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.

wind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?