Squeeze the Universe

2007-09-05T09:31:00.000-04:00

moving

2007-09-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

what do you pack when you're moving from one niche in cyberspace to another?

i've been looking around my little blog, wondering what should stay and what should go. should i take the little half-thoughts that have been floating around and fold them into sentences, squeezing out adverbs and adjectives so that i can fit more into the truck? should i find a box to shoehorn in this wonderful color of ochre? should i stuff the whole web--all its tricksy links hooking one thing to another--into the carebear bag i've been taking everywhere since i was five? should i ask you to come with me? should i pull your little cyber-self from wherever it's waiting and ask it to come, to sit next to me in the front of my buzzing yellow penske?

you would come, wouldn't you? if i asked?

little italy

2007-08-28T10:14:00.000-04:00

my next door neighbor is small italian grandma: gray wirey hair and quite the repertoire of house dresses and seersucker shorts.

me and hal were playing in the front yard yesterday when she pulled her buick up onto the sidewalk. after rummaging for a minute, she walked over to us holding two giant bottles of lemon juice.

"two eighty-nine," she said. "for two bottles!"

i smiled. "went out to sam's club again?"

she nodded. "and i've got twenty pounds of nuts!"

"do you need help carrying them in?" i asked.

"bah," she said, waving her hand at me.

"i've got eighteen loaves of zucchini bread to bake today."

our other neighbor walked up. "you're crazy, lydia," she said. "it's too hot."

"i don't even feel it," my little grandma said. "got the oven on and everything and i don't even feel it." she walked back toward her door holding a jar of lemon juice in each hand.

the next morning i found a loaf of zucchini bread neatly wrapped in wax paper, with a tiny label in curling script: milk chocolate.

the real problem

2007-08-27T08:22:00.000-04:00

i've been thinking about this for days. (i know, i should be doing the laundry.) but what it comes down to is this: i just don't like edward. i don't think he's interesting. i wouldn't want to hang out with him for an entire saturday. i don't get chills whenever he walks into a scene.

so go ahead. enlighten me. what's so great about him?

howl

2007-08-23T12:44:00.001-04:00

stephenie meyer has done it again. i've spent all morning debating whether i would sooner date a werewolf or a vampire.

it seems to me a tricky question, but bella, the heroine of eclipse doesn't seem to be having any trouble deciding.

now, go ahead and cast stones at me, but i'm a parent of a future teenager and i can't help twisting out the moral implications of young adult fiction. and when it comes right down to it, i really have a problem with edward, specifically the relationship between him and bella. it seems to be built around all the wrong things: looks, fate, muscles, curiosity. bella routinely describes edward as an angel, as if his admirable self-control and really hot body make up for the fact that he is what he is--a vampire. she constantly belittles herself around him, always pointing out to herself and to us that she isn't good enough. besides that, there's no real friendship between the two characters. edward never gives bella the full story and rarely allows her to take part in the decision making. it's a completely physical relationship that can't even get physical! (although, i have to thank ms. meyers for having edward so staunchly protect bella's virginity.) if bella were my daughter, i would be more bothered by her inferiority complex with this boyfriend than his vampiric tendencies.

juxtapose edward against jacob and i'm even more confused at the impetus behind bella's choice to remain with edward. bella frequently refers to jake as her best friend and is always down when she can't see him. with jake, bella is on equal footing. jake listens to her, respects her opinion, and while is perhaps a little more outwardly volatile, at least he's more real. and when bella is with jake, we finally see her being herself--free, open, and happy. from meyer's description of "imprinting," where the werewolf becomes exactly what his mate needs at all times, i can't see how edward's ice hard body and soulless existence can even stack up.

i haven't finished the book, but i'm crossing my fingers (most likely in vain) that bella won't trade her soul to spend her life with a very polite, perfect, and not very genuine seeming vampire, when she could be with a warm and comforting friend.

which life would you choose for yourself?
i'd take the werewolf.

feast

2007-08-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

i've been watching my neighbors hose down sidewalks, wipe off patio furniture, lug beer, and set up tables for days now.
it's the feast of the assumption.

i pulled out my picnic blanket this morning and sat with henry on our lawn--waiting for an hour or more before the procession came by our house. we watched family greetings, children running up and down the street.

i asked my neighbor, "what does the feast celebrate?"

"i don't know," she said. "it's hard to keep track of those things."
she wiped her hand on her apron that looked like an italian flag: her name embroidered across the top. she's been making meatballs and stuffed peppers and pasta and pasta and pasta. her family is coming--sons and daughters and their sons and daughters and more and more sons and daughters and they will sit on her porch for five days and eat and drink and smoke and laugh and celebrate the assumption.

and me and henry just watched from behind our little chain link fence. wondering who this mary is that gets such an interesting type of devotion: her life celebrated by meatballs steeped in garlic and peppers stuffed with sausage and people soaked with wine.

she must be related to the man whose birth we celebrate with trees and foilage and ham and giant socks stuffed with toothbrushes and oranges.

tolstoy said it

2007-08-09T08:53:00.000-04:00

My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons. And those unfortunates produce miracles of patience.

