The Wind is Southerly

O Christmas Tree (Poem)

2011-12-26T05:31:00.002-08:00

You are a Christmas tree

this year, a glorious star

on the tip of your sweet-

smelling head. You make

everyone happy and want

to dress you and water you

like a baby. You are loved

like a baby. You look inevitable

in silver and red, shining

brass angels and blinking

lights. People sing to you,

telling you all is calm,

heavenly peace as you stand

so tall -- even cut down, even

removed from your forest,

even bought and sold like

a slave. This is your mark,

the reason we adore you:

this ability to be beautiful

despite all you can't control.

Here Comes Santa Claus (Poem)

2011-12-26T05:31:00.001-08:00

If I were Santa Claus, I would sneak in through the front door at noon, when everyone is out shopping. I'd leave gifts under the sink, in the locked cupboards so the baby couldn't get to them. I'd drink milk out of the carton while I ate cookies right off the tray after baking them myself with extra chocolate chips. I would like a lot of chocolate chips. I'd be tired from the sleigh ride. I would wear flannel sheets wrapped around my jolly body in the spirit of ancient Rome. I would also wear glasses because I'm myopic, even as Santa Claus, but I have beautiful frames.

If I were Santa, I would live in the Southwest, because I'd like to hang my toga on a cactus now and then. I might reside in the exact house I live in as non-Santa, and my better Claus would have to be my husband, who loves my jolly body wrapped in flannel sheets, who loves my cookies and the way I lay my glasses on the nightstand. I guess I'd want one baby as well, sleeping with her blackberry-stained mouth open in the middle of the afternoon while her mom pretends she is herself. That's what I would do if I were someone else.

Poem: Ode to Nothing Too Dangerous

2011-10-30T14:33:00.001-07:00

The sun burrows into my shady body until I'm blue and vast, alive with pollen, dizziness, thirst. Stung and whipped by July. Nothing too dangerous. This is a one-way season. Nothing gets out. Nevertheless there comes a time for curtains and hinges, electrical outlets, dogs fussing over a handful of frozen peas. The pictures indomitable on the painted wall. Other days I carry a small fruit around, a plum or banana, never a pumpkin, and eat it in the car. God, the warm Tuesdays in the front seat of my car. Air like the flu. I'm glad to meet October, to pile leaves up to my chest, to breathe again after all that New Mexico summer, to crinkle a little in my heart, ah. I drive around with a pumpkin on my lap and no one knows. Winter, spring, come and go like donuts, cheap and almost straightforward. A few cold holidays and a windy tennis court. A squirt of ice on the mountain and a ragged person, me or someone else, trying to run in March after the hideous trying to run in February. The way we all look like canisters in our high-desert layered outfits. I'm economy-sized oatmeal. Tomorrow, something more bear-resistant, scent so muffled my dogs don't know me. I'm covered in warm pumpkins inside my coat. Then, May, we start to grow arms and legs again, and the dust is overrun with starfish. The sun burns holes in our clothes and melts wet spots in the highway. We stop the cars, smoosh our feet around in the tar, close our eyes and remember secrets we wanted to tell, then forgot to tell, then became.

Do People Who Like Books Like Reading About Other People Who Like Books?

2011-10-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Some blog to share recipes. That seems entirely legit. I love to eat. Others blog to share their artwork and incredibly funny grammar jokes. I love anything to do with clever stick figures or the misspelling of "a lot." Those are fine reasons to blog.

But what's my reason? What do I have to share? I have a daughter, so I must have some mothering experience, but I'm still at the point where I should be reading other people's mothering blogs, not writing my own. I bake, but casually, often without an apron. I don't dance much anymore, not that anyone wants to hear about adult ballet classes, which should remain private, like AA meetings. I run, but not as fast or as much as actual runners. In short, I do many things, but few thoroughly or with bloggable zeal.

I've been thinking about my little stock of book wisdom. I've read a lot (ha!) of books (to better imagine an alot of books, visit http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html) and think about them while I change diapers.

Do people like to read about people who like to read books? What do you think?

Why Blog?

2011-10-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

All my friends are on Facebook, even, finally, my husband. I post status updates, links, pictures of my darling baby. I read about my friends' travels, their children, their accomplishments, their questions. I know more people than I can realistically keep up with by individual correspondence, so Facebook is really fantastic, even with the ever mutating security policies and frequent format changes. It's so easy and efficient that lately I've been asking myself the big question: Why blog?

I used to think of my blog as a way to share my thoughts with my friends, and a few total strangers. But now, my mental power is pretty limited by constant toddler shrieks (think "Harrison Bergeron") and anything newsworthy, post-worthy, or blog-worth, is on Facebook. Why blog?

A blog, for me, has to be about more than simple sharing. It can't just be: Amelia has four new teeth. Amelia has the cutest, weirdest little legs. It can't just be about my classes, my anniversary, my crock pot, my ambivalent feelings toward Ally McBeal. I also don't want it to be some kind of half-honest journal, where I write about all the feelings I don't need to hide in a private journal.

So why blog? Amelia needs to nurse, so you tell me.

Another Labor Story

2010-12-24T05:16:00.000-08:00

There are real pains. Toothaches. Backaches. Migraines. Broken noses. Sprains. Chipped bones. There are less definable pains. Getting the wind knocked out of you. Trying to touch your toes in the morning. Staring at a screen for too long. Feeling fat. It does no good to separate, categorize or rank any of these. Is it worse to bust up your knee skiing than it is to have a head cold? Probably. Who cares? But it is interesting that we can suffer and then forget the precise sensation, or in other words, that suffering, in its details, is not memorable. We can let it go.

The same is true of pleasures. The peace you felt watching a few deer hop over a fence or the sense of safety you experienced in your ex-husband's arms can vanish. I remember saying on my wedding day -- and this is not with an ex-husband -- "This really is the happiest day of my life." I am confident that I felt that way, that I wasn't lying to myself or to Michael. But I don't remember how I felt. I can't compare that feeling, that day, with the many wonderful days we've had since with our daughter.

I do know the first day of my daughter's life, while amazing, was not pleasant. In the hours immediately preceding my daughter's birth, I experienced the worst pain of my life. I didn't consciously think about it. Unlike my wedding way, I didn't describe my feelings aloud. It was all I could do to count to 30, clutching at Michael's shoulder, the bed, or, a few times, the bathroom sink, while the contraction throttled me.

But now, even that word "throttled" rings slightly untrue. I don't know what the contractions did to me. I mostly remember my deep need to count. I would get to 30. The pain would end. I never let myself think beyond that, to ponder the dozens of times I counted to 30, and how if I had started at 31 for the second contraction, 61 for the third, and so on, the numbers would reach into the thousands. No, I just rewound each time, no memory of the past contraction, no awareness of the future. I had no mind. I was the second-hand of a clock. I ticked half-way around and then the pain stopped.

By the time I was 8 centimeters dilated, if I hadn't known for certain the pain would end, I considered dying. But this was not the worst of it. By 10 centimeters, I could feel my jaw pulling down, my throat letting out a horribly generic scream. I remember thinking, "That scream sounds fake." But I could do nothing about it. It wasn't a line of dialogue or something a person can choose to say or hold back. It was like a heartbeat -- and your heart will beat or not according to factors well beyond what you think it should do. I listened to my scream, I counted, I clutched, and after a mere 25 minutes of this, I pushed out a baby.

I say "mere 25 minutes" with something of a sarcastic tone, for two reasons. First, while many women endure this stage of labor for far longer even 25 minutes, Amelia was born at my exact breaking point. I couldn't have gone on any longer. Second, while time, specifically time limits, had everything to do with my pain, the overall duration meant very little. I labored for about six hours, but I didn't look at the wall clock once. I didn't feel hungry for lunch or dinner. I didn't notice the sun outside the hospital window. I was told at one point that my regular doctor would not be there for the delivery because it was likely I would have my baby after 5 p.m. A thought flickered through my head, like a spark off of a sparkler, that other people were going through work days, that, in fact, the nurse telling me this information was doing so because it was part of her job. But eight-hour blocks of time were inconceivable to me. I lived a minute or two at a time, over and over.

And between these brief, number-filled lifetimes, I felt just like I do now, typing this paragraph. Mild backache. Tired eyes. Just fine. I vividly remember thinking, "I feel absolutely normal right now," when I was fully dilated and had screaming less than a minute earlier. Childbirth pain is repetitive but compressed. It is definable. It never exactly enters the mind, and so afterward, it cannot exactly be remembered. It concludes with the intense satisfaction of holding your own baby in your arms, seeing her with your eyes and hearing her cry for the first time. And while that first-time-ness cannot exactly be remembered either, the massive number of times you will hold your baby eventually reduces the contractions to zero. Labor is nothing. I'd do it again. It'd be a pleasure, in hindsight, anyhow.

Just Before Dawn

2010-10-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm awake before the baby.
The dark cool air is mine
for doing pre-mother
activities but I don't
remember ...
Was life anticipation?
The bull before the rodeo?
I drink a little water,
read the comics,
pet the twitching,
splayed-out dogs,
reach for the laundry
and change my mind.
My brain is a loose stack
of petals. My baby sleeps
like an empty arena,
an empty place before
an event, peaceful,
snoring, her stuffed
October nose allowing us
these final dreaming minutes.
The gray sky crawls
toward blue. Silhouettes
become trees. Headlights
become cars and employees
with coffee cups with lids.
But I stay in the murky hour
just before dawn,
until she rises.

Rapper A. Dol. Discovered at Bach Convention

2010-10-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Paparazzi snapped this shot as A. Dol. exited a lecture on "The Well-Tempered Clavier." She was later quoted as crying.

Sleep: God's Greatest Gift

2010-10-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Michael and Amelia sleep in ... Why isn't Kelly sleeping? Mothers do not need sleep. They can survive solely on banana bread and digital photos.

Michael, Amelia and Kelly Dolejsi

2010-09-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

Our family portrait, Set. 17, 2010. We are completely happy.

A Break, Maybe

2010-08-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

The Monitor has discontinued 6 Monkeys. I still want to and plan to keep writing. I love writing, especially about my little one. But this week, I missed my self-set Tuesday deadline. Self-set deadlines are very easy to overlook. This time I gave myself a break because this is the first week of school. What will my excuse be next time? The second week? My first child? My sixth dog? My 11th hamburger? As you can see, it just gets silly.

My goal today is just to post something. Maybe I'll be posting shorter, less polished blogs for a while. Maybe that will free up something that, despite my countless news articles and feature columns, has been blocked since grad school.

The Conversational Skills of a Muffin

2010-08-17T16:06:00.001-07:00

I don't know what to talk about anymore.
"Amelia nursed seven times this morning."
"Amelia seems to like flashing lights."
"Amelia has kind of a dry forehead."
I am not so far gone as to believe my perfect six-week-old daughter is 100-percent absorbing to anybody else. But I have no idea what does absorb other people, no clue what goes on outside the range of my baby monitor. To be honest, I barely care. I sense that I should care, that I would be a more valuable conversationalist if I cared, but I don't know ... Conversational skills don't seem as important anymore.
Amelia doesn't need them. Why would I?
Moreover, it's not like I ever talked about interesting things. Before Amelia was born, I talked about TV shows, backaches, my hair, my dogs. We all have long lists of superficial inanities that we spend most of our time thinking about and then bore our friends with at lunch.
But before my brain turned into baby food, my list and other people's overlapped.
Like me, some of my friends agreed with me that one should never miss an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance." It leaves a horrible, wound-like gap in the week. It feels like Wednesday or Thursday, whichever day's episode you missed, died. And now the season's over. Lauren won. And you lost that tense, emotional, sexy, sacred pleasure forever.
Amazingly, not all of us watched "SYTYCD." But all of my friends had and continue to have hair. And although we're all smart enough to know better, we each believe that our hairstyles are meaningful, like Steinbeck's "East of Eden" only more photogenic. Our hair defines us, even more than our gushing commentary on Kent's amazing Broadway routines. We are more ourselves after a good haircut and we are pitiful warthogs when our barrettes lie at funny angles with our skulls. That last part is probably only true for me. No way my friends are actually that depthless.
Point is, it's not like people who are not mothers of newborn babies are necessarily any more profound. They tend to vary their repertoire more. They tend to leave the house with more exciting destinations than the old fruit cart at Smith's. And variety is what we humans live for. Variety, and food.
Luckily, food is something I can still discuss at delicious length.
Despite my scaled-back lifestyle, I still have to eat. In fact, when I'm not nursing, I'm certainly eating. When I am nursing, the probability remains high. I often have a piece of pineapple-heavy pizza in one hand and Amelia's beautiful, goosy-soft head in the other. The crumbs on her onesies are not her fault. She's not the one double-fisting banana-walnut-chocolate-chip muffins, warm from the oven and slightly painful to the palm.
She's my table. She's also my audience. From her special, contoured pillow, Amelia often watches me sing and dance and rattle measuring cups around in the kitchen. I do not have to talk to hold her attention. I just have to stand near a brightly lit window. I just have to wave my spatula around in a provocative, promising manner.
In turn, she kicks her little feet and knocks over stacks of Tupperware I have set aside to return to my afore-mentioned, hair-having friends, who cooked and froze dinners for my husband and I to enjoy during our postpartum ineptitude.
It's wonderful fun, and it's the kind of experience, unlike diaper-changing, that I feel comfortable bringing up over gyros at the Pyramid Cafe. No one wants to hear too much about poo. My friends will accept a few passing remarks, because they love me. But then we need to move on to something that doesn't smell like an evil pasture, the kind you drive past in upstate New York, thrilled you don't live there.
So I try to limit my insights on diaper pails and talk instead about zucchinis I buy at Farmers Market, experiments with cinnamon and my wacky discovery that whole-wheat tortillas don't totally suck. Strategically, I mention Amelia as if she's just part of the story, nothing more than an accessory, when really, any culinary antic I describe is purely an excuse to mention my little girl, my sweetheart, the reason I eat, the reason I get to eat 500 more calories per day than the rest of you.
I might not be interesting, but who cares? It's impolite to talk with my mouth that full.

