I Want to Feel Better

When Max was in the worst of his tantrum phase, he was in the middle of a screaming fit, and I was ignoring him until he finally said, "I want to feel better!" I was floored––he'd just shown me how all people eventually are able to transition out of anger or other self-destructive patterns.

White people in the garden

Yesterday was greening day on the block - organized by a few of us, attended by many. But surprisingly, all white people. Why is that? Any ideas?

Money and Fear

Last night, we were supposed to grill with the upstairs family, but all felt too cold and exhausted after an active day of gardening the tree pits on the block and protesting the war. In spite of the fact that we're all completely broke, we ended up at Nana for sushi -- they have goldfish in the windows, lights obscured by colored glass, a shined and polished concrete floor... Maybe because I haven't had sushi since getting pregnant, and we never go to restaurants anymore (well, OK, we went last weekend), but it was just so great to have a Saturday night on the town!

It's made me think a lot about what it means to be an American, ie someone pretty comfortable living with a zero bank balance, and engaging in a completely luxurious experience financed by credit cards. Especially ironic since we spent the money on Japanese food, and the Japanese are so famous for saving.

I read in the paper that even as our individual standard of living increasingly decreases, our economy itself continues to grow. I am so grateful to anyone in my life who has taught me to live on the cheap - Theresa, with Friday night pizza, Lorri with perspective, Mom with recycling absolutely everying and cooking all food from scratch, Sandy with the splendor of keeping what you have simply clean, Sophie and Joseph with tofu. But those little savings aren't going to do it.

Health care is one of the highest categories of spending for Americans. How much does that suck? Healthcare isn't even fun.

Spring

We're back today from spring holiday celebration bonanza. First, Yorktown for Passover, then up to Bloomfield for Easter. We saw 12 members of Rick's and my original nuclear families, and then also Howie, Polly, Paul, the 5 Gwardyak grandkids, Anne-Paul, Ann Chilton, Annette, 4 other Gwardyak relatives, Cindy Harvey and her new beau Russ. That's 29 people in 4 days. Wow.

On Easter Sunday two things happened that confirmed my faith in the universe. The minister at the Unitarian church spoke about how important it is to pay attention to the meaning of the Easter/Passover/resurrection/restoration stories without having to have faith in the factual truths of the stories. The second was that Max slept to 7:30 in the morning, which felt like 11 am after more than two months of 6:30 wake up calls.

It felt great to dress up. Frankly, it felt great to shampoo.

Am reading such a deadly book - Snow, by Orhan Panuk, about Turkey, politics, love poetry, and I'm reading 2 paragraphs a day. It's very long and all I seem to get out of it is that the main character is named Ka, and the city the story takes place in is Kars, and don't those two words sound a lot alike?

Where's my toothbrush?

I was on the phone after dinner, and Rick was getting Max ready for bed while also taking out the trash. When Rick was out of the apartment, Max came into the kitchen and asked, "Where's my toothbrush?" He has a habit of throwing it when he's done brushing, so we've found it face down in the living room, under his bed, at the bottom of a box of toys. He once went 2 days without brushing his teeth because we couldn't find the brush. "It's wherever you threw it," I said, and when Rick came back into the house, they went to look for it.

A few minutes later, Rick called me into the bathroom. They had the vanity cabinet open, and Rick was holding our longest screwdriver. "Where's your toothbrush Max?" Rick asked. "Show Mommy."

Max proudly pointed underneath the sink. "In the pipe!"

The Priest - to do

Watching The Squid and the Whale this weekend (also watched West Wing election final, the horrific opening of Saving Private Ryan, about 20 minutes of the first Spiderman, and baseball...it's back), I started to think about the way Noah Baumbach presented his parents, or the fictive versions of same. It's so hard to get a complex relationship down without either muddying it or oversimplifying. And then unpacking the copmlete Francis Parkman onto the shelves in my office, I thought about how I discovered this whole other side of dad, his entry into the professorial world, such a departure from what his parents expected of him, and then the world itself changed so much. He started out collecting bound completes of canon writers, and ended up reading only the paperbacks that were sent to him for free. It was like he did this whole self conscious professor identity thing to help him transition into an unknown world, and then rejected it in favor of a more authentic experience of reading, just as academia was shifting into territories where everything that had been accepted was now coming into question, particularly the authoritarian white male professor paradigm that dad had somewhat falsely bought into.