--Anna Karenina

eclipse

2007-08-07T09:08:00.000-04:00

there is rain outside heavy enough to purge sin.

it's flushing along the road. flushing along the students holding umbrellas, soaked anyway. flushing along the dirt in the cracks of the sidewalk, the dead heads on my petunia, the odds and ends left on the tree lawn (free!).

a frightening total eclipse of the day.

home

2007-08-06T12:35:00.000-04:00

i underestimated how it would feel to take my little hal baby back across the mississippi to the place where i lost teeth and wore my hair in pigtails and played double-dutch in the rain and locked my sister out of my room and took my keeshound for wild runs through red rock and tumbleweed.

it felt all fluttery when i could see my rocky mountains out the west window of the plane. it felt so jumpy i could hardly hold the feeling inside when we caught sight of the strange circus tent of a roof that means you're about to reach final descent into denver international airport. it felt nearly transcendent when i deplaned holding my groggy and disoriented little guy and got a whiff of that thin thin waterless air. and i don't think there's a word for seeing my father outside baggage claim, waiting.

it all felt supremely good.

but if i underestimated how good it would feel to go back to the place i grew up, i really underestimated how good it would feel to come home. yes, cleveland. home. home to my impatiens and my petunias. home to my two bedrooms and leaky garage. home to my scratchy patch of lawn and peony bushes. home to the place where hal lights up and runs his eyes over everything, satisfying himself that everything is in place.

how can one person have so many places called home?

to finish up

2007-07-12T10:46:00.000-04:00

movies i can watch over and over
first: cold comfort farm--"there'll be no butter in hell!"

second: big fish--epic tales about giants, blizzards, a witch, and conjoined-twin lounge singers

third: anne of green gables--i've been watching this since i was six years old: my dad sat on the roof holding our TV antenna all four hours [i still have that original VHS]

fourth: x-men--i have the hots for patrick stewart [does bald get any sexier than that?]

places i've lived
first: my parent's house, bedroom to the right of the stairs--i spent an awful lot of time in the walk-in closet [walk-in closets...remember those? sigh.] where i kept my stuffed-animal kingdom. [you think i'm kidding about the kingdom, but i really gave all the animals various kingdomly duties and assigned titles, etc. i still have the small notebook where i wrote out the details.]

second: the third floor of david john hall--i shared my bathroom with a member of the swim team, a cheerleader, and a very tall girl from hong kong

third: krasnodar, russia--i don't remember the street name, but i do remember that our front door was padded [a subtle hint of things to come]

fourth: cleveland, ohio--in an apartment above sarajane and next to valentino's pizza where we were lulled to sleep every night to the soothing sound of dishwashing

favorite tv shows
first: foyle's war
second: masterpiece theatre
third: the office
fourth: the cosby show

websites i visit daily

first: the new york times
second: the weather
third: craigslist
fourth: print & pattern

places i'd rather be
first: in a corner of hyde park, with a book, under a tree

second: on the top of a mountain in the uintas, with henry on my back, and joe holding my hand

third: driving the road from boulder to escalante

fourth: sitting on my parent's back deck watching the sun light up the red rocks in the south valley

people to tag, as it were
first: ioan gruffudd
second: diana rigg
third: dwight schrute
fourth: chili cheese polenta

swallowed

2007-07-11T10:33:00.000-04:00

i sliced the tip of my index finger on something in the dishwasher.
[i know, i know. i have a dishwasher. it's amazing. it's a half-pint that rolls around on casters and hooks up to the sink and has changed my life for the infinite better.]

that's why i haven't been typing. really.

[although, i have this funny suspicion that even though my hit counter registers over 100, i'm the only person reading this and i sign in as various people in my sleep and make comments to myself. isn't that the nightmare of every writer? besides the one where i get swallowed by jaba the hut.]

four

2007-07-05T19:24:00.000-04:00

call it the new moon, call it leftover roast beef hash, but for reasons inexplicable, i feel the need to tell you things about myself in fours. (look for installments, i wouldn't want to overwhelm anyone.)

employment history

first: hancock fabrics, cashier/general girl of all work, where i huddled next to the bulk fleece while someone robbed the bank next door at gunpoint and where i swept and swept and swept and listened to a lady named marge wearing a maroon apron tell me about her gall bladder and her hip replacement

second: the valley racket club, pool attendant, where i read les miserables and measured my life in fifteen minute increments, stamping the hands of small children covered in blue popsicles and watching them flex their muscles

third: at&t corporate office, personal assistant to the tech in charge of the Y2K switchover, where i ate yogurt and wrote out my boss's travel plans with a sharpie marker on giant sheets of paper

fourth: writing fellow, brigham young university, where i told other students that their papers sucked and spent a lot of time in a very small office laughing at a certain person named sarah olson who has now disappeared (or is at school in berkeley)

a small bout of heroism

2007-07-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

i have a job chart for myself. you know, just to remind myself of all the daily household tasks i'm not accomplishing. at the top of the list is "cook dinner."

see, i think families should eat together. every night. i think they should eat healthy things. i think they should spend time talking. i think they should know about each other's lives. the only hitch is, i am now the mom. surprise number one: if my family is going to eat dinner together, i'm the one who has to make it happen. my mom, for instance, is not going to come over every day around 4:30 and start whipping up her famous gulash.

not to say that it wasn't an absolute wrestling match, but this past week i actually did it. i had a warm delicious and mostly nutritive dinner on the table at 5:00 pm every day. wowzers.

the menu follows:

monday-baked salmon with tarragon butter
tuesday-salmon cakes with mint and basil
wednesday-green leaf and endive salad with salmon and artichokes
thursday-linguine in white sauce with salmon and basil
friday-braided loaf bread with roast beef, provolone, and pepper jack
saturday-biscuits and gravy
sunday-chuck roast with mashed potatoes and carrots
monday-roast hash with rosemary and lemon thyme

i amaze myself. [i also have to thank my herb garden for its important contributions to the week.] and i never want to eat salmon again.