Driving Mr. Poe

2010-08-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

The first time was April something, 1987. I was in fifth grade. I liked fifth grade, but not as much as fourth. Fourth was the first time I acted in a play. As the soothsayer in "Julius Caesar," I got to screw up my one line, twice. But I wasn't the only non-professional. During one rehearsal, our director told Jason, the boy who played Brutus, that he was sitting "like he was taking a dump."
That's why I loved fourth grade.
But in fifth grade I recited "Annabel Lee" in front of my class, and Jason said, "Good job." So fifth grade was pretty good, too.
However, Edgar Allen Poe didn't kill me. Neither did Jason. It was the Scarlet Fever. Many children have died from this, a fact my mother let me know right away, when I was a short, happy fifth-grader and the doctor said, "You have Scarlet Fever." Luckily, however, by 1987, bacterial infections rarely killed middle-class American girls, who had antibiotics readily available. My dad was middle-management. I was saved.
The second time I died I was 17. My mother was an entrepreneur and I worked in her pizza-and-sub joint, the Shamrock Cafe. I had a crush on one of my co-workers, a boy named Jared who was alternatingly kind and ferocious with me. Or rather, sometimes we talked so easily I imagined he was kind, when really he was just teasing me about what music I listened to or how fast I could run.
But certainly he was ferocious. One time, he took me out in his little red Fiero, driving faster and faster down the dirt road, corners screaming. I started crying. Still hightailing through our dark, sleepy town, he started yelling, "People get killed in cars. People die. Don't forget this. Don't drive like an idiot."
He told me he was teaching me a lesson.
But that ride with Jared wasn't when I died. Death had come just before, and was the reason he was yelling and I was crying.
I had been driving my first car, a 1977 Buick LeSabre, a vehicle into which I had sunk my entire teenage fortune -- about $1,100. I was commuting between my aunt's house and the Shamrock Cafe, and I wasn't yet experienced with mud. The roads were like the back of a wet cherry tomato and my car was like a fork. I couldn't dig in. I started sliding to the left. I tried to straighten out the wheels and flew off the right side of the road, smashing into a tree and falling about 25 feet down.
That was when I would have died, had I not pulled over about one minute before my accident and put on my seat belt.
The third time was about six weeks ago when I was having a baby.
I was nearly 40 weeks pregnant. Again, I had a crush on a boy, but this time he was my husband. He really was kind. When I felt my water break, Michael and I were eating Kraft dinners. We were scared but excited. We had been waiting to meet our baby it seemed like forever.
"Have you felt any contractions?" Michael asked me. "I don't think so," I answered. We went out for a labor-stimulating walk.
"Anything?"
"No."
We decided to go to sleep. In the morning, I felt great. I embarked on a hike with my friend Claire and her seven-month-old, David. I skipped along the trail, feeling lighter and breathing better than I had in months.
"Feeling any ...?" she asked me. I shook my head.
Later that morning, my friend Susan and I drove to Albuquerque to pick up my mom, who was flying in from upstate New York and hoping to be in the delivery room for the birth of her granddaughter. We three talked things over while we ate blue-cheese-bacon burgers at Red Robin. I had been nauseous and living off crackers. But suddenly the nausea was gone. I had space in my belly. This was the biggest meal I had eaten in weeks.
After lunch, I called my doctor to let her know my membranes had ruptured.
"How long ago? ... Oh, Kelly."
Susan dropped my mom and me off at the obstetrician's office in Santa Fe and the nurse practitioner confirmed that yes, I needed to go to the hospital right away. Now that the amniotic sac was kaput, the baby and I were at an increased risk for a very serious, total-body infection. But I still wasn't in labor. I didn't want to go.
I went home, slept and woke up the next morning feeling, unfortunately, great.
But that needed to change. Michael, my mom and I drove to St. Vincent's at a safe speed. Jared would have approved. When the nurse evaluated me at the hospital, I was only 1 centimeter dilated, and my cervix was all wrong. It wasn't ripe. It was too high. It had been 37 hours since my water had broken and everybody was very anxious.
My doctor gave me a stomach ulcer medicine that happens to turn cervixes into mush, and by that afternoon, I was definitely, obviously feeling contractions. Nobody had to ask. By 5 p.m. I was screaming in pain and around 5:30, we had a baby. She was and still is healthy and beautiful. She's a rosebud-lipped, gopher-sized version of Michael, with slightly less hairy shoulders.
But what if this wasn't the 21st century? What if my doctor wasn't able to induce labor? My water had broken but my body had no interest in pursuing the matter further. If things had continued on their natural course, it's very possible Amelia and I would have died.
Every day I live is a gift from the modern world, with its excellent drugs and safety straps. This is my thank-you card.

Every day is the Superbowl

2010-08-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

If life used to be wool, now it's feathers. It's a new goose, a tiny, paramecium-sized bird with a long purple tail, a swishing string that trails off into space like a mumbled sentence. It's fluffy and blurry and slow and conventional, and yet also oddly stiff, like blocky stone castles and war with axes.
Life has changed. I spend my days at home, mostly on the couch. I wear gym shorts and big T-shirts. I eat like every day is the Superbowl. I don't remember where I used to sit, what I used to wear. I don't remember yesterday, except so far as I'm pretty sure it was just like today. I'm too tired to think about it.
I live like a depressed person, a depressed me.
I have been deeply sad before and deeply entrenched in cartons of ice cream. But this is not sad or deep. I don't know what it is.
If you know from previous columns that I recently had a baby, you're probably thinking to yourself, "It's because she recently had a baby."
You might be right. The transformation and the baby came at exactly the same time. But the reason I'm going on about single-celled geese and eating ice cream sandwiches as if they're potato chips is because the baby is not the whole picture. Amelia is only one part .
I knew taking care of a baby would be unlike not taking care of a baby. I knew I would have to slow down and accept a little more conventionality than I usually prefer.
But life is different even when I'm not taking care of her -- when I brush my teeth, for instance. I'm just standing there in my unflattering lime-green shorts with a matted ponytail diagonally protruding from my head and a hot-pink toothbrush in my mouth. I'm not looking at myself in the mirror. I've stopped that. I don't know what I look like anymore. I don't need any more information about my ponytail.
This is what I mean by "war with axes."
It's different when I cook eggs, too. I love eggs. I have always loved eggs, except for the year or two following an incident wherein I scrambled a few with a diced, rotten onion and made myself sick. Anyhow, now it feels like a luxury to fry eggs, an act that requires two hands -- one to hold the pan and one to schmooze with the yolk-crusty spatula. It is not often I have two hands free. I don't remember ever appreciating my hands so much, ever noticing how useful they are as a pair.
Likewise, writing my column also feels completely indulgent, at least today. I had to type the last few paragraphs of my previous column with just my left hand, trying to think of words with lots of r's and a's and no i's or m's.
This is what I mean by "blocky stone castles."
I've changed how I read newspapers, load the DVD player, vacuum, feed the dogs -- really, how I accomplish almost every mundane daily activity. I don't know what I used to think about during these small feats before Amelia was born, but now I think about being fast.
I am constantly aware that I don't have as long as I want to read a Dilbert comic strip or remove "Clueless" from its case, insert it into the little black tray and push "play." At any moment, Amelia might start crying. Speed is extraordinarily important when I want to enjoy something. I might, for example, want to linger over my ice cream sandwich but I had better power through, because nothing is delicious or fun or relaxing once Amelia starts crying. I hate when she cries. I hate everything when she cries, even sugar.
It's not only waking life that has changed. These days, I go to bed at 8 p.m. If I sleep for six consecutive hours, I feel the same kind of awe as when I read my first Philip Roth novel. If I can get back to sleep after the prolonged nursing that results from such a prolonged snooze, I might as well have witnessed an Old-Testament-style miracle, with thunder, bread for everyone and a silvery-winged angel.
Also, the texture of the sleep itself has altered. Now only one of my ears sleeps. The other is always listening. Is she waking up? Is she in distress? Does she need me? My insomniac ear lets me know.
So yes, life is different because I recently had a baby.
But it's also because I have only one sleepy ear, one useful hand and no useful mirrors. The baby is new and my lifestyle has necessarily mutated -- but something more integral, more internal has shifted.
I'm more like an animal, alert, reacting instantly to specific sounds and threats. I'm more like a zombie, awake when I shouldn't be and not very well dressed. But I'm also more like a human, distracted no longer by things that I plug into the wall or buy on Amazon.com, but by another human being. I'm in love.

The Total Animal Soup of Time

2010-07-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

It seems impossible, but I am no longer pregnant.
I have a baby who lives slightly outside my uterus, mainly just above, since I am nursing. She has a name now -- Amelia -- and puffy cloud cheeks and skinny legs and lanky pink fingers that we try to keep in baby mittens, because each finger has its own wee but savage fingernail.
When she squirms around, I no longer have to guess which body part is jabbing me. I can clearly see whether it's her doughy little heels pushing on my belly or her round, warm head, which she likes to bash against my collarbone. Before holding her against my shoulder, I now layer myself with burp cloths.
When she cries and burps and makes all these excessively adorable coos and shrieks, I can hear her, very easily, especially at night. At first, Amelia's burbly dream sounds kept my husband and I awake. Now, we are so tired she could recite Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and we would sleep through the whole poem, which is ample.
I could sleep through Ginsberg but not her actually crying. Night or day, if she cries for too long, for more than, say, 20 or 30 seconds, I cry, too. I don't know why. I also don't know why I eat so many peanut-butter-filled pretzels. Or how to talk to people who don't have babies.
I've learned that "postpartum" means I don't understand anything. But I feel bad for my husband when Amelia and I are both crying.
Anyhow, just as I can hear Amelia, she can hear me, too. When I sing Beatles' songs to her, she looks right into my eyes and seems happy. She seems to especially like "Something" ("Something in the way she moves ...) We might have a latent George Harrison fan on our hands. It's hard to say. She also likes "Rock-a-Bye Baby" as performed by the teddy-bear mobile over her changing table.
Amelia is much more alert in the morning than any other time of day. Morning is the time for gazing into each other's eyes, letting her bond with the Great Dane and, in general, introducing new things, such as tummy time.
Parents tend to lay babies on their backs a lot, so they won't suffocate or end up with flat faces. But for developmental reasons, babies need to spend some time belly-down on brightly colored, washable, quilted floor mats. I've learned from more experienced mothers that this is called "tummy time."
When Amelia is down there on her pink, car-shaped tummy mat, she contorts her angelic face into an expression of pure exertion, kicking her legs hard and yanking viciously at the air with her arms. She's like an 8-pound, sleeper-clad rock-climber scaling the death-defying living-room floor.
In the afternoons, neither Amelia nor I is technically "alert." We pretty much just sweat. Our air conditioner is pretty pokey, so sweating doesn't require any effort at all. Forgetting to tie my hair up will do the trick. In Amelia's case, she doesn't really have any hair to worry about. All she has to do is get carried around and before long we both look like people who burn calories instead of people who lie around the house all day, eating and taking naps, which is us to a tee.
Speaking of naps, right now, as I type out this column, Amelia is sleeping on her special pillow on the couch next to me. Every so often, something startles her, maybe certain letters I hit on keyboard, maybe my elbow jiggling her pillow when I hit those keys, I can't tell.
But every minute or two, she throws her soft little arms out to the side, palms up like an orchestra conductor. This doesn't disturb her sleep at all. It does distract me from my writing but I'm so slow-witted today it barely matters.
I could have written this column from many different angles. I considered writing about labor -- the breaking of the water and all of that -- or about what it's like to suddenly, really be a mother. The requirements are much different for the mother of a newborn than for the mother of a fetus. Newborn mothers require more peanut-butter pretzels, for example, but no consecutive hours of sleep.
But eventually, I realized I didn't want to analyze this experience quite yet. I'm not ready and also I would need to hibernate first, at least until next spring. I know Ginsberg is not talking about motherhood or sleep deprivation when he mentions "the total animal soup of time," but that's an apt description nonetheless.
Anyhow, instead of pretending to think this week, I just wanted to introduce my daughter.
I've only known her for three weeks, which is not ample. But clearly, she's spectacular.

(Published July 22, 2010, by the Los Alamos Monitor.)

Four Great Things About Being Pregnant

2010-07-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

You get a new wardrobe.
Unfortunately, most maternity clothes fit awkwardly at best and look more like bedsheets than dresses or shirts. Early in your pregnancy, every outfit you put on sags, practically frowns, over your suddenly formless body. Later, it's your belly that sags -- out from under the hem of each of those giant, ugly, suddenly tear-stained blouses.
Nevertheless, most first-timers can't wait to slip into the world of elastic waistbands and tie-back tops.
I remember receiving what's called a "lot" of maternity clothes I had ordered on eBay. I spun around like a princess in each jumper and baggy-butted pair of jeans, demanding my husband invent something to compliment. I was four months along and barely showing, but to me, the bad clothes -- and specifically my needing to wear them -- confirmed that I was really going to have a baby, something it took me a surprisingly long time to realize.

You change.
And not just your clothes. Pregnancy represents a really obvious transition: One day, you're a confused existentialist who wishes she had more ambition and then the next, you know for certain -- and for the first time ever -- what you are going to be. In a fairly rigid amount of time, you will be a mother, and while this means something different to everyone, it always means something.
Armed with this prospicience, you begin re-imagining yourself. You envision yourself taking care of a newborn and grant yourself whatever traits you'll need to get through it: alertness, stability, reliability, courage. You might know nothing about being parent. You might never have been strong in your life. It doesn't matter. You know you need to be for your baby. You also develop determination.
You only have a matter of months to get ready, so there's no time for shame, self-pity, anxiety -- in short, for the regular "you." What a relief.

You learn patience.
Of all the honorable characteristics soon-to-be moms adopt, patience is the most unavoidable.
Foremost, you learn to be patient with the pregnancy itself. Yes, pregnancy lasts only a matter of months, but when you're waiting to meet this new love of your life, when you suffer daily from a long list of pregnancy "symptoms" (If you have hemorrhoids, fat feet and a moustache, you might be pregnant ...) and when you start burning your belly on cookie pans because your big, round body actually extends out over the stove top, sort of rests there on the cool, glassy surface -- nine months is a cosmic length of time.
Second, you learn to be patient with all the non-pregnant people of the world. They don't mean to but they say everything wrong.
When I was barely seven months pregnant, I had a woman ask me, "When are you due, yesterday?" I've had multiple women tell me I must be having a girl because I'm "wide." And when I'm tired, unfailingly there is someone around to remind me that it's only going to get worse once I have the baby.
Non-pregnant people don't like to be told they look fat or that things are going to get even harder. Why would pregnant women enjoy this sort of discouragement?
Prior to becoming pregnant myself, I said plenty of wrong things. Now, I know what pregnant women need to hear: They look beautiful, they're going to have healthy babies and they're going to love being moms. Anything else is cruel.

