hello, toddlerhood.

Dear Rowan,

Welcome to toddlerhood. I bet nobody ever actually says that to a toddler. That welcome is saved for said tot's parents.

For a year people have been saying, it will get better, it will be so much more fun. And I usually thought, but it's not so bad now. However, what they say is true. This is a really fun age. The blooms of communication are so tangible between us, it's like I can reach up and pluck a flower for you to smell. We understand each other, and that, dearheart, is an superb feeling.

And it's such a special exchange, because--for now--we ((you and me) + (papa, you, and me)) are truly in our own world. We know what your barking sounds like and that you bark whenever you see any animal. We know that you do this because we often look at dogs in the picture books and ask: Rowan, what does a dog say? Arf Arf.

Some things are more obvious, like when you bring your shoes to the door and try to put them on. Obviously you want to go outside. Arms up is up. Nmmm numm nmmm + the more sign closer to your mouth means eat.

Then there are the more nuanced wishes, which an onlooker may not decipher. Like knowing the difference between your milk sign and bye-bye wave. And that bye-bye means Good night, or I'm ready for bed.  That grunting to get my attention while twisting your wrists above your head with pointer and thumb together in what looks to be the beginning of the sweetest little pirouette means, Mama, please sing. And that only mama knows the story behind this made-up sign of yours.

Of course I've felt blunted by those moments of doubt, times where I set to fretting whether you'll ever sleep several hours in a row at night, or if you'll ever lay stand still for a diaper change. But your sleeping has improved organically, without us having to do anything drastic. Even when you kick and cry during a diaper change, you know how to help me--and you do. When I ask for hugs, you give me hugs. When we go to kiss daddy good night, you lean in for a kiss.

I love you, my little angel, who sometimes likes to scream.

autumn life.

sunday laundry :: cranberry bread :: a journey of a thousand miles :: maple leaves

what did you do this weekend?

moetic moment.

{gosh, a little over stimulation?}

Every once in a while, I take a step back and see myself from afar looking at baby clothes hanging over the shower door, and I think: wow I'm a mom.

true dat.

I'm writing an about page for this little blog. It's proven hard to do, what with a constantly nursing baby on my boppy and one-handed typing off to the side. But really, I can't blame sweet Rowan. The truth is I was feeling stuck. Suddenly I'm forcing myself to define my blog (+ myself). But I don't like being pigeon-holed! So much so that: during an icebreaker in college one of my professors had each student describe herself in one word. Absurd! Little rebel me, I decided to sneak an extra word in: pigeon-holed. 

{let's fly away}

Anyway, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Claire about helping creative writing students find their voice. Langston Hughes' poem "Theme for English B" popped into my head. And it seems so apropos for me now. The moral of this little (non)story is to be true. 

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

      Go home and write

      a page tonight.

      And let that page come out of you—

      Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.   

I went to school there, then Durham, then here   

to this college on the hill above Harlem.   

I am the only colored student in my class.   

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,   

through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,   

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,   

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator   

up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me   

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what

I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.

hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.   

(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.   

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.   

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.   

So will my page be colored that I write?   

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white—

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That’s American.

Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.   

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that’s true!

As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and white—

and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Do you have an About page? 

Did you "define" your blog there? 

How was that experience?

Wishing you a beautiful, springy Easter + weekend. 

signs of spring.

Yesterday the Navimag (backpacker-style "cruise" and cargo ship that sails 3 days through Patagonian fjords and connects Puerto Natales with Puerto Montt in the north) arrived with some travelers and lots of food cargo. Suddenly way-too-expensive blueberries, California red grapes, arugula and boxes of fruit + veggie delicacies crowded the aisles of our local market. It's only in the last year or so (and then, only during the impending summer months) some locals have even seen an blueberry. The clerk asked us what they were called: uvas?; no, they are arándanos.

This morning S halved grapes into our cereal bowls. We went for a walk along the coast, covered in litter (as it always is) and in the yellow beginnings of dandelions. In town, red and happy yellow tulips abound and show their black inner bellies. Occasional snapdragons sidle up to the fronts of houses, and leaves of lupine sprout from the brown ground. There are even daffodils, which I've never seen before here. Daffodils. These may be my favorite flower, and, yes, they are even more endearing to me for Wordsworth and having visited Tinturn Abbey way back in the olden golden days of a college semester abroad.

For everybody cruising into spring, I hope it's filled with flowering greens. If you're enjoying the fall foliage or already feeling an early frost, I send you images of daffodils--you know, for your mind's pretty eye.

{daffodils by harold.lloyd}

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

--Wordsworth

If you haven't already, enter my giveaway here!

{grape photo : unknown : please let me know if it's yours}

on edge + the sea.

"Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea..." 

-- Pablo Neruda

 

{me + the sea : parque nacional santa teresa, rocha, uruguay : by serkan yalin}

A soon to be relevant poem about falling...

...about stumbling suddenly into personhood, specifically into womanhood.
By Elizabeth Bishop, one of my favorites.

In the Waiting Room
by Elizabeth Bishop

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

ref: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15211

A poem for a sunny, cold Tuesday

I haven't read much poetry in a while. Got my hands on a montagecollection in Ecuador. (It can be tricky or really expensive to find books in English down here). Anyway here's one that made me particularly happy. I woke up thinking about it this morning.

A Display of Mackerel

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other
--nothing about them
of individuality. Instead

they're all exact expressions
of one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if,
after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler's
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate

in its oily fabulation
as the one before.
Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer--would you want

to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,
multitudinous. Even now
they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.
They don't care they're dead
and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,
they didn't care that they were living:
all, all for all,

the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming.

Here's an essay by Mark Doty on his mackerel poem:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/doty/mackerel.htm
Though things are generally way nicer before you overexplain them to death. That goes for poetry, love, patience, inner light, what have you.

But here's a great line from the essay, something for thought to munch on... "A poem is always a made version of experience." I have to add memory to that list of made experience.