carnage

2007-06-26T09:09:00.000-04:00

i ran over an earthworm this morning with hal's stroller. i stopped and went back to pick up the two pieces of its body and lay them to rest in the grass near the sidewalk.

later, when i saw one of those three-inch beetles on its back: red and black and giant pinchers opening and closing and legs reeling---i needed to nudge it over, back onto its legs, needed to atone for my earlier misdeed. i gave it a small push. but i didn't flip him, i squashed him. his legs went stiff mid-reel, his pinchers limp at his side.

i am a murderer.

a little secret

2007-06-22T14:52:00.000-04:00

it's a little embarrassing to admit that i got snared by a pop culture phenomenon, but whether it fits my "do nothing everyone else is doing" attitude or not, it happened. i am in love with so you think you can dance.

let me first defend myself by saying i am not a TV sort of person. sure, i love the office and i've been known to spend afternoons in front of hgtv or the foodnetwork, but in general i'd rather be doing something else--like writing a book or reading a book or watching henry eat a book.

but there's something about the show. [it definitely isn't the host or the judges or the way they keep referring to "America" as though she has a national identity and a single unified purpose--at least when it comes to one of the nation's greatest popularity contests.] so putting all the tween girl appeal aside, i admit i love to watch people passionate about dancing, dance. and it's not because i think i can dance [i know i can't]. but i wish that i could. and somehow watching others carry out that same dream onstage lets me imagine for a minute that i can spin on my head and jump into a somersault and not only move around in heels, but move convincingly, like i was born with three inch spikes attached to my feet.

so, dance, i say. dance.
[and i'm going to feel real ridiculous if i keep crying like i did last night every time a dancer has to leave the show.]

the work force

2007-06-19T20:49:00.000-04:00

after seven blissful months of postpartum unemployment, i'm back in the work force.

[in eulogy to dr. norton my grammar professor, i will now analyze the above sentence at every level.]

after: implies that i've finished something, like being a mother, when in fact i haven't finished anything -- i've just dipped my fingertips in the neverendingness of taking care of henry

seven: an interesting way to label time, "seven" seems to say that it's possible to quantify the hours and hours and hours i spent bouncing henry in front of the CD player while he screamed over the top of primary songs

blissful: the word can't hold the nuance of the past seven months -- the song i sang laboring my son into the world, surrounded by water, peaceful darkness, and the people i love -- the utter joy at hearing henry laugh for the first time (i held him in my lap and cried out of relief that he didn't hate me) -- the way it felt when he just wouldn't breastfeed and i pumped every hour, desperate for my body to make milk -- the afternoon meetings with the midwife to get my wounds cauterized, walking home in blizzards barely able to move my legs for the pain -- the nights i've watched henry in his bath grab his toes and suck on his washcloth and giggle

months: it has been months, or years, or enough time that everything has changed

of: self explanatory

postpartum: i still have the fluffy belly, the weight lingering on my behind, the squiggly vericose vein underneath my left knee

unemployment: they say that motherhood is a job -- they don't mention that it takes all your mental, emotional, and physical strength

i'm: is it me?

back: did i ever leave?

in the: i hope if i'm "in" it doesn't mean that i will never be "out"

work: work is finding carrots in your ears and your son's ears and along the molding and in the baseboard and on the linoleum and down your shirt and in your hair and sticking inside the seams of your pants

force: i will have to force it -- even after so many reasons (to stay current, hone my skills, keep my mind alive, fill the family coffers) i still hesitate -- will i miss henry when he is surprised by a butterfly or a ray of sunshine or a blade of grass? and if i do, is it worth it?

[the cold hard facts: i'm an online writing tutor for www.smarthinking.com -- i can work in my pajamas and smell like spit-up]

mom-ing

2007-06-18T07:59:00.000-04:00

it was my fault to begin with. we kept henry out all day: skipping nap after nap. [the picnic in findlay park was worth it, but that's another story.]

when i finally wrapped him up and put him in bed, he blinked a few times and then started to scream. he's just really tired, i thought. i'll let him cry. so he cried. and cried and cried and cried. [and if you're a mom, you know the difference between the i'm crying but soon i'll fall asleep cry and the i'm crying and i will continue to cry until something about my life changes for the better cry.]

i sat down on his floor and tried to think of all the reasons i can't fall asleep when i'm exhausted. i rubbed his legs. i slid his fuzzy blanky down his forehead and over his nose again and again. i gave him his binky. he continued to cry scream flail etc.

then it hit me. the number one reason i can't fall asleep: i'm too darn hot.

i picked little hal up out of his crib and put his head right in front of the breeze from the window unit. he blinked. he blinked again. he whimpered. he stopped crying. he made a little half-smile. he closed his eyes. he went to sleep.

yet another mom-ing moment where words would have helped.

gotcha

2007-06-15T19:01:00.000-04:00

just when you thought i had to be finished cleaning out my files ... i found this little bitty i wrote to apply for a scholarship a long time ago. the question in the application: tell us who you are.
i wonder, is it true ... was it true then ...
would i like it to be true ... ?

I accelerate on off-ramps. I have no trouble obeying the speed limit on the freeway, but somehow, after I pass that little green exit sign, I feel like I own those fifty yards. They are calling for a thrilling burst of speed followed by a punch on the breaks.

