"Recipe for a Headache"

My life policy of Don't Get Harried is inviolate.

Also, I lie a lot, especially on Mondays, when zipping around and feeling always eight minutes behind is the norm, and my life policy is brutally, repeatedly violated.

The policy of Don't Get Harried is predicated by the fact that doing lots isn't part of my self-definition. For me, racing around from commitment to commitment doesn't give life a sense of worth or purpose; on the contrary, it leaves me with a feeling that I've missed life's purpose altogether.

Honestly, I have no idea what life's purpose actually is, but intuition tells me it has something to do with sitting very still, pulling air into my lungs slowly, and staring at something the wind is blowing around.

Hey, if you take that description, plop a bag of Old Dutch bbq chips down next to me in the scenario, scatter about a few Little Debbie snack cakes, then suddenly I'm not so much seeking purpose as stoned.

Stupefied or meditating, either way I find myself sitting in a place, feeling a moment, being there. It feels right.

Contrast a relaxed Old Dutch day with my Mondays of late, and you'll be screaming for a toke of the Mary Jane. For some reason, even though I don't have classes on campus on Mondays, the start of the week has become crazy-mad-rip-roaring busy--as in, the day takes place in chunks of 24 minutes in 40 different places, and then the sun plummets, extinguishing exhaustedly.

Normally, this is just how it is. It just is. Last week, though, Monday took on an added pressure: it was my husband's birthday. And since he is the finest of souls, and his birthday last year was particularly The Suck (being born right after Thanksgiving means you're usually in a mini-van with crabby children, driving home up a grey highway, on your birthday; the highlight is stopping at the Chug 'N Munch for wasabi almonds), I had vowed it would be better this year.

Specifically, because he never got a Birthday Treat last year, he would get something this year. I would figure out the details of that when the time came. Like, on his birthday.

Thus, last Monday, the Gourmet cookbook and I had a date. Since Groom had no preference about his treat (high maintenance, that one is), I leafed through, looking for a recipe entitled "What Jocelyn Would Like to Have But Which She Can Pawn Off as Being For Her Husband."

Clearly, chocolate and profiteroles were in our near future.

The choice made, I scanned the list of ingredients, went through the kitchen cabinets and was able to whoop, "Yee-haw! We have sugar! This thing has legs!!" Then I wrote the rest of the ingredients down onto a shopping list and sent Groom off to buy his own damn heavy and ice creams.

What I realized, as the day went on, was that the Gourmet recipe was incredibly unrealistic. As if a person--on a Monday--can just take out the ingredients, stand in front of the stove, and make profiteroles and hot fudge.

Recipe, O Recipe, where is the section that has the cook crawling around on all fours in her basement pantry, spending 24 minutes trying to find the missing pastry bag?

Recipe, O Recipe, you mention 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, but why do you not mention 6 loads of laundry?

Recipe, O Recipe, why do you not mention the 24 minutes the cook will need to spend pulling together materials for the Girls' Book Club she's leading each week in her daughter's 4th grade class?
Why, O Short-Sighted Recipe, do you not list "24 minutes of driving to the elementary school" or "31 minutes of deconstructing the plot of Island of the Blue Dolphins with 12 girls" as necessary ingredients to your hot fudge? Why do you not acknowledge the emotional energy the cook will have to expend in explaining to a group of preadolescent girls that sometimes, as in the book, members of our families will die (albeit not at the hands of otter-pelt-hunting Aleuts)?

Recipe, O Recipe, why do you fail to mention the post-Book Club dash to first grade, wherein the cook will grab her 6-year-old, drive him 24 minutes to the Martial Arts studio, and--with no whisk in hand--help him strip in the backseat of a Toyota Camry and change into his karate kit?

Dear Recipe, you also neglect to mention the late afternoon latte the cook will need to make, after she whizzes home from the karate studio. By the time she has made her espresso, transferred the laundry, and found a saucepan, it's time to go pick up Paco. Amazingly, during class, he's managed to stain his uniform (with what??? blood???), entailing a double trip through the wash and the application of a bleach pen. Where is "bleach pen" on your list of ingredients, Ressy-pee-pee?



O Negligent Recipe, you also fizzle in the Homework Section of the baking, overlooking the fact that the chef's daughter might have been asked, for Social Studies, to make a timeline (complete with photos) of the seven Biggest Events of Her Life. Due the next day.

As it turns out, Dear, Blindered Recipe, 4th graders aren't completely certain what the Biggest Events of Their Lives have been. Fortunately, cooks who are chopping 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate are able to multi-task and suggest things like, "How about when you learned to ride a two-wheeler?" and light the burner simultaneously.

Speaking of simultaneously, O Recipe of Restricted Focus, you fail to lay out the moments when the cook will make her lunch for the next day, pack her gym bag, and ready her work satchel. Why do you not mention "ready work satchel" in your list of instructions, Small-Visioned Recipe?

Moreover, as your cook peels carrots that appear nowhere on your list of ingredients, she also muses that you underestimated the amount of homework 4th grade teachers like to give on Mondays. Dumb Recipe, you haven't done the math.

Specifically, Challenged Recipe, you have not allotted for the fact that a boy named Benito dropped a pocketful of change along a maze-like path, and my daughter--some sort of good Samaritan on a two-wheeler--needs to help him recollect it all, adding up his potential loss along the way.

Speaking of being lost, did I add the vanilla yet to you, Precious Recipe? I'm no longer certain, but assuage my feelings of confusion with the knowledge that Benito has regained his lost change and now has enough to go buy wasabi almonds at the Chug 'N Munch.

Oh, and Benito? When you're done, feel free to toss your wrapper into the trash. While the chocolate melts for the hot fudge sauce, I'm emptying garbage cans from around the house and compiling the recycling for its Tuesday pick-up.

The baking soda only went missing for a few minutes during the Recycling Phase of you, O Recipe.

Ultimately, once my salad was made, and Benito had a full tummy, and the karate uniform was again pristine,

Hot Fudge was born.

The labor had been long and difficult, but the fudge was dark;

the pastries were puffy.

Ultimately, it all came together like a dream. Groom felt properly honored, and we all needed napkins.

Of course, the real celebrating began after we'd put you to bed, Loyal Recipe,

and we took considerably less than 24 minutes to suck down your Urban Cousin: Surly Darkness, an imperial stout without compare.

When it hit our bellies, we sat

still

pulling the air into our lungs slowly

gazing out the window into the night

watching things blow in the wind.

"Husband as Muse"

A few weeks ago, I danced over to Jazz's blog and enjoyed a welcome surprise: her post that day had been hand-written. It startled me how much I liked seeing her handwriting and not just her typing; it reminded me of the individual behind the blog; it gave me a glimpse into her Herishness.

Hence, I've co-opted that idea, as you can see below (click on the image to enlarge it--and then zoom in even more!). While my handwriting has never been stellar, it has seen a marked degeneration in the last two decades, as I've graded thousands of student essays. As well, I wrote the page below as we drove 70 mph on the highway last night, after dark, heading home from a holiday weekend away. All that in mind, you can still accuse me of being illegible, and I'll have to nod in agreement.

"She Ought to Be in Pictures"

Nine years ago, a piece of my heart started to live outside of my body. Or, as my pal Pammy puts it, "Having children is like being held hostage by the world; you'll do anything the universe demands to assure their safe passage."


Girl slides safely out of my passage.

In her first year of life, she slept in her own vomit on New Year's Eve (more killer parenting tips available soon in the paperback release of my book If Baby Is Still Breathing in the Morning, Then You ARE a Good Mommy, No Matter What Social Services Tries to Report), which burned the skin off her cheek...

