the OTHER mother

A Suddeness of Trees

I've mentioned before Pearl's love of trains.  We saw a train on the way to her school and another on the way home.  She was excited.  We both love Liz Rosenberg's picture book, Adelaide and the Night Train.  Here's a train poem I will post for my girl.

Night Journey

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.

by Theodore Roethke

Details from our Weekend

• Yes, friends, crazy Jojo (Carrie) can sit and twist and shout.  She is a tiny, human tumbleweed, rolling across the prairie of our lives.  And oh, what a screamer!
• Pearl has learned the names of at least 60 of the trains from Thomas the Tank Engine from the toys, the books, and the videos.  Marcia has decided that as long as Pearl is--at this developmental moment--capable of memorizing so much stuff so fast that she's going to try teaching her something useful, such as the name of all the birds.  Or Spanish.  Go Mommy go Pearl go!
• We have the most wonderful social worker helping us with our adoption, and the home visit went well last Friday. The craziest moment of the morning was when Carrie had just gotten up from her nap.  Marcia had taken Pearl to go look for a panda bear (emergency!), and I was holding Carrie in my lap, and I sneezed.  The loud sound scared her so much that she began to sob.  And when the only face she could see was the social worker's (I held her facing out), she began to shed huge, marble-sized tears.  As soon as she saw Marcia return, however, all was well.  Just in the past week, Carrie has figured out that some people are strangers.
• We went to a pride party Saturday night.  It was fun, and we also saw what we thought to be a glimpse into the future.  Among new (to her) folks, Pearl usually sticks close to Mommy and Baba.  At this party, however, she met a 3 year old girl and the two of them played with dolls and a doll house for 2 hours.  Pearl didn't even stop to eat dinner.  The 8 year old girls were so great with the younger ones, even letting them dance to music with them.  At one point, Marcia interrupted the dancing to see if Pearl needed a potty break.  Pearl gave her an adamant NO and waved her out the room!
• Lately I have gotten addicted to a new (to me) computer game.  If you like word games such as Scrabble or Boggle, do NOT click on the link for Babble.  You have been warned.
  
• Inspired by Shannon, I have been trying to cook more lately.  As usual, my intentions are much more impressive than the reality, but I have been serving up whole grains, vegetables, and other good foods when possible.  All yummy too, I might.
• We started a modified cry-it-out routine with Carrie about 10 days ago, and to our great surprise she and we are all doing well with that.  She's slept until at least 4 a.m. most nights since then.  A light at end of the tunnel of sleeplessness?  We shall see.
• Happy Pride!  Have a great week.

Another Question

Is there a book (or song or video) that your kid loves that you hate?

My least favorite books that we own are the Barney books.  I don't how or know why we have them in the house!  Hand-me-downs, most likely.  In my spare time (ha ha), I plan to confiscate them!

A close friend of mine once told me that Barney (the TV  version) was the best form of birth control ever invented.  However the effectiveness of this method is apparently short-lived because a year after she told me that, her husband got a vasectomy. 

As the world turns....

If U Want 2 Buy the Book

Amazon.com is still showing Confessions of the Other Mother, the new book that my essay's published in, as "soon to be released."  Here are a few places that appear to be selling it right now:  Two Lives, Rainbow Books, and UUA.

To see the previous post about this book, edited by Harlyn Aizley, click here.

Moms Rising

Have you heard about Moms Rising yet?  MomsRising.org is a new online grassroots movement to harness mom power, and you can join for free by hopping over to their website.  Here some of from their introduction:

What would most moms like for Mothers Day?  Not flowers, or a necklace or even a new picture to hang on the fridge.  What moms really want are the policies and programs that would help families -- things like paid family leave, flexible work options, subsidized childcare, and adequate healthcare.   Our nation simply doesn’t have policies and programs in place to support mothers and families – but now moms can do something about it by logging on to www.momsrising.org and signing up.

MomsRising co-founders Joan Blades (co-founder of MoveOn.org) and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner co-authored a newly released book, The Motherhood Manifesto, which features stories of dozens of mothers with diverse experiences, and details the MomsRising agenda.  It will be published on the website, one chapter at a time.

