Preview

A Cinderella

Neither Aidan nor the North Shore Music Theater has been entirely bought out by Princesses, Inc. Yet.

Orange embellishments made by Cole.

First Day

She's a kindergartner now.

Birthdays

Tomorrow my girl will be five. And Monday my boy will be three.

I have put together a small gift for her to wake up to, part of it a handwritten note that says, "Happy 5th Birthday Aidan" placed above a row of waving paper dolls that she cut out and clothed this afternoon. A few months ago she wouldn't scissor them herself for fear of cutting off their fingers, but today she has done it. Quietly and confidently. Fingers unscathed. One's in a red and white polka dot dress. One's in a pink dress. One's in a greenish blue dress. Clothes have been attached with several pieces of tape. And the best part about the girls, the sparkle hippy flower stickers embellishing their dresses, large flower extending from the "queenie's" head like a hat.

Earlier Cole and I drove home from Target. In the truck. He told me that he liked sitting next to me, and finally alone, no siblings to compete for his mother's attention. I tried to teach him the words to "Ring of Fire" so that he'd sing it with me. The Social Distortion version. But he preferred to move his head and shoulders in a mosh pit kind of way instead of to sing, slightly impeded by the straps of his car seat. So I danced with him, glad for his company, lump-in-throat sad that I have not been able to spend more time with just him.

And yesterday morning I found the two of them eating apples, sitting in beach chairs that they'd pulled into the open doorway. They'd done this while I'd been busy with the baby, on their own this deliberate enjoyment of juicy apples and dry summer sun. They are growing and becoming and I am trying to watch. I am trying to remember to watch.

I hear gentle noises coming through the speaker of the baby monitor. The turning of his body. A car passing by our window, soft, faraway sound. The baby is in the room, sleeping and I try to remember a time when she wasn't with us, the essence of her already imprinted, even without the memories.

All of it seems right. At this time it seems right. The growing. The becoming. The struggle of it. And my love for them. Especially.

Ode to Dustbuster

To love a plastic thing
noisy as diesel
when suctioning
potting soil stuck
to a boy's leg
and then
to the rug
crackery crumbs
in folds of sofa
rice eaten with fingers
at supper
bugs in various states
of decay
black, beady and withered
corn muffin
backmost seat
of new car
sand
in the creases
of her baby bucket

Adjustable nozzle
turn knob for release
tap, tap
suck, suck
18 volts of
sweet cordless pleasure
busting dust
eating
up a list
of things to do
a list
mother's
forever long
doing, doing
list.

Final Days

The final days consist of things that I do and do not want to remember. Reliance on a body pillow that does not feel as much like a person as it should. Duct tape on a sandal to prevent chafing because indeed there is swelling and shoes worn every day for 30 days are wet. Sitting in rain, two pregnant women, too stubborn or too smart to move. And laughing about it--before the discomfort of wet clothes pasted to pregnant belly and breasts becomes noticeable. Too much PBS, or anything, for my children. "Uglies" party with people and food and a gaggle of children and candy and sirens and politicians and bagpipes and Beano Band and marching bands and three year olds dancing like Britney "Spearses." Apparently I snubbed Kerry Healy--but not on purpose--nine months of pregnancy an excuse for my suspicion of the friendly pol smile and handshake. And I'll remember Brazilians and Italians and anyfan taking to the streets of Gloucester. Horns and flags and World Cup excitement.

A little rain. Some sun. A lot of sand. Ice cubes. Yes, ice cubes. More like ice shards. Bubbly things to drink. And drive-through. Cold coffee, granules of sugar being sucked through a straw. Tums--smooth, not chalky. You've helped me through.

The end is near. And I'm ready.

Everywhere

She was everywhere. In "Dona Nobis" and "Amen, Amen." The beauty of Mount Adnah in June. The elegant urn. "Adventurer, antiquarian, artist." "Mother to Alexander and Theodore." And "Live simply."

Hard to watch the boys, 5 and 8 and wearing funeral attire and holding cards and flowers, spoon their mother's ashes onto the burial plot. Easier to watch Will run to Theo after the service to engage in kid conversation. Children need support from their friends, too. Wondering why death has to be the way that it is, here, in this country. Enough then to be comforted by the children being children. And thinking, still, about the words on the back of the printed program. Thinking about the words. Thinking about her.

Together

And
Now that we
have come to the end
of this time and place
my friend
how shall we spend
the future

We cannot ever be
sure
of the times ahead
but
let it always
be said
We were very together
then
When
it mattered.

