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.

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.

Sense and sensitivity

The smell of fresh biscuits is wafting upstairs from the kitchen in my parents' house in Texas. We've been coming here for the end-of-year holidays only since 2006, so the room I'm writing in -- a loft above a garage -- is not the one where I used to wake up to the promise of butter, flour, baking powder, milk, and salt, in those perfect, golden, flaky proportions that are my mother's standby recipe for daughterly bliss. It's just a loft with an elliptical machine in it, and I cycle along, willing myself to recall the tender center of this favorite baked good, how it releases a ribbon of steam when it first breaks open under my much younger fingers.

The last few years have been an adjustment -- first, the limit on sugars and starches after I became insulin resistant, then the limit on dairy and gluten after those food sensitivities came to light. I can choose to ignore these inconvenient circumstances -- nothing truly dire will occur immediately if I eat from the tray my mother has just pulled from the oven -- but I know it's unwise. At the very least, I'll feel sick and be less able to enjoy this time with my family. So I soak up the memory of warmth and comfort that the aroma brings back.

But the coziness of a different kitchen in a different time fails to materialize. I'm needled by earlier moments from the morning. "Can you butter the tray for me?" my mother asks, as I am about to leave the kitchen in search of a writing spot. "Oh, there might be flour on the counter. You can touch that stuff, right?"

I tell her it's fine -- I can wash my hands -- but then, as I clean the baking utensils left in the sink, I hesitate before setting the sponge back on the edge of the basin. "Is it okay to put this through the dishwasher?" I ask. Without a thorough soaping and scalding, a good quantity of gluten particles can stay lodged in the fibers.

"Oh, it'll never get completely clean," she replies, waving a floury hand, as if whether the sponge goes through the machine isn't important. I know she doesn't mean to be cavalier, but a flood of resentment at what feels like her insensitivity rises in my chest. Just because the sponge can't be sterilized doesn't mean I can't take the measures with it -- or anything else in her kitchen -- that will decrease my exposure to what makes me sick. It has only been a day since my arrival, but the few things I've asked her not to do for food I will eat -- like using wooden cutting boards, which are porous and also harbor gluten easily -- she's done anyway.

I wonder whether to say anything. When I do remind her, she makes the excuse that this is all new to her, which I understand. But she makes no move to apologize.

Am I wrong to feel hurt? I ask myself. Don't be so -- well, sensitive, part of me says in reply. Still, the scent of my mother's biscuits, hanging in the air of the loft, refuses to transfer the pleasure I wish it would.

And there goes another one

Fastest chapter on record -- yes, No. 5 is off into the electronic ether. It may very well remain out there for a few days while both my advisor and I are at this week's conference (assuming she's able to get in tonight), but that's fine. I'm relieved that it's off my desk and I can now focus on the next few days here.

Speaking of here, I very nearly didn't make it because of the weather yesterday. But I was lucky enough (seriously, how long has it been since I've gotten to say those words!) to finagle a flight change out of Seattle when my original itinerary through Dallas was canceled -- as well as the second and third rebookings automatically generated by the airline's computer system. No. 2 routed me through Chicago (into even heavier snow?); No. 3 put me back through DFW on the red-eye (16 hours after my original flight, into sub-zero conditions in a metropolis that handles temperatures in the 20s only rarely). Damned connecting cities!

I'm no fan of six-hour flights, but when the very cranky gate agent I sidled up to managed to find the last open spot on a nonstop operated by a partner airline, I was delighted. So, only an hour after I was originally supposed to take off, I squeezed into a seat between two gentlemen and tried to get comfortable.

Believe it or not, that's where I finished Chapter 5.

It was definitely a challenge, trying to do that with so many interruptions -- captain's announcements, the shuffling of beverages, turbulence (the flying-over-a-blizzard kind, not just a few bumps here and there). But with the new laptop battery that arrived just in time for the trip, I got a solid two hours of writing done. A big thank-you to my seatmates for being the quiet kind (one seemed to be studying for an interview; the other was writing a PowerPoint presentation on his own laptop). Not that I don't like being social, but the window of opportunity was invaluable.

So now I'm on page 51. Twenty-four to go ...

Wishful thinking

I bit down on my tongue. Hard. Held my breath, fixed both eyes on a spot on the carpet by the bed, told myself don't cry. I'd managed to get from Seattle to the panhandle of Texas despite surgery, despite infection, without letting on to anyone how I was feeling. My doctor had cleared me to fly, and I needed to go home. For my research, I'd told myself -- to look firsthand at the photos and old letters from my parents' early years together, before I was born, to begin untangling their story for my thesis. That's what I'd finally realized this project was about.

Don't cry, I thought harder. Don't cry don't cry don't cry. But my mother had her arm around me.

"You've been so good," she said. "It's okay, you don't have to be strong anymore today."