To summarize, MomsRising gives people a voice in the motherhood and family issues that are shaping our lives. Selah!

Just Published!

Here's a new book, hot off the presses, as the say, and guess who has an essay included in it? The book is called Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological  Lesbian Moms Tell All! Edited by Harlyn Aizley, author of Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, this book gathers the stories of eighteen nonbiological moms who have created the"other mother" role with a personal flair.

I got a contributor's copy a few weeks ago.  The official publication date is Mother's Day, but you should be able to find a copy for your sweetie now.  On amazon.com today it still gives the pre-order option, but Beacon Press assures me that copies are available in bookstores already.

Adelaide and the Night Train

When I was a chlld, my family lived near train tracks.  My favorite childhood dream was about a train.  To this day, I find great solace in the sounds of the railroad.

Pearl and I are both enjoying the picture book Adelaide and the Night Train by Liz Rosenberg.

Poem for Valentines

Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard


His beak could open a bottle,
and his eyes - when he lifts their soft lids -
go on reading something
just beyond your shoulder -
Blake, maybe,
or the Book of Revelation.

Never mind that he eats only
the black-smocked crickets,
and the dragonflies if they happen
to be out late over the ponds, and of course
the occasional festal mouse.
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear -

it’s not size but surge that tells us
when we’re in touch with something real,
and when I hear him in the orchard
fluttering
down the little aliminum
ladder of his scream -
when I see his wings open, like two black ferns,

a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rackets across the marshlands
of my heart
like a wild spring day.

Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
from that mysterious conglomerate:
Oblivion and Co.
The hooked head stares
from its house of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine.

by Mary Oliver

Quote for Today

"How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world."

--Anne Frank (1929-1945)

The Meme of Sevens

When it comes to these memes, I am so lame. Even when I have responded by posting a response to my blog, I tend to address only the questions that suit me.  The rest--whatever!  My friend Guusje tagged me a week ago with the meme of sevens.  We'll see how much I'm up to today.  And I'll keep adding as the weeks go by until I have seven of everything.

Seven Books

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Palace of Pearls, Jane Miller

Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami

Seven Films

The Deep End

Ponette

Rivers and Tides (Andy Goldsworthy)

Roman Holiday

Sans Soleil

The Sweet Hereafter

Seven Things I say all the time

How's my girl?

Seven Things I'd really like to do (with no due consideration of reality)

Walk across Europe

Dedicate a month-long retreat to my writing

Go on a cycling trip with my brother

Live in Italy for a summer with my familia

Paint

Please feel free to do the meme yourself, either on your blog or as a comment below.

Quote for Today

Ask “What’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?”

Keep asking.

Notice what you care about.

Assume that many others share your dreams.

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

Margaret Wheatley

"Sometimes they are naughty..."

Scene 1: 

When Pearl was born, our friend Patsy Cooper gave her a number of picture books.  Pearl loves all of these books, but lately one that intrigues her is a simple story called Babies by Gyo Fujikawa.  Patsy is an expert in early childhood education, and she wrote us a letter explaining how these stories would figure into Pearl's development in her first few years.  None of these books struck me as particularly profound, but I have the utmost respect for our friend Patsy, and Pearl seemed to like the books, so I decided to wait and see.

Scene 2:

This week I am starting to see something curious at meal times.  It all started when she began feeding pieces of her dinner to the dog.  We encouraged her to eat the food in her plate and let Jake eat his own food in his dog bowl.  This directive spawned a host of creative responses that capture the true spirit of the toddler sensibility.  For instance,

• She continued feeding her food to the dog.  (Testing, testing!)
• She made a modification and began feeding imaginary food to the dog.

Our response: We put the dog outside.

• Next she fed food to an imaginary dog. 
• Then she began hurling food chunks on the floor and laughing at the tops of her little lungs.

To use the diction of Fujikawa's book, I think this would be called "naughty" behavior.  Pearl knows "without a shadow of a doubt" that she is not supposed the throw food on the floor.  And yet she does throw the food.  Gleefully.

