Island of the Humorless

I had the privilege of interacting this weekend with someone who apparently is a native of the Island of the Humorless.

Privilege is a bit of a stretch.  Let's just say, if it wasn't an obligation I wouldn't have ANY interaction with ANY of the natives of the Island of the Humorless.

I have to say, I'm not sure how someone grows to adulthood with absolutely NO sense of humor, and because I can't see how such a total absence of humor is possible in normal human development, I can only understand it by believing that they come from some island, isolated from all that is quirky or funny or cheeky and surrounded day in and day out with serious things.

And now that I think of it that way, I kind of feel sorry for her.

What offends me, is not her rude and self-righteous treatment of me, but rather the fact that I am surrounded by people who, by rights, shouldn't have a sense of humor right now, but DO.

The woman I work with, her daughter has leukemia, she's the chair of a department that is hemorrhaging faculty and staff, they face serious funding issues, and YET--she has a great sense of humor.  She laughs and teases and takes everything in stride.

My brother just got back from Afghanistan.  He saw and had to do things that were serious and seriously grim.  You know what?  He still has a sense of humor.  He told us the Perils of Drinking the Milk in Afghanistan and it was disgusting and hilarious.

My best friend Samwise, she has to move, she's the leader of the young women in her church, she works part time, she's re-certifying as a dietitian and she's raising the roundest little redhead that I've ever snuggled with.  Her own history is chock full of hard times and yet, YET, she's got a sense of humor you ought not to fool around with if you're drinking anything because it WILL come up your nose.

**********

Maybe I'm approaching this the wrong way.

Maybe a sense of humor is a gift.  A talent.  A skill to be practiced and developed.  Maybe it's not something we're born with, something inherent in our DNA.  And maybe it's just not something that happens to be in this particular woman's skill set.

Which also makes me feel sorry for her.

I've just never encountered anyone quite so humorless before, someone so incapable of hearing the nuances of playful banter.  And it's this total want of humor that reduces someone like me, who relies on my wit and humor and charm to win people over, to a lump of human flesh totally devoid of desirability.  It's an alarming feeling.

And so to console myself I made a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread and have been eating toast all weekend.  Because when one is obliged to interact with the humorless, it's best to have a piece of toast first.

500 Posts

This is my 500th post.

Hm.  I thought I'd have more to show for 500 posts after 2 and half years of blogging.  Alas.  Not so much.

I wish I had more focus, more that was ready to share with you all.  I have a lot of thoughts shuffling around inside my head, but nothing terribly coherent.  I do, however, have a sick and crabby Boy at home.  He's been under the weather since late last week, I had hoped he would blow it off, but alas, he's gotten rather sicker than otherwise.

I have been thinking a lot about creativity.  About the act of creating something, whether it's crafty and tangible, edible or graphic, or the creation of another human being.  I keep thinking about the One whose providence creation is, and how patient He must be.  After all, it takes time to create things of great worth, human or otherwise.  And even when the Thing is created, it still requires time and patience to come to full flower.

[I am interrupted to think about our upstairs neighbors, I kid you not.  It sounds like they're having wrestling matches upstairs.  I have no idea what they're doing, and I don't think I really want to know.]

I find myself wondering, how do you know?  How do you know when a thing you have created is complete?  Finished.  How does the artist contemplate a painting and know when the last brush stroke has been applied?  How does a creator come to say, "Enough.  There.  That's it.  Any more and it will be ruined."

I read the Unknown Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac years ago, when I was reading for my comprehensive exams.  It's about a master artist who goes mad and can't stop painting his masterpiece and because of that, it's completely ruined.  It's just a black canvas.   He's added so many layers of paint to it that no one can tell what it was originally supposed to be.  Ever since I finished it, I have been haunted by this idea.

I wonder if I leave things to early, before they're finished, out of fear of ruining them by staying too long.  I love simple, practical projects that have a definite end point.  They take all the guess work out of it for my overly-analytical mind. 

But what if that's the point of creation?  What if we're supposed to...futz?  Mess up?  Toy with?  I don't know the right word, but practice playing with this balance between continuing to work on something and leaving it well enough alone.  Maybe THAT's the work our our lives, the things that we do, our education, our work, our marriages, our parenthood, they're all just the theaters in which we practice finding this balance.

I'm not sure.