I live my life like I’m driving down a six-lane freeway, cruising in my own set of wheels and pumping music from the dashboard. Most of the time I’m collected, reasonable; I obey the law. I never need to hit the breaks when I see cop staking out the cars from the side of the road—I’m always going the speed limit, sometimes I’m going under it. But that’s all right with me.

When my father taught me how to drive he was relaxed and laughing in the passenger seat. He told me to pay no attention if people were tailgating me—I should drive comfortable. And if comfortable for me meant fifty-seven in a sixty-five, well, that was all right. I smiled when he told me that. And I’ve been driving comfortable ever since.

I don’t pay any attention when people want me to go along with the crowd; I just live comfortable. Happiness, I’ve found, comes from listening to myself. And somehow, I don’t have a problem with driving slower in a fast-paced world, or doing homework on a Friday night, or eating ice cream outside in the middle of a snowstorm.

But sometimes, life calls for a little craziness. So I push that accelerator all the way to the floor on those off-ramps. Those little detours in life that sometimes make or break us—that take our identity and stretch it out. I build up speed and excitement and passion until I’m certain that, at any moment, I will fly.

stricken

2007-06-14T09:58:00.001-04:00

things i can no longer remember:

1. the date of the spanish armada's defeat
2. what my hair looks like blow-dried
3. when henry last ate
4. if he ate
5. if i ate
6. the name of the painting by whistler with his mother sitting in a rocking chair
7. the premise of post-colonial literary theory
8. how to analyze non-canonical english constructions
9. the name of my third grade teacher
10. what i look like without these extra 15 pounds
11. the taste of authentic mexican food
12. how it feels to sleep through the night
13. or eat a meal without holding someone on my lap
14. what mr. kurtz was referring to when he said the horror, the horror
15. who john galt is
16. whether i was disgusted or excited by ibsen's "a doll's house"
17. how empty the house was before hal's little laugh

cavity

2007-06-10T20:43:00.000-04:00

i'm still wallowing in word document nostalgia. [i think only a bludgeon could make me stop.]

i wrote the following nearly eight years ago, in my very first fiction workshop [sniff], before i even met my dentist husband.

I think my dentist is trying to kill me. The way he looks at me—those murderous eyes. His instruments are so cold. The pick digs between my gums, leaving trails of blood to pool inside my lips. He wears a mask, but I know the dentist is smiling underneath the elevator music and sterile gauze. He loves pain; must have been the kind of child who tipped over beetles and let them die with their legs clawing at the air. He hands me toothpaste and floss, smiling, expecting me again in sixth months. I tell him never to expect anything.

I told Nana about the dentist, and she just nodded her head slowly, patting the wispy hairs on my head. She always hated the dentist too—the way he hides behind the diploma framed in the corner of the room. As if education gave someone the right to kill. She took my hand in hers, little knuckles and fingers swallowed up in wrinkles. She hushed me with her finger to her lips; I kept my mouth shut, smiling. It was our secret. I told her all my secrets.

But I didn’t tell her when my goldfish died. It turned up floating in its little bowl of water. Blue and red pebbles anchored with unforgiving gravity to the bottom. Nana got me the goldfish. She brought it home one day in her pocket bulging with the plastic bag full of water. Sometimes it was the only friend I had when Nana was gone. I loved to watch the way its tiny mouth opened and closed in constant surprise. But when my goldfish died, bobbing along the top of the water, I could only press my face against the glass, clouding my fishbowl with fingerprints and hot breath.

I reached in and pulled the goldfish out, holding it in my hands, watching the body motionless. I put it on the counter. My eyes level with the small pile of gold, as water dribbled out of its gills and pooled around its small body. Eyes red-rimmed and startled. So red, the capillaries had burst. Exploded.

Like fireworks on the Fourth of July, as I lay on the grass and spread out my arms, wide. Trying to hold the sky. But my little arms never stretched far enough. Even when me and Nana lay side by side, with our fingertips touching, just barely. Our skin grazing as we looked up and up and up. Into space. We always liked the way the fireworks popped and exploded across the darkness, sparkling and then fading black. Nana said I’m like the fireworks. She said one day someone will set fire to me and I will shoot from horizon to horizon, leaving a trail.

Nana said her ankles might explode—the way they swelled so. She sat in her armchair most of the day, resting. Her legs stuck stick-straight out from her body to the ottoman like red-hot pokers. With the blood pooling around her toes and feet and ankles and heels, waiting for her heart to decide to pump again. I laid with my head on her chest listening to the thump, thump, thump; whispering, pump the blood back up. From her legs. Pump it back up.

She fell asleep, mouth slack, hands limp at her sides. I tapped on her rib cage, steady. My index fingers to her bones. Pump, little heart. Take the blood back up the veins, up the veins. Make the blue blood red. Red.

Even then, her apron never came off; just in case, Nana said. Its garish blue and red flowers and bow in front. Most people tie their bows in back, but Nana didn’t like bows in back where she couldn’t see them. She didn’t trust them. Her hat never came off either, even when she brushed her teeth. Her way of hiding, I guess. I wore a hat too, brushing my teeth, smiling through the white froth smeared on my lips and spitting flecks onto the mirror. Then I laughed while Nana rubbed the white spots off with toilet paper.

But no one could rub Nana’s pain away—not those men in white jackets. They kept sucking things out of her and squirting things into her anyway. I waited for them to straighten Nana up, take the kink from her back. I waited. Even through the tears—hers and mine—I waited. But still her body bent forward and collapsed on the backs of chairs. And she gasped.