Background:

The book Babies outlines some of the things babies do--eat, sleep, etc.  It tells what babies like and dislike.  Then it explains that soon they will be able to do things all by themselves.  Next--the clincher--we're told that sometimes they are "naughty" and sometimes they are "little angels."  Each of these concepts is illustrated with various pictorial examples.  Then the ending: but good or bad, all babies want to be loved. 

Analysis:

As I said, I wouldn't have chosen this book on my own.  I have a Ph.D. in literature, and the "good or bad" oversimplification grates on my nerves.  But I do notice that Pearl is fascinated by the good page and the bad page, especially the bad page!  She studies each illustration carefully.  I think that she is learning something.  I'm not sure what!

Scene 3:

Sunday night.  Scene escalates, as per scene 2.  I warn a time or two, then remove the plate, unstrap her from the high chair, and place her on the floor.  I clear the plates, and before I realize what's happening, I catch her eating the food from the floor.  The floor is dirty!  I am mortified!  What have I done!

Conclusion:

And so we are all initiated into a new era of being parents and child, the first of many events that we will negotiate together, I have a feeling....

We [Heart] Books

For a month or two last summer, Pearl seemed to hate books.  She seemed bored by them.  Then we hit on the idea of letting her turn the pages herself, and that made a huge difference.  We've continued to read to her every day, and she seems to be developing her own relationship to stories.

Now she appears to enjoy her books.  We can recite the first sentence or two of her favorite stories, and she will find the book and bring it to us.  For English major moms such as us, it's very beautiful. 

Sometimes to switch things up, we tell her stories that aren't from books.  We include words we know she recognizes, such as CAT and BANANA.  They often turn out absurd--one day a cat and a banana went to play together at the park--but they are stories we make up just for her.  The key words of that sentence are: for her. 

What stories are popular in your family lately?

The Stick Stchick

My friend Stuart has handed me The Stick, a list of questions that I am to answer and pass along to three other bloggers.  Here's the meme, at its finest:

Without further ado, questions and answers:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?  Of course! Both characters in movies and in books.  First one that came to mind: the Jodie Foster character in Hotel New Hampshire, viewed at age 20 or so. 

The last book you bought is: Under Flag by Myung Mi Kim

The last book you read: NEST by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge

What are you currently reading? Great American Prose Poems, ed. David Lehman

Five books you would take to a deserted island:  Tender Buttons, The Great Gatsby, Collected Emily Dickinson, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and a cook book.

That's the Stick.  And now, I pass the stick on to:

• Shannon (because she can only blog about baby bliss for so long, right?)
• Robyn (because she needs distraction while C experiences all these contractions)
• Mieke (because I'm curious to see her answers)

And anyone else who feels like playing.  Enjoy!

Books that Struck the Mark

This is in response to Julie's post at Mom in the Mirror.  Her question is, "What books changed your life?"  The answer is: so many.  And yet, although I have pondered this for a week now, the titles have not flooded my brain. 

Transformative books depend on a synchronicity of text and time. For a book to change your life, you have to read it at the right time.  You are probably on the crest of the wave of change already, and the book provides the extra push.  Or, to mix up the metaphors even more, the text crystalizes an understanding that was in your mind already but was disorganized.  So, for example, many friends talk about Catcher in the Rye as a life-changing book that they read as young teenagers, but I didn't read it until I was 24 years old.  Needless to say, it had a less palpable effect on me, even though I consider it a good book.

Here's my first attempt at a list, and if I continue to revise my answer for the next two years, you can't say I didn't warn you.  I've put them in chronological order, based on when I read them, beginning at age 15.

Demian by Hermann Hesse

U.S.A. (the trilogy) by John Dos Passos

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Pieces by Robert Creeley

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Doctor Sax by Jack Kerouac

3 Lives by Gertrude Stein

Ghost Dance by Carole Maso

The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It by Brett Millier

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

If you ever had any doubt about me being a complete egghead, now you know for sure.  Feel free to add your own list in the comment section below. 