I seem to be having a Funk of Uncertainty lately.  I second guess simple things and am riddled with self-doubt on the bigger things.  I spent a lot of last weekend sewing and found myself stitching things up, only to turn around and rip it out to try again and again and again.  In the meantime the fabric is becoming ragged as the stitching is ripped apart repeatedly.  Maybe I should just be leaving well enough alone, let the poor choices stand as witness of where I was when I made the choice and trust that my choices in the future will be a little bit better, wiser, more balanced, more patient.

After all, I'm not finished yet either.

Reapplying for the job...

Back in 2000 U2 released All that You Can't Leave Behind.

The album is brilliant but not really the point of this post.

When the band toured and did interviews and talked about "reapplying for the job" of greatest rock band in the world.

I've been thinking about that a lot.  The idea of reapplying for the job you already have.  The re-application of yourself to your own work.  However mundane or routine or hectic or predictable or frustrating or awesome it might be.

I've spent the past couple of weeks reapplying for the job of Mom.

I suppose because I've done it longer, I feel like I'm a better Wife than I am Mother.  But then, it's easier for me and Chris to stay in sync than it is for me and the Boy.  Some of that's just nature, he's constantly growing and changing and I'm grown.  I still change but it's much slower, so trying to keep up with him is exhausting in a number of ways.

But just because I'm tired doesn't mean I should succumb to apathy.

And I had.  Maybe it was the holidays, maybe it was the last growth spurt that drained me, I don't know.  But I was coasting.  Glazed over and going through the motions.

I've spent the past couple of weeks reapplying for the job of Mom, and you know the best part?  I can.  I can wake up in the morning, no matter how hard the previous day was, and decide that Today is going to be better.  I'm going to try harder, I'm going to be more patient, more engaged, more cognizant, more aware of what's going on around me.  We're going to have more fun, we're going to laugh and play, but we're also going to work and get something done.

And over the the past couple of weeks the one thing that has become perfectly clear is my absolute favorite part of the job.

It's this:

 

Teaching him to give Love.  To be Gentle.  To be Soft.  To be kind to others and to animals.

 

 

It melts me every single time I see it.  And I see it A LOT.  It's also got me thinking, when do we stop loving like that?  When do we become guarded and shy?  When do we start to hold back?  And I know that sometimes it's a good thing, but sometimes it's not.  And how on earth am I supposed to teach him how to tell the difference when I can't always tell myself?

He comes to me periodically through the day, just to lean up against me.  No matter what I'm doing, cleaning diapers, folding clothes, cooking dinner, yoga--he walks right up against my legs and leans heavily against them for 34 seconds and then he's off to play some more.  I love those moments.  I know they won't last forever so I'm enjoying them as they come.

I was talking to Chris the other day and I was saying how strange my days are lately.  Because I watch him run and play and climb and MESS and he's so Big.  And such a BOY.  And yet.  He comes to me when he's tired or frustrated and he climbs into my lap and leans over and looks at me and there is something in his small face that is still that baby that I held once upon a time.  I wonder if it's always like that.  I wonder if my mom looks at me and still sees some shadow of the baby I was once.  I wonder if it fades over time, if we forget and move on, if it's just a part of us like our eye color and the shape of our chins.

Her Name is Nina

We live in South Georgia.

Please understand that other than the freakish cold snap that lasted for about a week, the Boy hasn't really needed a coat all winter.

I really am NOT a bad mother.

And when faced with packing for Santa Fe, I did look for a coat for him, it's just that with no real need for coats down here, there were none to be found.

So I figured we'd layer and wear the fleece and just make do for four days.

We spent one day in Santa Fe proper.  Marveling at the 400 year old church, walking up and down the streets, poking into silver boutiques--we were a parade of strollers.  Whimsy was looking for a turquoise ring and I was looking for some very specific silver earrings (I have been looking for them for a DECADE, I'm not sure why I thought that I would magically find them in Santa Fe).  We ended up perusing the wares of several native american artisans.

We strolled slowly down the length of the commons, and then slowly back up.  At this point we had been outside, in the snow, for several hours.  On our way back up the commons a lovely woman said, "Your baby looks really cold.  His hands are all red."  At which point I crouched down and rubbed and blew and attempted to thaw his poor, red, chappy hands.

She then stands up and pulls out a blanket that she had been sitting on.  She holds it out to me and says, "Here.  Take this, wrap him up tight."

I protested.  I offered her payment.  I flushed and thanked her profusely.  I felt humbled and grateful and embarassed that I hadn't taken better care of my Boy.  I offered her money once again.