So they told Nana to lie in bed. She hated that bed, the way it penned her in her head all day. Couldn’t dance across the bathroom when the blood lived down in her feet and toes. I carried piles of books under each arm and sat on her pillow, touching her downy white hair. With a match, we could have made the bed a funeral pyre. Nana laughed when I told her that. Her wide smile bunched the skin up on her face; her teeth were missing and her lips curled around her gums. She ran her hand along my cheekbone.

But she got sicker. So much sicker. They forced her to the hospital with smells that reach up into your nostrils and won’t let you forget. She shriveled up in the hospital bed—so penned up. Small, crinkled, broken. I sat, holding her hand, smoothing her knuckles and tucking the thin, blue blanket around her bones. A metal tray stood next to her bed. Had different kinds of Jell-O in paper cups. Paper cups with bottoms that got weak and soggy. Red and blue. She hated Jell-O, the way it quivered and jumped. Nana couldn’t jump any more. Said she was like a wet noodle.
The dentist has a metal tray like Nana’s. But it swings around on a giant arm and he hovers over it. Delighted at the thought of torture. His hand trembles above each instrument; which one today, I’m sure he wonders. The sander is the worst. The way it rips the enamel from my teeth in tiny specks that flash around my mouth and then settle on my lips. He laughs and hands me a tissue as though I can wipe it all away and forget.

Nana never forgot anything—her memories were alive, always burning inside her mind. When she told a story, her eyes lit up like fire. She forced her memories to get up and dance in front of me; so that I could almost smell them, taste them, touch them.
But in the hospital, the fire was in her body. Spread from her lymph nodes, that’s what the doctor said. Lymph nodes sounded awful strange to Nana. Couldn’t see lymph nodes, couldn’t trust them. I blame those lymph nodes, those secret things that nobody sees, for the way her hair fell out. For the way her body hunched and crippled and tore itself from the inside out. When she spoke—small, quiet, little words. She missed apricots and string beans. And hanging from the oak tree out front to stretch her spine. She looked down at her hands, the fingers spread wide and the skin of her palms stretched taught. The capillaries burst underneath her skin. Spots of red. Their edges blurred and ran together. It was no use pressing my ear to her chest and begging her heart anymore.

They begged me to smile and wear a dress when Nana was laid out cold in her red mahogany box. The room moist and hot with tears. I covered my face, cursing the lymph nodes, the secret things. Between my fingers, I saw my relatives wrapped in black. Hushed. I stared at Nana, her legs stiff underneath her skirt. Flowers clogged the room. Bursts of red shoved into the corners. Like capillaries. Like fireworks.

I walked small and careful, step by step, up to her box. She didn’t much like to lie down, she would rather sit in her chair. I tried to tell them about her chair, tried to tell them. So many things, about Nana. About me. Even her downy white hair looked dead. Soulless. I ran my finger along her veins tracing lines across her arms, her hands—running after the blood. Not blue, not red. Sucked right out.
Sometimes the dentist sucks out my saliva. A white tube that he tucks in the corner of my mouth. My cheeks, my tongue, my palate—all dry as a cotton ball on the road in July. When he’s finished, he squirts a stream of water right on my incisors, my bicuspids. I jump; it’s so cold.

The dentist says that I have a cavity. A hole. A weak spot. An empty place.
I wonder what else the dentist knows.

education

2007-06-09T20:49:00.000-04:00

i'm cleaning out my old word documents. [a dangerous business that could keep you up far too late on a saturday night laughing at yourself.]

i stumbled onto some of my humanities papers from sophomore year in college. [oh, to be a sophomore in college again! when i could spend evenings on my balcony eating pudding swirled with cool whip and talking about existentialism and mascara.]

i can't stop laughing. and i really feel the need to share this little paragraph with you. [i'm sure if my old students could get their hands on these pretentious snobby meaningless sentences they'd all come screaming back for me to change their grade.]

Animals wander about their natural habitat killing, feeding, and resting as they please, urged on by some primal instinct. Naturalism attempts to carry this metaphor of the natural world over into the seemingly more complicated day-to-day existence of humans. Through this philosophy, the rationality each human believes he or she possesses dissipates into a disparate well of confusion, frustration, determinism, and pessimism. Rational thought is replaced by instinct, and compassion is left mutilated on the battleground of competing economic forces. Eugene O’Neill’s character, Yank, in The Hairy Ape is the quintessential example of such a man lost in his own primal nature. Every action and attempt to grasp hold of sense in the world around him leaves Yank increasingly more confused and dissatisfied with his existence.

the irony is, i have absolutely no recollection of yank or his hairy ape. so much for education.

teeth

2007-06-05T21:31:00.000-04:00

i'm married to a dentist, but i'm not exactly convinced of teeth.

henry just spent several weeks screaming in my arms as his two bottom toofers pushed up through his bone and broke through his thin pink skin. we spent hours on the porch rocking and rocking and rocking (watching my impatiens, which i must say, are absolutely stunning) while the sparrows looked at me in mock sympathy. nothing could comfort henry. nothing. not even tastes of sweet sticky cherry tasting tylenol from a dropper. not even the songs i sang while dangling the stuffed red monkey above his fingers. not even when i just held him on my lap and cried too: crying for him, crying for me, crying for the hours my own mother must have spent crying with me.

what's so bad [really] about a liquid diet?

real estate

2007-06-04T08:17:00.000-04:00

funny how our dreams constrict over time.