You learn who people really are.
Despite the abominable comments they hear, pregnant women get to see the very best sides of people. No matter what people say, they like life. They value all this breathing and hugging and chatting they're allowed to do for 70-some-odd years. I think being around pregnant women reminds people of how lucky all this is and thus, goodwill prevails.
I never knew how kind, thoughtful and selfless people could be before my husband knocked me up. Since then, friends and acquaintances have given us given us nearly everything we'll need for the baby: clothes, toys, towels, blankets, bibs, bumpers, cloth diapers, a diaper pail -- even nursing pads.
I'm not talking about gifts we received at our baby shower, either.
I received a full truck-bed of baby accoutrements, including a super-cool Baby Einstein "gym," from a woman in my adult ballet class whose last name I didn't even know.
Michael received two garbage sacks full of little-girl clothes from a woman whose parents live across the street from us. He knows her from a project he was on a couple years ago at LANL.
These donations saved us hundreds of dollars. Furthermore, we don't know how many burp clothes or baby socks we'll need, but we don't have to -- these generous moms knew, and told us, and provided.
The advice, suggestions, encouragement and offers of help from other mothers and fathers have been the most amazing gifts of all. They prove to us repeatedly that this really is a community we live in, not just a lab surrounded by separate houses and guarded lives. We are part of something remarkable, and our baby will be as well.

(Published July 8, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor.)

Still on Standby

2010-06-23T13:04:00.001-07:00

Right now, my unborn baby ripples along the sweeping circumference of my belly. She strains against the wall of me dozens of times each day. She stretches her long legs, steamrolling my tiny sour stomach with her delicate feet. Soon, either she will outgrow her house, or I will outgrow mine.
It's distracting.
Also distracting is the knowledge that I am due to deliver this baby in about one week. Although, of course, I will most likely give birth on some other day, maybe not until the middle of July or maybe prior to publication of this column. Facebook fiends are placing bets.
It's exciting, but it's also a little like being on standby for a flight. Maybe I'll get a ticket today. Maybe I'll just keep treasuring hanging around the airport.
But seriously, I am in no rush. Pregnancy is a treasure. My husband Michael and I are only planning to have one child. This might be the only time in my life I ever get to have this incredibly intimate experience -- an experience that, regardless of the exact date, is going to end soon. And although I'm not religious or even spiritual, it's clearly a miracle.
One of the great wonders of pregnancy is that once it gets going, I don't really have to do much. If I want to grow a spider plant -- and spider plants are ultra-low-maintenance -- I have to at least water it. I have to make sure it gets sunlight, but not too much sunlight. I have to think about and actively tend to my spider plant fairly often just to make sure it doesn't dissolve into brown goo.
But to grow a baby, I pretty much just eat and sleep and put up with a few temporary discomforts. This is easy because I eat and sleep even when I'm not pregnant. I also endure occasional discomforts when in my relatively concave state.
While I might eat slightly more now that I'm pregnant, it's not like eating more requires much effort. Like most people, I enjoy eating. I especially enjoy eating cookies-and-cream ice cream, which, for those of us in the family way, is a perfectly acceptable breakfast.
While my discomforts are slightly more predictable these days -- instead of an occasional pulled tendon I have the standard back pains of a person carrying a watermelon with her abdominal muscles for several months -- I can't really complain. It's not like at the end of all this, I get to admire the lushness of an indoor plant.
No, I get a baby. I can't think of anything better. It's also true that I can't think of anything else, but still: a baby.
Despite my pure exhilaration at the thought of holding our daughter, I admit a profound lack of training. This is Michael's and my first child. We have never parented anything beyond puppies and the afore-mentioned, not-exactly-thriving spider plant.
We have, however, babysat for a five-month-old. On Mother's Day, we watched baby David for a few hours while his parents disappeared into the sunny, warm May afternoon.
At first, we failed repeatedly. David cried for more than an hour as we tried swinging him in his swing, bouncing on a yoga ball and lying him on his tummy on his special tummy-time blanket, which is far more interesting and three-dimensional than most blankets. Nothing affected his sad, wet-eyed, wet-nosed little face.
Then, inspired by a lack of any more creative ideas, we changed his diaper. This was the correct answer.
The quiet, happy afterglow of the diaper-change, however, did not last. Soon, we had begun floundering anew. But this time, it didn't take us quite so close to forever. Struck by revelation, Michael fed David, cradling the baby close to his chest and holding the bottle to David's joyful, toothless mouth.
Babies, like pregnant women, really like eating.
Also, babies, like pregnant women, like sleeping, which is what David did after his snack. He fell asleep on my shoulder and then I laid him down in his crib. The house was silent and we were exhausted.
But so happy. We have not been asked to babysit again but nevertheless, we did not turn David into brown goo. We show promise.
When I run my hand along my rippling belly, I feel like our baby and I can already communicate. But I realize it's not even the beginning. Knowing that within days or at most a few weeks she will rely on me -- the conscious me, not just my awe-inspiring, globoid body -- preoccupies nearly all my thoughts.
I keep imagining what she will sound like to me the first time I hear her cry. What will change? Who will I be? Will I forget my obligations to the spider plant?
It's absolutely distracting but I make no apologies. How could it be any other way?

Cloth Diapers: Cute for the Environment

2010-06-23T13:03:00.001-07:00

I'm so close to the end, and yet there's still nothing I can do but wait. Oh, I can pre-wash the cloth diapers and drink my uterus-strengthening tea. I can swim the world's slowest 800 meters and blend healthy strawberry-banana smoothies. I can bump into counters. But mostly, I wait.
I feel like I've been waiting since way back in October when I saw two lines on a little stick instead of one.
This is not how I usually work. For example, if I can't think of the right ending for a column, I'll still end it. I don't keep writing indefinitely.
Or consider a ballet combination: A dance stops when the choreography does, ideally on a particular note in the music. There's no guessing. When I perform a variation onstage, I can predict the final movement down to the exact second.
Yet, I can't even predict on what week my pregnancy will end.
Here's what I do know: About 90 percent of pregnancies that run their natural course last 37-42 weeks. This gives us a range of more than a month.
Now, the probability of going into labor in week 40, the most common week, is about 35 percent (studies vary somewhat -- I'm looking at "Calculating Due Dates and the Impact of Mistaken Estimates of Gestational Age," www.transitiontoparenthood.com/ttp/birthed/duedatespaper.htm).
Zooming in even farther, the probability of a baby being born on its exalted, meaningless due date is about 5 percent.
I also read somewhere that the chance of giving birth on a Wednesday is 15 percent higher than on a weekend day.
I'm due July 2, a Friday. Is Friday a weekend day?
Numbers mean nothing, especially to a hugely pregnant woman, such as myself, who is too exhausted some days to turn the pillow she's drooling on.
Statistics cannot compete with drool, unless they prove that once the pillow is soaked through on both sides, contractions will commence immediately.
Anyhow, the day after this column runs, I'll be 37 weeks, or what's called "full-term." The past eight-and-a-half months have been practice. Conditioning. Tomorrow, the waiting season truly begins.
I'll have my bag packed for the hospital. I'll have copies of our birth plan prepared for our doctor, the nurses, our doula and my mom, who is flying out from New York at the end of June.
I'll undoubtedly have purchased more cloth diapers, and need to pre-wash those.
If it weren't for the existence of cloth diapers, I would either be much more productive or simply lie drowning on the couch. I spend an embarrassing number of hours, which I refuse to calculate, perusing cloth-diapering Web sites and reading endless commentary from cloth-diapering mothers.
I strongly suspect those planning to use disposable diapers -- called "sposies" on the online cloth-diapering boards -- do not get excited about buying diapers. Do disposable-diapering boards even exist?
Are there countless adorably-titled Web sites pandering to the sposies-diapering mom? Because we cloth-diaperers have our choice.
We can visit The Thrifty Mama, Thanks Mama, Mother-Ease, For Baby With Love, Baby Naturale, Fuzbaby, Bare Bebe, Tiny Tush, Beebers Butts, Punkin Butt, My Baby Pumpkin, countless of pages with the word "Fluff" in the title and even For the Monster.
In terms of brands, we've got FuzziBunz, Bum Genius, Bumbino, Rumparooz, Happy Heinys, Knickernappies, Smartipants, BabyKicks, Kiwi Pie, Kissaluvs, Kushies, Thirsties, Sugar Peas and Swaddlebees.
And of course, the diapers come in a plethora of prints, such as flowers, blue birds, robots and tow trucks, as well as fabrics, such as fleece, teddy-bear fur and organic bamboo.
How could a pregnant woman not get a little addicted to such a darling world? We are all about cute. Every time our babies squirm around in our distended bellies, it's so cute. Every tiny baby sock we've lovingly tucked into a drawer is super cute. And obviously, anything called a "Knickernappy" is just the sweetest thing.
Furthermore, in many cases, the cloth-diaper enthusiast finds herself shopping for diapers sewn by even more enthusiastic mothers, who send personal e-mails in answer to questions about leg gussets and doublers.
I doubt Huggies or Pampers, while certainly cutely-named products, can offer consumers this kind of attention.
In any case, and admitting that I have not actually used a single one of my cloth diapers to diaper anything beyond a stuffed monkey, cloth diapering has saved me.
Just thinking about dressing our baby in gumball-print Rumparooz makes me happy. Learning about how to wash and snap the diapers in place gives me something useful to focus on. And the amount of time I must wait before I can reduce my family's environmental impact by using cloth diapers -- on a baby! -- passes just a little less unbearably slowly.

(Published June 10, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Birthday Wish

2010-06-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

When you're eight months pregnant, it's hard to think about anything but the baby. What is she doing to your body? Is she OK? How are you going to get her out?
Life becomes a series of familiar, daily symptoms: a little nausea in the morning, heartburn the rest of the day; shortness of breath if you do something crazy like stand up from sitting in a chair; extreme, alternating hunger and drowsiness; bionic abilities to fold and re-fold onesies and sleep sacks without ever getting bored.
It becomes constant belly-monitoring: Is the baby moving around as much as she was yesterday? Is she head-down? Is she sunny-side-up (her arms and legs facing up toward my navel -- a position she can't be delivered in)? Is she hiccuping? Is she uncomfortable because you're lying on your right side? What are you thinking, lying on your right side? Is your shirt long enough to cover your huge belly? No, it's not. It's never long enough.
And, more and more as you get closer to delivery, life becomes what you do between prenatal check-ups, which mainly involves keeping track of questions you want to ask at prenatal check-ups. What does a contraction feel like? When do you call the doctor? When do you leave for the hospital? What do you bring? What do you eat? What do you wear?
Luckily, my husband and I have a great doctor. We like her.
"Why are my thighs all red?" I asked her at our appointment Monday.
"I don't know," she said.
"Should I worry about it?"
"No."
"What should I worry about?"
"Nothing. Just go on a few dates with your husband."
Later, in the car, my husband suggested that perhaps patients take on the attitudes of their doctors, the same way dogs take on the attitudes of their owners.
I think he's right. I think, despite all my anxieties, I'm handling this whole incubation phase pretty well. The only time I really worried was when my doctor was worried, too -- several months ago when I had to go to the ER for an emergency ultrasound.
In that instance, we had a legitimate concern and our doctor took it seriously. She also took it seriously when I failed the one-hour glucose-tolerance test -- ordering me to take a follow-up, three-hour test, which I passed -- and when my platelet count was slightly low.
But red, blotchy legs? We all have better things to think about.
And so, immediately after our check-up, my husband took me out to The Melting Pot. This is the perfect place to bring a pregnant woman. Pregnant women love anything that includes a "cheese course." We love any situation that encourages us to eat for two straight hours. We love dipping brownies in chocolate. We love dipping said brownies while wearing maternity clothes with massive, roomy "waist" bands. We mock those of you in belts.
Michael didn't take me out for dinner just because our doctor said to. Technically, it was my birthday, and with that occasion in mind he had planned and reserved and even worn shiny shoes. He is a wonderful husband.
It was easily my best birthday ever. It was the only birthday I've ever celebrated while pregnant. The first birthday on which I've listened to our baby's heartbeat. The first birthday on which our baby moved in some way that, according to Michael, created the impression my belly button was pointing at him. The first birthday on which I blew out my candle with only one clear wish in mind.
Heartburn be damned. I'm so blessed to have a husband to feast with and a baby to feast for -- and a doctor I trust to help us make my birthday wish come true.

(Published May 27, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Motherhood: The Hottest Party

2010-06-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to fail at being a poet or a novelist. It's much worse to fail at motherhood. Even my worst poems never cry all night. They never suffocate because I did something wrong with their bumpers. They don't mind at all if I lock them, with my keys, in the car, even if it's a really hot day.
My most stupefyingly unreadable novels never actually tell me how much I suck. They don't literally insult me, or yell, or shove metal objects in electrical outlets, or require healthy meals from my probably inadequate body every two hours.
My writing doesn't actually depend on me. True, it wouldn't exist without some effort on my part, but it doesn't really make a make a big show of its existence. Maybe it's revised or mocked or published; maybe not. I never hear it complain. It has no will or memory or sense of justice. It will not ever resent me or deliberately not invite me to its wedding to a fetching, psilocybin-addicted mycologist.
Furthermore, I can control what I write. There's no randomness. It won't get sick. It never feels ignored (though some of it certainly is, quite pointedly). It will never develop its own personality, a completely independent voice from my own.
If I fail with this baby, I can't stick her in the closet and start over. However, I abuse my fiction like this all the time. This makes me a bad writer, but ultimately, who cares? I can't hurt words.
Until now, I've been scared of my unborn daughter -- scared I won't know how to keep her comfortable. I won't know how to make her like me. I'll make her anxious. I'll make her sad. I'll accidentally treat her like a creative project instead of a child.
But finally, at nearly eight months pregnant, I've started to feel like I can handle this business of having and taking care of a baby.
At very least, I'll notice she's not an electronic file in my computer or a stack of adjective-soiled printer paper. This will give me an edge right away.
I don't know exactly where this lack of complete panic is coming from. I imagine it's a little like the feeling a drowning person experiences, right after they give up thrashing around and right before they lose consciousness, when the sea or the bathtub dissipates and a glittering world full of talking orchids and adorable Japanese change purses appears in its place.
It's a brand of accepting the inevitable. It's simple logic. Instead of writing, it's math. I am pregnant. Pregnant women have babies. Therefore, I will have a baby. I will be a mother. I will, through trial and error and reading and talking to superior women, figure out what to do.
I understand why people worry about stuff that might or might not happen. Uncertainty is worrisome. But in this case, there's nothing to fear. The future is predictable. Barring terrible possibilities I don't let myself think about, this baby's imminent arrival is a fact. And it's absurd to be afraid of facts.
For instance, were you scared to learn that "imminent" meant "quickly approaching" and "eminent" meant "important" or "famous"? Are you scared of your middle name? Does it worry you that King John of England signed the Magna Carta in 1215? Do you find it concerning that Nintendo released Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 for the Wii on October 27, 2009, in North America?
Maybe you do. Maybe you think the Magna Carta was the beginning of the end for English politics. Maybe you really, really love Hottest Party 2 and can't stomach the idea of an inferior successor.
But I do not feel this way. I love Hottest Party 3.
Obviously, most people, if they worry about facts, worry about future facts -- namely, death. Everybody we know, including our very own selves, is going to die. Even my baby, who hasn't even had a birthday yet, will die someday. This is not a comforting reality.
But worrying about death is tantamount to worrying that summer will end. Of course it will, unless you live in Ethiopia.
And worrying about the birth of our baby would be like worrying that the summer will start. Of course it will, unless we all die first, but I think there's a clause preventing that possibility in the Magna Carta.