...perhaps as payback for her having screamed for eight hours one night at a campsite in Yellowstone Park. That night, at 3 a.m., Groom finally bundled her into the car and drove her around the park for several hours until they both conked out at a scenic overlook. To this day, the words "Norris Geyser Basin" are synonymous in our household with "that could not possibly have sucked more."
------------------------------

A year later, she was heading towards two:


Pigtails kept the hair out of her raging double ear infection. And after three nights of no sleep for anyone, we ripped those ruby slippers off her feet and stuffed them right up the Tin Man's rusty, er, tailpipe.

-------------------------

Then she was two:


The transformative event of her life happened, and her vocation--no, not playing slots at the casino--was discovered. The arrival of Baby Brother Paco/Niblet gave her a purpose. She continues to serve as ballast to his tipsy keel.
-------------

After she hit three:


Part imp, part back rest, she twirled and cavorted, sold us plastic food at her grocery store, changed outfits 17 times a day, and slept through the night for the first time.

------------------------

As a four-year-old:


Under threat of, "Either hold still and let me brush your hair, or we'll snip it into a no-maintenance pixie cut," she announced, "I think we should cut it, then, because I don't have holding still in me."

Life's greatest privilege remained propping up her best buddy.

...unless Lawrence Welk was on, and there was polka-ing to be done. Then, as she jumped up to dance, he could fall with a thud, for all she cared.

----------
When she was five:

Her demonstrative love interferred with mealtime...


...while her solidity propped up the very trees.
---------------------

She was six, and:

She built a town in Canada...


and crept up to "boo" her harem of one.

-----------------
Amazingly, suddenly she was seven:

And she was all courage,

and capability,

and unflappable serenity.

----------
Next came eight:

a year of honing balance,

making static dynamic,

and mastering the absorbed arpeggio.
----------------

And now she is nine:


...the embodiment of lovely.

What's more:

The baby who didn't sleep is now a girl who checks her alarm clock through the night, lest she miss her bus.

The toddler with an ear infection swims laps, makes assists on the soccer field, monkeys around the jungle gym, and jumps rope backwards.

The delighted two-year-old who held an infant brother now chooses his clothes and gets him dressed before leaning to me and whispering conspiratorially, "He's in a bit of a mood, isn't he?"

The wee elf of twirling and clothes changes now monologues, "I'm not so much of a fashion girl--not that liking fashion is bad; I just don't care if my clothes match." A breath later, she asks if we can go shopping for ballet flats and notes that if Paco wants some, too, he should get some, perhaps a shiny, metallic pair.

The pixie-ish preschooler treasures long tresses and insists, "I read in an American Girl book that a 'sleeping braid' will keep the knots out."

The solid, loving kindergartener still carries her brother from room to room and brings him bandaids. At school, her teacher chose her from the class for the Citizenship award while we all marvel that she jotted down "misspell" correctly on her weekly pretest, when no one else did.

The first grader who built and crept now studies maps of Stonybrook, Connecticut, the fictional town of the Babysitter's Club series, quizzing me nightly on which is Mallory's house. She no longer scares anyone--unless it's 7 p.m. on a Monday, and she's just home from Girl Scouts and has four pages of homework but would rather do somersaults in the living room. Her mood teeters on a ledge, and Kleenex may be needed.

The courageous, capable, unflappable seven-year-old continues to impress. I am ageing easily, knowing that she will one day be handling my estate and shunting me into the best of homes. What's more, I feel certain she will bring me ham for dinner on Sundays, if her career as an Event Organizer doesn't offer a conflict that week.

At eight, she had found her center but tipped occasionally towards goofy and abstracted. Indeed, we still have to ask her, when she gets the giggles, if she needs to hit the bathroom, lest she require a change of underwear. Her reading habit continues to demand feeding, which is a delight--and, surprisingly, a despair, as she sometimes leaves her best playmate craving the sister who used to entertain him for hours. Mournfully, he will call out her nickname, "DeeDee, don't you want to play Animal School?" to which she'll respond, only half listening, "After I'm done with this book."



Ultimately, all of this means that she is more and more a whole unto herself--a distinct thread in the family fabric rather than an indistiguishable part of the larger weaving.

At times, this can feel like a loss, as though already we are experiencing an unraveling.

Mostly, though, her increased demarcation allows me to see her better; were she completely enmeshed, I would ascribe to her my own traits and view her as sharing my color and texture, missing so much that is uniquely her and not me:

her vividness
her poise
her confidence
her sound judgment
her certainty

her purity of soul

---------------

Thus, I live with a piece of my heart--nine years old now--next to me, not in me,

and I cannot fully express how blessed I feel to release her into the world.

"I Have Called Upon Your Goodwill and Patience Frequently In the Past, But Never Moreso Than Now, When I Have a New Toy"

I woke up on my birthday last week and was gifted with a digital video camera, already loaded with this message:



Don't worry. Groom knows he is the whitest boy on the planet when it comes to carrying a tune and/or dancing. Since he excels at all else, it is only fair that he be fallible. Note, however, how well he plays up his deficiency, hammering out and sustaining even the sharpest note. That, in itself, is a talent (kind of like how Rush Limbaugh pretends, through sheer bravado, that he has a brain).

Later that day, Niblet began establishing his relationship with the camera and asked to film me:



There's a strange light from the window behind in this clip, but let's pretend it's the angel what lives inside me, coming out for a wink. And aren't we all wondering, based on this rendition, what kind of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" I could coo out for Obama, thus tapping into the subtext of our years-long torrid affair? (not that such a thing would ever happen because His Nibs is much too smart and genuine to ever take for granted the peach that is Michelle, and if he did, I would have to gauge out my eyes with a flagpole, what with every last belief having been rattled).

Shortly thereafter, PacoTacoHaco/Niblet wanted to try out the song himself, standing next to one of his creature creations, a guy named "Eye-o":




Even better, in the intervening days, Niblet has taken over the camera and started staging stop-motion Lego films:



Sure, he's six, so he has little patience for the multiple incremental movements a longer film would require, but it's still a really cool start to his future career, when he will join the Wallace & Gromit production team. Until then, he'll live in our basement and have seriously pasty skin.

During the years of pasty skin and basement dwelling, I'll take him a platter of pancakes every night--to keep his cinematic energies from flagging--and once a year, on his birthday, I'll put a candle in the stack of pancakes and sing him that damn song.

Rolling his eyes, he'll mentally storyboard a stop-action video in which his mother is decapitated by a light saber.

"I Live in Zoo. Word On the Streets Is That I Smell Like a Monkey. Even More Tragically, I Look Like One, Too"

Wednesday was my birthday. The cool thing about my announcing this today is that now you aren't compelled to chime in with a “Happy birthday!” You’re off the hook, toots.

Because it was yesterday!
And now it's over!!
So nothing you can say or think can change how it was!!!
C'est fini!!!!
Keep your kind felicitations tucked in your handbag!!!!!
Haha on you!!!!!!!

Luckily, even without your lovely words, I enjoyed a really nice day. Having a family that treated me all special-like made that happen. Were it just me, alone, the day would have been one of gorging on donuts followed by lolling my head into the bottom of an empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.

Which, come to think of it, is a valid celebration in its own right. Maybe next year.

