Magnolias

So, I'm beginning to come out from under the baby haze. I even have Dylan lying on the bed next to me while I type this and he's totally entranced by Larry's belt or something else sitting in that general direction.

Yesterday was the first glorious day of true spring, a little late in coming, but welcome nonetheless (however you spell that word!). Dylan had a doctor's appointment in the morning and I had a midwife appointment in the afternoon, and it was so nice out that I decided to just spend the whole middle of the day wandering around. As a result Dylan got to breastfeed in a number of interesting locales, including on a bench next to a smoking, but very polite homeless man.

Magnolias and Dogwoods are my favorite trees -- although I can't tell the difference between them. I love their lush flowers that shade from deep pink to white, but they die very quickly. First the flowers open too far, like a middle aged woman who still relies on the makeup routine she used when she was 20. Then, the tender white ends of the petals turn yellow and thin, as if someone has smushed them on purpose. Finally, the petals fall off individually and the branches, while still in bloom, but lacking any of the green that will come later to fill them up, looks scraggly, naked, while beneath the tree a carpet of rotting petals builds. It is one of the hardest trees to catch at its perfect peak, but when you do, it's breathtaking.

There is a magnolia garden in the middle of the colonial section of Philadelphia, one in a string of connecting gardens that run throughout the old city. I love to walk that route and yesterday, Dylan and I meandered through it, taking the time to stare at the daffodils -- ok, I stared and he slept -- and rest under arbors. It was delightful. It felt so great to stretch my legs and take advantage of one of the best parts of the city -- one I don't often get a chance to appreciate -- especially with my little son in tow.

The best part was the magnolia garden. I had Dylan in his baby carrier at that point, so I left the carriage at the foot of the stairs and strolled slowly through it with the baby. We just stood under the trees and felt the breeze. There were people reading on benches and there was a hushed sense of being in a quiet, contemplative place in the middle of the city. No one was talking and all cell phones were silent. The trees even blocked the sounds of the traffic. The magnolias were just a hair past their prime, but still lovely. I sat on a bench, kissed my baby's head and teared up at the beauty of spring. I decided I would go back to school in the fall and this summer I will make it to Montana. After all, I've turned 30, had a baby, started my own business and am married to the man I love. Now I just have to lose the last 20 pounds of baby weight and I'll be a chick lit heroine. Ok, maybe not, but standing there beneath the blue sky and the floral crosses of pink and white, I felt like life is pretty damn good.

new life

This is my first post since having the baby and it is such a respite to write. I am typing as fast as I can because I can hear him stirring downstairs - our little dylan henry. He's great. But he hasn't let me put him down in days. except the last hour and I finally got my bills paid and my dinner eaten -- first things first. well - I hear crying. looks like second things second will have to wait ...

Speach

Larry's sisters and mom are throwing me a baby shower this weekend and I cannot wait. I hope they won't think it's too corny, but I want to give a little speach. I don't know if I've ever given a speach before. We didn't do anything at our wedding or even, I think our rehearsal dinner. I guess I've spoken at friends' weddings and at my grandmother's funderal, but that's different. Anyway, this is pretty much what I want to say:

When Barb called me to tell me she and Jeannie and Eleanor were making me this party I was so touched. It was so important to me to share this really special time in my life with the important women in my life and I'm so excited you are all here.

Larry is always talking about how much he loves my family -- and that's such a blessing for me. He gets job advice from my dad and they chat about music all the time and he gets cooking lessons from my mom and grandmother. And I'm always telling Larry I actually married him for his sisters. When I was having job trouble this winter I kept Barb on the phone for hours and Jeannie's talked me through every moment of pregnancy hysteria. Sometimes I think Kevin is the only one who gets my sense of humor and Eleanor is, of course, the most supportive mother-in-law I could ask for. The only person that I miss - of course - is Nancy, but I know she's thinking about us, just like we're always, always thinking about her.

And all his wonderful cousins and aunts! I was telling Larry the other day that I was daydreaming about all the parties that are about to happen - all the graduations and first communions that bring everyone together in the spring - and I said I can't wait to be there and play pass the baby with all your cousin and aunts. It's going to be so great - Ryan and Jayden will be just this baby's age and they're going to grow up together. Because of the war, my family is very small and I grew up without any cousins - barely even any second cousins, so it's so wonderful to me that my children will have that.

And I also have to say that it was Mary Pat who actually convinced Larry to let me try natural childbirth -- so if I'm screaming bloody murder a week from now it'll be all her fault!