She held out her hand and said, "Be my friend."

We shook on it and I asked her name. 

"My name is Nina," she replied with a brilliant smile.

I hugged her and thanked her for her kindness, and Samwise took our picture. 

I am continually amazed at the kindness that Heavenly Father brings into my life.  And yes, I lay it squarely at His door.  It is too much, too rich, too pointed for mere fate or mortals.

Meeting my Mentor

The Boy and I hopped our way to New Mexico.  From Jacksonville to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Phoenix and from Phoenix to Albuquerque.

We were really lucky on all three flights, there was an extra seat next to us so I didn't have to suffer death by Toddler Wallow.  Who am I kidding, he did just great.  He got freaked out a bit when things got loud but for the most part he was just awesome.

But his awesomeness doesn't cancel out my fear of flying.

I mention this fear because by the time we got to Phoenix I was exhausted and a tangle of nerves.  I kept telling myself that I was almost done.  That the Boy was depending on me, I needed to at least pretend to be calm for him so that he wouldn't be afraid.  (I'd rather not pass down my own fears and anxieties.  I feel confident that he'll develop his own.)

They boarded us early because the Boy is under 5, so we schlepped onto the plane and stowed the backpack and settled in.

I was sitting in the middle seat and the Boy was standing/playing on the floor next to the window.  And so I took the moment to breathe deeply and people watch as the rest of the passengers boarded.

I wasn't paying too close of attention, trying to distract the Boy and myself from the inevitable flight when I looked up and recognized a fellow passenger.

It is a strange thing to recognize people out of context.

10 years ago last month I started at the University of Washington.  I was an in-state transfer student.  And that first semester I declared as a Comparative Literature major (with French as my primary foreign language).  Spring quarter I had my first Comparative Literature class.  It was Love and Marriage in European Fiction.  We started with extracts from the Bible, Aristotle and Milton and then moved on to read Jane Eyre, The Lover (by Marguerite Duras) and Woman Warrior (by Maxine Hong Kingston). 

My professor was a lovely woman, a Princeton graduate from the 70s.  She was a Francophile with a long publication record for feminist readings.  In the course of the next three years she became my mentor, counselor and friend at the University.  She wrote my recommendation letter to graduate school.  And when I had my first paper published, my first email was to her.

I had lost touch with her through the years, it wasn't deliberate neglect, I knew that she was busy and I had grown busy with husband and child.  (And I will admit that I was hesitant to admit that after a long and expensive education, I was choosing the traditional path of wife and mother.  I knew that she was a feminist, I expected her disapproval.)

You can't imagine how surprised I was to see her walking on to that flight to Albuquerque.

As I watched her walk on, searching for her seat, stopping at my row, smiling down into my face, I forgot my fear entirely.  I was all Super Fan.  For in spite of any differences we might have, I genuinely admire this woman.

I smiled hugely and said, "You're Dr. Dornbush, aren't you?"

She smiled and said, "Yes.  Are you one of my students?"

I chuckled and said, "Once upon a time, yes, I was."

I reintroduced myself, offering her my maiden name and the years that I was her student.  She smiled hugely and insisted that she remembered me!

(I shall admit, I was a bit flummoxed, Dr. Dornbush remembered ME!  It was awesome.)

We chatted through the whole flight.  Talking about the classes she had taught, she told me how much she enjoyed having me in class and how she wished she could have had more students like me (I was a work-a-holic and an overachiever), how hard it was being a comparatist now-a-days because in all comparative literature departments the film students were taking over.  We talked about her lay-off (she had never gotten tenure, instead she had signed 1-5 year contracts to teach and it left her time to pursue her own interests).  We talked about Chris and the Boy and my choice to stay home with him.

And as the plane landed and we disembarked, she turned to me and said, "The best part is that you have the choice.  If you want to stay home, that's great.  If women want to work, that's great too.  It's great that now we have a choice."

I talk a lot about my choice to stay home.  I feel guilty, for having this extensive education, for the academic gifts that I've been given, staying home feels like selfishness, it feels like I've quit, like I'm disappointing the sisterhood of women who have worked so hard to be taken seriously.  And so I have kept that door open in my mind.  The PhD.  The academic career that I had planned for so long.  I have been hesitant to shut the door and walk away.  After all, what happens if something happens to Chris?  What happens if I HAVE to go back, if I HAVE to work?  I need that door open as my insurance policy against grief.