She is a Bunny Too

Ever since I started blogging I've been following the saga of City Mama and her hilarious child, Bunny.  I chose the word "saga" intentially because in the past 8 months a whole lot has happened with their family.  I've never actually met Bunny, but I love reading about her. 

Lately Pearl's favorite book is called I am a Bunny by Ole Risom.  We read it forwards, backwards, and upside down.  The Richard Scarry illustrations have an unusual depth.  The bunny, Nicholas by name, tells what he likes about each of the seasons.  Pearl turns the pages herself now.  She is a very athletic turner of pages!

It's interesting to me to try to imagine why certain books appeal to her more than others.  Here in Houston, we don't have four seasons.  Maybe two?  But she couldn't know that yet. 

Her favorite picture seems to be the one with pictures of frogs. The one page she seems to dislike is the one in which the bunny goes to sleep.  Have you noticed how many children's books for kids this age end with the character going to sleep?  Maybe Marcia and I have projected this--but we've both noticed it separately--when we get to a picture with a character going to sleep, Pearl SLAMS the book shut with extra zeal. For the new readers, I will simply add: Our little bunny does not like going to bed one bit.

Have you noticed certain images that you child adores or abhors?

Dimples

I must confess that TIS THE SEASON has me feeling a little overwhelmed.  A few months ago, Marcia and I hired a babysitter so that we could sit down at a cafe and think.  We wrote up our new values, because now that we are parents the values have shifted a little bit.  Our list was meant to become a kind of ten commandments for this new phase of our lives. 

As I review our list of ten, what I observe is that parenting has brought to us a need to state the obvious.  For example, value number one is: Sleep is crucial.  Before Baby Pearl, we never had to write that down, even though it was equally true. 

I am reminded of that chapter in One Hundred Years of Solitude in which the entire village experiences an "epidemic" of insomnia.  Due to the rampant lack of sleep, the people of the town start losing their grip on reality.  In order to preserve order, they begin labeling things, just in case their collective memory escapes them.  At first they simply label a window with the word WINDOW, and a door with the word DOOR.  As the insomnia progresses, they leave themselves notes with messages saying: GOD EXISTS.

Eventually someone figures it out.  The animal cookies that have become so popular in the village have caused this sleeplessness.  Chaos is replaced by order once again.

I wish a solution with such elegant straightforwardness were in the offing for us, but somehow I doubt it.  My answer, for the time being, involves dimples.  I look at our little girl's face, and somehow it is all worth it.  It really and truly is.

The Dirty Dozen: 12 Details from the Weekend

--> attempted to conquer a veritable Everest of laundry

--> placated (with varying levels of success) an irritable baby and who knows why? is it teething, allergies, insect bites, rainy day syndrome?  we wondered and wondered....

--> discovered a new DEET-free insect repellent that smells less like a chemicalized lemon and more like a cinnamon stick

--> watched in awe as baby Pearl stood on her own holding onto mid-air for at least 10 seconds

--> went to the movies for the first time in 5 months

--> loved the Huckabees movie and was the only one laughing in the theater any number of times

--> examined a Stokke KinderZeat at a store in Rice Village

--> bought some warm clothes for our girl to wear on our 2 upcoming trips to places with winter

--> bought an autographed copy of Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman for $10

--> caught Pearl using her sign language (More! More!) for the first time

That's my report. Feel free to add your own list in the comments section below.

The World According To You

Here's a question that has nothing to do with the kids, but what the hell, yes?  What's your favorite lesbian novel?  I have fond memories of The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin and Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson.  If you have more than one to recommend, feel free to submit a list.  You need not be gay to play!

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne's character Pearl from The Scarlet Letter has always delighted me. Here's how he introduces her:

WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant: that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!—for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price—purchased with all she had—her mother’s only treasure!

In The Scarlet Letter, little Pearl is born with an inexplicable understanding of things as they are:

Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself—it would have been no longer Pearl!

I think I remember reading eons ago that Pearl is modeled after one of Hawthorne's own children. She is a marvelous spectacle of a character.

