Reminders

A few days ago I had a memory:

Long before I entered this realm of motherhood, I went to visit family in Cleveland. My aunt's house was full of young kids playing hide-n-seek while the youngest of the troop, Joey who was probably about one at the time, was too young to join them and watched from the sidelines.
In an effort to make him feel included, I walked up and said something in a too-friendly, too-excited tone. He promptly replied by crying. Loudly.
Embarrassed, I high-tailed it to the other side of the room where the more predictable older kids were, mumbling something about how I must have come on too strong.
Joey's mom witnessed the moment from the same room and said nothing. She may have glanced over to make sure Joey was ok but just as quickly went back to what she was doing with no further acknowledgement.

I didn't think of it again until a few days ago, from the vantage point of being a new mother. And I am pleased to report the wisdom--and relaxation-- that was gleaned from its consideration.

When Opal cries, my tendency is to automatically say something like "she's tired" or "she's hungry" seeing as both of those statements are true most of the time. What I have noticed is that adults tend to take it personally when a baby cries, as if they did something wrong. Sometimes that is the case, but most likely it is just a baby being a baby. Honest, expressive, present in whatever she is feeling.

Recalling this scene where I was on the other side of the equation, and remembering how quickly the whole thing passed, is a reassuring thing. Rachel didn't feel the need to explain to me why Joey may have gotten upset. She assumed I, as the adult, understood that this is just how it goes. It wasn't even a blip on the radar.

What shows up on our radar is certainly lessening as time goes on and concerns that Opal will feel fussy are being replaced with the acceptance (and appreciation) of her spontaneity.
But reminders are still appreciated.

Franny, the smile and the songbird

We went to a brunch last Sunday celebrating the Tibetan New Year and there we encountered a woman named Franny. Franny wore two gray braids tied with hair so thick she needed no rubber bands on the ends. Her skin was creased as unevenly as a pile of silk and she wore clothing that draped over her shoulders and hips, clinging to nothing. She pulled a plastic flask out of her pocket and poured a clear libation into a small juice glass before acknowledging Opal, who was balanced on Jesse's left hip, sleepy-eyed but approachable.

"Well hello!" She said loudly and too close to Opal's face.

I will never understand why adults feel the need to get so close to a baby when they talk, at a volume that is twice the level they would use for a peer, often grabbing the baby's tiny fingers with their dirty hands--tiny fingers that will end up in her tiny mouth within seconds. Don't get me wrong, I am sure I was guilty of this before I became a mother. But that doesn't stop me from cringing and often physically stepping back when it happens, hoping the non-verbal communication will be heeded.

I made a pact with myself on the car-ride over to this brunch to try and chill out a bit while anticipating the people who would loud-talk, touch and kiss my baby without being mindful of space or germs. I tried to imagine this slathering of attention as being a good thing, a Loving thing. (Germs or not. Space-invasion or not.) People simply cannot help themselves--it truly comes from a place of delight. I try to remember that. And short of staying home for the next three or four years or limiting our interactions strictly to 4 people or less, there is not much I can do about it aside from keeping her as close to Jesse and I as possible.

So by the time Franny had arrived front and center, gleeful and curious, perhaps a bit flushed from the liquid in her flask, I felt relaxed and comfortable with our daughter in my husband's arms.
Franny approached Opal with a gaze that was gently analytical. She stood there looking for a few seconds and softly touched Opal's hand.

Opal smiled.

"Ahh, she smiles." Franny said. Taking on the tone of an oracle in disguise. "Once she begins to smile at the world around her, she has begun to forget where she came from."
Jesse and I were both a bit taken aback--we paused to consider the sneaky profundity, and accompanying heartbreak, of this statement as Opal held on to Franny's pointer-finger with both hands like a songbird grasping at a solid branch for perching.

Bird on a Wire Between Seven Generations

The scene: We are gathered at Grandma Louise’s house in Denver for lunch. It is Jesse, Zeb, my mother who is visiting from Ohio for the weekend, Louise and baby Opal who is sacked out on the couch having a spontaneous nap.
We are sitting in Louise’s living room, which is a room that not only pampers its inhabitants with comfortable, conversation-inducing seating, but also provides housing for her agglomeration of beautiful things. Trinkets gathered from voyages she took with her late husband Raymond: framed paintings, ink-prints, etchings and drawings, as well as mind-stopping gem and mineral chunks the size of lamp-shades that Raymond accumulated from his work in the mines. Everything has its spot, its proper place, meticulously dusted above and below. This room (and much of the rest of the house) provides asylum to these wonderful calcified bits of memory and it feels as though we humans are merely guests. And that feels rather nice.