But as I talked with Dr. Dornbush, and as I thought things through that week in New Mexico, I felt that door quietly closing.  She set me free from that insurance policy.  Her and Whimsy and Samwise, they helped me to realize that nothing is a waste.  They helped me to see that I have made my choice.  And that's what Dr. Dornbush and so many other women were fighting for.  I'm always going to worry.  It's a part of who I am, as a woman and as a mother.  I'm going to lay awake at night and stew about what I would do IF something bad were to happen.  But it's time to close the door and walk away.

It's time to have a little faith.

These Hands

These hands used to be pale white. The skin almost transparent, the fingers thin and short with large bony knuckles, the nails short but smooth. I was never one for flashy nail polish, but I do so love my rings, one for each hand. These hands are scarred with the long thin swipes from cats' play. These hands were once smooth with only a single callous on the middle finger of the right hand.

These hands are different now.

These hands are still small and white. The nails are still short and smooth. The rings have been consigned to my jewelry box. The scars remain and have been added too--the white slice across the end of the pinky finger of my right hand, a collection of knicks on the knuckle of my thumb. The callous have expanded, from the middle finger of the right hand to other knuckles and the palm. The skin is no longer smooth but roughened and chapped. The skin around my nails peels.

They're far from lovely. They no longer resemble the smooth and soft hands of an academic. Now they speak of diapers washed, a drippy nose wiped, back rubs, loaves kneaded, meals prepared, cats claws clipped, toys retreived from under the stove, dishes washed, letters written, load upon load of laundry folded. They're not pretty, but they're busy. Working to care, comfort, support and nurture in their own small ways.

We've been getting ready for this trip to New York. I have to go and socialize with women who spend their disposable income on salons and spa treatments. Women who are put together and polished. Women who have manicured and sparkling hands. I will be expected to shake hands with them at some point. And I find myself feeling inexplicably nervous about this and rather defensive about my sad, chappy hands.

When I moved to Athens from Seattle, I kept getting lost--I've mentioned this before I think. And I was mortified that I couldn't seem to accomplish a simple thing, like getting to a given activity without needing HELP. I had to resist the urge to tell people that I am a smart girl! I graduated with HONORS! I speak 3 languages! I drove across the country BY MYSELF. I am NOT an idiot.

I feel the same sort of reaction when I think about having to shake hands and fraternize (or sororitize) with these other women. I want to look at them and say, "My hands do important work. They aren't what they used to be, but then, neither am I. There are many ways to be beautiful, one of them is to be polished and manicured and bejewled. And the other is to quietly do your work and raise a child to be kind, compassionate, funny. To make Home the place where people actually want to Live. To love others through the work of your hands, even when that means that they grow plain and rough and chappy."

Masterpiece Theater

Anyone who reads this blog with any degree of regularity is well acquainted with the many levels of my dorkiness. And so I feel at liberty to talk with impassioned fervor about my love of BBC classics and Masterpiece Theater.

I just finished watching Jane Eyre, and all I could say when I finished it was, "I LOVE Masterpiece Theater."

Let me forewarn you, these adaptations are NOT necessarily true to the novel as it was written. Translating a novel to film is like translating it from one language to another. What you are getting is someone else's interpretation of that novel. You're getting their reading of it, the themes, images and ideas that were prominent to the director and screen-writer. If you want the author's text, then read the novel. Don't go to any kind of adaptation for it, because you won't get it.

I don't watch these adaptations for the literature, I watch them for someone else's reading of a text that is already well-known to me. I watch them to see the text differently the next time I read it, but mostly, I watch them to be entertained.

And while I'm writing about my love of Masterpiece Theater, let me just say, I'm not one of those women who loves to see actors and actresses all dolled up in fancy clothes and poofy hair. I don't watch them for the fashion parade. I find it interesting how these adapations are able to show that kind of life, while still criticizing it.

And returning to Jane Eyre, yes, they play up the love story between Jane and Rochester--that's how the novel is READ. But they're also looking at how lonely and isolating the life of a governess was at the time. They're looking at how limited the choices were for women if they were poor and had the necessity of providing for themselves. They're looking at the worth of family more than the worth of money. And they don't breeze over the value of someone's character rather than the worth of their property.

I love that they didn't pick a pretty-pretty actress to play Jane, a notoriously plain heroine. They picked someone who isn't tradiationally pretty and just let her look odd. And in spite of what she knew to be her failings, she remains, as she does in the novel, certain of who she is and unwilling to pretend to be other than who she is. She is unabashedly Jane Eyre.