Anyway, I just could not ask for a more caring, more forgiving, more amazing family - on both sides - to bring this baby into. Thanks you guys so much for doing this for us. I love you!

Well, admittedly, it is pretty corny, but that's ok, I think. Showers by their definition are pretty corny, no? So, oh well, I give into the cheese. After all, it really is what's in my heart.

The Evil Eye

I just got off the phone with my sister, who is not sure she wants to come to my baby shower. She says she is superstitious, but I really don't undersand why. I've never been much for superstition, although I do read my horoscope sometimes. Anyway, I never even knew Jewish women didn't have baby showers until 2 years ago when my friend Nitza was pregnant. I was like, oh, let's make her a baby shower, and everyone was like, no, you can't because of the evil eye.

The evil eye is very annoying and inconvenient, if you ask me. When my mother was born, my grandparents kept her in a drawer. A drawer - I swear to god! When I was a kid, I always thought they meant that they pulled out a drawer, stuck her in it, and then closed it back up, still full of socks and everything. I guess they must have kept it on the ground by their bed and had it lined with blankets and stuff. Actually, it probably made quite a cozy little bassinett, but that's not why they did it -- they did it out of fear.

Historically, when mothers and babies survived childbirth far less often than they do today, I suppose it made sense. After all, how terrible to have to return all those gifts and furniture and everything. But I was always taught to prepare well ahead of time for new situations and this seems like a situation you'd want to be really prepared for. You don't want to be out shopping for a crib 3 days after giving birth, when you're sleep-deprived and just learning how to breastfeed and stuff - right?

But the thing I was trying to explain to my sister is I don't want the baby shower for all the presents -- as my mother pointed out, people are going to give us plenty of stuff no matter what. And whatever we don't get, we'll just buy on Craigslist (much to my grandmother's horror). For me, the party is right of passage, a welcoming into this stage of womanhood. My sister pointed out that some Jewish people have parties after they give birth with men and women and the baby there -- but that's really a party for the baby, not the mom. This is really about femaleness and fertility. I don't know if it's corny or too anthropological to describe it this way, but I would be so sad not to have this little celebration. I am completely grateful to Larry's sisters for organizing it for me. It also really means a lot that my mom is going to come - even if she's not going to bring a present (actually, she already sent me a stroller/car seat, which I promised to keep in the basement until the actual arrival). Anyway, it means a lot to me, even if it's cheesy, so I hope she'll change her mind and come, because that would be really sweet and it would be so nice to have her there.

A Quail's Coffin

I watched Babette's Feast tonight. Good winter movie. I was making beef stew. It's not quite the lush perfection of the Cafe Anglais, but it smelled good and I know it will warm Larry's belly when he gets home soon.

It's so cold out and he has to wait alone for the subway. It makes me feel like some sort of prarie wife, waiting for her man to come in off the barren plains. It is nice to be home, covered in a blanket like a shawl, having put in a hard day's work myself. I love working from home, even if I do get a little lonely sometimes. I have a new peace.

I think it's like the movie - how good food links the physical with the spiritual world and breaks down the stoicism of this religious community. Sometimes we get so caught up in the rat race of it all, it's hard to remember the joys of earthly basics like good food and it's hard to remember that so many of the things that seem like such big deals don't really matter in the end. I choose a bread and chocolate life.

I looked deep into the mirror as I was brushing my teeth just now. I get lost like that sometimes, wondering who that woman on the other side is and what she has to do with me, other than a snaggletooth that needs fixing and some chin hairs that need desperate plucking. For the first time in a long time my eyes don't have bags; its the third trimester exhaustion and the former job stress --- but that feels lifted. I saw my big eyes and my round face and the zits by my hairline. I saw the blond streaks growing out and the shiny brown coming in. The elastic of my black shirt caught the hollow light of our tiny bathroom because it is stretched so thin across my belly and breasts. I looked at that woman in the mirror, a woman who makes mistakes, but, I think, a good woman, and I thought, I am ready to be a mother. For the first time in a very long time, that thought didn't scare me.

My baby is all but bursting out of me already (so it's a good thing I'm getting used to the idea of him in my life). I am all belly. I am a ripe fruit. He bolts around inside me like a torpedo. I think he must be very squished in there.