We are all in a curious mode on this particular day, asking for the story behind this and the reason behind that, begging for an epithet to accompany each thing.
The shiny monkey, for example, who had stared at us during dozens and dozens of visits (she has had him for as long as she can remember and he always sits next to a ceramic deer who appears to be looking out for him), or the chair that is embroidered with such mastery that we all avoid sitting on it, even when there is nothing left but the floor (her mother spent countless hours making it).

Tell us about them, please. We're hungry for the recollections. Louise generously unveils one story after the next while we sit wide-eyed and word-less, hanging on her every word.

After unwrapping a half dozen or so slow and deliberate explanations, she pauses and gazes forward without settling on one specific object and says, “You know, I sit here in the middle of seven generations." Great opening. She has our attention in the center of her warn little palm and you could've heard a bird sigh outside. "I remember my great grandmother very well and the proper dresses she would wear that seem so formal to me now in hindsight. I remember my grandma, she played a huge part in my life and was often around when I was a girl. And of course, my mother--she would've been your great-grandmother, Jesse."

She takes a long breath, as if taking a drag from a cigarette that isn't there.
And continues, "Now my son has his own son--you, Jesse-- who has just had a beautiful little daughter— the precious one who is asleep in the other room.”
She gives us a thick pause to count along with her on our fingers.
“And here I am, sitting right in the middle.”
She smiles softly as we all sit there together, absorbing this notion, like shiny stones at the bottom of a pond.

Walking

Olive knows. She's no dummy. This is the highlight of her day and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't also the highlight of mine. As I strap Opal onto my belly in her beloved lightblue sling, Olive begins to pace. As I put on my tennis shoes, Olive adds whimpers to the pacing. But all question is cast aside when I slide into the over sized grey zip-up sweatshirt (big enough to zip up over Opal while she is on my chest) and it's at this point Olive explodes into a convulsing mess of canine bliss. I strap on her collar and kelly green leash and off we go for our daily walk.

We walk almost every day, Opal, Olive and I, except for the days that are a vicious example of winter showing off, with temperature in the single digits or when it's actively snowing. And it is on those uncommon days that we all feel more than slightly strange and unlaced.

The muscles in my legs begin to peculate even before we reach the end of the driveway and my biggest decision for the moment is whether to go left or right. Different from my approach to many other decisions that arise during the day, I make the choice without breaking my stride. We move forward like a tiny school of fish, one unit. We go left.

The details of our surroundings rise to the surface of what could otherwise easily be a broad, indeterminate landscape; details that greet us like familiar faces in a crowd. The graffiti on the stone wall. The sycamore that litters branches onto the sidewalk below it, as colorless as newspaper. The funky house on the corner painted primary colors and home to the overly friendly dog who is never fenced in.
Then here is the place where the path wanders away from the neighborhood houses for a moment to lead us through a field, like a moment of space between songs on the radio. There are a dozen or so old fence posts and a grown-over well that alludes to what life was like in this very spot before the subdivisions sliced it in half with a sidewalk like a hair part and filled its edges with houses. We think it may have been a farm. We wonder of there is anything buried there.

So much seems to live in this used-to-be farmland and in the air above it and presumably the ground below. The cottonwoods, bare and spindly without their leaves, have branches that reach with warped joints into the sky. A single bird is inevitably perched at the tip of the highest branch, paused, observing, and every so often a swarm of black birds erupts from the viscera of one of the trees like ink spilled upward. Quite a sight.

Olive trots along at my side, I see her ears flopping in the form of the shadow that precedes us. We walk at virtually the same time every day and, at this part of our walk, we almost always have a shadow that precedes us like a tour guide. If Opal was not already asleep when we left the house, she most certainly is at this point. We have never, not once, gotten more than 10 minutes into a walk without her little pumpkin head falling heavily against my chest as her breathing sinks to a deep, slow hum.

I meditate on the sound of my steps against the pavement and how they mix with what is in my ears. If the headphones are in, I either align my walking rhythm to Gnarls Barkley, Jurassic Five, Regina Spector or go into a kind of cadenced auto-pilot in the background of This American Life or Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Without headphones, my steps tap out a long and homogeneous sentence in Morse code.