Since Chris is working so much right now, I've taken over the neflix queue, and I'm excited that I've got a new adapation of Little Dorrit coming, along with Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist and the Old Curiousity Shop.

Civil Disobedient Wife and also...a blurb

So.

Whimsy's been here. I have several posts that I have essentially TALKED to her and she is insisting that I post them, so I shall...later this week, but for now there's an announcement of sorts that I need to make. Just know that this too, was born of a conversation with that extraordinary Whimsy.

I started this blog for ME. As a place for me to write. I had been out of academia for a while and I was feeling the absence of writing in my life. Over time, as I came to be aware of some of my readers I began to cater the blog to them--sharing funny stories of our life here in North Carolina for our friends and family who live away from us, and NOT sharing some of the gorier details of Life as the Wife. It happened gradually and for a variety of reasons...it was easier to cater to my audience rather than risk alienating people and tell the truth. I'm a VERY private person and it was easier to hide behind my fortress walls and dress them with pretty ivy to distract you all from the facts that I wasn't telling you.

note: I'm still not going to tell you everything. But.

I am RECLAIMING my blog. I, the Wife, heretofore reclaim my Blog for myself. It is a place where I can write about the things that I'm reading about, thinking about, laughing about and crying about. Without apology, without remorse and sometimes without explanation.

If you don't like what you read, DON'T read it.


The End.





Now for the blurb.

The Husband is an awesome Husband in a number of ways, but up towards the top of the list is that he will generally read anything I tell him to read. He's read Anil's Ghost, Pride and Prejudice, Pickwick Papers and Our Mutual Friend. He read Everything is Illuminated AND Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It's fantastic for me to hear his varying view points and opinions about these books.

Everyone has been asking me if I've read those Twilight books by (ugh) Stephanie Meyer, and I got tired of telling people No--without clarifying that I generally read books written for ADULTS. So for Christmas the Husband bought the books for me. I read them. They were cheesy and hokey and irritatingly compelling. Stephanie Meyer should be drawn and quartered in Poet's Corner of the Canterbury Cathedral for the injustices that she has committed against actual, REAL works of literature. I complained about them to the extent that the Husband became curious, and seeking to escape his final semester as a grad student and all the HELL that that entails--he started reading them.

I asked him how it was going. He said, "It's not so bad as long as I start off every chapter by saying, "Dear Diary..." to myself."

I cracked up laughing.

Up and coming: The David Copperfield post, a post on the Magnificent Whimsy, and something about how The Boy has changed the Wife.

Sunday Afternoon

You know what's worse than being sick when you're nursing? Being sick when you're nursing with a cold that the Husband lovingly brought home and shared.

Niiiiiiiiiiice, huh?

Anyway, I'm sitting in the floor of the Boy's room and I was rocking him to sleep for what feels like the frillionth time and thinking about motherhood, so if you'll all indulge me--and if it's too much for you just blame the slight fever I've had all day.

So, I'm rocking the Boy who starts out wide wake, in his drooly pajamas from last night (because I am sick and the Husband sees no point in putting him in clean clothes when he's just going to drool all over them anyway) and he's all snug in his super soft car blanket with his pacifier in his mouth, eyes wide open and we're rocking away and I'm looking at his little face and thinking how he's growing and changing and Heaven be Merciful, he's starting to have a hint of little boy about him and not so much baby and I'm thinking how odd it is to be a mother.

After all, it's my job to keep him fed and healthy and clothed and reasonably content. But it's also my job to remember what his face looks like at every stage. It's my job to remember how soft his skin is and how he likes to be rocked to sleep. I need to remember his different laughs and what makes him crack up. I need to remember all the weird things we tried to calm him like sitting him in the bouncy seat on elevated surfaces (like the table or the bed--the kid loves to be tall) or how he loved to hang upside down off of the couch like a bat.

And someday he will come to me and want to know all of the names that the Husband and I called him when he was small and it will be my job to say, Stinker, Boy, Son, Little Love, Mon Petit Prince, Moy Malenkii, Moy Ciin, Mon Petit Fils, Pooper, Droolmeister, Puddles, Cameron-Man, I-Love-This-Boy, Cameron-Stop-Spleening-Me, Why-Won't-You-Sleep, Little Wrinkle, but mostly The Dude.