-Ja Jahannes

Looking forward, looking back

10 years ago today
35 weeks today
5 years next month

Really Absurd?

I first read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez about 15 years ago and upon finishing, immediately added it to my list of favorite books. At the time, I was a 21-year-old woman with a freshly purchased literature degree flitting about, falling in love, sometimes. I'd call myself then a woman romanced by romance, though not too stupidly, and, mostly naive to the inner workings of love and happiness and marriage and life. I thought it was kind of sweet how Florentino waited "fifty-one years, nine months, and four days" for Juvenal Urbino, Fermina's husband, to die so that he could again pursue her.

But this time through I am different--10 years of marriage (this Thursday) and almost three children into it different. The young, flighty, excited woman of before is a present reader, but much more critical. The characters, then, not so sweet, and my sympathies fewer. And as I read I find myself looking not for romance, but for absurdity--if to mock it, briefly and to laugh. For example, one of my favorite parts 150 pages into the reread is the part where Florentino Ariza unsuspectingly makes a whore of the Widow Nazaret (close to Nazareth?). It is strangely absurd and absurdly believable that Florentino, who wants desperately to give his love to Fermina and only Fermina, tries to teach this pent up woman how to fornicate.

"With all his perseverance, he tried to teach her the tricks he had seen others perform through the peepholes in the transient hotel, along with the theoretical formulations preached by Lotario Thugut on his nights of debauchery...The lessons were to no avail. The truth is that she was a fearless apprentice but lacked all talent for guided fornication. She never understood the charm of serenity in bed, never had a moment of invention and her orgasms were inopportune and epidermic: an uninspired lay...Little by little, listening to her sleep, he pieced together the navigation chart of her dreams and sailed among the countless islands of her secret life. In this way he learned that she did not want to marry him, but did feel joined to his life because of her immense gratitude to him for having corrupted her. She often said to him: "'I adore you because you made me a whore.'"

This passage, the passionless but real but absurd relationship that Florentino and the widow have, Florentino's notebooks recording 622 of his "long-term liaisons," delight me in a way that is perhaps disturbing. And perhaps I should reflect on why and how I came to this rereading of one of my favorite books--this delight in the absurd, or, delight in the realness of the absurdity. But something that I've learned, maybe with time, is that sometimes in this age of supposed self reflection, it can be best not to analyze to the point of absurdity. There are things that do not need explaining--and for me--my delightfully absurd rereading of Love in the Time of Cholera is one of those things.

They Might Be Giants NSA ringtone

Thinking about this for my ringtone.

So I took a few photos of the Olson walk. Actually, I took a hundred photos of the Olson walk. And I liked about 28 of them enough to post here. Thank you to organizers, participators, Charles Olson for a full weekend--starting with Michael Rumaker reading at The Bookstore on Friday and ending with Gerrit Lansing reading at Fitz Henry Lane on Sunday not forgetting the panel of folks at MIT and the Ferrini film in between.

Outside

We got outside today. To talk about politics and do headstands. And isn't Lucy's cat the coolest? There's only one answer to this question. Answer carefully. Penalties for wrong answers.

Mum

Being a mother. Straightforward. And then not so.

Easy enough to understand when two children, Sunday morning, climb onto our bed, move in close for warmth. Easy to love the smoothness of their skin, their silky hair, their giggles and squeaky morning voices whispering, or yelling, "Happy Mother's Day," and "I love you."

Difficult. Thinking about a friend far away. In Korea. Separated from her children. Not knowing when she'll be close to them. And another friend, mother of two young boys, sick with cancer. Sick to think about the children living full time with the man who has been needlessly trying to gain custody of the children--three wives into it. Thinking about a mother's thoughts as she lies in a hospital bed, dying. The difficult--no--agonizing--aspects of being a mother for these women.

Often it isn't buttercups and happiness and moonshine. There are decisions to be made, hard ones. There is loss. There is the pain of fierce love.

But most of us wouldn't have it differently, the being a mother, being a parent. It balances, challenges, rewards us in ways that we cannot understand, sometimes, but for the feeling of it. The little things, then, beautiful and simple as being surprised by a small plant with pink flowers, a note card with colorful scribbles, a thank you. These gifts after a particularly long weekend of husband away with work, an achy, pregnant back, and rain. These gifts meaningful beyond my limited comprehension of the way things are and the way things should be.

