Essay in the Boston Review: Smothered to Smithereens: the poetics of motherhood, by Stephen Burt.

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To portray life with small children—so it seemed to Mayer and Notley, to Owen, and for that matter to Olds—one had to break just the standards of form, of closure, of compactness, that Plath (even in Ariel) worked to retain. One had to show language and time as unfixed, uncertain, as in the speech of preliterate children, or in the day-to-day, hour-to-hour reschedulings that children (even older ones, and even given quality day care) require. A poet had to aspire less to immortality than to immediacy, to turn away from made things and toward processes, toward some sense of poems as always—uneasily—shared. Owen called one poem “There Are Too Many of Me.” Notley’s “Three Strolls” encompassed the bleariness, the blurry sense of self, the cuteness, the resistance to cuteness, the sense of confinement, the infinite expectations, and the stretched-out sense of time: “how much of what goes on gets stopped & started.”

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March 8th, 2010 | Category: overheard | Comments (1)

March 8th, 2010 | Category: written | Leave a comment

I see this space as a studio/journal and not as a newspaper, so if I write about a baby all the time, then I’m going to keep doing it if I feel like it, even if I worry sometimes that I’m being boring. But I’m also relieved to link to something not-baby: The Dailies from design for mankind’s website. I have a very messy method of looking at websites. I should really learn how to use Google Reader or something. But for some reason I must have set up a long time ago that design for mankind can send me email updates of her site, and I enjoy looking through them once in a while. The Dailies is a section of her site where artists she chooses catalog their day, hour by hour. I love to see how people spend their days, and artists in particular.

March 7th, 2010 | Category: overheard | Comments (1)

This is probably incredibly boring, but I was thinking the other day about how to explain to a friend where my days go. I never really know, and I wanted to see it outlined for myself.

And I’ve been thinking about what I do each day when I write — this phrase came to mind: turning the day into language. I really do try to do that each day, at the very least for myself, to turn the day into language. So maybe this post is the least metaphorical interpretation of that phrase.

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Waking at 6, 6:20, 6:40. He fusses, his mouth roots at the fitted sheet, he stretches his arms, it touches me, he falls back to sleep. Again and again, this goes on for almost an hour — not quite asleep and not quite awake. When his eyes open I sit up, I lift him to me in one ungraceful swoop that causes his arms to shoot up as if he’s falling. He doesn’t wake smiling like he did the day before. I work for a smile, and finally on the changing table there is one. I go through the hellos with the baby, our ritual to the wagging tails: hi moby, hi joonie, hi roxy, hi lucky. Hi beautiful day: I open the curtains to show him. He looks at the light.

His arms still move as if he’s swimming in amniotic fluid. I have put on my blue robe, the temperature out there is 27 degrees. I take off his diaper, which is heavy with pee and cold. It’s a cloth diaper and the wet is wicked off the layer that touches his skin and sits heavy and freezing in the insert. He kicks his legs, he spreads his knees, I swear he helps me clean him up. We put on a clean diaper, then I put him on the bathroom floor and close the door to keep out the animals while I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth.

I let one dog outside and then another as I hold him. I put him down in his soft baby chair and start to make oatmeal. I clean the kitchen some. I wash some bottles. Steve comes upstairs from his treadmill run as Henry has begun to cry again for more food. I sit down, unzip my robe, and feed him to prepare us for our walk. It’s 8:15. Steve showers. He holds the baby as I put on the baby carrier and my boots. I wrap the baby to my chest as Steve puts on his boots and leashes the dogs. then off we walk, downtown, stopping on the way to drop off the rent for my studio space, which I have not visited for a month.  I write each day, but not there. It’s still so early, I’ve just figured out how to take care of the baby inside the house, I don’t yet know how to leave the house with the baby without feeling a lot of stress. My home will have to be my studio for a little bit longer.

Henry sleeps for the whole walk, as he always does as long as I feed him first, lulled to sleep by a full belly, having been up for two hours it’s amazingly already time for a nap, and inside my coat it’s so warm. We return from our walk at 10, and I hold the baby while Steve makes juice for breakfast, then Steve holds the baby while I pump milk for the day. I pump six ounces – the baby takes about four ounces per meal these days, though most of the day he seems to like to snack. I put some in a bottle and some in the fridge, and Steve feeds the baby while I shower.