I'm watching his eyelids droop and pop open, droop and pop open and hoping that I remember all the things I love about every age so that someday when he asks me to tell him stories about when he was little I have plenty of happy, funny, quirky things to tell him and not just how I judged a good day from a bad day by the number of onesies he went through, or how long his naps were.

I think I need more Tylenol. Also probably more water and a nap.

I know it's terribly morbid and melancholy of me but I find myself picking up the Boy and holding him and rocking him and thinking how quickly the time is passing. He's getting so big so fast that I almost feel like he's leaving me behind. All of this melancholy is compounded by the fact that in all rationality I just didn't like being a mother so much, not at first, when I was sore from being cut open and he was crying crying crying all of the time. And now that I'm arriving at a place where I like being a mother, he's growing so fast that it almost feels like I won't really have time to enjoy it before he's out the door and on with the rest of his life.

I know. I'm over-reacting, I'm descending posthaste into sentimentality, I really need to go take that Tylenol and lay down. I need to go kiss my boy one more time while he's too small to run away.

The Namesake

The Husband and I finally watched the Namesake. I had intended to see it while it was in theaters, but well, life sort of got in the way. I taught this book when I taught at a certain University south of here. I love this book. It's bittersweet and beautifully written, so I was a bit nervous about the film. I need not have been, it's amazing. Beautiful and faithful and wonderfully sad in all the right ways.







Mira Nair directed it and she included one of my all time favorite parts from the book. It seems like a minor scene at first, it's only a childhood memory after all, but it means so much more than what it is.

And now that the Husband and I are on this totally different journey, both together and with the Boy, I was thinking about that passage. I got it down this morning and read it to the Boy while trying to tire him out for his nap (it didn't work, he's still wide awake and hanging out here beside me...c'est la vie).

Gogol and his father walk to the end of a jetty off of Cape Cod together. Gogol is maybe 5 years old and his father is bemoaning the forgotten camera--they will now have no picture of this moment. Jhumpa Lahiri writes,

"All this way and no picture," he'd said, shaking his head. He reached into his pocket and began to throw the striped stones into the water. "We will have to remember it, then." They looked around, at the gray and white town that glowed across the harbor. Then they started back again, for a while trying not to make an extra set of footsteps, inserting their shoes into the ones they had just made. A wind had picked up, so strong that it forced them to stop now and then.

"Will you remember this day, Gogol?" his father had asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head.

"How long do I have to remember it?"

Over the rise and fall of the wind, he could hear his father's laughter. He was standing there waiting for Gogol to catch up, putting out a hand as Gogol drew near.

"Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go." (187)

It was one of those passages I made my students analyze again and again and again and every time I got wonderfully different responses. I always managed to lose myself in Lahiri's description of the landscape and completely overlooked the father and the son and the journey that they are on in the course of the book. I had to take my own journey to find that one.

Something New For Me

I am sick.

Again.

But rather than regale you with all my charming symptoms and whine whine whine, I have actually learned something...it's like I'm growing here, people.

Here's my new epiphany. Everybody gets Something.

There are some pregnant women who throw up every single day of their pregnancy. There are fertility problems, there is preeclampsia or gestational diabetes. There are miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, preterm labor and complications during birth. There are women who desperately want labor and end up with c-sections and those who want to breastfeed but can't. And there are women like me whose immune system goes on a 40 week hiatus.

From where I sit, the vacationing immune system doesn't look so bad. If I had to trade it for any one of these other things, I don't think that I would.

And in the end it doesn't really matter, because Everybody gets Something.

Blueberry Bagels

So, the flavor of the week is blueberry bagels with cream cheese. In case you haven't noticed, due to the sparse posts lately, I haven't got much to say. Work is particularly heinous right now, my blood-pressure is sky high and being pregnant is uncomfortable and only likely to become increasingly uncomfortable.

The one comedic highlight so far has been that The Husband and I have both started reading to The Child. He reads the Tales of Uncle Remus in Gullah, I read a collection of Scottish folk tales--complete with Scottish accent. Our poor child is going to be so confused.