(Mom - are you enjoying this?)

I think that that is what is missing from the family I'm building for The Priest. I have this late 50s priest die of cancer and his daughter come home to take care of him and stay. I want her to be working through defining herself against parents, whose identities were often in flux. I want who they are to be real, but to do that I think it has to be pretty confusing...

The mold...

Yesterday Max went to the Botanical Garden with Joseph, Miriam, Rachel, and David and Dorothy. Rick hung shelves in my office and the globe lamp, and today Maribeth came for a meeting. She had an allergic reaction and thinks it may be the mold. I hope it's just the old rugs. I've turned on the air purifier.

This morning Max was charming. He has emerged a little more each day from the funk he hit right before his birthday (when he dropped his nap). Of course, it's adjusting to Eliza, but he has never been anything but completely adoring to her.

I think that is maybe what sibling relationships are about. All your life, you will love them passionately, and you will also never forgive them for coming between you and your relationship with your parents...

Friday morning

Max is at school. It's at Grace's house today. We had a lovely morning -- he seems to be moving out of the trantrum hell of last week. It's like recovering from menstrual cramps, when you're just so grateful to feel normal. He got dressed AND ate breakfast without a meltdown. (Last week it was "Pick One.") Eliza woke up early, ate a lot, played, peed through her diaper and went right back to sleep after 1.5 hours. She's such a good girl.

At school, Max brought a chick and some bunny ears in his backpack. He got them out and Grace wanted to play with them. I explained he had to share and asked him how many minutes. He said, "A lot of minutes."

But he ended up turning them over when it was still his turn. Grace and Clara then hid under the piano and wouldn't let Max in because they were going through the special things in Clara's purse. Monica took the purse away and then Max was welcome to join them. Funny little birds.

April Snowstorms

I took Max and Eliza to the doctor this morning, Max for his 3 year check up, Eliza for her 8 week. They are both healthy, well-percentalized (Max is in 90% for height!). Eliza weighs 9lbs 14oz. As I was making E's next appt at the desk on the way out, another mother appears completely drenched. It took me a good minute to accept that fact that that dishevelment was my own fate.

We walked home in a blizzard, and I was amazed by 1) how easy the stroller and bjorn transition to extreme weather conditions, 2) how beautiful it was - the pear trees were in bloom and looked quite snowlike themselves, 3) the fact that April snowstorms seem to mark major events in life. There was one the day Sophie and I left Williamstown after Dad died, when Rick and I took Max for his first doctor's appointment, and then Rick pointed out later on the phone, it snowed on his bar mitzvah, April 16.

Starting Up a Blog

When I told Rick I was thinking of making a blog, he said, "I'm sure your mom will enjoy reading it."

So I titled this blog, "This is for You, Mom." Only that name was taken.

I'm calling it, "Dear Eliza and Max," toying with the thought that it will substitute as Eliza's baby book. It won't. And I hope that this one way journal won't give me an inflated sense of community, all the missing phone calls, drifting friendships, and lost opportunities that I've sacrificed to the goals of being an OK mom to my kids, an OK wife, and OK writer, and an OK fiend to the few who remain in my life (here's a shout out to Laura).

So let me get right down to it: a regular record of daily life in the year which Eliza has entered the family that has until now consisted of me, Rick, dachshund #1 Archie (may he RIP), dachshund #2 Oscar, dachhund #3 Oprah, then child #1 Max (if this were a tree sampling, he would be a thick, dark stripe), and now Eliza.