i used to dream of living in a tree house. it would have a secret entrance, a rope swing, a lookout -- you know, the works. my bedroom would be underground (hobbit-style) accessed only by an elevator hidden inside the trunk of the tree. the cozy earthen walled bedroom would have two canopy beds: one pink and frilly, and the other mint green. the mint green would be mine, and the pink for unexpected sleepovers. i saw both of these frothy wonders in the jc penny catalog and spent hours with that lug of a thing on my knees, envying.

now with the real estate market (do people who write "the real estate market" dream of canopy beds?), i dream of a mobile home. yes, a double wide manufactured siding covered mass produced thing where i can lay my head. i've found the perfect one. [click here for a peek.]

stung

2007-05-31T12:21:00.000-04:00

it's penske season. you see them tipping along the roadway. bulging honey bees of change rolicking through the streets. you see them parked on the edges of sidewalks, belching their contents: the microwave, the futon, the box of college papers, the ficus tree, the bikes, the boxes taped and labeled.

i watched our friends load their penske from behind our curtains, holding henry in the crook of my arm, wanting to see this little family (mom, dad, baby girl), but as a voyeur -- too weak to walk out on the porch and confront change. i felt like crying. mourning those late afternoon phone calls, little conversations that sound like nothing but add up to everything.

how did the baby sleep? did you hear so and so is expecting? do you want me to read my recipe for lemon sour cream trifle?

before she left, our neighbor brought over the remains of her fridge in plastic grocery bags. i went through them on the kitchen table, holding the popsicles we shared on sticky summer afternoons, the bags of mixed vegetables she heated to mush for baby juju, the poppyseed dressing, catalina, thousand island, italian. i thought about putting them in my fridge, shoving these offerings next to the cilantro and the mango chutney, but i couldn't do it. every time i held up another item of hers, something caught in my throat.

in the end, i quelled the voices of my depression era ghosts, and took the bags out to their final resting place. i knew i couldn't pull open my freezer every day and face her bags of peas and chicken fingers and pretzels. i just kept the generic chocolate syrup, tucking it into a corner where i wouldn't have to look unless i wanted to. too much remembering stings.

all grown up

2007-05-19T08:56:00.000-04:00

i planted my first garden: rows and rows of bright impatiens, lemon sage, yellow lemon thyme, basil and basil and basil. i feel like i have seven new boxes of children--i want them to grow and be in the sun and drink up rain. i find myself sneaking out between meals and chores to chat with my posies, to tell them to be strong and listen to the songs of robins and cardinals in love.

all my warm summer memories have my mother in her wide brim hat, watering her flowers, talking to them, sitting on the porch and enjoying their charm in the evening. she can make anything grow: she saved my african violet, she rescued my cactus, she coaxes zinnias as tall as your hips.

i will tell my flowers the story of my mother. i will tell them how high they can grow. i will tell them they are beautiful and smart. i will tell them why i can't sit on the porch in their glow without poking a few tears out the corners of my eyes.

the world is small

2007-05-18T20:54:00.001-04:00

over the weekend (imagine how fast we can travel: blink an eye and everything changes) i sat on a bench in fell's point.

i sipped a lemonade, i watched the water riff and pull in the harbor, i laughed while henry smeared milk across his face, i melted into the blue expanse of sky and the yells of drunk graduates and the soft plucks of a twelve string guitar. i wasn't anywhere except inside myself when the woman next to me tugged on my arm. embarrassed, she handed me a tissue and asked me to wipe the white glob of pigeon dropping from her hair. i pulled at it over and over while we talked ... her accent tangled something inside of me.

she said she was from new york.
but i said, no, before that.
russia, she said.
my breath caught. where in russia? i asked.
southern russia, she said.
i must have laughed: the smallness of the world frightening me. which city? i asked.
she looked at me. a small city, she said, you wouldn't know.
which city? i asked again.
krasnodar, she said.

and i fell into laughter that reminded me of tears. the world shrinking us together.

[for a history of me and krasnodar: look here. i lived there. and loved people there. and lost myself there. and found myself. and ate lots and lots of magnum bars.]

swing time

2007-05-09T08:44:00.000-04:00

joe brought swing time home from the library.

i wonder if there's a support group out there for people who cry whenever they see fred astaire and ginger rogers dance. i could be president.

i don't cry because i'm a gushy sentimentalist (although that is why i cry at hallmark commercials). i cry because i wish i could dance. they are green green tears of jealousy.

i was the girl in ballet class who stood at the bar for an entire afternoon trying to teach my feet to skip. the other girls skipped around the wood parquet floor, twirling in their leotards and pink tights. they made it look so effortless. one foot and then the other.

i was the girl who was cast in the tap recital as "girl who dies." i tapped my way onto stage, only to leave seconds later under the cloak of the bad man who killed me.

i was the girl who would get onto the dance floor at EFY for "i would walk five hundred miles" because i could jump up and down, up and down -- but stood with my hands at my sides, plucking my skirt for the rest of the songs.

and when i saw saturday's warrior everything finally became clear to me. i was like pam! i was a dancer sometime before this life and by bum luck ended up in this body: the narrow shoulders, the wide flat feet, the meaty thighs, the tight tight hamstrings, the joints and bones that ache to find a beat.

but it's okay. someday i will be in a leotard and pink tutu, dancing across the wisps made by smoke machines. in heaven.

at last

2007-05-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

henry slept the night.

and i got the feeling back in my fingers and toes and the edges of my brain.

mother

2007-05-02T11:31:00.000-04:00

henry doesn't feel good.

isn't that one of the most terrifying sentences for a new mother? [besides, perhaps, henry's in jail or henry isn't breathing or henry is in the living room with an uncapped permanent marker...?]