So rather than listen to further whining from me--which I'm quite sure that no one really wants to hear--I propose a friendly wager. The Husband and I are going to the doctor on Thursday and prior to the actual doctoring we will have our 2nd ultrasound, which will (theoretically) determine the sex of The Child. Who wants to place their guess? Please do so in the comments section. But please make an educated choice...here are your pertinent factors:

1) The Husband is the youngest of 4, with 2 older brothers--since his swimmers are the deciding factor, I thought you should be informed genetically.
2) I have a twin brother (but also 2 older sisters).
3) I never really had morning sickness.
4) I certainly craved action movies and nasty canned nacho cheese sauce (that has to indicate a male occupant, right?)
5) I had terrible acne when first pregnant, but it has since subsided.
6) I still shave my legs every other day.
7) EVERYONE around me is saying that we're having a girl--EXCEPT my sister and her kids.
8) The Husband thinks it's a girl--but it's partly because he wants a little girl with "Little Orphan Annie" hair.
9) I think it might be a boy--but what do I know I've never been pregnant before!

OK. Everyone, make your declaration in the comments--I will certainly be blogging the results on Thursday afternoon and will praise those of you with infallible instincts for this sort of thing.

Also, hopefully, by then I will have something interesting to say!

5:06 Sunday

The Husband is snoring softly next to me in Bed Sweet Bed. We've had one of those lazy Sundays that refill your soul and make you feel up to tackling the rest of your life. He's been rereading the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien...I'm rereading Bleak House, but then I decided to re-watch Band of Brothers.

I was watching the taking of Carantan and thinking about the cost of war. Not the dollars and cents. I think we all know that. Not even the human cost, we know. We know the fathers and sons and husbands. What we can't measure is how war changes us fundamentally as human beings. What I fear is that as a people we are becoming hardened. On the inside. That those qualities that make us feel connected to all other human beings regardless of race, religion, language or what have you are being eroded. Those parts that make us mourn with those that mourn because they too are human, and one day we too will mourn. Those parts that grieve loss because we too have lost. I worry that we care less and less about the violence and suffering done to others in the name of ideology...or what ever cause you want to name.

The problem is, of course, how to we turn this back? How can we undo the damage that has been done but cannot be measured? How do we return to that ineffable human characteristic that connects us with all other human beings? How can we at least stop the erosion taking place?

One of the reasons I keep watching Band of Brothers is Captain Winters...in his interviews he talks about this...the ineffable parts that make us human. He is quiet and kind and wise and I wish that I could sit down and ask him these questions. I fear he wouldn't have a concrete answer. What I fear most is that there is no answer.

One True Sentence

So. I'm ill (I think it's a sinus infection) and skeptical. So what to do when coming home from work? Eat nachos and read Hemingway, of course.

I strongly object to Hemingway on personal grounds. The man was a raging alcoholic and a misogynist, so naturally I dislike him. I am, however, objective enough to recognize that whatever his fatal character flaws, he managed to make some sort of contribution to the world of literature so, when I am ill and skeptical I take down his books and read them for a bit.

I was reading in A Movable Feast where he speaks about his own writing. He was saying that when he felt stuck, when he didn't know what else to write that he would start with one true sentence. Just one. And he would be able to write from there. So, feeling a bit confounded by The Blog myself, I thought that I should start with one true sentence. Here it is:


Surely one of our great sorrows is that we should speak so much insincerity and dishonesty in the name of kindness, in sparing others feelings, so that we can barely recognize truth in ourselves.


I've been percolating on this topic of late. And my own intense frustration with wanting to say things. True things. Honest things. But being constrained by the fear of hurting people. And then one day I should regret it if I knew that something that I had said, regardless of how true it was at the time, had hurt someone I cared about. And yet. I can't help but feel that, at these times I am willing living a lie. I allow this person. These people. To continue to believe what they want to believe. To continue to see the world (or at the very least me) in a way that is not true or real. And it annoys me. A lot.

So why do we do it? Why continue to let people believe things that simply are not true? How can this be a kindness? How is this deception somehow more merciful than the truth would be?

I have no answers. After all, I continue every day to say things that I don't quite believe, or just as bad though slightly different, I don't say things that I do believe in order to spare another human beings feelings. I don't like it. But I continue to do it because it seems the greater cruelty to selfishly smash those feelings rather than deceptively muffle them.

I feel a bit like Medea. I know the evil that I continue to perpetrate and yet I am powerless to stop myself. But I'm tired. Tired of the forced deception. Just once I would like to have one whole day to be honest. To tell people how I really feel, what I really think; to say whatever happens to be on my mind regardless of how mean or petulant. Just one day.


But who's to say? It may be that that one day is enough to irreparably ruin every relationship I currently have. And then who is the cruelty directed towards? Them or me, and yes it sounds a bit trite, but I know that my life would be empty without them in it.