Wednesday, however, went:

7:27 a.m. The sound of running feet. On top of the feet were the bodies of my kids, who zoomed into the bedroom and pulled a "lazy bag" (some of y'all might call it a "gift bag") out from under the bed. In it were two scarves they had finger-knitted, kind of long, loose snaky things that can keep my throat warm in -20 degree weather or, better yet, tie the kids to the banister if they lip off. Wildly tangled in the scarves was a new Webkinz, which is just what a 42-year-old needs if her Webkinz account is about to expire, and she really just wants to decorate her pet's room (aka "Manhattan walk-up") and play a lot of Cash Cow 2 in the wee hours. They gave me a manatee whom I have named “Sassafrass.” I was certain the hugely-cautious Webkinz site, which won’t even let a user name a pet “Buttercup” because it contains the word “butt” in it, would certainly put the kibosh on “Sassafrass” due to its double assage. But whaddya know? Sassafrass passed muster. Since he’s a manatee, he was given an underwater room in Webkinz world, so come to think of it, I’ll be decorating not so much a Manhattan walk-up as a New Orleans row house.

Also in the lazy bag was—smash some cymbals together here, if you keep a pair next to your keyboard—a digital video camera, which I’d been craving so that I could carry it around my life, capturing random moments like when I’m driving (and filming) and hit a pothole. Then, once I download and upload and post it all on my blog, people far and wide can hear me swear and feel the jolt, and if that’s not good Internet entertainment, I don’t know what is. Of course, there’s the small matter of the learning curve before I can get anything online, but the prospect in itself makes me want to cuss a bit with excitement and lurch about with joy, all pothole-hitting-like.

8:05 a.m. Kids get on the schoolbus and head off to school. Day gets even better.

11:11 a.m. Finish lifting weights, doing 100 crunches, running a challenging 5K, biking 11K and finally doing a high-intensity 10 minutes on the stairmaster. Take all this physical fitness as a clear sign that I will live to 90 and still be trail running, albeit at a 45 min/mile pace.

11:12 a.m. Notice a twinge in my hip. Feel certain I’m dying.

12:32 p.m. Put pans of molasses cookies in the oven.

12:44 p.m. Wave newspaper wildly under the smoke detector to get it to stop bleating.

2:00 p.m. Feed molasses cookies to my colleagues at an English department meeting. Listen to discussion of outcomes and visiting speakers and textbooks and wonder when I stopped caring.

2:01 p.m. Admit I’ve never cared about anything when there are cookies in the room.

3:45 p.m. Drop Niblet at his Mandarin Chinese class. Yell “Ni Hao!” obnoxiously loudly at him as he exits the car.

3:59 p.m. Drop Groom at auto shop to pick up mini-van, which, lo and behold, no longer sounds like Ethel Merman with a belt tightened around her larynx.

4:04 p.m. Take Girl to nearby coffee shop to use freebie “birthday” coupon for my favorite drink: a Turtle Mocha, which contains approximately 700 calories.

4:05 p.m. Gain 8 pounds.

4:20 p.m. Neighbor lady and her daughter join us in coffee shop hanging out. Neighbor lady bestows gift card for said coffee shop, urging me to buy more and more and more Turtle Mochas.

4:21 p.m. Gain 6 more pounds, just from the urging.

5:12 p.m. Get home to discover best pal from college has sent box of gifties. Lay them all out on floor and roll around on top of them until Groom announces, “Okay, now that’s getting kind of creepy.”

6:01 p.m. Prepare to eat steak dinner. First, wave newspaper around wildly under smoke detector to get it to stop bleating.

6:28 p.m. Wipe steak juice off chin with hand. Hope, as an adult one day, to start using a napkin.

6:35 p.m. Welcome neighbors (with 3-year-old and newborn baby) as they come over to share cake.

6:37 p.m.-6:46 p.m. Play seventeen different games with 3-year-old. Hold baby.

7:14 p.m. Hold baby more. Consider this one of the day’s best presents.

8:01 p.m. Peel sleeping baby off lap and send him home with parents. Consider that, too, one of the day’s best presents.

9:00 p.m. Tuck in kids, who sleep these days in the master bedroom, due to water damage and resultant smell in their bedroom allowed by careless roofing crew. Swear a little at roofing crew. Remember, next time, to record the swear on the new digital video camera.

9:10 p.m. Sit down with glass of wine and Stephen Colbert to watch with Groomeo.

9:11 p.m. Pretend not to hear Niblet crying upstairs because everything is scary, even with 4 night lights on, music playing, and wiry sister nearby.

9:14 p.m. Let Groom go upstairs to hear about the terrifying cobweb hanging from the ceiling, amidst other real and imagined horrors. While he’s gone, log-on to Webkinz World and adopt manatee. Put a toilet in manatee’s underwater bedroom. Chuckle because somehow, that’s just funny. Then put a cactus next to the toilet. Chuckle more.

9:42 p.m. Feel kind of bad when Groom continues to struggle with overwrought child. Then remember the toilet in the underwater Webkinz room; chuckle silently but, heading upstairs to join the fray, act concerned, outwardly. Suggest Niblet’s frightened brain watch some Loony Tunes for a bit.

9:54 p.m. Niblet done with Loony Tunes and wants to sleep. But because there are so many tewwwible and awwwwful things in the world that he is not able to name or describe, he cannot. Just cannot.

10:01 p.m. Crawl into bed with Niblet and tell him the weight of my arm on his body will protect him from all monsters and marauders. Marvel as his body relaxes and breathing slows. Realize I’ll never again have power such as this and that he may be a bit of a foolchild if he genuinely thinks my arm could ever take on a three-eyed monster holding a bloody spear. Let him sleep nevertheless.

10:25 p.m. Rejoin Groom for more wine and a little Stephen Colbert (not a euphemism; we really watched the show, you big Naught Pants). Eat rest of birthday cake.

10:26 p.m. Gain three pounds.

11:00 p.m. Kiss Groom goodnight. Log into online classes. Grade research proposals. Brace self for forthcoming papers about the HPV vaccine, excessive advertising, and eating disorders.

11:01 p.m. Gain pound from thinking about eating disorders.

12:00 a.m. Read a few pages of White Heat, the book about Emily Dickinson and Thomas Higginson and their literary relationship. Admit Dickinson was one hell of a crazy bit of brilliance—especially because—she used—dashes—all the time—to such great effect—to the point—that sometimes—I don’t even—know—what she—means. Read part of a letter she wrote to Higginson and find self swearing under breath about how incisive dash use can be.

12:01 a.m. Note that birthday is over and that the next time I read Dickinson, I should have the new video camera running, just to catch the random swears—for future—uploading—onto—the Interwebs.

12:02 a.m. Place icy feet onto Groom’s legs and leech off his warmth.

12:03 a.m. Think that it doesn’t get better than this.

"Ashen, Ashen, I Bawl and Fall Down"

For the event of Niblet's birth, we bartered for the services of a local doula (if you can't buy the time of a lesbian who works at the Environmental Protection Agency for the price of a gallon bag of frozen pesto and a six-course feast including hand-made butternut ravioli...then it's time to kvetch about the state of the economy). "Doula" is a Greek word meaning "she who will dive into a uterus to pull out the remaining piece of a placenta when everybody else in the room is more concerned with taking APGAR scores."

A doula is kind of a labor assistant, someone who tells the nurses to back-the-eff-off if they're clacking too much in your face, someone who suggests that a pair of feet dug into one's lumbar might be just the ticket to relieve back labor. Some doulas also create written narratives of the labor and delivery, just in case you want to recall at a later time that one of the blood vessels in your eye burst during the pushing.