(Published May 13, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

The Best Gift of the Baby Shower

2010-06-23T12:59:00.001-07:00

It's a tiny, velvety pink pair of pajamas, with miniature feet, each one barely big enough for a Ruby K's mini-muffin, and a silky cut-out of a pointe shoe stitched over one hip.
It's a handmade quilt with squares of antique fabric featuring drawings of marionettes.
It's a book, only it's also a glove with a little pig on each finger.
It's a baby.
My friend Claire hosted my baby shower this past weekend, an event I had been both looking forward to and sort of dreading for weeks. On one hand, I am drastically fond of my baby, unborn though she dutifully remains, and wanted to gush about her with all my girlfriends. On the other hand, I have always felt a little funny about baby showers -- the corny games, the overbearing cuteness of all the gifts and, in general, the way everyone is reduced to blobs of talking estrogen.
However, at seven months pregnant, I didn't mind so much.
My estrogen has been in charge for many weeks now. I have just about given up the fight to be a fully-functioning, well-rounded adult capable of talking about a variety of topics, some of which are not even baby-related.
My appearance is not deceiving: I really am just a sleep sack for a three-and-a-half pound fetus. I am something other than what I used to be.
Anyhow, I opened a bunch of overbearingly adorable gifts on Sunday: pj's, cloth books, board books, blankets, pillows, diapers, beaded baby-shoes, crib sheets, a scrapbook and even a device with a little net on one end -- barely big enough for a votive candle -- in which I am to place food. I was told I can load it up with a chunk of banana and then the baby can learn how to eat it, without choking or throwing fistfuls of banana at the houseplants.
Oddly, opening these presents did not embarrass me. I didn't feel reduced in any way, or childish, or bored. I never once thought, "I can't wait to be done with this!"
Some of my guests undoubtedly did; I can't imagine they were as delighted with the stuffed monkeys (yes, there were multiple monkeys) or the pacifiers as I was. But I was absolutely enthralled -- not because I love baby toys so much, but because every single gift I unwrapped made my baby seem more tangible -- more like a human baby and less like some impossible, hazy, dreamy phantom.
She's going to be an actual being, not the mysterious fantasy half-me / half-my-husband that I see in my mind, who loves her Mommy-and-Me ballet classes and, a bit later on, adores playing volleyball with her Daddy.
These fantasies are fun to talk about, but they lead nowhere. They describe an imaginary baby, and not necessarily the one in my uterus. Our daughter might dance but she might not. She might have an amazing overhand serve or, like me, she might cry every time the volleyball slaps its stinging red wrath across her arms. I have no idea.
But the shower helped me focus on the few certainties we have. Although it sounds stupid, I know she'll be a real person because she's going to wear real clothes, have real toys, be swaddled in real blankets. I need these obvious indicators of non-illusion.
For me -- someone who's never had a baby and who rarely, before marrying Michael in 2008, ever pictured myself having a baby -- being pregnant is a pretty abstract thing. Still. Despite my animated belly, monthly visits to our obstetrician and a refrigerator covered in ultrasound images, I still have difficulty seeing myself as a mother, living with and taking care of a warm, smiling, screaming, diaper-devastating infant.
I have witnessed other women with infants and for the most part, these babies blurred into one generic, scary creature that belonged to anyone else but me. But this one is not going to go away once I get off the bus or leave the restaurant. This one stays. This one is mine.
How do I know?
Because I will wrap her in a beautiful quilt I can physically wrap over my shoulders. Because I will read to her from a silly book, my piggy fingers pointing to their two-dimensional piggy counterparts in the illustrations.
And because, although I can't yet touch her cheeks or run my fingers through her hair, I can touch this set of footed, preposterously soft velvet pajamas and get some kind of glimpse, both foolish and yet substantial, of what -- of who -- will soon be in my life.

(Published April 29, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

When Does Existence Begin? (Part 2)

2010-06-23T12:58:00.001-07:00

It's completely possible to exist for others before we even exist for ourselves.
In a way, this is obvious. For instance, my mother and grandmother have memories of me as an infant, memories of which I am a major part but yet I can't remember at all. My grandma, several times, has recalled the first time she held me, and how I looked right into her eyes "as though (I) were thinking." In contrast, one of my mom's favorite stories involves a time I threw up in her mouth.
If it weren't for other people's memories, I would have no idea that I was alive, existing, staring and vomiting before age 3 or so, when I clearly remember using the potty. I suppose my basic knowledge of biology and counting would lead me to believe I was not born a toddler, endlessly wanting to ride my Big Wheels, and that I had, in fact, been born at age 0, cleverly moving onto 1 and 2 before consciousness finally settled in at 3. But I have no first-hand, experiential evidence.
Clearly, I existed before "I" was there.
Now that my husband and I are expecting our first child -- due July 2, less than three months to go! -- I've gained an even broader perspective on existence. My daughter most definitely exists, despite living in a space about the size of a volleyball and being attached to me by a cord.
She exists every time she rolls over, hiccups, or pokes my belly with her feet and fingers.
She exists when my back hurts, when I take my heartburn medicine, when I get short of breath walking up stairs, when I get into funny positions trying to get out of bed or put on my shoes, and when I eat three lunches in one day. She exists when I burp.
She exists when I fold and refold the little pink outfits we've picked out for her and when I see the car seat in the rearview mirror of our new car, a vehicle we purchased specifically for her because our current truck has no backseat and therefore nowhere safe for her to ride.
She exists when my husband and I talk about names. We like Annabel, Rosabel, Amelia, Nina. We can't really decide because although she exists, we haven't actually met her. We've never seen her face.
As luxurious as it will be to hold her in something besides my swollen uterus, there's something extraordinarily essential about seeing another human's face. She will exist more, somehow, once we see the shape of her cheeks, the way her lips move, her first expressions -- her physical collection of cues as to who she is.
We already love her and will do anything for her. But we also acknowledge that right now she's not so much a person as a cross between a second stomach and a pen-pal. Only once she's born will she be herself. But, of course, even then only to us, her grandparents, our friends and everyone else but her.
At least that's how imagine it was for me. I picture my infant self completely focused on meeting my most glaring needs: food, comfort, warmth. But I was also learning all the time. Before long, my entire brain was saturated with new information -- new landscapes, new sounds and tastes, new movements, new pleasures, new sufferings, and new methods for getting my mother's attention.
And eventually, I learned how to think.
Thinking is different from observing and accepting. It requires taking what is outside of one's self and bringing it in -- not like bringing a spoonful of applesauce into one's mouth, where it starts the complicated process of becoming energy, but rather taking information about the applesauce (maybe that it can be used to make Cheerios stick together), keeping it and using it again. Because kept information has already been processed once, and is no longer new, it can inspire a person to look for a new way to view it -- in other words, to think -- even 30 years later.
I am almost certainly wrong. Babies might very well have rich inner lives from the moment of birth, maybe too rich to remember, too dazzling.
Maybe they exist to themselves immediately, and it's other people who fail to exist for them, except maybe as dreamy images, odd, moving shapes that occasionally fulfill their desires.
Or maybe existence only truly begins when a person realizes he or she exists in a world where other people's infinitely and uniquely detailed realities are completely different from his or her own, yet equally poignant.
In any case, I can't wait to meet my baby, who exists and yet doesn't, whoever she is.

(Published April 15, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

When Does Existence Begin? (Part 1)

2010-06-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Everyone has his or her very earliest memories. Author Augusten Burroughs purports to remember lying in his crib, a helpless and anxious infant. But for most of us, life seems to have begun when we were toddlers.
Before age 2 or 3, I remember nothing. I could have been asleep. I could have been dead. My mother disagrees, but I know that "I" was not there.
I didn't exist until one very bright moment when I was sitting in the very back of my mom's Ford Mustang. I didn't know it was a Mustang. I didn't know we were driving through Arizona on something called a highway. I had no idea what a car seat was, or whether I had one.
I was just sitting on my little travel potty while looking through the car's broad rear window at the man driving the car behind us.
I don't know what it says about me that my first memory is of going to the bathroom, in public. Probably the reason is pretty benign. Using the potty was likely one of the first things I was really proud of learning, and I might remember this particular usage because I was showing off for a stranger.
"Hey!" I might have been saying in my head. "Top this!"
I think I waved at him. But this could be a flourish I've added in the 30 or so years and countless distortions since. I also think he could see me, all of me -- that the Mustang was a hatchback with the backseat flipped down to form a nice-sized floor, large enough for a little girl, a potty and lots of toys. But it's also just as possible I was looking out over the top of the backseat, my goings-on completely obscured and relatively private.
Anyhow, in my next memory I was fully dressed. This was not the most comfortable way to be, as anyone who's ever been fully dressed knows. But this day, or this moment at least, would have been an especially good one to take off one's clothes, every place I went, it was raining, the drops coming down from the top of the world to the bottom, and extending without end from side to side.
I think I was in a parking lot outside our apartment building. I think my grandma and my mom were with me. But I know for sure is that this was the first time it had ever rained.
This memory takes place sometime soon after what I'll call the Mustang memory. We were still in Arizona, in Phoenix specifically, and because I hadn't existed before this move, neither had rain. Yet, I knew what it was, and I knew something else, too: It was not unusual for rain to fall from the sky, but it was unusual for said rain to land in Phoenix.
The most distinct part of this memory is not visual, or even the tactile sensation caused by the rain. It's me yelling, "It's raining in Arid-zona!"
These are, as far as I can recall, my first words. They also represent my first mispronunciation or possibly, my first attempt at word play.
These two memories are vague in plenty of ways. I can't answer some of the most obvious questions associated with them, such as whether the rain felt cold or how I was able to get my pants back on in a moving car.
But they are both perfectly vivid in their limited ways. Without a doubt, I remember seeing the stranger and going to the bathroom. Likewise, I remember verbatim what I yelled in the rain.
After that, my memories become more indistinct but also more fluid. Instead of singular, choppy scenes, I remember short series of events, some lasting as long as five minutes.
For instance, the night before we moved from the rainy apartments I remember climbing into my grandmother's bed (mine had already been packed or sold), her warning me not to mess up her sheets and my mom settling in to sleep on the floor. I was worried about my mother because I thought there were roaches on the floor and that they would eat her.
In another, even fuzzier memory, I made friends with another little girl in the playground (I believe at that same apartment complex but it could have been the next one) and when we went to her apartment, her mother forbid her from playing with me. I remember feeling looked over and judged -- that the girl's mother had decided I was too dirty or my hair too unbrushed.
These brief, recollected scenes eventually start to overlap and although I have far more memories as I got older, they never had the surreal magic of those super-early memories, the ones that continue to hold my interest even now that I've grown up, despite the fact that they're not that interesting.
These first glimpses of my own consciousness are, ironically, more like dreams than anything else, and just as with dreams, I keep looking for meaning that might not be there.
Either they are random pictures that just happen to be among the first my brain was capable of keeping, or they are existential: the first times I saw myself as an individual, worthy of being watched and of witnessing impossible events like rain.

(Published April 1, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Who is This Pregnant Woman in the Mirror?

2010-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Do you ever imagine yourself as someone totally different, not necessarily a better or worse person but just someone who doesn't always do exactly what you do?
What if I were a single man, one of those old, sloppy men who seem to live on the bus? Maybe I'd really like comic books and I'd be retired from a career in hot glue. Would I think of myself as sloppy? Would I have more sympathy for other, similarly sweatshirted men?
What if I were a rich person, man or woman, who didn't know who rode the bus, who had never bid on a repo car, who had never even opened a can of tuna? Would I still dance? What would dancing as such a person be like?
These kinds of questions aren't extremely useful to think about -- knowing who you're not doesn't much narrow down who you are -- but this doesn't stop me. What if I were handy, the kind of person who intuitively understands faucets and towel racks? What if I were brought up by a single mother, a vegan psychiatrist who chased squirrels out of the yard with a push-broom?
What if I were the kind of person who only asked useful questions? Would I be more successful? Would "6 Monkeys" attract any of its current readership?
Maybe a more practical question than "Do you ever imagine yourself as someone totally different?" is "Do you ever imagine yourself as yourself"? It sounds a little asinine, but that doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.
If I were part of the world outside of myself, how would I appear? Probably energetic. I take a lot of dance classes, I volunteer in the community, I work two jobs, I walk two dogs -- and I'm pregnant to boot.
The world probably doesn't realize how lazy I am: how it feels like an accomplishment if I water the plants, how it takes me six or more months to fill photograph frames, how I'm addicted to Netflix and how I waste way too much time repeating the same un-profound thoughts in my head -- what kind of car seat, is the stroller we bought too big, we should really do something about a nursery.
After teaching in the mornings and before ballet in the evenings, I spend entire afternoons acting much like a spring snow drift, just taking in the sunshine. Every couple of hours, I'll get completely motivated and eat a Mediterranean pizza. Then I return to melting. Perhaps in the summer I'll be more animated, like a shaking aspen tree.
Perhaps in the summer I'll have to be. After all, by then I'll have a baby, whether or not the stroller's too big or we ever finish, or get started, on the nursery. However, mostly I imagine myself lying around with my baby, sleeping, adorable, cuddly, warm.
The world probably also sees me as predominantly capable. I manage to lead a varied and interesting life, despite my surreptitious loafing. But I don't know -- maybe I'm not so much capable as unambitious. The few things I do, I do full-out. I enjoy them. But once I extend my small portion of effort, I lie down. I sometimes imagine myself driven by an all-consuming passion, writing always, never resting, never knowing how much time has passed, never checking my word count or taking an animal-cracker-break. But I as much as I love everything I do, I rarely love it quite enough to lose myself.
When I imagine myself curled up with my baby or staying up all night in front of my little computer screen, typing a post-modern novel at 100 words per minute, am I imagining myself as myself or as someone else?
Maybe the two big questions I asked earlier in this column aren't so far apart, so obviously distinct. I mean, clearly, my future good-mother self and my future obsessed-author cannot be the same person. Yet I imagine them both as me, as clearly as I imagine my present self as a snoozy snow-pile, or as a tutu-wearer, an essay-grader, a bookshelf-stocker.
It's possible all this question-asking leads nowhere -- that people either know who they are or they don't. And maybe those who don't aren't even trying to figure it out; we just like to daydream. We can't see ourselves clearly, so we come up with all sorts of fantasy selves, each one with her own little cluster chart of characteristics. In moments of inspiration, we think in Venn diagrams, with lots of overlapping clusters within one large woman.
That's where the search for self leads me: Venn diagrams. Math textbooks. Did my mother go through this? Does she still? How do we go about preparing to be a mother only knowing who we were, a little bit about who we are and nothing about who we will be?