We need to come up with a middle name for this baby. Dylan is such a hard name for an infant, I think. I know it will suit him later on - I still love the name - but when he comes out all tiny and bloody, when he's screaming and cold and wrinkled, I think it will be too solid a name just yet. Larry still won't go for Sawyer as a middle name. It's still my favorite, but I guess I can't win all arguments (even though we all know I should!!!). So, I've been thinking Solomon, Sebastian, Stefan, Sagi. Sagi means strong - and that would certainly be a name to do justice to my grandmother's dirt-tough legacy - but I'm not sure I love the sound of the name. Sebastian sounds like a young, royal paige with blond bangs flopping in his eyes. It was also the name of the boy in the Never Ending Story, and I would love for my child to grow up with that sense of wonder, imagination, fortitute, and, of course, indulgence in the power of the written word. 'Course that kid was also a dork that had to hide from bullies and I don't want a sissy for a son (or a daughter).

The other thing we still have to figure out is the ceremony of it all. Larry convinced me to do a bris. It wasn't hard, because it would be such a fight with everyone not to have it, but I really don't see much of a point to it. It's weird to me to decide to chop off a piece of his little body - especially as I consider the "natural" alternatives of not giving him every vaccine on the list. I also don't think he needs a nicked noodle to be a part of the Jewish people. I mean, I know rabbis would say he does, but shouldn't religion, faith, and peoplehood emanate from the mind and spirit? Then again, Judaism certainly teaches a strong connection between the two hemispheres - something I believe in strongly -- I'm just not sure I see this particular connection. I mean, is he going to think about being Jewish every time he pees or has sex?

Well, Larry should be home soon, and I should get this belly to bed. I was up at 6:30 this morning, working on a spec assignment. I feel good about that. I like working for myself. It feels so much more meaningful. It feels solid, rooted. I just hope I can keep up that feeling as I enter this sacred, liminal space of emergence and life. Namaste, I guess.

my famous blue raincoat

I am standing in a CVS in Boston with my brother buying junk food and pre-natal vitamins when a magazine cover catches my eye. It is a photo of the young actress Scarlett Johansen, who I like because she chooses good roles and plays them with depth. The headline says that Cameron Diaz’s boyfriend has left her and he has hooked up with Johansen instead. It describes Johansen as Diaz’s enemy, which certainly juices up the story. Since I do not follow Hollywood gossip, I have no idea if this is remotely true or has even been long-rumored. What catches me off guard is the idea of Johansen, whose character I imagine to be sweet and down to earth, with an enemy. It occurs to me that part of the reason I like Johansen is that I feel a kinship with her; I picture her as a beautiful, actress version of myself: smart, funny, buxom, unafraid to embrace her inner dork. This impression is based on flimsy information gathered mostly from the characters she’s played in movies, and yet it moves me to think: Scarlett Johansen has an enemy and I do, too.
This is the first time in my life I have had an enemy and I find it hard to get used to the idea. This is also the first time in my life I have ever disliked a person so much. I will not say I hate her, because hate is a word filled with a high level of anger I do not posses. Stunned would much better describe how I feel. I am both stunned by my feelings of dislike and by my own actions. The actions that lead this person to become my enemy were predicated not on my dislike, but almost wholly on my fear and a sense of survivalism. As in, if I didn’t act, I feared this person would hurt me far worse than I was hurting her. In the end, I may have been wrong about that, because we both ended up getting burned, but I do feel sure I was right to fear her, that she is a bad person, that she wanted my destruction far more than I wanted hers, that she would have stopped at nothing to get it, and that she had better means to do so than did I. All of these things are what make me dislike her so much. It is a ridiculous revelation for me each time I realize how much she must hate me back.
In my dream last night, my enemy tried to trick me, but I didn’t see the ruse until I woke up in the morning. Our devolution from friends to enemies was always predicated on her trying to help me. I am not a cynical person, and I always believe people are who they say they are, offer what they mean to offer, are as honest as me. It never occurs to me that people I trust - and I trust almost everyone - are out to hurt me, have ulterior motives, or mean anything other than the good they profess. My grandfather always says not to trust anyone an inch, but since he also focuses on bitter family feuds that took place more than half a century ago, I have always laughed at him. Now I wish I had listened.
Before I tell the dream, here is a case in point, a very small point, which, by its very smallness shows how endemic is this enemy’s insidiousness. Before I told this person I was pregnant, she was constantly showing me photos of her cousin, who was about to give birth. She asked me how big pregnant women were supposed to grow, since her cousin had gone from skinny to huge, and a number of other pregnancy-related questions, none of which I knew the answers to, because I was so newly pregnant myself. I was always afraid of answering her questions because I was afraid she would find out I was pregnant before I wanted to tell her, which could have had very bad consequences for me, but it never occurred to me that she actually suspected I was pregnant and was trying nearly every day to get me to admit it so that she could use that information against me. After the incidents that made me her enemy occurred, a friend pointed out that that had been exactly her intent all along. I felt so stupid for not having noticed or even suspected. I thought this person would be able to see beyond politics and be at least a little happy for me and the new family I was starting. I was so naïve.
In my dream, I was naïve again, and it felt like relief. My enemy was suddenly in the picture and was talking to me normally. She was going about work in her usual way, giving me too much information and extolling her accomplishments. She told me she had a job working for the business desk of the Philadelphia Inquirer and she’d brought a number of people from our old situation with her, mostly students and cloying underlings. She says she knows we’ve had our differences, but says I should talk to her new boss, explain that I’m with her, and he will give me writing assignments. I am glad for the openness, but not sure I want the assignments. In addition, her boyfriend is there and he is following me suspiciously. He is a nice guy and I hope that in real life he won’t be hurt by her. In the dream, my enemy is telling me how our new life together will go, the only detail of which I remember is that I am supposed to move in with her. I do not want to do that because her place is a mess, full of shoes and clothes, and because I do not like the way she is laying out the future. She is not order me around outright, but assumes I will do what she says. I begin to have the vague notion that if I do what she wants now, I will be doing what she wants forever. Then there is the impression of someone else, and I remember that I am married. Larry certainly can’t move here with me. I tell her quietly thanks but no thanks, that I have another writing assignment from another desk at the paper -- which is true in real life -- and that it was nice of her to think of me. Then I walk out of the room and out of the dream calmly, as she stares resentfully after me. I wake up feeling even more relieved.
If this situation doesn’t represent plotwise what happened between us in real life, it certainly represents it symbolically. I trusted her instead of myself and when I finally realized how dangerous she is, I was honest to a fault and left. In life, the situation was much more dramatic and full of gray areas, but it felt the same. I beat myself up daily for the real life situation, like a soldier who survived war but had to kill men. In both the dream and real life, ridding my enemy from my life is still the source of my greatest relief. I am so thankful, even as I sort through the emotional, financial, and bureaucratic debris of the fallout, that I do not have to deliver my baby with the black cloud of my enemy in my life. The fact that the pale memory of her will always be with me is like a battle wound. Luckily, having wounds means you’ve survived the battle.