Our doula, Anne, was cool. When Niblet maneuvered into a bad-bad-no-no position a couple weeks before his due date, she researched various stretches and lunges I could do to get him to shift back. It didn't work, but, as a faux-academic, I can always appreciate failed research.

On the day of Niblet's delivery, when I worked for eleven hours to pass his 10+-pound body, which was posterior facing instead of the preferred-anterior position, I kind of, um, stalled out. I was done and ready to wait until he and I both died, whereupon we could romp together in a heaven much like the scene in 1977's James at Sixteen when James had a crush on Little House on the Prairie's Melissa Sue Anderson, and they ran towards each other across a flower-filled meadow. Pretty much, I was ready to be Lance Kerwin, and my unborn baby was cast as Melissa Sue.

But then the damn doula refocused me and told me to lower my vocalizing out of the high-and-ineffective-wounded-puppy range, to drop it more into a gravelly and powerful "This-is-the-big-one-I'm-coming-Elizabeth" Fred Sandford plaint. So I started grunting real low-like and forcing my breath to do some work. It was a pretty remarkable sound of channeled pain.

Fat lot of good it, and the doula, did. Fancy-schmancy labor assistants and their blather about breathing. I'll tell you how to get a damn baby out of you: let a well-paid team of carpenters take their blades to you and cut the thing out.

Now that worked. They hacked me open, and out came Melissa Sue.

Who knew, however, that nearly six years later I'd be giving the low, primal, Sanfordian groans a curtain call...all due to that same Melissa Sue (now a little boy in kindergarten)?

Who knew that I'd be carrying his 54-pound body towards the bunk bed one night and step on this, a much-coveted ring that I'd picked up off the floor already at least twenty-nineteen times that week:



Of course, I was barefoot, and the ring was turned sword side up. Impaled, dropping Melissa Sue, crazy with the pain, I yanked on it.

The ring didn't budge.

I pulled again, harder, trying to get the sword to yield my foot flesh.

Arrrgh, maties, but it hung tight.

For a nano-second, I wondered what kind of boot Steve Madden makes that could accommodate foot-with-pirate-ring-growing-like-a-barnacle-out-of-the-sole.

If it meant new boots, I might be able to live with the thing.

Contemplating my options, I also hopped around wildly and--apparently--emitted a familiarly deep and extended moan of pain.

Generally, cries of pain are ignored in our house, as they are all overblown act, put on by the drama queens that live with my husband and daughter. But in this case, Groom detected a different tenor. He heard the doula keen. He knew my pain was real and that carpenters might need to be called in.

In fact, he was so convinced actual pain was happening that he dropped his chef's knife (thankfully not into his foot; I could have told him that would hurt like a mudder-effer) and raced up the stairs, hollering, "Are you okay?"

At the moment he crested the stairs, I was delivered of a healthy pirate ring. It popped out with a flourish and belched a weak cry. As when Niblet was born, I managed to heave out the words "That. Hurt. Me. A. Lot. That. Should. Not. Happen. Anymore."

Crankily, I hobbled into the bathroom and scrounged for the Bactine and gauze. That's been Niblet's legacy to me: blood and gauze and misplaced toys and despairing cries. Several times now, he liked to have killed me.

This week, as as the lad turns six, I am twirling dizzily in the circle of life. His birth gave me a new noise to make; six years later, I trotted it out again. In six more years, when he's twelve, he'll whack me in the head with a remote control in a fit of pique. He shall make me groan again, and often.

Yet.

Of course.

Without him there would be

no moon that looks like a "sleeping banana,"

no snowman called Puffy made out of cotton balls and M & M's,

no cadre of stuffed kitties named Star, Butterscotch, Strikes, Jingles, and Flash,

no body made prone with laughter over "sufferin' succotash,"

no science "conspiriments" of growing "jiggly crystals that look like the sunset,"

no Baby Paco who is learning to walk (a character he inhabits through much of the day),

no fried eggs and frozen blueberries for lunch,

no heap of broken junk in the basement for "when Dad learns to weld, and we make a robot,"

no one asking Girl to hold him on her lap and groom his hair "like chimpanzees do,"

no one humming "Allouette" under his breath while throwing a bowling ball at Optimus Prime,

no one naming his betta fish Anikin,

no one seranading me with a song that goes "this is my soft leeetle weenis,"

no one climbing into the bed every morning to hug my cranky body to wakefulness,

no one who moves through the world just as I do, a perfect partner in hyper-sensitivity and goof-ass-ish-ness.
--------------------------
Thus, at the end of an extended visceral growl, I have discovered

there couldn't be a more perfect pain.

"Species: Dinkus Dorkus"

So have you ever thought to yourself, "Well, now, Martha, hasn't it been an age since we've had a nice photo with the kids? And looksie-looksie: we seem to be at that rare moment in time when everyone is clothed and within yodeling distance of a bath! Yes, let's do."

Clapping your hands together brightly, you line up the troops, warn them sternly that we actually want a nice photo this time--no "Look how Niblet smeared his quesadilla all over his torso; isn't that precious?" pictures today. No, this will be one we can show the great-grandparents next time we brave the 85 degree indoor temperatures and go visit them in The Home.

So everyone's really trying here.

But pretty quickly,


you realize it ain't gonna happen. The vibe is off. Clearly, everyone had way too big a bowl of Slack Muscle Flakes for breakfast.



No matter how much you try to look like regglar folk, attempt after attempt,


everyone seems to be embracing his/her Inner Eejit. We try to look natural, but somehow we continue to look just as creepily "wrong" as Priscilla Presley's post-op face.

So whaddya going to do?


For us, it was back to normal. Dropping all pretense, we ditched the clothes and laid off the bathing.

"Mockingbirds and Tortoises"

Damn Darwin. Were it not for his meddling ways, I'd still be catching a daily nap just before--okay, more honestly, during--"Oprah."

But he just had to go to the Galapagos and stare at all sorts of birds and turtles. Then he wrote that thing.

And suddenly, everyone was in a tizzy, wanting to roar at each other over what are clearly apples-and-oranges issues. Religion shines best when there are no microscopes in the pulpit; science convinces better when amazing technicolor dreamcoats aren't hung in the lab.

Despite these truths, people started fighting, and they continue to this day.

Unfortunately, I'm just not very conflict oriented. I let pushy bastard-ass drivers on the highway ram through, a strategy that keeps it their problem, not mine. I smile as bossfolk shovel verbal compost and call it "a new initiative." Sometimes, in fact, I have been known to remain in relationships for, say, six years, simply to avoid a fight.

'Cause most fights require hot air and posturing, and doesn't that sound like a lot of work? Generally speaking, I've got better things to do.

Thus, I shouldn't have been so suprised eight years ago, that night I attended a Creation versus Evolution debate at the local high school. I never would have gone, except a colleague--a pal--had agreed to sit on the side of Evolution and use his philosophical skills to debate the visiting evangelical "I'll-Give-Y'all-God-In-This-Here-Slideshow-AND-Scorn-The-Empiricists-Whilst-I'm-At-It" preacher. My colleague was nervous. He needed clapping hands in the audience.

Given the right cause, my hands can be very clappish.

One time, back in '97, I even did a "woot-woot."

Some Chinese Acrobats had just spun plates with their feet. How could I not?

At any rate, Groom and I slogged our way into the auditorium that night and settled into the hard wooden seats. At halftime, I excused myself to "go shake hands with My Savior" in the restroom.

I sat on the toilet and started to muse. Why is it evangelical preachers always wear powder blue suits? Why is it their hair--

KKKKAAAABBBLLLOOOOSH.