(Published March 18, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Infected, Protected and Expecting

2010-06-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

My puppy's stalking snowflakes, back and snout forming a long, gray line against a wet, white yard. An hour ago she sat on the arm of the couch, her front paws on the carpet, and my husband commented lovingly, "She looks like a vulture."
Sick people need puppies. I hope to be fully healthy by the time this column goes to print, but this past week I have been stuck at home coughing. I seem to have caught the same cold as everyone else, though it has hit me a little harder, maybe because I'm five-months pregnant.
Anyhow, between fits, I would stare drowsily at my youthful Great Dane, Pique, who is a warm, 90-pound cartoon.
She sleeps on her back, her limbs immodestly akimbo, her jowls sagging over her face.
She pounces on spiders, which is terribly unfair -- it's like South America swooping down on a baked ham.
When I'm on the couch, drinking another God-forsaken cup of tea, she sits on my lap, her butt on my thighs, her hind legs sprawled over my knees, her front paws on the ground and the last remaining quarter of a gutted, blue bunny in her mouth.
I try to think of being sick not as this horror through which I must suffer, but as a time when I'm permitted to be lazy. Healthy, busy people envy me, I tell myself. While they work, I can lie around reading all day, napping, enjoying steamy baths and generally taking time for myself.
True, I have blown through an entire box of tissues today, but I'm lucky, I say in my head, because it hurts way too much to talk aloud. I should enjoy this restful period, I silently order myself, because between painful, unladylike spasms of deep, guttural hacking, I can finally finish that Camus essay I've been mucking through for weeks.
But ultimately, I do not study existential expostulations. I watch Pique try to simultaneously carry a teal rubber ball, the pathetic remains of a stuffed weasel, a sock with a tennis ball shoved in the toes and an old, stretched-out yellow bathing suit that she keeps stepping on as she tries to bring me these gifts.
Sometimes Pique sulks, incredibly bored by my limp-armed attempts to throw her mangled orange monkey. She flattens herself out on the couch, pressing her skinny legs along her chest and burrowing her nose in her four pink-and-black paw-pads. When I shuffle by on my way to heat up soup, I ruffle her silky, sleeping ear and she glares at me through adorable eyelashes.
Even this scowl is entertaining, at least for me.
One of the excellent things about puppies is even stupid people like them. And often, I am very, very stupid, especially on these long, dull sick days, when my head is a mashed potato and my muscles feel like crumpled paper.
However, dogs do not always behave themselves.
Even when I'm laid-up, lost in a kudzu of pillows, books and used Kleenex, they show little to no respect for my condition. I can be completely immobilized in viral wretchedness, and yet Pique and Zooker, my sweet but less amusing older dog, will begin barking at some random, extremely non-aggressive neighborhood noise.
My dogs believe that as long as they keep barking and therefore cannot hear the woman across the street unloading her groceries from her car, then we are safe from potential celery-hurling. Because they are extraordinarily concerned for my welfare, they prefer to bark long after the threat has gone inside, hidden the celery in a drawer, baked some chocolate-chip cookies, eaten them, watched a taped episode of "American Idol" and filed her taxes.
Typically, my loud, firm command to cease this interminable display of protection will shut them up. But when I have no strength, no willpower and no voice, what I end up with is no rest and a neighbor who can't enjoy her cookies.
Nevertheless, being stuck in the house day after day could be a lot worse. I have a puppy to make me laugh, although even a slight chuckle leads to a ferocious whooping, choking spell. I have a shiftless older dog, who, while unexciting, will occasionally cuddle.
And, of course, I have a baby in my belly reminding me more and more frequently that she's awake, alive and not about to let me wallow in congested lethargy forever. I'm really here, she tells me with her tiny fists and feet, so you better get well soon.

Columnist's note: Thank you to everyone who came up to me after last weekend's productions of "The Sleeping Beauty" to tell me they enjoyed the show. I loved dancing in my gigantic tutus, and it makes me so happy to know my community shared even a small piece of my euphoria.

(Published March 4, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Bulbous Fairy ready to graduate

2010-06-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

I wish I had. I regret not. Why didn't I?
I'm not old yet, but I know lots of sentences that start like that. They tend to revolve around high school. I wish I had spent more time thinking about what I wanted, instead of what other people might want. I regret not telling people who I was or what mattered to me. All I ever said was a bunch of crap.
Sometimes the sentences get really specific. Why didn't I go out for track my senior year? I had run hurdles for four years. I loved running the hurdles, winning a weird event that not very many people could even do. But I didn't do it my last year in high school, the year I theoretically would have been at my best.
But more significantly, why didn't I dance? I took ballet for about a year when I was in maybe third grade. I hated it. I quit and never gave it another thought until a dozen years later, when I was in college and needed to fill a physical education requirement. By some miracle I signed up for ballet, and I actually had a little talent for it. Furthermore, I actually liked it.
But, already 20, I thought I was too old. So for the next five years, I took step aerobics, rode my bike, hiked, and occasionally thought to myself, "Too bad I didn't stick with ballet."
By 25, I was living in Boston, and sometimes, things that seem impossible in small towns seems perfectly plausible in big cities. For instance, it had never occurred to me that other 25-year-olds (and 30-year-olds, and even 45-year-olds), might share in my bizarre desire to wear leotards and do splits in the air. But then I found out one of my friends, a quirky graduate student at the University of Massachusetts who sometimes taught classes while standing on her desk, took adult ballet lessons.
"I don't think I could stand it without ballet," she told me, seemingly dumbfounded that I didn't take adult ballet lessons.
So, I checked around and discovered several local studios offering beginning-level instruction to people of my advanced age. Then, I bought a ballet workout video, and danced alone in my living room for six months. Finally, I took a class.
And then hundreds more.
I'd found a voice.
Most adults eventually get past the insecurities that cause most of our "I wish I had"'s. While we might regret not overcoming them sooner, we're happy with the way life is and don't spend much time worrying about the way it was or wasn't.
But my second chance is unusual. Most of us don't actually get to DO what we wish we had done in high school. I will never, for example, have a chance to repeat my senior year and run the hurdles. I can set up hurdles on the track and run them on my own, but that's not the same thing at all.
Now, as I learned in Boston, lots of adults take dance classes. They pirouette and glissade and find out beautiful secrets about their souls. But for me, just taking classes would ultimately be similar to setting up hurdles and running against an empty lane.
I love performing. Running in track meets was great -- the starting guns, other runners' feet stomping the track and kicking the hurdles next to me, people shouting in the stands. But hardly anything in life comes close to stepping out from the curtains, feeling the heat of the stage lights, and dancing for an audience.
Not very many dance students, of any age, get to perform as often and in as great a variety of productions as we do in New Mexico Dance Theater's Performance Company. But with NMDT, as with most non-professional companies, most of the lucky students are a lot younger than I am.
I dance with teenagers. I see them go through the ranks, moving from up from the corps to take the lead roles by the time they're seniors. It's exactly what I wish I could have done in high school.
But I get to do it now. A few years ago, I danced in the back line of the big group dances. This weekend, I'll be one of four Rose Fairies as well as the Sapphire Fairy in NMDT's "The Sleeping Beauty." It's like I'm 17 years old again -- but with one monumental exception.
Even during my solo, I'll be sharing the stage with my unborn daughter. The two of us will be swaddled in many yards of a custom-made, sparkling blue maternity tutu, which, alone, should be worth the cost of admission. This will likely be my last ballet performance for some time, and will definitely be my most memorable.
I don't think it could be any better if I were a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.
And then afterward, I'll look forward to a challenge I'm glad I never faced in high school.

(Published Feb. 18, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Escape Plan

2010-06-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

My puppy is sleeping beside me on the couch. She's breathing evenly, her whole long, spotted torso rising and sinking back into the cushions with a little flutter. When I place my hand over the her chest, I realize the flutter is her heart beating.
My older dog sleep on the floor about four feet away. He breathes loudly, his nose a tiny black amphitheater. Unlike the puppy, he's thick with fur. He's a living pillow, his heart deep in his downy body.
I don't know how anyone can worry in the company of these two drowsy dogs. But until two weeks ago, I couldn't stop worrying.
And now life has changed completely. Last Monday, my husband and I saw Dr. Michael Ruma, a perinatal specialist in Santa Fe. After the technician conducted a full scan scan of our baby's anatomy and my reproductive anatomy, and after the doctor double checked every single one of her measurements, he talked with us for a long time.
He answered every one of our questions, and since our appointment, for the first time, I believe my body is a safe place for a baby. I know I won't hurt it. I can walk the dogs on the icy roads, I can vacuum, I can even dance and jump -- and our baby is 100-percent protected by my expanding, healthy uterus.
This kind of calm is utterly new to me.
I remember, well before my first trimester, when I could not sleep until I had worked out a way to save every member of my family should our house be attacked by arsonists. It began when I was about 6 years old.
I had heard about arson on the news, and assumed that any home, on any night, could be set on fire. It was just part of living in the suburbs. I assumed it was like a draft, for a war: The arsonists would eventually pull our address out of the hat and our two-family duplex would go up in an orange inferno.
I went over my escape plan every night before I went to sleep.
I had the back bedroom, which meant I had a huge advantage in that my window overlooked the roof of the addition my dad had built onto the back of the house. Because the roof sloped down, I could easily hang from its edge and drop unharmed into the back lawn.
However, my parents' bedroom was in the front. They'd never survive the jump from their window. And I knew they slept more soundly than I did. They might not realize the house was burning all around them until it was too late, until they were huddled together, screaming, the flames rushing at their bed from every side.
Obviously, I would have to get my parents to my window before the fire really got out of control.
I always imagined moving quickly, but without panic, to their bedside. I would wake them up just enough -- "Follow me," I'd say. They wouldn't know why. They'd think they were dreaming. But, as if in a trance, they'd obey.
We'd climb out my window and, deftly, I'd help them curl their fingertips around the edge of the roof. "OK, now let go," I'd say, never losing my cool, and they'd do it. They'd live. The three of us would stand in our backyard in our pajamas, waiting for the firemen to arrive and wrap blankets around our shoulders.
I had a lot of confidence in this plan, and literally went over it hundreds of times. For most of elementary school, I believed the arsonists would get us. It was a matter of staying alert, of being ready when the night finally came.
But I also knew the plan had a terrible hole. I have always had at least one dog. At that time, we had a large Labrador / German Shepherd mix that I had named Sandy. Many times when she sat, I would curl up next to, almost under her belly. I don't remember if I felt her heart beating, but I certainly felt mine. I loved that dog like she was my second mother.
Sandy did not have fingertips. How was I going to get her down from the roof? I knew she'd follow us out the window. She'd follow us anywhere. But I wasn't sure she'd jump, and if she did jump, I wasn't sure she'd survive. Without hanging down first, she'd have so much farther to go.
Every night, eventually, I'd comfort myself by picturing my dad catching her. He'd be more awake by then. He was strong. He would save her. The whole family would be fine.
Now, my escape plan is much simpler. My husband, two dogs and I -- even with a big belly or carrying a newborn -- should fit easily though the sliding glass door in our bedroom. The door opens directly into the back yard, and from there we can run toward freedom through the prickly brown grass and goatheads in the field beyond our fence.
The firemen will find us asleep on a picnic table, a big fluttery stack of fur and skin and scratched feet. They'll marvel at how happy we seem despite all the lost possessions, nihilist arsonists and, at least everywhere outside of that picnic table, overwhelming chaos.