I shower for a long time. I never know how to leave the shower. I leave it when there’s no more hot water left. When I get out, Steve is walking Henry around the dining room table, around and around, listening to Cat Power. Henry’s almost asleep, but he’s rooting for more food. I get my things ready to leave the house, then I feed the baby for ten minutes until he is asleep while I check the internet. Then I put him in his car seat, where he wakes but is calm and sleepy. This is the stressful time. It’s impossible to nurse while driving, and if he’s not asleep in the car then he’s usually crying. We say goodbye to Steve as he packs up his laptop for work. I put a pacifier in the baby’s mouth while I drive and he falls asleep.

I drive to the pharmacy and grocery store to pick up and return some items. Henry sleeps for the car ride there, then wakes when I take him out of the car into the bright and cold day. I haul his car seat into a grocery cart – I’ve learned to park by the cart collections in the parking lot — and he smiles at me throughout the store, up and down each aisle he stares at me and waits until I look back and then he smiles. We get back in the car and he starts crying as soon as my face is no longer in sight. I try to put a pacifier in his mouth while I drive, but he’s not calmed. I drive and hold a bottle of expressed milk to his mouth, my right arm in the backseat while my left hand drives. This isn’t safe, but it’s not safe to hear a baby cry while I drive, either. He’s calmed, but it’s impossible to find his lips with a bottle and I worry I’m digging it into his eye. I worry he’ll choke and I can’t help him. Steve has given me directions to get to the next store – I know I’ve been here for six and a half years, but I still need help with the highways. I misunderstand his directions and end up very far from town. Oh, this is how it’s stressful to be in a relationship when there’s the constant stress of a new baby. I call him, unhappy, and he directs me back to town before I abruptly and tersely hang up. I’m stressed out. Ah, love.

I’m at a gas station and the tank is empty so I buy gasoline, feeding the baby from the bottle as the tank fills. He cries briefly when I get back in the front seat, but then he sleeps and I arrive at the local baby store. Henry sleeps as I haul him and his car seat into the store, and he sleeps as I talk about baby carriers and receive a demo on how to better use the moby wrap and I learn how to use it while nursing. He stays asleep while I try on a nursing bra, but he wakes when I’m putting my clothes back on, and he’s crying. Crying, I’m learning, is a language, not a manipulative tool or a sound that might annoy me. I answer it as much as I can. I love to heed it, I do. I go to the bathroom and feed him from the bottle, squatting on the tiles beside his car seat, until he stops crying, then I quickly pay for the nursing bra and leave.

He cries the whole way home, and I can’t seem to find his mouth with the bottle, my right arm in the backseat, my circulation and patience dwindling. Driving alone with a baby sucks. I keep having to take arm breaks, stretching my shoulders, and he cries harder. When we’re home it’s 1pm and I run to let the dogs out, grab some water and tortilla chips, then sit down with him and nurse. As soon as he’s out of his seat he smiles at me, and he smiles for so long that it’s hard for him to form his lips to nurse. He is so beautiful, my God. I check the internet and feed him until he sleeps.

I put him in the moby wrap and carry him while I write thank-you notes for some baby presents until he cries, then I nurse him in the wrap while I eat lunch too late, 2pm, beans and rice, leftovers from last night’s dinner. He sleeps this way for a few minutes, then he wakes up crying and calms when I take him out and put him in his baby chair on the kitchen counter. He sits there while I clean the kitchen and write some more thank-you notes.

He hasn’t had a solid nap yet today and it’s 3pm, so I lie down with him in bed and nurse him until he sleeps. I fall asleep, too. He wakes with a start at 3:30, I don’t know why, and he cries and nursing doesn’t stop his cries, so I take him to his changing table and he calms down. I change his diaper – it’s not the diaper that bothers him ever, but the changing table almost always calms him. He’s so serene and playful there, kicking his legs and staring at the wall and at my face. I put him in the moby wrap and bring the dirty cloth diapers downstairs to the washer. We talk as we go down and the dogs follow us. We go in Rosie’s room and turn off her bedside lamp. We climb over her piles of clothes. We go upstairs and I go on the internet to do some research for a bit more until he cries — maybe crying is a harsh word for these sounds that signal that something inside of him is looking for balance. But that word ‘fussing’ doesn’t feel right, either.

I feed him as I work at the computer, pecking away with one hand unproductively, and he sleeps briefly until Steve comes in the door at 4:30. Steve holds the baby until he cries, when I feed him some more, then give him to Steve while I get ready to write for an hour. There’s some milk in the fridge for them. As I leave the house, Steve is walking the baby around the dining room table and they’re listening to Cat Power together.