My musings were interrupted by an enormous eruption into the toilet. This eruption was so unusual, it was, like, NUMBER THREE, maybe even NUMBER FOUR, if NUMBER THREE was something just a little bit more impressive than poo but less impressive than what had just come out of me. Let's call NUMBER THREE cake batter.

So, yea, a volcanic thing had just exploded into the toilet water. Generally speaking, that can't be good. If it ever happens to you, make sure you mop up but good afterwards, Moby.

Especially when you're just starting Week 37 of your first pregnancy, and you're pretty sure you have, like, a month left to consider packing a bag for the hospital.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The Creationists and the Evolutionists had to go all barky at each other up there on the stage that night, getting my knickers in a very particular bind, and before you know it, my anti-conflict membranes had reacted with a pre-term rupture.

I still don't know if it was an act of God or science that caused it. What I do know is that, eyeing the ensuing bloodletting, we hied it over to the hospital an hour later. To this day, I don't know who was right in that debate at the high school, but a part of me hopes God and Darwin fled the building and settled the argument afterwards by kickin' it on the curb and drinking a couple 40's of malt liquor.

Me? I pretty quickly had a monitor strapped around my belly. "Did you have any idea your contractions are three minutes apart?" the helpful nurse asked.

Contractions? Really? Three minutes apart?

This was starting to sound like the Big Show.

And no. I had no idea I was even having contractions, much less that I'd gotten them to repeat with the regularity of a Dick Wolf cop 'n lawyer show in which a corpse is discovered in the first thirty seconds by an early-morning jogger who stops to retie his trailing shoelace.

Crikey, if these were contractions, this childbearing gig was going to be a walk in the park (just not Central Park, where I'd undoubtedly be attacked by a group of wilding youth who could only be brought to justice through the power of Sam Waterston's homey-voiced closing statement).

A couple hours later, though, I had become one with the contractions. While Groom dozed, I stared at the clock during the peaks of pain and dozed through the valleys.

By morning, infuriatingly, the contractions had stopped all together. At that point, the midwife said we could either go home--and come back later when they started up again--or we could follow the momentum and make the birth happen.

Moment of character revelation: I discovered I don't go through twelve hours of contractions just to be sent home with a casual "catch ya on the rebound." So they rolled out the Pitocin and, as long as they were hooking me up, some penicillin to treat the Strep B that had built a vacation home in my downstairs lady flat.

We were in business. Over the course of the next ten hours or so, I started out determined and then got really tired and then cried and got emotional and then had my spine poked and for awhile there got really happy and chatty and then got all panicky and wild-eyed--the whole thing being kind of like a recap of the conception--and eventually I got really, really angry.

Second moment of character revelation: I hated the pushing. Holy watermelon through a bagel, but I hated the pushing. I was surrounded by medical staff, Me Man, and a crew of galpals. They were all being really good cheerleaders, assuring me, with each push, that I was almost done, that this was IT, that one more push would do it.

Sam Waterston should have prosecuted every last delusive one of them for perjury.

It was NOT the last push. It was never going to be the last push. I hated the push. The push was a pisser.

At one point, as I lay damp and panting in between pushes, the midwife announced, "I'm going to go make a pot of coffee."

She was so carefree, so breezy, I 'bout reared off the bed and severed the midwife's tail.

Turns out, the old Pot of Coffee Trick is well-known, in, um, druidic circles for jumpstarting a plateauing labor.

Midwife returned. Everyone told me--the lying sods--that it would be just one more push.

And then, twelve pushes later, it was. And it was a girl. It was the Girl.

I sobbed crazily, like a woman who had been through labor and a Creation vs. Evolution debate in the course of one 24-hour period.

Hot upon that catharsis, I realized that getting the babe out was just Step One. Step Two was expelling and massaging the mother******* placenta out. Where had that bit of information been, in all my pre-delivery reading? Huh? HUH?

But the Girl was good, and that was lucky, so I muddled through the placental hell; soldiered through the bloody, blistered and cracked nipples the next day; and eventually we all went home. For weeks, lovely friends came and went, urging me to "Enjoy every minute of it because it goes so fast!"

More with the lies. For a long time, every minute felt like three days. Nothing flew by. After a short battle with jaundice, we all were doing fine, but never, never did I end a day wondering where the time had gone. Time was sludge. The second hand had been attached to a glacier.

A few years later, we had Niblet--at which point every minute felt like five days.

Yet.
Now.
In the last couple years.
Things have sped up.

Occasionally, a minute feels like a nanosecond. Occasionally, I start to consider the possibility that all my friends and family aren't just big whoreliars. Time sometimes gets pulled over and issued a speeding ticket.

That fact gives me profound joy, yet it simultaneously rents little fissures into my heart. This moment in my kids' lives is very, very good. It will change soon enough, though.

But what can you do? Just be.

Eight years later, we have gotten pretty good at be-ing with our Girl. She's made it easy.

Before, I had expectations of parenthood--about how challenging it would be, how rewarding, how much it would revolve around caretaking. However, I had no idea

that She would become my friend ("Can I braid your hair now?")

that She would teach me responsibility ("I need to put on my coat and hat by 8:00 and be on the corner by 8:03, or I'll miss the bus, Mom. I need to get ready now.)

that She would take care of us ("Ooh, Niblet, that runny nose needs a Kleenex! Let me get you one.")

that She would earn my respect ("I have some questions I want to ask a lot of people, like a survey. Then, when we get their answers, can I make some graphs of them?")

that She would inspire in me a keen admiration ("I want to run this 5K, and I'm going to beat you, Mom.")

that She would have an uncompromising purity of character ("I can't even breathe right when I think about people having to be slaves. It makes my heart inside of me hurt.")

that She would be unflappable (Of a neighbor boy, "He calls me an idiot all the time. It doesn't bother me because he's wrong.")

that She would illuminate how shy, quiet reserve is also gentle, poised confidence

that, by her 8th birthday (today!), She would be one of my best companions, the person with whom I'd most like to take a walk around the block at the end of the day--that She would be one of my calmest and most-insightful chums

that the promise of Her arrival the night of the debate would be fulfilled a hundredfold by 2nd grade

We created her. And what a delight is has been to watch her evolve.

----------------------------
Semi-incidentally, and if you have any more reading time, my post commemorating the Girl's birthday last year is perhaps my personal favorite...

"Unwrap This"

Roughly forty-one years ago, on March 25th, my mom didn't know what to get my dad for his birthday. Somehow "a child" seemed more creative than "a Mickey Mouse necktie."

So on my dad's 32nd birthday, my mom, spinal-blocked but fully conscious, pushed me out of her girl bits.

Half an hour later, she was snarfing down a ham sandwich.

This was an auspicious start.

Since then, it's become a point of pride that I've never been more than half an hour out from a ham sandwich.

And, except for twice in college, I've been fully-conscious each time I've eaten one.

About two years later, my poor parents had this on their hands.

Of course, Payback never misses an appointment. Right now, I have this on my hands:



And if your questions at this juncture are along the lines of "Is he really in nothing but his boy-panties, is that his sister's sweater he's wearing, and are those his mother's boots?" the answers are yes, yes and more yes, Sweet Ru Paul.

--------------------------------------------
Instead of just wishing me a happy birthday--which you should do, you gauche clod--tell me something about the day you were born, woncha?

"The Twelve-Inch Scar"









Five years ago, on January 17th, I made one of my students vomit.

I hadn't even assigned "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," either.

Rather than yacking up her lunch as a reaction to Coleridge's opium-induced writings, she barfed out of affection and empathy.