(Published Feb. 4, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Up in the air

2010-06-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Friday morning, I woke up to a sunny Florida day, the golf course sparkling outside my in-laws' patio. Friday evening, I was back in Los Alamos, finally, after one of the most stressful periods of waiting I've ever experienced.
It began while I was admiring the sixth hole of the short, crane-filled golf course at The Groves in Land O' Lakes, when I felt a new pregnancy symptom that didn't seem right.
I decided to ignore it.
During the first several weeks of pregnancy, I was too tired to even notice what was going on. But before long, every new symptom alarmed me. A stuffy nose, a sore calf muscle, even disinterest in reading a Murakami novel seemed ominous. The biggest question was always, Is this normal? And the answer, every time, was, Every pregnant woman is a complete freak.
So by Friday, by 16 weeks into this, I had evolved enough to relax as my husband's parents drove us to the airport. But the symptom persisted. By the time Michael and I made our way to the terminal, I was worried.
I told Michael a few minutes before we boarded, and he reminded me that it was probably nothing serious, and that even if it did signal a complication, most likely the doctor could do something to help us.
He was right. I believed him. The plane took off, and I tried looking out the little window at the flat, water-edged landscape. I tried reading some essays. But the worry was turning into something worse. I could barely breathe, taking in only crumbs of that weak, faded airplane air. Tears popped out of my eyes, tiny optical balloons pricked by this overwhelming fear of losing the baby.
My husband and I had already had one miscarriage. Just a few months after our wedding, we found out the tiny embryo we had recently become so excited about had never developed. An ultrasound revealed that I had what is lamentably called an empty womb -- meaning that an egg sac had formed inside my uterus but no embryo was growing inside of that sac. Having that blurry black-and-white image explained to me was the saddest moment of my life.
Sitting in the airplane, imagining our current fetus, whose heartbeat we had heard only weeks earlier while we watched it bouncing around on a much more encouraging ultrasound screen-shot, I tried to concentrate on what I could do to keep it safe. I could stay calm. I could rest my head on Michael's shoulder. I could eat my peanuts. I could focus on calling the doctor's office as soon as we landed.
When I finally spoke to the nurse midwife at Albuquerque Sunport, she said to go to the emergency room.
She advised heading all the way to Los Alamos Medical Center, which would not be as crowded as the busier hospitals in Albuquerque or Santa Fe. My husband and I agreed, got in our truck, and almost immediately hit a traffic jam on I-25. I wanted so much to hurry, to be there already, to know our baby was still alive. But we kept stopping every few feet, the seat belt pulling against my stomach. Each time, I concentrated on breathing with my tiny, stone-like lungs.
After more than eight hours of frantic worrying, we arrived at the ER, and thankfully, from this point everything happened very quickly.
The doctor on duty confirmed that everything was OK. Then a technician wheeled me over to the ultrasound room where Michael and I saw, on the screen, our baby scratching its head, its pointy elbow jutting upward and its tiny hand near its ear. It appeared utterly content and completely safe.
That's when I realized: I had been so distraught all day not because I might miscarry, but because my child was in danger. These are very different thoughts. The first means I might not become a mother. The second means I am a mother of a baby who could die.
Like nearly everything else about pregnancy, this glimpse of mother-brain is both wonderful and harrowing.
For now, I'm relieved and ecstatic that we made it through Friday. I'm relaxed. I'm in love with my still small but round belly. But looking toward the future, I see that I have no choice but to give birth to an immortal, one with wings and an inability to be harmed by stove-top burners, electric sockets or cars. Otherwise I might never truly breathe again.

(Published Jan. 21, 2010, in the Los Alamos Monitor)

Catching Up

2010-06-23T12:42:00.001-07:00

Hello ... I haven't updated my blog since January and so much has happened. Or maybe nothing has happened. I'm still pregnant, though dramatically more pregnant. I'm still overly analytical, and insisting every new flush of hormones impart life-changing philosophy. Maybe I overvalue philosophy, but I really don't know how to live without it.

Anyhow, I have lots of columns that have run in our local Los Alamos newspaper that I'm going to post today, along with a column that is scheduled to run in the June 24 issue. Get your sneak preview here :D

The Announcement Heard Across the Country

2010-01-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

I made our big announcement in this week's newspaper column. I think telling the world is almost is as exciting as finding out ourselves. The more people we tell, the more real it seems and the more happy I get. Irrationally, I feel less terrified after telling. Or maybe it's not so irrational. Maybe through telling I'm creating a support network, something I'm clearly going to need and without which I should be terrified.

Anyhow, today Michael and I (and my belly? When do we start speaking as a threesome?) are in Florida visiting his parents. It's cold today, not even just by Florida standards. It's in the mid-30s, breezy and raining. It's not a good day to play tennis. Michael has the right idea: He's sleeping, curled up like a giant rotini on the air mattress. I woke up pretty early today. The heater seemed to be heaving. It sounded to me like a headache. I couldn't relax.

In general, though, all is well. We're having a pretty great trip, and excepting a little motion sickness and light headaches, I'm feeling fine. It's fun eating seafood.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

2010-01-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

I slept through the all-important midnight yelling, but it's still a new year. It's still a good time to re-evaluate and to remember goals long-stifled by hundreds of days full of mundaneness, that big eraser of work, errands, obligations, biology. Even those things I love to do and take care of distract me from other things I love. But today, like every New Year's Day, I look at my priorities and see if there's anything out of order. I look at goals I've really kept and goals I never meet, year after year. I remember to say "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" because it's also the first day of the month, and that's when saying "rabbit" three times first thing in the morning will bring you 31 days of luck. Today, especially, I look at all the ways luck, far more than any of my accomplishments, has created who I am and how I live.

Speaking of luck, today is a little extra special, because I am officially 14 weeks pregnant, which, even according to conservative numbering, means I'm in the second trimester. And the second trimester means not feeling sick anymore, not crying so much, not worrying so much. It means my stomach will start sticking out, that it will start kicking me, and that we'll find out whether we're having a boy or a girl. Being pregnant is the most amazing yet 100-percent conventional experience I've ever been through. It's impossible for me not to look forward to the same moments as every other pregnant woman. With other experiences, especially those mundane ones I mention above, I tend to focus on different things from those that people around me talk about. I don't like to talk about other people, I don't like to talk about work, I don't like parties because I don't know what to talk about. But when it comes to my belly, I'll talk about cravings, or needing to pee, or how I can't button a certain pair of jeans already for as long as anyone will listen. I usually prefer theories, emotions, philosophy, books, any kind of abstract analysis. But now I'm embracing the actual world, what's actually happening. Being pregnant is taking me out of my head.

I'm really excited about this year. I write myself a New Year's Day letter each year, and yesterday I was reading through some of my old ones. Each of the last several years something momentous happened: I met Michael, we got engaged, we got married -- and now we're having a baby. What an incredible, fortunate streak. I suppose this is the best time of my life. And I'm so glad I'm taking today, at very least, to notice.

A Blogger's Blog

2009-12-31T06:44:00.001-08:00

I'm trying something a little different this time. Typically, the blogs I post here match the "6 Monkeys" columns I publish in the Los Alamos Monitor. I spend lots of time on them, trying to make them say just what I want them to say and in the funniest and / or most thoughtful prose possible.

Today, and most likely on future days, I want to actually blog here. I want to write about myself day-to-day -- if not every day, well, at least my daily-level thoughts, or my experience, my ordinariness. I want to be selfish, and not write SO much for readers. I want to be able to look back and see what happened to me, what I did about it, how I changed. Obviously, I could do this kind of writing in a journal or diary, but I don't. I need a public, or the impression of a public, to motivate me. I am a big, pregnant ham.

That's part of this decision, too: I'm pregnant. I'm about 14 weeks along and people, primarily women who have been pregnant, keep telling me what a special time it is. They wish they had documented their pregnancies better. They wish they were still pregnant. They wish, they wish -- I know there's no way to prevent wishing myself at some future point, that whatever I do won't be enough and that I will eventually cease being pregant, no matter how many words I write, but I want to at least do my best to listen. I'm going to take advice.

It's always hard to convince oneself to take advice, I think, because you have to have faith that the advice-givers are correct, without your own personal evidence. I have no idea how I'm going to feel after July 2, my due date. I might be nothing but relieved. I might have the most difficult third trimester a non-elephant has ever experienced. Or, I still might miscarry. All signs point to having a healthy baby, but I might not. I don't know.

And maybe, so far, that's the hugest thing about pregnancy for me: I can no longer ignore how much I don't know about my own life. Why do I call it mine? This blog is mine because I control every word I type or mis-type into it, but I have shockingly little authorship when it comes to the most important moments of my life. Meeting my husband, getting married, getting pregnant -- these happened by mysterious luck as much as anything I did. The more luck -- and not me -- is involved, the more wonderful life seems to be. Control over one's own destiny can be a limitation.

I think life is more like a sport than a blog. We have to set up our opportunities, be open, be ready for the big plays, and then they come to us.

So here's my first entry of a new kind of writing for me, a new kind of being open with my unedited thoughts, to my friends' advice, to the momentum of the game. Happy New Year's Eve!

Full of Grace

2009-12-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

Last night, I dreamt my husband called me ugly.

I woke up devastated -- not only because not only of his words but because, in the dream, I could tell he said it because he was in love with someone else.

When I woke this morning, I would not drop it.

"Do you really think I'm ugly?" I asked my husband for the fourth time.

"No," he mumbled into the pillow, "you think you're ugly."

He knows my awfully well, this man I sleep with.

But now I wonder if this lingering dream-despair is less marital insecurity or self-criticism than a kind of metaphor. This is what I would feel should he truly fell out of love with me because it would be the death of our marriage. It would be death -- and a funeral was still sharp in my memory, stinging.

I'm writing this column only hours after returning from an trip to Denver, the kind of trip no one ever wants to take. At least I didn't have to go alone. Carol and I hit the road at Sunday afternoon and, after a rough night of sleep, attended a funeral in the morning. One of our best friends has just lost her father.

The service was a full Catholic Mass, and church reminded me of the one I attended as a child, which was the last church I attended regularly: the morning light muted by stained glass, the smell of incense, the priest and deacons walking heavily down the center aisle, signalling the beginning of the service.

We said a rosary, more than a hundred voices in unison saying, "Hail Mary, full of grace."

We listened to readings from the Bible. Many of us took Communion. Several family members spoke and cried in front of the congregation.

The most heartbreaking moment came immediately after the service when my friend, about to pass my pew as she walked up the aisle with her family, suddenly threw her arms around my neck, sobbing.

"He didn't want to go," she said. She said it again and again.

What can we do about this life, where we have no say about the most important things that happen to us? Her father didn't want to die. Two years ago, my grandfather didn't want to die, although just weeks before it happened he called me up to let me know he didn't have much longer to live. His kidneys were failing. He was done with dialysis.

"You have meant so much to my life," he said, while I sat at my desk at work, trying to look like I was talking about work, about dangling modifiers, maybe scheduling something.

I thought of my grandpa about 2,000 times during this trip. I remember arriving at the military cemetery early and waiting for the rest of the family, alone among incessant rows of identical, white tombstones. I remember the soldiers firing their guns, then folding a United States flag and presenting it to my grandmother. I remember, before all that, seeing the urn containing his ashes at the front of the church, preposterously small, smaller than a baby.

His funeral was in Denver, too -- and it's just a coincidence than the only two funerals I've attended as an adult were both in the same city, six hours from where I live.

After any trip, especially a rushed one where fully half is spent in the car getting there and back, especially one where I see men crying, it feels awkward and wrong to sink back into my routine. The old routine feels inadequate. Feed the dogs. Take a shower. Every mundane act waxes existential, full of questions about meaning and absolutism.

And I feel too stupid.

This trip was particularly hard, and the existentialism responded in kind. But I have to get back to work.. I have to unpack, do laundry, fill the water bowls. Now I'm home, selfishly locked in my own subconscious, waiting for a bad dream to dissipate. I am awkward. I am wrong. It's not the routine itself but the way I keep living my life, thinking about dreams and ugliness instead of something deep, or at least interesting, or at least useful.

Ironically, it's a routine that finally gave me peace. It's my puppy. She keeps bringing sticks and scraps of our non-functioning welcome mat in from the back yard. We have a game, where she brings these things in, and I pretend to be mad and throw them back into the yard -- at which point she runs back outside and we begin again. And so we do begin again.

My Father is Alive and Not an Elephant

2009-11-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I try to write something. In fact, I do write something. I write line after line until I've got paragraphs. I spend several minutes, or even hours, before I realize my mistake, my monstrous mistake. It's one I make repeatedly on blank screens and pieces of paper: I write a bunch of crap.
This wouldn't be such a problem if only people enjoyed reading crap. But they have much better things to do.
You might be thinking, well, any number of things right now. But if I'm managing to engage you in this text, you're likely thinking, "How do you even know if it's crap?" Or, "What I call crap might not be the same as what you call crap!"
In addressing the former point, I can only say that if you want to be a writer, you work like hell to figure it out. But the latter point is more interesting.
First of all, by "crap," I don't mean "writing that is not good." I can't define "good" when it comes to literature. I would as soon judge what you read as who you sleep with.
Furthermore, I don't mean, "writing that doesn't matter." This is a little closer, but think of your average plot line Maybe a person falls in love, kills someone or has some other problem. Whatever happens, it's not your problem. You're just reading the book, holding pages of relatively harmless paper in your hands.
When I read "Kafka on the Shore," for instance, I was not a suspect in my father's murder. Issues that matter to the main character, who is, in fact, a suspect in his father's murder, didn't matter to me the way they do to him. And since he's merely a creation of Haruki Murakami's awesome mind, do these issues even matter to him?
Do imaginary beings have real concerns, or only those imposed on them by those doing the imagining -- by those imposing imaginary life in the first place? Are the concerns of real beings any less imaginary or imposed? Are we authors or are we characters?
If you're a Murakami fan, you probably find these questions worth pursuing.
Regardless, I mean only to suggest that non-crap writing doesn't necessarily matter.
Even nonfiction doesn't have to mean much. Does it matter to me how John-Paul Sartre spent his childhood? Why would it? But I certainly enjoyed his autobiography, "The Words."
What about this: Does it make any difference in my life how much food elephants eat in a day? I am not an elephant! But I recently enjoyed an article describing their gluttonous intake of 300-500 pounds of food a day.
In fact, if I were an elephant, I wouldn't have enjoyed the article at all, unless I ate it.
No, when I say writing crap is a mistake, I'm referring to a very specific kind of crap. I mean writing that writing that is written either just for the writer, or just for the reader.
Now, I do plenty of writing just for myself. I do a lot of what's called "freewriting." Lots of professional writers recommend freewriting for some period of time every day, typically about 10 minutes, in order to get yourself writing and, with any luck, to clear away all the nonsense so you can write some non-crap.
Typically, my 10 minutes results either in uncensored, self-obsessed musings that I would be mortified if anybody read or in unedited, ultra-literal digests of my day ("Now I am typing a sentence. Now I am typing another sentence. That makes two sentences"). This is sometimes the best I can do.
So, this freewriting is definitely crap. But I do not submit this writing to the newspaper, or to any other other publication. I don't ask my husband to read it. Or my friends. Or my writing teachers. No one is ever subjected to this putrefied, melting, brown glop I scrape out of my brain.
Writing composed just for a reader -- that a writer doesn't have any personal interest in -- is just as bad. I've tried writing columns about topics I think people might like, but if I don't want to write about it, it simply doesn't work. It's just like the glop, but all dried up, verbs like old vomit.
For example, I like to write about my dogs but sometimes, for no particular reason, I don't want to. On these days, I've tried writing about them anyhow because people seem to like my dogs. And I want people to read my column. I want to write about things that interest them. But if I'm not also interested, doesn't work. I'll spend a half an hour writing 65 words and checking my e-mail 12 times.
Ultimately, I believe non-crap writing is a communion. The writer gives something to the reader, and while that something might not be universally good or significant, it should at least convince two people they're not alone. They're sharing a laugh, a smile, a nod of recognition.
If this never happened, writing would be like jumping into an echo-less canyon, and reading would be like watching.

