2 gargoyles + 3 months = 1 love.

A few weeks ago, a busy girlfriend of mine penciled us in for a babysitting date. She's a teacher, pregnant with her second daughter, and even though she's exhausted she insisted on babysitting R one day during her spring break. She said it's good for S and I to spend some time alone together. 

It was my first time away from snickerdoo--who is three months old today! And the first time S + I have been alone together, since he was born. We tried to think of something to do that you cannot do with a baby (and that is semi-close to where my friend lives in south San Jose). Museum, movie? But we wanted to be outside, it was such a beautiful day! A seedy dive bar? But there are lots of baby-friendly bars + pubs around. Who wants to dive into a dark bar during the day on a Tuesday, when the weather is so grand? Basically everywhere we wanted to go, we wanted to bring R along too. But we took her up on it... 

{here's a sunny preview}

Any hot dates lately?

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. 

what's in a white shelf?

{book case + baby gym}

This is my favorite part of our house. And I love the fact that these bookshelves are white. I grew up around solid oak book cases, and I've always had some faux wood shelves in my own places. But why be tied to wood coloring when it's not even real wood? Sure, IKEA's stuff is wooden, but I wouldn't really call it wood; it's more like molten woodstuffs. 

Maybe I wanted the bookshelves to match the two pieces of furniture I've never gotten rid of. First, my mother's hope chest, which has been moving with me since I was 17. I must have transported that thing at least a full handful of times with what few other belongings in the back seat of my sedan. (You're talkin' to a girl who has moved more than 20 times in as many years and who has lightened her load [read: gifted and goodwilled maniacally] more times than she cares to remember.) Second, my grandpa's solid heavy desk. But you know what? Fake wood will never match real wood, and one wood usually doesn't match another wood either. 

After living through a long Patagonian winter--half of it spent in a low-ceilinged, dark icebox--I dreamed of living in white place with white, clean lines. Everything around me would be some shade of white. However when we arrived to the States and finally moved into our apartment taking stock of the things I did still own, white just didn't seem in my future. So when we went to IKEA, I imagined purchasing something black. Or maybe even red. But white matches everything; or it doesn't beg to match anything. Happily (after hours walking through a weekday IKEA with little R in the carrier) we banked on white.

As I unpacked the boxes of books and haphazardly organized them a la heather, I saw how they tell a loose history of me. Aside from family furniture, books are the one thing I never let go. That is, until I left for South America. I sold about three boxes of me to a used bookshop right before I skedaddled. But the remainder still creates a complete-enough history. Even if I'm the only one who knows the story. The classes I've taken, papers I've written, where certain books were acquired or read, how used Elizabeth Bishop's Letters reeked of stale cigarette smoke when I sliced open the box in my cubicle at work. 

{go toward the white}

What I love most about the whiteness of our shelves is the context they offer. Stuff pops off each shelf in splishes of color. They signal a beginning. Baby books and family magazines. Arrows to our ourness.

homebound.

{enjoy the green spaces}

This weekend we zoomed around enjoying the wide green outside. Today's grey and misty and I'm bound by home. S has the car all week, while he takes a rope access certification course in Santa Cruz. The walk score in our neighborhood would be a big fat ZER0. It's about a 40 minute walk to decent shops and groceries. A walk I'd planned to do before I tumbled out of bed this morning, but that was before baby and internet land ensnarled me. 


Let's be clear though, it's not that I really want or need to walk to the shops. It's that we don't have coffee. Or, rather, we do have coffee, but I forgot to grind it at the store before bringing it home. And we don't have a grinder. I managed with tea in the morning, but then my genius husband called and reminded me that we have Turkish coffee. No cezve to brew it in (because like so many other things we left it with a grateful friend in Patagonia), but that won't stop me. 

{cafe turco, the cezve is the copper container}

But it makes me wonder, what do you look forward to most when you get out of bed in the morning? I tend to think too much about what I want or need or should do instead of thinking how good that first cuppa is going to taste. Lately I do love waking up to a bright eyed (not yet crying) little person, who smiles a big ol' open-mouthed smile when I say good morning. 

What's your morning pleasure?