See, this student came from a background so sketchy, so traumatic, that you would be skeptical of the details. The first twenty years of her life were positively and brutally cinematic, in a directed-by-Quentin-Tarentino-and-starring-Harvey Keitel-as-a-coke-addicted-mafia-enforcer-with-a-blowtorch-and-a-pair-of-pliers kind of way. In short, any possible abuse that you can imagine inflicted on another human being had been heaped upon her before age 11, when she finally broke free of her parents' terrors one seminal night and found possibility--found life--on the streets.

I didn't know all this at first, of course. All I knew was that she seemed oddly experienced yet unformed there in Freshman Composition, and when I gave students twenty minutes to write up a paragraph of introduction, she fidgeted and ultimately turned in less than a line, apologizing that she was having a bad day. At that time, I didn't know her literacy was so newly-minted that it shattered in the face of pressure.

As the weeks passed, I noticed that she was making tentative overtures of friendship and that she seemed willing to expose some hidden parts of herself (when she came up after I'd assigned the persuasive essay to say, "You told us to write from our personal experience, so, uh, could I argue that the War on Drugs is a good thing, from the point of view of those in the drug trade? I can easily come up with three reasons to support that idea--it keeps our, um, their prices higher and keeps employment opportunities up for some of us, um, them and such to have drugs outside of government control). I told her to go for it, draw from her experience, and if she didn't want to share her essay with classmates during a peer review session, she didn't have to.

In particular, she seemed fascinated by my expanding belly that semester, as I was in my last trimesters of cooking up the Wee Niblet. She started with "I've never seen a healthy pregnancy before" and, a week later, progressed to "So this kid won't be addicted to nuthin' when it comes out, right?" before eventually winding around to "Because of some stuff that's happened to me, I can't have kids."

Thusly, through small disclosures, we became friends. The semester and third trimester carried on.

Then the semester ended in December, and the third trimester carried on. And on. And on. Those last weeks dragged out endlessly, as they do in most pregnancies, but for me they were exacerbated by a big baby in my uterus deciding to turn. Generally speaking, at the end of the pregnancy, a fetus is too big to move much, but Niblet apparently was feeling the squeeze because he shifted from happily-head-down (the Ready to Rock position) at about Week 38 of my pregnancy to Head Up and Right, Head Up and Left, and eventually Head Slowly Descending, which I think is also a yoga pose.

Trust me, having a huge ball of flesh move around in a womb that's stuffed to bursting--bursting like Paris Hilton's closet, but not like her head--is painful. Each time he started travelin', I had to stop and grab the counter or the car or Groom's leg, thinking, "Holy Red Hots, but this is some funky contraction."

Then it would stop, not a contraction at all. I'd clean up the spilled cereal or pick up the groceries or administer a soothing cream to Groom's broken leg skin, and we'd move on.

We did have the support of a doula during the pregnancy and labor, fortunately, and during the "Where the Hell's the Head Now?" phase of things, when I was getting weekly ultrasounds to determine the babe's position, she would come over and help me try to flip the Niblet. There are age-old methods of baby moving, apparently, that require the expectant mother to crouch on the living room floor in a position called Turtle or to do lunges against the edge of the couch, in the hopes of prompting the Little Shaver to rotate. Since these methods have emerged out of eons of childbirth, I found them worth trying, although I never could figure out how prehistoric women did them--what with not having living rooms or couches.

After all my contortions, the baby ended up head down, but anteriorly, not posteriorly (translation: when you're standing behind a birthing woman--which is safer than standing in front of her, where any missiles she lobs...water glasses, car keys, unopened condoms...can nail the innocent onlooker--the baby's face should be looking right at you when it exits the birth canal. In my case, the baby was trying to come out face forward, so he could watch and flinch each time innocent onlookers were pelted with unopened condoms). The upshot was that the kid was overdue and not in ideal position, but he could make it out.

Ultimately, labor was induced. The night before, I was checked into the hospital, where a heavy-handed resident practiced, with loudly-whispered advice from the bystanding nurse, inserting a little P-gel, in the hopes of ripening my crabby cervix and making it more amenable to labor. It didn't help much, so the next morning, they broke out the hard stuff: Pitocin.

Haysoos Marimba, but a Pitocin contraction is a regular contraction on steroids (or, um, Pitocin). Bigger, harder, meaner. I labored for about six hours--in awe at my water breaking, at upchucking my Nutrigrain Cereal Bar when I dilated to four centimeters (classic stuff, I was told). Truth be told, I was only awed for about 4 seconds during that time. The rest of it?

I wanted to die.

There's a reason why I've never written about this day before. Even with my love of juicy vocabulary and a sound thesaurus, I have continued to have the sense that there just aren't words for that day. When I type, "I wanted to die," it sounds cliche. It sounds like me at the mall when I spy the perfect pair of ankle boots on clearance--and, amazingly, they are available in my size--but when I get them to the check-out, I am told they weren't on clearance after all. That's when I usually drum up a good "I just want to die."

So it's almost impossible for me to convey my longing to die that day. Unquestionably, if I had been Linda Purl in The Young Pioneers, out there alone on the prairie, just me in my corn-husk bed, raising my calico skirts to make way for the delivery, reaching for my sewing shears to sever the umbilical cord, I would have died. I would have reached over for my plow-loving husband's rifle, angled it towards my head, and pulled the trigger.

Fully aware of the impact of my actions and the fact that I would miss that year's wheat harvest, I still would have pulled the trigger. Knowing how much we had desired this baby, craved his addition to our family, planned to have him, I would have pulled the trigger.

On our way out of the world, I might have whispered an apology to the baby. But mostly, I would have welcomed the release from the agony. That day, in the hospital, I just didn't care. I only needed it to end.

In my recollection, the long hours are actually a blur. Women in labor dive so deeply, internally, that we don't realize our husbands are shoveling in Dagwood sandwiches while standing next to us--getting the bones in one hand crunched during a contraction, snarfing down a stack of turkey and lettuce with the free hand. I certainly had no idea Groom had eaten. Later, I expressed to Groomeo my admiration at his uncomplaining fast, noting that he must have been incredibly hungry as he worked Support Staff. Turns out, he ate quite a bit while standing a foot away. He probably answered the phone, too, fluffed some pillows, and carried on conversations about the local news anchors' hairstyles. I had no idea.

Certainly, I was not proud; I availed myself of one, two, three epidurals, the story of which is another twelve-page post. In brief, epidurals are more efficaciously administered when the hospital pages the anesthetist on duty, not one who is at home shoveling his sidewalk. And certainly, I had my peeps. Pulling me through that day were not only the doula and Groom but also our kids' Godmamas (the beautiful lesbians), my cousin's wife (herself nine months pregnant, yet she dropped to her knees repeatedly to massage my lower back as we paced the halls very early in the process, helping me wheel the IV stand along), and my mother (who was ultimately sent from the room, when she couldn't handle seeing her own grown-up baby girl in such a state). This troupe went through their own physical contortions on my behalf: pressing into me a foot or an elbow to counteract the back labor; chasing the heartbeat around my uterus with a mobile monitor, to avoid having to insert a scalpal monitor into the baby, who was firmly lodged inside of me; getting my husband that big ole sammy.

Even surrounded by help and love, however, I was ready to die.

Still working, our doula urged me to lower my vocalizing from high, squeaking, ineffective pips down to lower, stronger, diaphragm-centered tones, yet the baby didn't descend any further. The nurses came and went with a bustle. And then the resident insisted on checking my dilation during a contraction.