Don't have to be strong? Since when did she ever use words like that? The spot on the carpet dissolved into a uniform blur and I buried my head in her shoulder, bewildered but relieved.

"You're so warm," she said after a few minutes.

I lifted my head. "It's fine," I said. I reached for a tissue and glanced toward the door, hoping my father, who usually spent the evening watching TV on the couch just outside the room, couldn't hear us. "This fever's not as bad as the first."

My mother frowned but said nothing, a hand still holding tightly to my shoulder as she surveyed the suitcase on the floor, the airline ticket stubs on the nightstand. "You've had a long day. Now you should just rest."

I pulled the robe she'd lent me closer, leaned my head against hers, and closed my eyes.

*

I remember getting sick as a kid -- flu, strep, bronchitis, the usual. All of which meant long mornings at the pediatrician's office that smelled like old vinyl seats, worn-edged board books, and that nose-wrinkling soap you found only where there were doctors. We never said it aloud, but I don't think my mother or I particularly liked that place.

My mother tended to look worried during those visits, but not because of me. My father would be irritated when he got home. While he doctored the sick every day at the hospital, giving his all to an endless string of cardiac patients, he didn't tolerate illness in his own house. Most of the time, he'd just ignore the problem, leaving my mother to handle all the nursing duties -- administering medication and fluids, keeping track of symptoms, cleaning up vomit. On occasion, he'd pop his head into the bedroom doorway to assess the situation, but he never crossed the threshold.

He did, however, expect my mother to keep the rest of the house running as usual. A hot meal ready to serve, the newspaper waiting by the couch, bills paid, phone calls made, my younger sisters bathed and fed. If things weren't as he felt they ought to be, he'd whine -- at me ("Are you still throwing up?") and at her ("How much longer before dinner? It's getting late."). My mother couldn't help growing annoyed in turn. She never said anything directly to me, but the look on her face when she was caught between my needs and his said plenty: he wouldn't cut her any slack. Couldn't I?

Hers was obviously wishful thinking, but I felt guilty all the same. So I learned to downplay how I was feeling, even if I was miserable. It was better than feeling like a nuisance, even if I wished deep down that it didn't have to be that way.

*

My body remembered this as I leaned against my mother, so many years later, in the dimly lit guestroom of my parents' new house. The mattress on the bed was old, but the comforter was brand-new to match the pillow shams my mother had sewn. "To update things," she'd said a few weeks earlier on the phone, telling me how much she couldn't wait for me to see what she'd put together. She'd wanted to work on the room sooner, but in my parents' nearly four years in Panhandle, she hadn't gotten around to it until then. It didn't matter to me -- being with her, no matter what kind of bed I slept in, was what made home feel like home. Though I did like what she'd chosen, knowing that I would be the one to curl up there.

And how I wanted to do just that. But I didn't want to move while she sat next to me, holding me close. How I'd wanted this too, in those moments when she'd been forced to choose between me and my father. Even early that evening, he'd only grunted, when my mother mentioned I'd been ill, and then complained about what had taken her so long at the grocery store, where she'd gone to get the fresh fish he'd wanted for dinner. Nothing seemed to have changed.

But my mother's arm stayed around me as I glanced toward the door, listening for sounds of the TV, long after the meal had ended. "He's gone to bed," she said. "Don't worry about him."

I dabbed at my eyes, not sure what to say. But for once, she seemed to understand how much I needed her, even more than I'd realized.

Things I am grateful for, or an epistle to the powers that be

Dear Life:

You and I have had our ups and downs this year. Mostly downs, by any measure, but let's not quibble over the finer points therein. Suffice it to say that in general, 2010 has been unmatched in this Troubadour's experience of "rough patches," "tough spots," "suboptimal circumstances," or any other euphemistic label you'd like to slap on it -- despite multiple appeals for relief. To which I have to ask, at the risk of sounding repetitive: WTF?

I have not, in the past, been a big bright-side seeker. I lost my innocence a little too early on to develop the habit. But I'm willing to try almost anything at this point, given the November you've served up so far. And as tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I figure now is as good a time as any to start. So whatever you are -- an entity indifferent to the human plight or one whose intentions for me have yet to make any sense -- listen up.

In the last week, I was grateful for the following:

• Getting to see one of my dearest friends from college, who happened to be interviewing in Seattle for a medical residency at the UW and needed a place to stay. Never mind the kidney infection you decided to make apparent to me with a raging fever and teeth-rattling chills, about the time her flight was going to arrive. The ER was on the same route as the airport, so it was convenient for D to drop me off and continue on to pick her up. A reunion in one of those skimpy hospital gowns was not what I'd envisioned, but I have never been happier to have company. The laughter that came from behind the curtain in my ER bay for the hours we were stuck there should be proof enough of that.