I spend so much time looking at a creature who is less than a foot away from my eyes, sometimes it’s hard to adjust to looking into the distance as I drive. I order some decaf coffee at a coffee shop and write and feel so different without a baby attached to me. I feel strange, like I’m lying to people by not having the baby with me. They don’t know what I know about myself, they don’t know who I am. It’s a Friday early evening and there are babies with their parents all over town it seems, and I want to show them that I’m one of them. I feel like I’m missing an arm.

I drive home and assemble the cloth diapers while Steve tends to Henry, then I feed him while we wait for our friends to come. When they come, we drive together down to the neighborhood restaurant/bar, but the wait is an hour. Maybe before we would have waited an hour, but babies are heavy and unpredictable. We drive to the vegan restaurant and only have to wait fifteen minutes. With this new diet — no dairy, no soy, no onion, no spice — I am able to eat a salad, which makes me feel sorry for myself but it’s actually surprisingly good. His stomach still seems sensitive to something, and I worry that when we go to his doctor’s appointment this week, the doctor will suggest that I also surrender all wheat.

Henry is asleep the whole dinner after a day of no solid nap. Beautifully asleep in my arms, heavy in my right arm and I wish he were leaning the other way so that I wouldn’t have to hold my fork so awkwardly in my left hand. He sleeps from 7-9:30, sleeps for the car ride home, then wakes to eat as we talk over whiskey in our living room (our friends insist we try it, we’ve never tried it before, and the tiny glass they pour me is so sweet and also dark). I’m so tired by 11pm when our friends leave, too tired to be helpful and articulate. Looking outside of yourself for so long, every minute tending to another creature, holding a twelve-pound baby all day, it is surprisingly exhausting. Steve puts Henry to bed without a diaper change — we’re still traumatized from a week ago when he woke him to change his diaper and the boy would not sleep for four hours after that — and he sleeps through the usually impossible transition from arms to mattress. I fall asleep beside him instantly, blissfully.

He sleeps until 1, then is up every hour from 1 until 7 for just a small drink before he falls back to sleep again. The sleep is too fitful, I can’t get into it deep enough and I feel so hot, the night is warmer than others previously and our heat must be too high. I want someone to take the baby for an hour so I can have just a little more sleep, but there is no other food source in the house and so we all wake, Steve lets the dogs out, I feed the baby and we head out to the grocery store to buy some food and coffee for a weekend breakfast.

March 6th, 2010 | Category: apparent, house | Leave a comment

March 5th, 2010 | Category: henry | Leave a comment

Henry: Rawrrrr

Me: Rawrrrr. Henry’s a lion. I do think his animal is the lion. Like I think we all have an animal that is most like us. I think your dad’s animal is the ox.

Rosie: What animal am I?

Me: I think you’re a bear.

Rosie: Why, because I’m big and hairy?

Me: No. Because you’re strong, and loyal, and cuddly.

Rosie: Aww, thanks. It means a lot that you think I’m cuddly.

Me: What animal do you think I’d be?

Rosie: Um, I think a snake.

Me: A snake?! Why?

Rosie: I don’t know, that’s just what I thought of.

Me: Come on, you can’t say I’m a snake and not say why.

Rosie: I don’t know.

Me: I was sort of thinking I was a deer.

Rosie: Um, I guess I can see that?

Steve: This is a dangerous game.

Henry: Rawrrr.

March 3rd, 2010 | Category: house | Leave a comment

I’m still scared going outside, but in our house I’m not afraid anymore. I can’t be continually afraid. Like continually noticing the sensation of clothes on your skin.

In the beginning we had to learn a new language. There is still fear now, but it comes after 53 days of knowing that we have been okay. I had a nightmare last night I whacked his head on the edge of a cafeteria table.

I am often afraid of hitting his head. Once a bottle fell out of the fridge and hit him on the head and that was his second pout just before he wailed. It hurt. I hurt him because I was not superman, I didn’t knock that bottle out of the way. I was holding him and inside the fridge something fell. The world is so dangerous. (Note: Once I protected him from a falling can of chicken broth.) The tonic water fell out of the fridge and the brunt of it went to my shin,  or at least I hope so because it hurt. I kicked the dogs out of the way, racing to a place to sit down and nurse.

Nursing: comfort, antibodies, warmth, nourishment. He sometimes wants to stay there all day and I let him. In these arms is safety and contentment. Remember that.

In the beginning Steve wouldn’t leave the house for even ten minutes, nor would I. I would race to school to pick up rosie and come back and he would look so calm but we both admitted complete fear. The baby could explode at any point. Anything could go wrong, but not if we had each other. In the beginning, you have to learn everything from scratch. Everything. The baby needs to sleep just a little bit longer while I learn.

