carnage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

henry slept the night.

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

mother

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

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

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

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

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