Wordsmith

To grow up Jewish is to grow up in awe of words. Had I grown up Catholic, I believe I would have become a painter, a mosaicist, or a jewelry maker. I remember seeing the Vatican in Rome and the Sisteen Chapel and thinking, Oh, I get it, this is what makes people believe in God. I did not grow up Catholic, nor did I grow up to believe in God in any traditional sense. I grew up to believe in words.

I remember in college, I would dream in typewriter. That is, as I thought the thoughts that lead me into sleep or those that woke me from it, I often saw them typed out, each letter hit on an imaginary keyboard in my head.

Now I make my living with words, weaving them into stories and eliciting them from people whose stories are locked deep within them. One of my greatest feelings of accomplishment at my present job came after I finished interviewing a man who has lived for decades with full blown AIDS. This man is a motivational speaker for a local AIDS group, so he's comfortable talking about hard subjects, including the details of his own disease, but usually he speaks as an educator, divulging his status simply to make a point. During our interview, we talked about his life, his lovers, his drugs (his prescription drugs, that is), and his struggles. We went into deep detail and the detail was fascinating to me (and hopefully later to the website's listeners, as well). Afterwards, the man thanked me for my questions and I felt wonderful. He was so happy to tell this much more personal story and we both agreed it would make a difference to whoever heard it.

Though I no longer dream in typewriter, I do often still dream in words. Sometimes, I wake up and can barely describe the colors and voices and smells of my dreams. The plot is completely tangled. But often there is one word or a feeling of a word that sticks with me, makes me see the waking world differently.

My writing guru, Mary, has explained that in stories dialogue is action. That words can be considered action is so revolutionary to me. Recently, I heard a lawyer who is also a novelist interviewed on a radio show. He related how his law school professor told the class that the law, after all, is only a collection of words. This stunned the man, because in his mind, the law is so powerful. But, of course, these are words that describe actions, and, more to the point, words are powerful. So, words = law = power or law = words = power.

As Chanukah approaches, I think of the story of the Maccabees, their war, their miraculous oil, the lesson that we are all vessels, empty oil jugs, and that God - however we conceive him - is here to fill us, to light our flames. As a kid, I used to wonder how much of these fairy tales could be true (I was a rather cynical kid). Now I realize it doesn't matter. It is the words that fill us with light against these short days and long, dark nights.