Then Steve left for two hours, Henry one week old, to take Rosie to her tutor. The anxiety over holding a living helpless thing, you can’t think about it all the time, you can’t think about the clothes touching your skin all the time, but then Steve was gone and the baby choked. He made the most beautiful face as he searched for air, his mouth in a tight O, his eyelids shut and taut. I drained away. The strength in my arms, gone. I don’t know what I’m doing. This creature could die. He might as well die now before I feel too invested, I remember thinking that then.

I have hit his head on two door jambs while turning corners out of a room while holding a baby who has no neck control in one hand and trying to turn off the light with the other. I hit his head on the inner roof of the car while trying to get him out of his carseat to nurse him while he was crying, his face red, his tongue curled back. I am a careful person, and babies are sort-of heavy and awkward to hold and fragile. When I take off his clothes there are red indents where his clothes touched his skin. There was a red mark where the tonic bottle fell, though it faded within a few minutes.

Putting on his small clothes for the first time: Steve did it, I couldn’t. I felt like I was going to snap his arm. I tried to take the baby’s tiniest shirt off of his newborn body, tugging it over his shoulder and then over his head, not completely sure that his head wouldn’t fall off. As we changed him he would scream, freezing and vulnerable, his body trying to stretch out for the first time.

We were all so frail and fragile, my chest bleeding, sitting on an ice pack for the stitches, the new baby light as a kitten on my chest in the hospital. Hospitals hold too much trauma at every turn. They hold too many stories that get scrubbed clean when patients leave. I was exhausted and high on hormones and couldn’t sleep and my husband was there in the husband chair in the corner of the ugly room. A man came in to clean the blood out of the bath tub. We’d just watched Sunshine Cleaning the night before. There was a snow storm that I saw through the window blinds of the hospital.

My boy. A brand new baby. It’s taken this long to even realize that what I have is a son. Don’t take me seriously when I say this so soon: I want one of those again right now, those new babies. I feel like I didn’t see it for what it was, and I’m not seeing this for what it is. I can’t see it while I’m in it, the hormones and the lack of sleep and the feeling like I’m just about to fall into a nap or come out of one. I can’t focus on the awe enough, having a baby in the house, a life you better believe I fought for.

In the beginning there were too many logistics and too much pain to see this moment and that moment. You must be having so many feelings, my dad was pushing me to talk about the feeling of having a new baby that first day. But it wasn’t feelings, it was logistics. How to put a carseat in the car. How to hold a carseat without dropping it while opening a door. How to nurse without bleeding. How to get water when I’m thirsty and feeding a baby. How to let a dog outside to go to the bathroom while holding a baby who shouldn’t yet go outside. What I did feel then was toward my husband: in love with him, for the way he looked at me, what we had witnessed together, what we were trying to figure out together. I thought he would know more than I since he’s done this before, but it’s been fifteen years and look we’re new at this together, a team in a new way.

Each day it’s just a phase. Capture it. We do this six more times and the baby is walking. Two months old. We do this six more times and the baby is talking, calling our new names.

March 1st, 2010 | Category: apparent | Leave a comment

I wish there were a way to have this book!

(Pirate Boy, or, Adventures of Henry Warrington)

We found it online the night after Henry was born and we googled his name. The delight! Our new beginning, and an adventure already begun.

February 26th, 2010 | Category: henry | Leave a comment

I am getting better at saying, I would like to go out and buy those shoes, but maybe tomorrow.

I am good these days at recognizing that if I go to the grocery store with a long shopping list and then the baby starts to cry, well he’s probably hungry and I should abandon my groceries and head back to the car so no one sees me trying to figure out a silicone nipple shield. The boy can turn in a blink from smiling to storming. I am just going to go out to get some bananas, I tell myself, hiding from myself my very long list. Then if the bananas are in my cart and he’s still hanging out, staring at the fluorescent lights, then maybe I’ll just try to get some apples, too. So far this system has worked to get me out of the house.

I think often of a Simone Weil quote my friend added to her online studio index recently: Absolute unmixed attention is prayer.

My full attention, staying in each moment. It makes these days small. I surrender to one thing at a time. I watch my baby eat, and watch and watch. It calms me. This is a phase where nothing gets done. I lately love the feeling inside myself of feeling attached to something and then cutting it loose. I want to write here more, but it is often nearly impossible to both remember what I want to write inside this hormone-riddled brain and to find the time when I have two hands to do so. I cut this string and that string, watching what I had thought the day would hold float away. I feel my breathing calm, my ability to stay in the moment widen. A baby is here.

February 26th, 2010 | Category: apparent | Leave a comment