Izabella

Inventory

Have a cold but I'm eating strawberry icecream anyway. Something to bite into. Strawberries. Clothes don't fit. Elastic band waist thingy won't stay up, shirts too short to cover belly. A week since my grandmother died. Still wishing for goodbye that didn't come with seeing her tiny, lifeless person in those clothes, hearing hymns, listening to talk of the other side.

Thursday news. Friday flight. Saturday funeral. Spanish Fork burial. Second cousin, 10 children. Sunday knitting while others go to church. Monday flight. Week's worth of laundry and cleaning. Behind. Too tired to care. Wednesday glucose test. Three hours of needle poking, not eating, sugar drinking, waiting, knitting. Shaking then sleeping. Negative results. Thursday for bill paying and grocery shopping. Sun on Friday. Caught a cold, midnight, steam, shower with two year old. Awake eating ice, solving number puzzles. Orange goldfish crackers to plastic bowl, then to bed. Excavator under pillow. Go to sleep thinking about the doctor and his wife--not the baby and the photographer and those dreams.

Weaving ends in, then out. Tank top finished. On. Stripes beneath. She's out to buy flowers.

Laundry. Needing to do laundry. Laundry. Laundry. But writing instead.

Sweet and sassy haircut

Back when people tucked their shirts in

There

I am knitting with cotton. It is soft between my fingers. As I knit, my work becomes heavier, less like yarn and more like something to wear, a weighty circle of knitted rows. Soft colors--pink, coral, white and green. Not colors that I would have chosen, but pleasing enough.

An e-mail says that she's not doing well, disoriented, roaming a place that is not her own, falling. She said that she would never leave that house--and she meant it. She's not eating or drinking or sleeping. The note says that they're sorry that she can't recognize us now, that John went to see her last week and that she recognized him. And that is something—for my grandmother and for John.

Grandparents grow old. Grandparents die. We wish for it to happen quickly, without the suffering, but how often is that? Most unlike my 90+-year-old great-grandfather with wooden leg pressed firmly to the floor announcing to Stella that he would be dying in a day or two. Two nights later he died in his sleep, entertaining his great grandchildren with stories and guitar at home one day, not alive the next. There wasn't the waiting, the wondering, the wishing that somehow it could be different. He went. And that was that.

We attended a burial on Saturday. Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester. Catholic burial. Short and probably what she would have wanted, but void of the essence of her, learning details from family later. Never knew that she cut and curled her own hair, explaining the length and the straightness at the end. Never knew that she accumulated--over how many years?-- $1400 in cash at the bottom of her dresser drawer. Bridge money? Or Cape Ann Savings Bank money? Or splurge money? Never knew that she had a fur coat that she didn't wear, that she strongly disliked the name McElligott, her maiden name, a name that we had been considering as a middle for our next born.

I talk to my children about death. Aidan, age four, says, "When a person dies they can't do things anymore and we can't see them." She makes it simple and is satisfied. Cole, age two, wants to know if he'll die when he gets sick. "I was dying last week," he says. I talk about how people get older, how their bodies stop working as well as they used to--and then the inevitable questions, "Do only old, sick people die? Will you die? Will I die?"

I am thinking about how to say goodbye. From here. 2300 miles away. I'm thinking about the time my brother and I visited their house in California, the one that she didn't want to leave. Went to four amusement parks in four days--Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Magic Mountain--I realize now, a labor of love on their part. My grandfather was alive then. He couldn't go on all of the rides because he'd had a heart attack at 40. But it didn't matter because he was there with us, laughing, panning for gold, eating the famous fried chicken and raspberry jam wearing that white cap of his, the one that he always wore to cover his disappearing or disappeared hair, my grandmother's hair perfect, same chocolaty brown color for as long as I have known her.

I want to see her. I think. I want to look into her eyes for recognition--of my memories. I want to hold her hand. I want to sit next to her and knit, tell her about the cotton yarn, the coldness of spring in Massachusetts, about the pansies that I will buy and plant in a bright, blue pot and place on our stone steps. I want to tell her about my babies, about the one who isn't born yet. I want to thank her for all of the cards and the dollar bills that she has sent and to tell her that I agree that "you can still buy something for a dollar." I want to say goodbye. And it's not about regret. It's not about wishing that I had said or had done--it's about being there, with her, before there is nothing left. It's about growing old, about death, about the realness of both. But mostly it's about love. I want to be there with her because she's my grandmother and I love her.

Last night, among other things that I may write about later, I came home to this.

Hope the photos make a couple of people laugh.

Totally, like, you know, pagan