with them. Not that I wish to deny those aspects of my life experience, but I am more than all that. I am other thoughts and questions and indeterminacies that do not yet know how to bear up under the labels automatically bequeathed or contracted to me. For now, then, it is easier to shed these names temporarily and just be me, with a pseudonym as a neutral placeholder where it would be inconvenient for someone to address me simply as "she" or "you."

But that's not the answer to the question my mother is really asking on this night.

Why couldn't you have kept our name? It's a loaded question because it immediately implies that I did not choose as I should have (consider why did you change your name for comparison). The differences are minute, but words and meanings are my territory; I can't help being attuned to the subtexts in my mother's query even if she doesn't realize they are there. Why the clannishness tonight? I'd like to ask in return. I glance inadvertently toward the guest bedroom, confused by my mother's sudden coolness toward my husband. I'm hurt on his behalf.

And then it all comes out. Suddenly she's on to our financial arrangements (joint), our career decisions (too much in favor of D's advancement and not mine), even our past marital problems (the particulars of which she can only guess at since I don't share them -- and she is, of course, largely off base). It is all I can do to parry with fragmented sentences in the face of this onslaught. "You give him too much control," she says at last, still at a whisper but eyes blazing, angry for reasons I can't fathom. Do I just run?

I wish I had.

Cornered by so many accusations, I lash back. "My marriage isn't like yours," I spit. "The choices we've made have always been ours -- not just D's or mine."

The argument deteriorates from that moment. I've found the bruised places in her heart, and everything she throws at me from then on is more of the irrational -- which I don't recognize until long after I've met her barb for barb. I am terrible at refusing to engage.

That is what I need to learn, though, because the boundary that marriage establishes between me and my parents is a necessary one. Like my decision to use a pseudonym to separate my writing persona's role from the roles I have to take on in real life, my decision to limit the information I provide about my married life when my mother asks is protective -- young marriages, like young writers' identities, have weak places, foundations that need work. The protection that such a boundary affords as D and I contemplate starting a family of our own has never been more important.

But the price of maintaining that boundary is clearly something I didn't completely anticipate. If anything after this ambush, I've learned that much of what my mother thinks of my marriage is what she assumes about it, perhaps based on her dissatisfaction with her own, because I've left her with little real information to take its place.

Still, some of her last words to me on New Year's night tell me that the alternative -- sharing it all to prevent so much misunderstanding -- will be more costly. "We'll never be able to have a heart-to-heart," my mother says, "because you won't let me be honest with you."

As long as her idea of a heart-to-heart is for me to accept unconditionally her opinion on anything I share, I'd rather keep the details to myself.