the past few days i've held him endlessly as he kicks his legs and squirms and vomits and fills his pants. he'll smile occasionally, a tiny apologetic line. his cries open a giant ache: one that throbs in my head, rips across my heart, sticks in my brain.

i look at his little face, twisted and angry at the pain, and i marvel at my own mother -- who held four of us and watched us grow and put on our bandaids and held back our ponytails when we hovered over the toilet and snapped pictures before prom.

how did she do it?
she is a hero.

twilight

2007-04-28T12:23:00.000-04:00

i jumped on the junior high bandwagon: i'm about halfway through twilight and i'm obsessed -- caught somewhere between a teenage crush and a perverse fascination.

while poor little hal gurgled and cooed through his formula this morning, i propped him in my elbow and held the novel in my other hand, racing through sentences and paragraphs to see how many times bella would brush against edward. it's ridiculous, isn't it? a few breaths into a novel and i already feel like i'm sitting in the bay of windows next to my junior high locker again. waiting with my little maroon padded trapper-keeper on my lap, hoping to see derek. wanting him to sit next to me ... really close. wanting him to touch me, even by accident. wanting him to talk to me about algebra, about our teacher in his white lab coat, about steel edged rulers, about anything -- just so long as he was talking to me. [unfortunately, i haven't exactly been able to stir up the same amount of attention for my husband when he talks about teeth and root canals and amalgam fillings.]

there is nothing more intoxicating than a high school crush. and stephenie meyer got it perfectly right, in a fantastic tongue-in-cheek, yet entirely serious: "i noticed that he wore no jacket himself, just a light gray knit V-neck shirt with long sleeves. again, the fabric clung to his perfectly muscled chest. it was a colossal tribute to his face that it kept my eyes away from his body." sheesh ... i'm shivering, aren't you?

this book is going to consume the rest of my weekend. meyer has captured the essence of high school and that little twinge inside all girls -- we all want to believe that we are the most beautiful and we don't know it -- we all want to believe that the most intriguing and handsome man in the class is staring at us -- we all want to believe that there is someone hovering just outside our peripheral vision, waiting to save us -- we all want to date vampires.

weather

2007-04-27T08:36:00.000-04:00

three days of ohio rain. thick clouds grazing the tops of buildings. drowning in the dark: i dug my lightbox out from behind the couch this morning.

when i was little, in colorado, rain was mythic. rain didn't just come, it never stooped out of the sky of its own accord. we had to coax it from heaven, with prayers, with dances, with long dead stalks of weeds and rituals we imagined and performed from the ridges of red rock. and when it would come, finally!, we ran outside. we laid on the warm cement driveway and let rain crackle over us. we turned over our bigwheels and collected the rain in its crevices. we opened our palms and let them soak with rain. we shouted, we laughed, we jumped double-dutch, we watched it stream in flash-flood rivers down the gutters of the street. rain! rain! rain! and that night we would thank god for moisture, because that was all that was left. a filmy hint of wet along the grass, pretending not to notice the return of the sun.

in ohio, the rain is a faucet a bucket a shower a deluge. after one day of rain, two days, three, four, five, i want to punch through the clouds. i want to collect the wetness in my arms and throw it back: somewhere ... to the bosom of lake erie or the clouds that spilled it. i want it to stop. drowning me.

dewey decimal system

2007-04-25T08:03:00.000-04:00

the library supply catalog i sent for came in the mail yesterday. i had no idea i needed a card catalog cabinet until i saw the one on page 588. all those perfect little drawers stacked on top of each other. five different types of finishes. i could put it in my study to hold paper clips. or in henry's room to organize his socks or his desitin or his hats. i could use it in the kitchen: pour my spices into individual compartments, tuck away my spatula collection, collect all the twisty ties from loaves of store-bought bread, hide potatoes and onions and short skinny squashes. i could put it in the bathroom, a roll of toilet paper in each tiny drawer. i could put it next to my bed and spoon paperbacks into each little crevice.

it doesn't stop at just the card catalog cabinet. no. i also need a gallon of glue! forty retractable sharpies! a box of 894 crayons! revolving media storage and a wall size map of the world and the entire collection of goosebumps by r.l. stine! a rubber snake, a decorative penguin statue, a motivational 10 poster set! and three thousand three hundred sheets of perforated computer paper!

spring

2007-04-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

when i peeked into henry's crib this morning, he smiled at me: big and full and better than the sun.

wind

2007-04-18T10:36:00.000-04:00

the wind is gusting at fifty miles today. fitting for the strange grief that's gusting around me. i spent the morning with two slices of peanut butter toast and the newspaper, haunted by article after article of the shootings in virginia. i'm tightened by that same strange rock-like hurt that came after columbine -- when i sat with my mother, my hair dripping wet, watching the tv as bombsquads surrounded the school i passed a hundred thousand times on my way to our public library. we waited and waited for my little brother and sister to come home, for the lockdown to end. and for weeks i always felt like crying. for weeks i looked at my ashen faced sister and her trembling hands and wondered if sitting in the cultural hall at church tying quilts for those kids who were locked in the choir room could really help. it's the same thing now: it seems wrong to talk about strawberries or the weather or doing the laundry because everything is different. because people are gone. people that mattered to other people. whole chains of friendship and family whipped apart by an inexplicable violence that newscasters spend mornings and evenings trying to explain.