When we reach the lake, we take a lap or two around it and return home the way we came, unwinding what we so sufficiently wound up, with the sun on the opposite side. The path around the lake is a mine-field of moss-colored goose poop, the offerings of dozens of geese who inhabit it, though it is half frozen. It is a constant source of curiosity why these winged characters did not fly south with their sisters and brothers. They seem pretty uncomfortable as they walk with staccato steps across the ice, resembling sleepy humans crossing a cold linoleum floor with bare feet, and they often reside with their own heads in their armpits to keep warm like a kittens on the sofa.

This is the walk I took when I was pregnant, occasionally at first, but eventually exclusively as my main form of exercise as I grew impressively girthy in the later months. This walk is laden with en-route benches, fences to lean on and even a covered picnic table positioned for perfect lake-viewing, perfect for someone who requires frequent breaks. I spent longer periods of time pausing and dwelling in the shade on those warm autumnal afternoons then I spent actually actively moving. I no longer need to take advantage of those resting spots, but I can't pass by them without thinking of those days, only one season prior to now, when the leaves were still on the trees. Now the trees are naked and the sweet baby gets her ride on the outside.

This is my meditation, my daily experience of traveling through poetry, a time when I feel virtually and deliciously off-duty. By the time we return to the house, we are all sun-soaked and aligned with the same rhythm that pushed those sacred cottonwoods vertically into the clouds and provided the gaggles of geese with squeaky-toy voices as they stretch their cold wings and rupture into flight.

Opal in the sling on my belly

Walking with Olive on the leash and Opal in the sling (when she was just a teeny little thing).

Snapshots

Snapshot 1:
Mid-day in the kitchen and Opal is in the baby-blue sling. She is facing my chest and there is a burgeoning shoot of hair placed right under my chin like a feather under the nose. She has woken from the twenty-minute nap that required an hour and a half of focused effort to induce. I am unloading the dishwasher with my left hand while supporting her little noggin with my right, assuming positions that are an obvious compromise to my body mechanics. I am singing a sort of rhythmic, chant-version of "Low Rider" by the band War, emphasizing the beats that accompany the squatting and the reaching with a slight grunt. It does the trick until I place the very last glass into the cupboard and then she is ready for a new song from the mama-juke box .

Snapshot 2:
Pushing the stroller on a warm, crystalline day and the sun seems to drip from the branches and grass, pooling onto the sidewalk like a mirage. The snow and ice have all but melted so the path is smooth but for the grooves in the pavement that tap under the wheels like the beat of a metronome. The dog is tied to the handle with a kelly green leash. A blanket is arranged and re-arranged meticulously over the carriage that Opal sits in, facing me, to block the sun as we shift and turn while at the same time allowing her to see my face with the sky as the backdrop. She cries for the vast majority of the walk, in varying degrees. She currently spends most of the time in her carriage either protesting and wanting to be out or sleeping. There is no real medium in this case.
I begin to sing the lyrics "Ooh lordy, got troubles so hard. ooh lordy got troubles so hard. Don't nobody know my troubles but god. Don't nobody know my troubles but got" because she took a special liking to this track while we danced to a Moby cd a few days earlier after her bath. I am singing at full volume and getting amused looks from the passersby.
She continues to cry, but it feels much better to participate in the moment with her instead of avoiding it or ignoring her, to be using my voice in my way as she uses hers in her way, harmonizing and aligning the parts as the sidewalk taps out beneath us.

Snapshot 3:
I am about to change Opal's diaper. She glances at herself in the mirror next to the changing table and gazes at the string of faux-butterflies that drape above her. I am perky, chatting with her as I reach for the proper supplies, admittedly a bit on auto-pilot as I go to unsnap her Ducky-jammies. She then grabs my hand with the obvious motivation to get my attention, as if tapping me on the shoulder, and it works. She grips my fingers and looks me straight in the eyes, as if to say, "Hey, I just want you to know that I know you're my mommy. And I love you." and she holds onto my eyes for plenty long enough for this message of recognition to be conveyed and to sink in. Deeply. My mind went completely blank as we stood there staring at one another in awe, until she gently turned away and I reached for a diaper, smiling and regaining my breath.