• Having my white cell count remain oddly normal in the ER, despite the fact that the infection had already spilled into my bloodstream by the time the poor nurse assigned to me found a usable vein to get the IV antibiotics going. (Is laughter, indeed, the better medicine?) The delayed immune response fooled the hospital into discharging me on the same night rather than admitting me for what was actually a much more serious condition (bacteremia, with the potential to turn into straight-up sepsis). It was nice to get to spend a few extra hours with my friend outside the hospital, which we used not wisely but very well. We took the conversation home and didn’t end it till nearly 3 a.m.


• Having the blood cultures come back soon enough the next day to get word to my urologist, who promptly called in the extra antibiotics I would need to make sure the infection was properly treated (the ER doctor prescribed only 7 days' worth; turns out I needed 14). Without them, I would have been short on meds for the length of my research trip. Which brings me to ...


• Getting to go on said research trip, despite the severity of the aforementioned infection. I know the party line, per the infectious disease consult ordered by the urologist, was to cancel my plans, but she and I decided that the calculated risk of getting on a plane for a few hours to spend a week essentially under my parents' care (the arrangement was for me to stay with them while doing the research) was reasonable to take. Yes, you made me pay for it by giving me more chills and fever while I was somewhere over Utah, but I was armed this time with enough antipyretics to kill a buffalo. So I'm still glad I went. Recovering in Panhandle, Texas, is essentially no different from recovering in Seattle. And Mom's chicken soup beats any I could make.


• Being lucky enough to have scheduled my return flight between that arctic front's passage over Seattle and its subsequent arrival in Panhandle. For a few days before the anticipated snowy cold snap, we were concerned that I might get stuck in Texas for the holiday, leaving D on his own for Thanksgiving. But I'm home now, thanks to a little mercy from the travel gods, and we will have turkey together tomorrow. Given the last month's health ridiculousness, we will not be throwing the usual fete we love to put on nor will we be traveling to share the holiday's bounty with the numerous folks from out of town who have invited us. But we are glad that I'm on the mend (for real this time, we hope) and look forward to the long weekend, if only just to rest.

So. Here's to a happy Thanksgiving. May what remains of 2010 offer much to be grateful for. (I wouldn't mind, though, if the things to be happy about were packaged with fewer associated challenges ...)

Sincerely,
C. Troubadour

Have salt, will travel

Airports. Not the best places to sleep, but in terms of providing basic office services, they're not bad.

I got stranded in Dallas on Friday because of the blizzard that settled over the Texas panhandle, home of Troubadour Mom and Dad (Troubadour Mom had a birthday last week, so it was a nice reason to visit):

Image courtesy of weather.com

I expected flights to be canceled, given the numerous warnings the National Weather Service was putting out days in advance about whiteout conditions, so I packed a good chunk of work and enough cereal to cover me for two extra breakfasts (that's the one meal that's more difficult to get from airport vendors in a form that will fit my dietary restrictions).

Around the time I was finishing lunch, D called me to say our realtor needed my signature on the post-inspection repairs agreed to by the seller of our house -- preferably before the weekend. Hmm, what to do? I knew I could get to my e-mail for the documents, but where was I going to find a printer and a fax machine without being a member of any airline's elite travelers' club (with the private lounges and conference rooms for business executives on the go)?

Well, it turns out that the people who work at the information kiosks scattered around DFW's terminals have access to their own office technology. For free. They set me up with everything I needed, and within an hour of D's call, he had the forms in hand to add his own signature to.

I wish I could say the rest of my day was as productive. I nodded off more than I graded while sitting in the airport's low-slung faux-leather chairs -- I'd only had three hours of sleep on the previous night -- and by the time the last flight out was scrubbed, all I wanted was a good workout, some dinner, and a real bed. I got all of that at a hotel a few miles away after getting tickets for the next morning.

Saturday, 6 a.m.: first three flights of the day to Panhandle canceled. Grrrr.

Being slightly better rested, I plopped myself down by a plug in a wall (I've gotten pretty good at spotting these in airports since acquiring my laptop) and started editing my thesis prospectus -- it had been hanging over my head since before spring break, which is when I wrote the first draft. I also got to know the large herd of travelers also hoping to get to Panhandle. The first plane cleared to go was around 2 p.m., so we wandered in a pack thereafter, peeling off a few at a time whenever standby seats were available on flights to points northwest. I was eighteenth on the list, so I did quite a bit of wandering, but it allowed me to take breaks between editing sessions. We'd install ourselves at a gate, wait for it to board, and if we didn't get seats, we'd pack up and move on en masse to the gate for the next departure.

I finally landed in Panhandle shortly before 6 p.m., just in time for a belated birthday dinner. After cake (a sliver for me), I gave Mom the gift I'd been carrying with me for two days:


She loved it.