shout

2007-04-17T12:58:00.000-04:00

i took henry to see the mountains today. we didn't have to go far: i just opened the curtain in my aunt's spare bedroom where we've been staying and pressed my nose against the window. mountains are bigger than i remember. they push up and up and up, all brown and crumbly and staked with trees. with such a clear big gasp of sky hanging between the peaks in the east and their sisters across the valley. i want to take them home with me. i want to wrestle them into my diaper bag next to the burp rags and the tinkly rattles and drag them across the threshold of my little apartment. i want them to jump like a real live pop-up, cut outs of greatness filling my living room. i want the wash of cool mountain air to stream around my ankles. i want henry to know how it feels to stand at the top of something so tall and shout shout shout.

rotisserie

2007-04-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

i cleaned out my fridge this morning. a small bout of heroism.

my husband poo poos at me every time i wrap the last bit of cheese in a cocoon of cellophane or spoon a half a ladle of soup into plastic container or save the heel of the bread, tucked into an empty space on the door of the fridge. it will just go moldy, he says. and he's right. my brilliant plans to save leftovers and have them return in a triumphant new form dissipate into night after night of campbell's tomato soup until there's no more space for another gallon of milk and i have to attack the memories with a garbage bag in hand.

this morning, digging through my past life, i ran into the cranberry sauce from thanksgiving -- four bags of cranberries, my sister-in-law said we could never eat that much, but we did, save half a cup full which i've been harboring in the lee of the aloe juice ever since. i dumped out the spaghetti sauce my mother made the week after i had henry when i had to ease myself into chairs and wear mesh underwear lined with bags of ice. i put to rest two full bags of cucumber salad: the pungent smell of vinegar and dill hadn't eased since my husband made dinner for my sister in february and again for his brother in march. there were four skinless lemons that sacrificed their yellow lustre for a sour cream and berry trifle. one green pepper that never made it into the red beans and rice. and the leftover bits of a rotisserie chicken: we bought it when i was feeling nostalgic for russia, ripping it apart with our fingers, rolling it in yogurt garlic sauce and eating it wrapped in thin tortillas.

now there's just a carton of eggs, slices of kraft cheese (for hashbrowns scattered and smothered), gallons of milk. the fridge is gaping open at me. jaws wide, mouth hinting saliva.

farenheit

2007-04-07T17:34:00.001-04:00

when my husband told me this afternoon that there might be a job for us in small town nevada, i put on my coat and boots and took a walk in the spring blizzard. i got to the corner of mayfield and murray hill and stood pretending to wait for the 9X express.

i faced the wind and let the snow hit my cheeks, let it make my nose run, let it tickle my fingertips. i smelled the warm burst of hot dogs, the sizzle of garlic roasting in every italian restaurant up and down the street, the sweet warmth of cassata cake puffing in an industrial oven.

i watched a woman walk into la barberia di laura holding a pack of smokes and a bar of chocolate and walk out again a few seconds later holding only one smoldering cigarette. i watched students wearing sweats and scarves hurry to mama santa's and duck inside the double wooden doors, shivering.

would all of this smell the same, look the same if cleveland scorched in a bath of sun year round? would i be as relieved to pull open the door of corbo's bakery and hide myself in a white paper bag of cannoli and butter cookies if it was always warm enough to wade in lake erie? if a rose could bloom at 122 degrees farenheit, would it smell as sweet as the first taste of spring and mud and rain after months of deep icy clouds?

erosion

2007-04-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

i am losing my hair. it comes out in long clumps, the strands wrapping around my hand and fingers. it sticks to the shower curtain. it nests in tiny piles in the corners of the bathroom. it threads its way through my husband's underwear: i find it as i fold the laundry and pull and pull the strand until it comes loose and floats away. it catches itself in the crevices of my son's neck. it turns up in the bread dough, the cracks in the keyboard, the toes of my socks, the soup, the pages of anna karenina. i find it underneath my pillow, long strands curled and waiting for who knows what -- easter bunny, tooth fairy, santa claus, a postpartum godmother?

it feels like erosion. my goddess body of motherhood [the curves, the thick rope of hair, the puffy ankles, the shining eyes] is disappearing: a mountain of sand caught in the fury of a spring rain. i am left a shuddering pile of pebbles, weary and missing sleep.

should i collect the hair, coaxing it from between my toes and underneath the couch cushions, into my lap? will i need a reminder of the way my body expanded as wide as the universe? will i forget the moment i first felt my son leap, somewhere between my navel and my hip? will it be buried in my own strata of memory?

she will deny this

2007-04-05T14:25:00.000-04:00

i remember an afternoon digging through my mother's old things [frayed scrapbooks, reams of paper, bits of photographs] and finding a notecard with a few lines of ee cummings written in ballpoint pen.

though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

i didn't know it was ee cummings then, i only reeled back with shocked delight, sucking in air. my mother! poetry! and a stanza as sultry and velvet as this one! i copied the lines down into my own notebook, keeping them, reading them at night after everyone was asleep.

this is how spring should feel: a close secret, a delight, a petal by petal moment that reveals just a little more beauty, a little more color until the whole world is alive and gasping for breath.

this is how spring should feel. but i'm in cleveland. and it's april. and it's snowing hard bitter pellets: the snow of february, not even the wet snow of spring.

Birds

2006-09-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

we put a bird feeder outside our front window approximately nine days ago. since then we have had approximately zero birds visit.

are birds frightened of ambulances?

Congestion

2005-09-16T15:48:00.000-04:00

I saw a woman standing in a flowerbed along the side of the road holding a parrot. She was whispering something into its ear.