The Apartment

2009-10-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

When I'm old, I'm going to have sagging, misshapen, ugly tattoos. People love to remind me of this. A miserable buffalo, a rotten pear, a little king whose beautiful ermine coat needs ironing. Typically, it's someone who doesn't know me well and with whom I've never shared any philosophy about aging, death or even body art.
Although I was only 18 years old when I got my first tattoo, I realized that eventually I would get old. I have long hoped that I would not die before my first wrinkle appeared. I'm in no rush, but I want to get old. In fact, I even know what it will be like.
Since fourth grade or so, I've been able to picture it exactly.
In my vision, I'm in a long, one-room apartment, tightly situated between bookshelves that run the length the walls on either side of me. I'm writing at a large wooden desk, writing in the near-darkness with a good-sized, open, unscreened window behind me. I'm on an upper floor, and I hear the sounds of a city far below me, a city I don't take part in anymore, one that makes me feel both angry and less alone. I assume it's New York.
I see my hands and wrists on the surface of the desk, but I don't see my face, my hair or whether I've gotten fat. I don't see my tattoos, although I've got to assume that if I'm there, so are they. Likewise, I don't see the window behind me. I simply know it's there. The death apartment is not cinematic or dreamlike. I cannot watch myself. It's more like a memory, where I look through my own eyes.
There's never anyone else in the room and I'm always at that desk. There's no bed, no kitchen, no husband and no pets.
The pen and paper (sometimes I'm using a typewriter or computer, but typically I picture myself handwriting) feel like my whole world. It doesn't matter what I'm writing -- a letter? a newspaper column? a novel? I'm writing and I can't seem to do anything else.
Despite the gloom and crushing loneliness, I have never been as calm as I am as I am in this apartment. Oddly, even when I was in elementary school, I never felt scared of dying like this, alone in a crappy room. It seemed inevitable and in a way, reassuring; it soothed me somewhat to think I would still be writing that close to the end -- that no matter what mistakes I had made in my life, no matter how badly I isolated myself, in the end I would still have my writing.
This vision has stayed with me for more than a decade, through countless life changes and many changes of address. I no longer live in a city and don't plan to ever again. Yet, in my mind, at the end, it's always this tiny urban apartment, with its notebooks and ink, that's my only companion.
I find it interesting that the apartment is so far above the city, almost in an angel-realm. It strikes me that the room is dark, lending a sense of obscurity to the room, its minimal furnishings, the books and even the words I'm writing.
Even the city is obscured, not by the darkness but by its placement: countless floors down and outside a window that is behind me.
It's death itself, this room and its impenetrable solitude.
Except the word "impenetrable" might be incorrect. In my mind, the window is always open. I can feel the air on my back, cool and smelling just a little like cars and shoes. There is nothing between my back and the world, other than an unseen vertiginous drop. There's a sense that if I stopped writing and tipped my chair toward the window, down I would go. I could die. Or if the apartment is death, then I could return to life.
Imagine if death really were a dark studio apartment in Manhattan. It could be similar to Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit," where it's hell to stay. Or it could be nice break, not from work but from life itself. You could know your thoughts in a place like this. You could master them before you face life again, or before you face whatever's next.
Or maybe this death apartment is literally "what's next" for me. Maybe when I was 10 years old, I somehow tapped into a life that will be.
I like my husband, my pets, my non-cosmopolitan White Rock life. I don't ever want to be that reclusive old woman so far away from the faintest noise of any life besides my own. But if it happens, at least I'll be a reclusive old woman with a moon-vine arm band, the little green leaves wiggling merrily on my loose skin as I scribble my way through the dark.

Can Cujo Do a Cartwheel?

2009-09-11T06:55:00.001-07:00

When I was 5 years old, I thought our apartment was haunted by the spirit of a girl exactly my age who'd been pushed down the stairs and killed by her parents. I thought I slept in her room. I thought she lived in my closet and made the room cold at night.

A year or two later, I believed the spirit of my father's little sister, who died when she was 7, would try to drown me in the shower. I looked behind me dozens of times every time I shampooed my hair. I would wash as fast as I could and leap into my towel.

These were scary years. Dead children aside, our family went through several changed. When I was 3 years old, my mother drove the two of us across the country, from Phoenix to Buffalo, to meet the man who would become my father. When I was 4 years old, my mom and new dad married. We moved to nearby Hamburg, NY, where it was not uncommon for it to snow six feet in one day.

I have one of those hyper-distinct memories of walking behind my father as he shoveled a path. It was like being in a dream or an ice-cube tray. I felt absolute trust in this tall man clearing away the freezing, wet snow. That was the moment I knew I loved him.

When I was half-way through first grade, we moved to Kenmore, another suburb of Buffalo, land of duplexes and Dairy Queens. I felt persecuted by my new teacher, who did not appreciate my creative math skills.

I was bad with numbers, couldn't tell time with analog clocks and I couldn't do a cartwheel in the big, echo-y gym, where everyone else threw themselves upside-down so easily. They looked so happy on their hands. I cried on the shiny floor with all the meaningless, painted-on lines. I had trouble making friends.

The following summer, I took swimming lessons at the community pool and one day my mom insisted I approach this one little girl, the daughter of a woman my mom had been talking with. This girl, Angela, who was terrifically alive and hilarious, became my best friend for the next five years.

But I didn't stop being terrified of death.

Maybe it was the books. I loved reading. I read about a dozen Stephen King novels during elementary school: "Carrie," "Pet Sematary" (sic), "Firestarter," "Cujo" -- I read "It" three times. I liked the nonlinear narrative. I liked that it was about kids, even though a terrible monster was trying to kill them.

The book that really got to me was "Shadowland," by Peter Straub. It was the only book I regularly had to put down because I got too freaked out.

Today, I no longer read these kinds of books, nor can I stand movies like "The Ring" or "The Grudge," although I went through a phase a couple years ago where I would torture myself with this stuff -- I even saw that movie with all the talking static -- remember that one? "White Noise," I think it was called -- at the theater. Afterward, I was 4 years old again, afraid of the dark. When we got home, I ran from the car to the house and turned on every light.

I used to like that feeling, maybe because it was so familiar. Now, I think I've been scared enough. I would rather watch dance movies, where the message is always the Santa Claus-ish, "Just believe." And the thing you're supposed to believe in is never some creepy ghost but instead, your own best self.

Anyhow, when I was 13, we moved again, this time to Attica, NY, land of the Attica Correctional Facility, land of rapists and murderers chained to lawn mowers, trimming around the tombstones in the cemeteries. Everyone's dad, except mine, worked at the prison. Mine worked in Buffalo, an hour away, and I would worry every night in the winter, as he forged paths on unplowed back roads with his pickup truck. This was my new fright, now that I had traded in Stephen King for the Sweet Valley High series.

Sweet Valley High books are as non-threatening as they sound. They are short, fast-paced stories of high-school crushes and first cars. Nobody ever dies, and you get the sense that if someone did die, they would stay dead.

I think I lived my horror-life backward.

I was supposed to start un-scared. Apartments shouldn't have been sources of perpetual stress until I had to pay for one. And I should have read kids' books as a kid -- started with stories about Sweet Valley's pleasant Wakefield twins (each 5 feet, 6 inches tall and a perfect size 6 -- a detail included in every single book and the most horrifying thing about them), only later moving on to the adult fiction about rapid, man-eating dogs and child-eating clown-spiders.

Or perhaps the literary man-eating dogs should still be in my future -- and I can wait to think about ghosts until I become a one. A nice one, I hope.

Oh, Canada

2009-08-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

I've been hiking for about four hours with one end of a canoe balanced on top of my pack. Dan has the other end. Everyone wants Dan to be his or her portage partner because his arms are the size of pit bulls. His stomach would barely fit in a laundry basket and he'll have a heart attack before he turns 20, but right now he is strong and unkillable. Thank God -- because I am losing it. Despite my best efforts to stay on the trail, I'm stumbling, crushing mushrooms and little yellow flowers in an apologetic delirium, the Canadian soil soft as biscuits beneath my boots.

I yell back to Dan, "Watch out -- log," as I grip the boat and throw myself over a fallen fir tree, scratching my knee on one of several small, broken branches and watching my blood mix with dirt and sweat on the cut.

Ordinarily, I would tell everyone about this new source of suffering. As the other five campers in my group know, I haven't been having a good time since this trip began. The first day, I got into some poison oak and I haven't stopped itching long enough to shut up about it. And my back hurts. I'm dehydrated. The insides of my boots feel like hot soup. Last night, I refused, for hours, to crawl into my rain-soaked sleeping bag. "I don't know what I'm going to do," I whined over and over, shivering in the total darkness. "I need to sleep."

But now, with my pack pushing its 40-odd pounds into my shoulders and my knee howling, I grin. Because as soon as I pass over the log, I see the lake, and the lake means instead of us carrying the canoe, the canoe will carry us.

The air smells like water and watery plants, that bright green and blue smell that signals our release from the trees, which have been hovering over us like angry, 100-foot-tall strangers. That smell means we get to sit.

As I remember this camping trip 14 years later, it strikes me that I recall that smell better than I recall last week. It's as strong as my visual memory of my mother's face, or my tactile recollection of how my husband's beard feels against my cheek, which I felt this morning. It's as strong as my memory of how I spent Sept. 11, or how I felt the night before my wedding, or how I felt my first day in New Mexico, staring out over the desert and realizing I was home.

The two-week trip was a wilderness adventure in which incoming freshmen to Kalamazoo College, in Michigan, were invited to participate. I had signed up mostly to get out of my parents' house a couple of weeks sooner, since it took place at the end of summer, right before school began. I never once thought about my total lack of backpacking experience, my utter laziness, or my mean, defensive shyness around people I didn't know well. I simply packed my journal and my Leonard Cohen novel and got on the bus.

How I hated the first few days. I actually missed my mom and dad. I would have given anything to lie around depressed in my bedroom. I wrote long, impassioned letters to my boyfriend, whom I wasn't even sure if I liked. As I've already mentioned, I complained every day to my fellow campers, never questioning whether their backs also hurt, or whether their sleeping bags were just has unthinkably soggy when they zipped themselves in anyhow, trusting our group leader when she said our body heat would quickly dry the bags.

But something happened up there in Canada. My campers and I read my Leonard Cohen novel aloud over the campfire every night. We skinny-dipped together in a beautiful lake. I let one of the other girls cut my hair with a Swiss Army knife. One day, we got lost bushwhacking for several nerve-wracking, compass-clutching hours, eventually, magically, ending up alive and geographically adept. We relied on each other and ourselves in a way I never had before. You can't get lost in the small towns I had grown up in the way you can lost in thousands of forested acres of a foreign country. And I certainly couldn't discuss Cohen's "Beautiful Losers" -- which is about poetic, homosexual adultery and equally poetic married love -- with other members of my senior class at Canandaigua Academy. I didn't even eat lunch with those people. I snuck out to the parking lot, and ate my sandwiches with a book perched on the steering wheel of my car.

I remember finally getting to the lake, the sensation of unloading the canoe and then the packs off my shoulders, the sound of the oars and the boat moving through the water -- and then flipping the thing and laughing before my head even popped out of the water. The packs were soaked. Lunch was inedible. My sleeping bag was, once again, much too wet to sleep in. But it was funny.

It's easy to laugh when everything is good, but much more interesting when you're in pain, when you don't know your way, when you don't think anyone will ever like who you are. For me, somewhere beneath a flipped canoe in Canada, my life became truly mine for the first time.

Civilization and its Mochas

2009-08-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am not the kind of person who stands up her friend for their regular early-morning Farmers Market rendezvous. I am also not a person who ever sleeps past 5:30 a.m. I am not a person who doesn't have a puppy. In the morning, it's like having chicken pox with claws.

"Yay! I love to jump all over your bare legs and face!" she yells in Puppy every day.

"I want to drown you in calamine lotion!" I retort in groaning human.

However, today I am not myself.

"Look at that beautiful smile," a man just said as a greeting to his lovely table-mate, as he bent to kiss her.

I am not at my kitchen counter, sitting on a bar stool, listening to and smelling dogs, as I usually am when I write. Is it any wonder all I write about is dog world? No. Right now, I am surrounded by people, capable of saying such nice things in the sweet, articulate language of public discourse.

I have transformed into a person who sleeps. I don't know how it happened. Did someone kidnap my puppy for four hours, then bring her back quietly just as I reached my eight-hour mark?

It turns out I like sleeping. I don't like so much that I stood up Deborah, my Farmers Market droog, but magically she stood me up, too. I received a message from her at 9:30 a.m., when I finally got out of bed.

"Why do we always meet so early?" her recorded voice asked.

I don't know.

So here I am at Starbucks, happily spending lots of money on a cup of hot, wet sugar. Of course, I'm really paying for the peace. I need to be where nobody will lick my knees. I like how unlikely it is that one of us here will pee on the carpet. But it's not just being away from the dogs that I appreciate. It's that I'll never have to mop these tiles or take out Starbucks' trash.

I have no work to do here. I can write. I can eavesdrop.

One of the baristas just bemoaned her landlord, who said she could have a pet mouse in her apartment, but definitely not a rat. I feel like kissing her poor, homeless rat.

Should I feel guilty, after the dogs gave me this marvelous gift of sleep, leaving them alone so soon afterward? No. I'm no idiot. They are well-fed, safe and cozy in our air-conditioned bedroom. I'll play with them later, take them for a walk when it cools off this evening and, probably, curse them tomorrow morning when they start running across my husband's and my stomachs at 5:30 a.m.

This morning is mine.

"There's zero crime!" the man I mentioned earlier just said.

It certainly seems true from where I sit, drowsily musing in one of those two stuffed chairs near the back of the cafe. I'm so deeply enmeshed in my chair, so very cushion-brained, I can't imagine anyone having the energy to steal a purse or even open an illegally-obtained beer.

However, I realize this is merely an illusion. Just yesterday, a friend of mine, upon hearing of a neighbor's success with rosemary bushes, exclaimed, "I bet she mulches!" with such contempt that I realized how little the Los Alamos Police Department does to prevent mulching in the county.

But excepting those sinners out there improving their soil, Los Alamos is a pretty fantastic place, especially once I leave my house. I mean no offense to my house. It's my home and I have always been a person who likes being at home more than any place else. But sometimes you need a little pause, even during something great -- a few minutes between roller-coaster rides at Six Flags, a short bathroom break during Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet."