The Whiteness of the Noise

True Confession #1:  I've read Moby Dick 5 or 6 times.  The first few go-rounds, it was required in school.  No excuses for the rest of them.  I always skip some of the cetology chapters about 2/3 through, the ones about the whale from a biological perspective.  But there are parts of the book that really stay with me and hum and vibrate at certain times.  One chapter that I like a lot is called "The Whiteness of the Whale." 

In this chapter Ishmael (or so the narrator requests that we call him) ruminates on--you guessed it--the whiteness of the whale.  It's a list of speculations on what the color might signify.  And in Moby Dick everything sure does signify.  This chapter in particular is very like a poem.  No answers, just slow swimmy drift from one possibility to the next.

True Confession #2:  In our efforts to help Pearl calm down at night, we've started playing a white noise CD.  I hate it when writers refer to the dictionary definition of absolutely anything, but dig this:

white noise
1 the sound heard when the entire range of audible frequencies is produced at once, as in the operation of a jet engine.
2 an overlay of sound to cover up distracting or annoying noises; acoustic perfume.

Dictionaries must have really improved since I was a kid.  Since when does dictionary-speak describe anything as "acoustic perfume"?  That is downright groovy.

This white noise CD moves through 3 phases of noise.  The first track sounds like a garage band, a million simultaneous disasters, and it's pretty fast.  The second one sounds like a jumper with perfect rhythm doing his thing on a trampoline with rusty springs.  The third one, which is the longest track, sound like a robotic heartbeat. 

It sounds awful but my child loves this stuff.  Another bonus?  When Jake the dog barks at the mailman, the cat next door, the neighbors, or the opera walker,  the usual disturbances of our lives, thanks to the whiteness of the noise, Pearl can't hear a thing.

R U Pacified?

What do you do to find peace and tranquility?

While our doctors stop short of labeling Pearl a colic baby, we have had some long nights of trial and tribulation. Longer for Marcia than for me, since I've gone back to work now. It's very upsetting to see your baby so upset. So we've been seeking advice from our posse.

Our friend Melanie, mom of Oliver, pointed us toward a book that had helped them through the first few months, The Happiest Baby on the Block. We also bought the CD of white noise that goes by the same title. The package from amazon.com [in the spirit of full disclosure, I do own stock in this company!] arrived yesterday, and we began reading immediately, taking turns exchanging book for crying baby and back again. We had been introduced to Dr. Karp's famous 5 S's in our childbirth class, but the book gave us a more detailed sense of how they work.

Last night we tried it out, and our results were about 50/50. We still have to work on our swaddling technique. This seems to be key, as we find our way along the road to peace and tranquility, two moms and a little baby.

The Book of Moments

Recently I read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The narrator is an autistic teenager, and his point of view is what makes the novel moving.

Marcia read the book after I did. I told her I was struck by the boy's system of determining what was in store for him each day. For example, if he saw five yellow cars as he rode the bus to school, it was sure to be a "super good" day. But if he saw five black cars on the road that day, he was doomed and wouldn't even bother to participate in the activities du jour. The boy's method seemed to be 100% madness to yours truly.

Marcia explained that the character's means of assessment were not so different from anyone else's. We have friends, for instance, who check their horoscopes first thing in the morning and expect fate to unfold accordingly. Others tune into the weather channel and design the day around those predictions. She reminded me that I have had days when I tripped over a tree root (without actually even falling down) between my car and the office and have concluded it was going to be a doozy.

With a baby in the mix, such inferences from one moment to the next are truly absurd. There are no good days or bad days. There are no days, only moments. In fact sometimes the moments seem to be strung together with no relationship to one another whatsoever.

A moment of true distress might be followed by another one of peaceful bliss. It's a good thing that I like surprises.

Just before Pearl was born, Marcia and I took an eight-week workshop on MINDFULNESS. Before enrolling in the class, I had always thought that the goal of meditation was to erase your brain and think of absolutely nothing. In the class I learned that in meditation, the idea is not to alter anything but to accept what thoughts are presently in your mind without judging or assessing them.

Maybe Pearl is here to teach me how this works, one moment at a time.