As I bellered at this painful indignity, and the cast swirled around me, trying to regain focus out of chaos, the curtain shielding the door to my room was pushed aside. It was my excited, naive student. She was happy, expectant, ready to see a healthy baby for the first time in her life. She was ready to behold the post-birth beauty of Mother and Child, nestled in joyous union.

Instead, she walked in on Dante's Inferno, if Homer Simpson had doused that inferno with charcoal lighter and held a Bic to it before spraying the whole thing with aerosol hairspray.

At the moment she popped through the door, she heard one of my low, gutteral,"I-am-a-broken-person" moans. It struck her as a familiar a sound. It struck her as the same sound she'd made herself in moments of profound physical pain, when others were on her, in her, torturing her. It struck her that I was dying. I wager it struck her that I wanted to die. She'd been there.

As the doula called out to my stunned student "This is NOT a good time," she'd already turned and run--run down the hall, stumbling into the nearest bathroom, where she vomited up her visceral reaction to what she'd seen and heard.

For the rest of that day, both of us were shaking. I had five more hours of torment before decelerations in the baby's heartbeat led to an emergency C-section. Strangely, I felt shame about not being able to get that baby out on my own. I felt I hadn't worked hard enough. I felt a failure.

However. When the blessed epidural finally took effect in the operating room, and the misery ceased for the first time in eleven hours, and I proclaimed my everlasting love to the anesthesiologist, they pulled the Niblet out of me, and no matter how he got here, I was oh-so-glad he had arrived.


(with Niblet weighing in at a few ounces over 10 pounds, the surgical team greeted him with a roar of appreciation; for at least a few more days, he had the distinction of being the biggest baby born in the city that year)

Due to the sheer amount of painkiller my body had accumulated throughout the day, I had been on oxygen; I had the shakes; I had uncontrollable itching. As I was prepped to move into the recovery room, the brusque surgeon took two seconds to stop by my arm, which she touched briefly. I had been warned that bedside manner wasn't her forte, but her words sliced me as deftly as her knife: "You need to know that you couldn't have done this any other way. Neither you nor he would have made it. This was the only option."

It is so rare that we hear exactly what we need to, exactly when we need it most. She gave me that rare solace.

---------------------------
The day after Niblet was excised, when I was still hooked up to the ease-inducing morphine pump, the phone in my hospital room rang.

It was my dear, traumatized student. She opened with, "So you're alive?" An hour later, she sat at my bedside, a bag of chocolates in her hand. With awe, she took in the fact that I had been through such an ordeal, yet I was still her same Jocelyn (read: happy to see the chocolate). When the nurses brought my boy in for a feeding, she refused to hold him, aw-shucks-ing that she wouldn't want to drop him.

A few minutes later, after our goodbyes, I spied her down the hall, standing outside the nursery, where she stared through the glass at him with marvel bordering on reverence. Overwhelmed, I hit the button on my morphine drip and clutched a pillow to my foot-long incision, grimacing as I anticipated the pain of an approaching sneeze.

That hospital hall saw my student move from spew to wonderment in the course of twenty-four hours. It took me weeks to recover from the agony of Niblet's delivery, but the sight of her down that hall, her nose against the glass, appreciating for me what she could, can, never have, was an instant benediction.

Her joy at my good fortune,

her joy at seeing a healthy, welcome child,

her joy in his tightly-swaddled purity

reminded me that beauty can be birthed out of terror and anguish.




And now Niblet is five, and Student has just this week accepted her first professional job.

As a nurse.

"Arc of Some Skivers"

In the fall of 1985, my mom dropped me off near the little town in Minnesota where I would be starting college.

Fortunately, my aunt and uncle lived at the spot where she stopped the car, so it wasn't like I was left trying to hitch a ride to campus or anything. Mom had a meeting back in Montana the week my college experience commenced; thus, she dumped me on my aunt and uncle a little early with instructions to "ditch the girl at the dorm next to the smelly ponds sometime next week. Oh, and here are her sheets, size Extra Long."

They heeded her words, and a week later, Sheets and I were deposited at an imposing cinderblock structure on an otherwise bucolic campus. After the goodbyes, I felt as many freshmen do: a little excited; a little bewildered; a whole lot lonely. I tried to act confident and cool as I blasted my cassettes of Howard Jones ("OOOOH, what's love got to do, got to do with it?") and bought new highlighters, accoutrements which would, I hoped, help me decipher my HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN EUROPE textbook. Who was this Balzac, I wondered, and would covering his life story with bright yellow marker make it more meaningful?

Essentially, I was bewildered and adrift.

Gradually, though, that business of hanging in there and faking it did pay off. I met some people, and we flirted with each other. Pretty much, they all lived in my dorm. On some levels, they affirmed my feelings of worry and inferiority, for they were Big Smart, well-traveled, and accomplished. In comparison, I felt Just Smart Enough, provincial, and a touch hayseed.

More importantly, however, they affirmed my worthiness. They thought I was funny; they invited me to sit under their tapestries and listen to The Replacements; they wanted to go in with me on a late-night Domino's double cheese pizza. Together we wrote (in highlighter) own new history. They transformed me.

Now, twenty-two years later, these pals from college still rock me like a hurricane. After graduation, everyone cast about for careers, spouses, homes. While we threw our voices into the greater world, this college crowd also continued its common thrum. I was with some of them the first time they got drunk. Later, I was with them when they got married. We've carried each other through divorces and the deaths of parents and the joys of babies being born. Damn it if these people haven't turned out to be found-siblings that only cost our families about $30,000 per year in tuition to discover.

Along the way, there have been times when our closeness has waxed. Then it's waned. For a few years, I thought some of the relationships were gone, that they'd shriveled beyond repair or care.

Now that I'm forty, though, I sit at the vantage point of a queer maturity: I can see the larger arcs of friendship. It came as a big life lesson to realize that even when a relationship has seemed dead for some time, it can still be revived. What I sometimes thought was belly up had simply gone dormant. With the slightest puff of air, we always resuscitate completely.

Hence, when many of us gathered a couple of months ago to celebrate the birthday of one of our luminaries, it was a true celebration--and not just because there were little hors d'oevres of butternut squash soup served in shot glasses and shrimp tacos and scallop empanadas and free wine and Red Velvet cupcakes and itty spanikopitas.

It was a celebration of longitudinal camaraderie.


And buttercream frosting.

"If You Wheel It, He Will Roll"

Groom just turned thirty-seven.

We gave him a unicycle.

He should never have said, offhandedly, as he bit into a piece of watermelon this summer, "By the time I'm forty, I want to be able to ride a unicycle."

'Cause then we gave him one.

And now he has to master the sucker.






















Thus, Groom's birthday saw him down in our dungeon, learning how to mount the thing (and, yes, we keep the house cold enough that indoor hat-wearing is called for; stop being such a wussy guest and hat-up already). Balance will come later. Even one day in to his training, he already maintains it will give him a core workout to rival the pilates class taught by the Ab Nazi at our gym.

Since I can't have them myself, due to the chocolate-worshipping tenet of my religion, I do so appreciate rock-hard abs in others. When the census-taking ab-checkers come to our door next year, Groom's unicycle-hardened belly will earn their respect. Just to get them to put X's in all the right boxes, I'm willing to intensify the display and eat a smidgeon of lentil soup out of his belly button. Just 'cause I can. Those ab-census-takers will get an afternoon of entertainment beyond all dreams when they hit Unicycle House.