I'm bluffing: I've never been to Six Flags, I don't like roller coasters and, if I remember right, I sat through "Hamlet" no problem. My bladder ceased existing, out of respect.

Maybe I should be more specific. Sometimes you need a little pause to be around your own species, where other species can cease existing -- just for a little flicker of time, not in the extinction sense of "cease."

So far, no Starbucks customer has bitten anyone else's face. Since I arrived, I haven't had to fill a single water bowl. I love these customers but could cry with adoration for the employees. They swipe our cards. They fill our cups. And if on the off chance someone does have an accident on this beautiful tile floor, I'll just keep enjoying my chair while they yell "no" and take that person outside.

*** QUICK UPDATE: I haven't posted the past few days because I've been teaching. It's so hard and I've had to spend lots of alone time with my textbook and my slowly-accumulating lecture notes. I'll write more on this soon.

Dare to Read Your Own Top 100

2009-08-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

There's a list going around on Facebook right now of the BBC's top 100 books. It's called "Book Dare" and while it includes many good titles, two things about it make me a little angry, kind of the way under-cooked bacon served in expensive restaurants makes me a little angry. I'd still tip the BBC, if that were the protocol, but I might not recommend it to friends.
First of all, it features primarily British authors and excludes too many bestselling and critically acclaimed Americans. Of course, it is not called the ABC and I don't really expect equity. Secondly, the BBC says it believes most people have only read six of the books on the list. Does the BBC also believe we should feel ashamed for this? Am I an above-average being because I've read 39? I know someone who has read 89, and I bask in her mental sunshine. I also think widely distributed lists of the best books ever should include more than six titles most of us have enjoyed.
I should add the disclaimer that the BBC's list is hardly the only list out there. There are plenty of others. This is just one that keeps drawing my ire.
Anyhow, rather than whine on Facebook, or rather than just whine of Facebook, I've decided to make my own list. Because this is a personal list, I assume not everyone else likes or has even read most of these. But they represent books that have made me who I am, or at least reminded me who I am when I got confused.
Please note that the titles with the asterisks next to them are also on the BBC's list. Feel free to be flabbergasted by appalling absence of particular asterisks.

The Beginning of Kelly's Top 100 Books (in order of memory, not fondness)

1. Catcher in the Rye * by J.D. Salinger
2. Life of Pi* by Yann Martel
3. Catch-22 * by Joseph Heller
4. 1984 * by George Orwell
5. Middlemarch * by George Eliot (I absolutely love this book but was surprised to see it on the BBC's list when there are certainly more popular Eliot titles. Of course, maybe that's why it was chosen: because fewer people have read it.)
6. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy * by Douglas Adams
7. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
8. The Great Gatsby * by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Crime and Punishment * by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I actually forgot to mark this one on my Facebook list -- whoo who! I'm at 40.)
10. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (At least the BBC included "Grapes of Wrath.")
11. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow (The BBC didn't find a single Bellow title worthy.)
12. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
13. Chronicles of Narnia * by C.S. Lewis (Interestingly enough, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe also made the BBC's top 100.)
14. The Counterlife by Philip Roth (The BBC didn't find a single Bellow title worthy either.)
15. The Dying Animal by Philip Roth (I can't help it.)
16. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (Stoppard is British, even -- but maybe the BBC didn't want to muddy the list with plays.)
17. Lord of the Flies * by William Golding
18. Fool's Progress by Edward Abbey
19. The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
20. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I'm just going to start with 20. In fact, I may just leave it at 20. If you have any thoughts on the titles I've listed so far, or want to make suggestions, I would love to make this a collaboration of books selected by readers of "The Wind is Southerly." Please leave a comment in the space provided in the right-hand margin.

No Exit, or The Existential Truth About Dogs

2009-08-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

I live with two dogs, one cranky almost-12-year-old and one puppy, whose fur is spun by baby silk moths. Some weeks, I have an extra dog on loan from a vacationing friend, a super-fierce Yorkie who can hide inside an oven mitt if he needs to. Essentially, I live in dog world, where all we do is rip the fluff out of stuffed bats and bunnies, and look for better and better places to pee.
I love this place but sometimes it makes me feel like chewing on my my own feet or walking around in 17 circles before I lie down. This is usually a good time to do something dogs just can't do -- that is, sweat.
So I run. Most of my runs kind of blend together. Perhaps I my throat felt very dry on Monday and then on Wednesday, I wish I had worn the other socks. But two of my recent excursions really stand out, and although they both involved plenty of sweating, on neither run did I actually escape.

RUN 1: The Purple Leg

This is not the first run chronologically, but this story just can't follow the other, which features majestic beauty. This one features my left leg, a few inches of it anyhow, in a mouth.
It was near dusk, and I was nearly out of oxygen. A couple miles back, I had espied, hugged and had one of those too brief, flickering little conversations with a friend of mine where you say a fragment of every 12th thought, and since then had been running fast in an effort to finish the trail loop before darkness fell and all the rocks became invisible.
I was almost to sweet, magical pavement and bright, happy street-lamps. I had maybe 400 meters to go, according to my right-brain's GPS mechanism, which doubles simultaneously as an e.e. cummings appreciator, when I saw a couple walking a perky honey-colored dog up ahead, its head all lively with whiskers and tall ears twitching every which way.
We were on a double-track trail, but the right-hand track was stuffed with rocks, so I headed toward the middle, and the dog and its family stayed in the left-hand track. The dog was so cute, and leashed; it never occurred to me that it would mangle my thigh.
But that's the thing about dogs, isn't it? They have a lot more teeth than most of us dog-owners truly acknowledge. Even the nice dogs have these full sets of huge, sharp teeth situated in these powerful, vastly under-appreciated jaws.
I think this was a nice dog. Its owners seemed completely shocked when I yelled out and grabbed my punctured leg. Through my pain, I heard the woman say something -- "... a nipper, not a biter." I heard her apologize several times. I sputtered something about being OK and kept running, looking down every so often at the throbbing orchid on my leg.
By the time I got home and iced, I realized how often I let my dogs reach out to the ends of their leashes to sniff passers-by, and that my dogs have teeth, too. Even the puppy, whose mouth sometimes turns into furious stapler, could actually hurt someone. My dogs are in dog world, even around people who think they're free.

RUN 2: The Missing Sled

I'm glad this run actually happened before "The Purple Leg," or I might not have enjoyed it at all.
I was on the same trail loop, a little earlier in the day and a little earlier on the trail, where it's still single-track.
I get kind of lost in my head on these runs. I start columns, I rhyme couplets, I compose letters to cousins I haven't seen in 10 years, I play out arguments. In the middle of one of these pointless cerebral detours, a very relevant thought accidentally interceded: "Hey," I thought to myself, "there's a trio of huskies charging toward me."
They were beautiful, even with their hackles all ridge-like on their backs and their dog-lips curled up in growls.
Then a few more rounded the bend, then another half-dozen, and soon I was standing, arms out, palms down, in the middle of a pack of huskies. I still didn't see their owner. I was trying not to look into their ghost-like blue eyes, in case they might misinterpret that as a sign they should rip the fluff out of me.
I eventually saw another person, and later, after the dogs let me live to sweat another day, learned the dogs were a sled team, out for a little exercise. It's quite a feeling, though, being allowed to live -- feeling all those nostrils sniffing out my fate. I might complain sometimes about living in dog world but ultimately, and I'm their helpless, square-toothed guest.

Vet Wow

2009-08-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

Living solely with an older, healthy dog for the last several years, I often had the feeling something was missing from my life. Now, I have a puppy and I know what I longed for all those years: weekly visits to the vet.
Veterinarians are extremely important people, even more so when you own a pet. They protect your puppy from parvo, distemper, rabies and other horrible diseases they can get playing with disgusting things they find outside, everywhere. They inject your beloved with anti-diarrheal elixirs. They fend off worms. Best of all, they are the keepers of the Cheese Wow.
I don't know if all vets are this spectacular and in-tune with canine desires, but our vet gives her patients Cheese Wow, which is a lot like Cheez Whiz but not as sophisticated. Our puppy loves Cheese Wow more than her morning ritual of digging at my armpit. As long as Pique has a mouthful of tufted orange dairy product, Dr. Williams has free reign over my puppy's booster-needing body.
The vet can poke giant needles into her shoulder or even stick medicine in Pique's sensitive, putrid under-tail realm. She could probably stick a cat in there a Pique would just keep licking the little white nozzle.
But seriously, I love our vet for more than her ability to hypnotize my puppy with empty calories. Pique has had, in her first 15 weeks of life, way more than her share of hard knocks, especially in the afore-mentioned putrid region.
I like to run; unfortunately, so does Pique's gastrointestinal netherville, and it is not picky as to where. The backyard, the sidewalk, church parking lots -- one time we were barely able to stop the truck in time for her to leap off my husband's lap and into the sacred, quickly devastated desert.
So anyhow, we spend a lot of time cooking rice and going to visit Dr. Williams, who is so awesomely nice, knowledgeable and, best of all, comforting. She speaks in soothing baby-talk, the kind where each word is really "I love you, you adorable pumpkin muffin!" no matter what it sounds like.
She's not talking to Pique. She's talking to me. We puppy-owners need baby-talk. We spend most of our time playing with spit-soaked socks.
Otherwise, we're stepping on half-chewed Nyla-bones (toward the end of its life-cycle, the Nyla-bone transforms into a giant goat-head), re-filling water-bowls, establishing dominance at dinner time (some puppies don't like to be touched while they're eating; snarling, training manuals advise, must be dealt with either by grabbing the skin on the back of the animals' necks until they stop, or, in severe case, kneeling over our pets while holding their necks until serenity is restored), cleaning up the yard, inspecting what we're cleaning up, saying "sit!" (hundreds of times each day), teaching car manners (this involves pushing our puppies off of our laps and saying "sit!" while not driving straight into that beautiful sedan fresh from the hail-damage-repair shop) and applying anti-bacterial ointment to the various wounds our older, typically well-behaved dog inflicts.
The rest of you have no clue what we go through just to get our shoes on in the morning.
But back to Dr. Williams. It's so important to have someone I can trust to take care of my new family member's strange bodily needs. Pique is a mutant. I think she's the weirdest thing I have ever hugged.
What does she think of me, constantly pawing at this laptop computer and never once putting it in my mouth?
Anyhow, vets are amazing, superb, spectacular, almost mystical people. They understand our puppies. They understand us. And they have Cheese Wow, which is something Pique and I could both eat right out of the can. Though not the same can -- that's gross.

Keep an Open Mouth

2009-08-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

I write to you amid decibel levels rarely experienced in 21st-century American dining rooms, especially those with neutral color schemes. Because of the riot underfoot, I can barely hear "Mr. Tambourine Man." Maybe I shouldn't be listening to this music anyhow. I hear it belongs to my parents. But that is not the cause of this riot, nor very many others.

This started because of an animal you could store in a peanut-butter jar.

There are two barkers in our home today, and the eldest of our two dogs, Zooker -- or Old Man Chow-Chow as he now likes to be called, as long as we pretend to do so ironically -- is not one of them.

Every riot has its gory backstory, and this is no exception. Pique, our 15-week-old Great Dane, discovered her voice about two weeks ago, and it was like finding an exciting rotten potato long buried in the crease of a futon. (I pull this example from Zooker's personal gory backstory: Long ago, I gave him a potato to play with. About two months later, lo, sixty eyes stared out from the crease in the guest bed.)

Unfortunately for Pique, there are few bark-worthy events on our townhouse-lined cul-de-sac. Sometimes a neighbor will work on her lawn, and Pique will protect the innocent grass from the woman with the evil trowel. Otherwise, she protects my husband and I from sleeping past 5:30 a.m.

But today, wonderful today, she finally has a sustained need for the gravel pit of her throat. His name is Tyrone.

Tyrone is the beloved, microscopic Yorkie Terrier pet of a friend of mine, who is currently on vacation. He weighs the same as a banana, and he has tiny springs in his paramecia-sized paws that allow him to bounce alarmingly high. Earlier, I bent over to scratch behind Zooker's ear and Tyrone jumped onto my back, where he promptly laid down to rest.

Anyhow, Pique had never met a chew toy that introduced himself so fearlessly.

Most of her toys wait for her to make that first move, huddling in corners and playing dead alongside couches until she awakens them with her preposterously strong jaws, at which point they might begin to squeak.

But Tyrone, although he is not as large as Pique's squeaky orange monkey, is the upgraded version. He squeaks, sure -- but he doesn't even have to be in her mouth before this happens. He also, as I mentioned above, jumps with unbelievable agility for a chew toy, and runs and cuddles and eats and goes outside, though he needs a hand navigating the doggie door.

Even the sock with the tennis ball tied inside of it does not do these things.

Thus, Pique has spent about 90 percent of Tyrone's visit so far barking at him. The other 10 percent she has spent trying to steal his food.

The long and short of this tale is that the majority of the last several hours I have spent listening to an over-sized puppy and a dog about as big as her foot barking their mismatched heads off. It's loud, but it's also kind of a relief.

For one thing, I'm glad that Pique and Zooker have not murdered my friend's pet. Pique won't hurt him, because she won't close her mouth. And Zooker, who has bitten my sweet Pique three times in the face, has shown remarkable tolerance for Tyrone. Perhaps he can't find Tyrone's face in all that long, silky fur. Or, more likely, perhaps he, like I am, is relieved Pique is so completely distracted from her usual occupation, mainly, teething on our bodies.

To avoid perforated arms, I could listen to those dueling barks for hours -- which is convenient, since that's what I've been doing.

It's really not bad at all. Maybe the neighbors disagree, but puppies are meant to be heard and not plied off.

I can't tell if Zooker is as totally sold as I am on this peaceful, ear-splitting arrangement. While I think he likes the lack of attention from Pique's bicuspids (if dogs have bicuspids -- when googling fruitlessly for this information, I did find, however that "The Great Dane was not content to go through life without a nose, not at all."), I'm not sure he approves of one more obstacle between himself and my attentions.

Back when this was a one-dog household, Zooker was the least-affectionate dog I'd ever known. He'd follow me from room to room like a self-propelled anti-vacuum-cleaner, spewing fur everywhere. But he hated to be touched. He'd lie down at my feet, but I stroked his back, he'd get up, with considerable groaning, and move dozens of arm-lengths away.

Now he's become needy. He can't share the love he never wanted. Furthermore, I think he wants a nap.

Dogs are tricky. If you're in the market for a pet, you might want to seriously consider adopting a squeak-toy instead.