all hail columbus

i cried during the columbus day parade.

i wish i could say that i don’t usually cry at parades, but i’m not sure that’s true. there’s something just so overwhelming about seeing so many kids all dressed up and excited and doing what they’ve practiced and being proud of themselves in so many ways: some of them are beaming, some staring straight ahead, some ignoring their mothers who are frantically waving and trying to get a picture. it chokes me up to see henry staring at the clarinets and snare drums, waving his little arm to everyone on foot and on trolleys and floats.

as if that weren’t enough, i couldn’t help thinking, “this is it. my last little italy columbus day parade.” and that got me in the gullet. i know it’s taken years, but this place is home. it’s where my begonias bloom. it’s where we pluck mexican midget tomatoes at midnight. it’s where i brought home my baby, bungled through mothering an infant, and wrote my first book. this place has given birth to so many things. it’s a precious place. and perhaps more precious because i knew we would never stay.

and then over the next few weeks will be interviews upon interviews for residency programs. another year of our life up for grabs.

is this how columbus felt when he got in his boat not knowing whether or not he was about to sail off the edge of the world?

one of those days

everything is making me cry today. the lady at the grocery store snipped at me when i asked if she had more chicken better-than-bouillon in the back. she wasn’t any nicer when i couldn’t find the frozen pastry crust. and the bagger left my groceries sitting on the counter and walked away, leaving me to fight with a screaming toddler and a pregnant belly to stick the groceries in the cart. i came home so distraught that i let henry watch barney. (yes, it was that bad.)

but it’s not just that household chores seem so frustratingly overwhelming. (yes, all the non-perishables from the grocery store are still sitting on the kitchen floor as i type.) it’s days like this that make me wonder if i can really manage another little one.

i’m a week away from the third trimester and it hit me that i haven’t given this pregnancy much thought. i’m only aware of this little girl as an ache or a hunger or a pang or a pinch in my bladder. i don’t lie on the couch after lunch, like i did with fetus hal, with my hand on my belly, feeling movement and imagining  fingers and toes, first words. i’m just surviving. i’m just crossing off days on a calendar, just counting weeks until this is over.

i pulled out a book on labor and delivery last night. i flipped through the pages and saw a picture of an episiotomy: i spent the rest of the night trying to talk myself out of fear. i am terrified. i’m terrified of tearing, the recovery. i’m terrified of breast-feeding. of newborn cries. of sleepless nights. of henry’s reaction to a new baby. of myself.

i marvel at these women who move from one child to two to three to four joyfully, peacefully. maybe i’m just not cut out for pregnancy, but i know i wouldn’t get out of bed if henry wasn’t begging for a drink, for oatmeal. i’m tired. an all-out bodily exhaustion. my brain feels equally stretched and battered.

and then there are those moments. those briefs steps outside time where the universe seems split in two and i see for a second, just a second, the impossible beauty of motherhood, of my children, my husband. why are those moments so few? and why am i so tired and weepy in the interim?

giggle

i didn’t write this, but i wish i had…

“When I heard that John McCain’s running mate had children named Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper, and Trig, I was floored.

“A lot of Americans, myself included, want to believe this is still the country we grew up in, a country where no one dreamed of giving their children names like Brooklyn or Rhiannon or Darcy.

“We want to believe we are still living in a country where naming children is a cultural self-preservation tactic, a means of maintaining an institutional memory of the ethnic and religious groups from which the newborn has sprung, a way of maintaining a link with a heroic past rather than a cute or ironic future.

“But that country no longer exists. American children are no longer named after prophets, warriors, healers, or cultural titans; they are named after Welsh fairies, characters in science-fiction movies, the outer boroughs of New York, and trees.”

– Joe Queenan in the Los Angeles Times

get political

i’m a political party nightmare. i’m the sort of person who, thanks to my brilliant training in the humanities, can talk myself in and out and back into just about any issue over and over and over. at any given moment i may be a republican or a democrat, a libertarian or a political agnostic (these exist, apparently).

but the nomination for sarah palin has kicked me out of my political stupor.

i know two things for sure:

1.) this woman has unique (insane?) taste when it comes to naming children.

2.) when one is both a parent and a full-time employee, something’s gotta give (and it’s usually the kids).

for some reason i never really cared that chelsea clinton was getting the short stick when it came to parental invovlvement, but there’s something about five kids who are so young, motherless…

i hope to hear at some point that mr. palin has decided to be a stay-at-home dad…

juicebox: issue three

come. come and read juicebox issue three.

read about onions sliced into Os and the movement of ice and the poem from an 87 year-old man and a patch of stinging nettle and a long kiss and a bunch of nuns with knives.

i’m biased, yes, but this is the best issue yet.