The unicycle is, indeed, a gift that will keep on giving.


supportive applause

The Wee Niblet can't wait until Pappy can juggle flaming torches on the unicycle. Girl can't wait to play tag with him and be chased by Unicycle It. I can't wait to see him make stir-fry on the roll.

Face it: we are circus folk.

----------------------
P.S. Stop coveting our orange shag carpet. Your desire is unattractive.

"Talent Will Tell"









Most nights, I watch only the first three minutes of the evening news. Everyone knows the first three minutes are where it's at, and the other twenty-seven minutes are all weather teasers; superficial overviews of happenings nationally and internationally; the weather guy in an outside-the-studio weather garden ringing a bell because the night is, er, "clear as a bell"; hockey highlights; regional weather reports; weather-across-the-nation summaries; stories about how Gordy at Gordy's High-Hat Diner has been pleasing crowds for three decades with his well-fried hamburgers; and weather predictions for the following day, all capped off with some stilted banter between faux-jovial anchors ("That cold weather, Steve, that's kind of like 'brrrr, why do we live here, isn't it?'" "Don't you know it, Seth! I couldn't have said it better.")

Okay, I have to be honest here. I don't even think the first three minutes are worth tuning into, much less the other twenty-seven agonizing minutes. Local evening news--any evening news--is a bunch of overpackaged blather (Gordy and his burgers notwithstanding).

But sometimes I tune in, just to see if Dick Cheney's shot anyone that day.

And occasionally, even if Cheney has kept his finger off the trigger and his hands off George Bush's marionette strings, the evening news coughs up a goodie. For the last four years here in Duluth, those goodies have come from one source, a baby-faced newbie reporter-cum-anchor named Edward Moody.

My relationship with Edward started when he, a fresh graduate from some Kansas university, landed a job "here in the Northland." For his first assignment, his mettle was tested when studio heads packaged his lithe frame into a huge parka and stationed him, in the middle of a severe ice storm with hurricane-force winds, out on the most blustery corner in our beloved hamlet of Frigidville. For many greenhorn reporters, this would have been a moment with which they would not have reckoned at all well. Many unseasoned reporters would have watched their frozen fingers snap off, one by one, blowing away in the tempest, and decided, "Mom, Dad, I'm coming home to live in the basement. My blogging will keep me out of trouble; I promise."

But not Edward. Nae, Edward fluffed his parka, clung to the microphone with every frozen finger still dangling from his paw, and shouted to the camera with an enthusiasm bordering on glee: "This is Edward Moody, coming to you from the Coppertop Church, where small children are flying by my head, their bodies encased in ice! You can hear faint splashes as their bodies reach the lake and are tossed in!! Even better, cars all around me are skidding into light poles, but luckily their frames are buffered by the two inches of ice coating their exteriors. Indeed, this is no night for man, beast, or daycare to venture out!!!!"

Then he winked, turned a cartwheel right there in the church parking lot, and wrapped it all up by doing jazz hands after tossing a baton twenty feet into the air (not that he caught it; the baton was found the next day embedded into the side of the Positively Third Street Bakery, where it had narrowly missed decapitating a worker who was rolling out challah dough).

In short, Edward breathed passion and fire into that ice storm, melting hearts around the city.

The next day, I sent in my registration and dues for the as-yet-nonexistent Edward Moody Fan Club. It's a great club to be a part of, since there are no meetings or officers. We do nothing but tune into the universal vibe that is Edward. And we don't even have to watch the news to feel that. It just thrums amongst the stars.

After such an auspicious start, his natural talent and boyish enthusiasm fast-tracked him to a job as weekend and morning anchor. More than anything, the populace of Duluth has been eager to see him grow facial hair and hear his voice change. We've folded the lad unto our bosom, and isn't he turning out nicely?

So you can imagine how exponentially my affection grew a few months ago when I staggered down to the television one morning at 6:15, turning it on as I grappled about for a Backyardigans DVD that might sedate the Wee Niblet and tamp down his natural energies until at least sunrise, only to find Edward already in the studio, dapper in his usual sartorial splendor, presiding over the morning news.

I stood up a little straighter and ran a hand through my tousled hair, discreetly testing my breath in the palm of my hand (Verdict? Nasty.). Averting my mouth from the television, I watched peripherally, as Edward put his own stamp on morning anchoring.

At the end of the broadcast, Edward suddenly departed from reading the teleprompter, acting initially as though he was launching into some wooden repartee with the weather guy:

"It was my birthday yesterday, you know, Todd."

"Oh, well, happ--"

"And you know, Todd, I was feeling a little down..." [editor's note: It's hard to be a person of color here in Honkeytown, not to mention young and, I speculate, gay...so don't go getting the idea that feeling depressed is a usual thing for Edward. Don't. He's fine. He just had ONE hard day, all right?]

"Geez, Edward, that's too bad. But you know, we at the station all wish you a happ--"

"And so here's the thing, Todd. I went up to the mall..." [another editor's note: Bad idea, Edward. The mall never made anyone feel better, even if they got a Cinnabon. That thing goes to the hips for a lifetime and is the stuff of regret.]

"Wow, that's great, Edward. The mall is a great place to see some weather, which we now need to wrap up..."

"And after I'd walked around for awhile--feeling a little mopey, I'll admit--I headed out to the parking lot."

"Wow. Now we really do need to just recap the weather. Tomorrow we'll see..."

"And when I was in the parking lot, a woman drove by and recognized me. She stopped and rolled down her window to tell me that she's a fan and how much she likes the broadcast..." [editor's note: How could she not? It's EDWARD, and he is possessed of a natural charisma the likes of which Bill Clinton only aspires to] "...and then she started telling me about how watching our show has really helped get her through some hard times."

"Sure enough, people have hard times in all kinds of weather, don't they, Edward? And if I could just go into some of that NOW..."

"So I listened to her tell me about her thirteen-month-old son and how he'd been really having a really hard time because he'd needed a series of eye surgeries..." [editor's note: I don't have a thirteen-month-old, already. And no eye surgeries. I wasn't at the mall that day. Sure, one time I ran into Edward at the grocery store and mauled him near the butter, asking him, "So who *does* choose your on-air clothes? Because you are always so turned out." But, swearsies, that was not me at the mall that day.] "...and she was just telling me how difficult the last year has been for her and how she really appreciated the brightness I'd brought into her mornings..."

"That's really interesting, Edward. We're just about out of time here, so quickly, let me just warn..."

"And after I thanked her for her kind words, I really had a moment there. I know we're about out of time, Todd, but it really hit me there in the parking lot that no matter how bad you think you've got it, there's always someone else who has it worse...." [editor's note: I'm sure the hard-times woman felt really good about herself when she watched you say that, Edward. But we can forgive you one gauche misstep. You're young, after all, and compassion comes in baby steps.] "...and so I needed to buck up and realize that I should just be appreciating what I have. Now, Todd, I know I've used up your time here, but we've got to sign out now. This is Edward Moody, along with Todd Hansen, hoping you have a good day."

As the cameras pulled back, Todd's body language remained agitated--after all, he hadn't finished off his broadcast with the much-needed thirteenth reminder to "grab an umbrella before heading out"--while Edward's face softened into misty dreaminess as he further mused on the lessons of his birthday.

The following week, swear to Cronkite, Todd Nelson announced that he would be switching stations and becoming the weather dude for a new FOX nightly news broadcast.

My forecast for Todd in his new job? A cold front of completely scripted weather updates, sprinkled with showers of awkward banter alternating with deep sighs of opportunity-missed, topped off with patches of keening for the sunshine that is Edward "Keepin' It Real" Moody.