I need the eggs.

Motherhood and writerhood in my Petaluma hood.

The Occupation Movement. May 23, 2012

Filed under: Reading and Writing — lumamama @ 11:17 am

I recently changed my occupation to “writer” on Facebook. (One problem with listing your occupation on Facebook: they want you to specify where you practice that occupation. So, adding to my non-legitimate-seeming professional status, I am listed as “Writer” at “Various Coffee Shops.”) This felt a bit momentous, a bit like a coming-out – it’s kind of a loaded thing, as any artist or creative type will tell you. Yes, you may feel like a writer or a sculptor or a standup comedian to your very core. You may have identified as a writer or a sculptor or a standup comedian since you were a small child. But to announce yourself to the world as an artist – to introduce yourself at cocktail parties as an artist – is pretty frightening.

A woman and writer I admire immensely also recently changed her occupation, too. She has, in my eyes, anyway, totally “made it.” Her short story collection has garnered rave reviews in pretty much every major newspaper in the country. Her work has appeared in the “Best American Short Stories,” she has a teaching gig at a prestigious liberal arts college, and she just sold a second book.

When she changed her Facebook occupation after I had changed mine, I paused for a moment. Why had this writer – talented, lauded, MAKING MONEY on her work – waited so long to start identifying herself to the world as a quote-unquote “real” writer, after years of success? Why is that title so hard for us to claim?

There are a lot of things about our culture that are kind of messed up, clearly (see the Trayvon Martin shooting, Newt Gingrich’s presidential run, and the Kardashians). One of these is the low level of respect that is often afforded to artists. While certain creative individuals – Katy Perry, the director of the “Saw” movies, Sylvester Stallone, the author of “Fifty Shades of Grey” – are allowed to claim their status as professional artists, most people who toil at a keyboard or an easel or behind a lens have to have some chutzpa wear the artist mantle.

Some people say that one can claim to be a professional artist when he or she starts supporting him or her self financially with his or her art. I disagree with that, because often, it takes years of dedication to one’s work to get to that point. Some – no, many – very talented, hardworking people never get there at all.

In pop culture, “the struggling artist” is kind of a punchline. It’s code for lazy, out of touch, deadbeat. It’s shorthand for untalented (because if you had any talent at all, you’d be rewarded handsomely, right? It can’t be THAT hard. And all those people earning the big bucks for their creative work are clearly astonishingly gifted, right? )

The lazy stereotype is what gets me the most. Every artist I know – writers, photographers, musicians – must work twice as hard as most people. Most of them have day jobs, and many have families. Many write in the wee hours of the morning or paint late at night. Finding the energy and the toughness to create when you’re running on four hours of sleep and the baby has fallen asleep on your shoulder is no dip in the underwater basketweaving pool.

So, when I decided to start telling people that I’m a writer, I was taking a real risk. People would probably take me more seriously if I said I was a teacher, or an accountant, or a rocket scientist. (Maybe I should just start saying I’m a rocket scientist – I do write fiction, after all). But even though I make things up professionally, I do need to tell the truth about who I am.

 

 

Baby, Turn My Brown Thumb Green May 16, 2012

Filed under: Family,The Housewifely Arts — lumamama @ 1:15 pm

I come from a family of gardeners. FARMERS, even – my great grandparents had a small setup in Northern Wisconsin, where they grew corn and oats. The farm – no longer functioning, but still beautiful – has always been a meaningful place for me, a place where I could step on the land and know it was mine. This had nothing to do with growing anything, though – it had more to do with family history, my father’s stories, the ghosts of the dairy cows lowing at me from the locked-up, falling-down barn.

My grandmother’s back yard is a horticultural wonder. She loves flowers, especially iris and lilies, and even though she is 89 years old and can no longer do much of the leg-and-back work herself, she still maintains a gorgeous garden. Her trips to Asia and to Hawaii influenced her sense of composition, and the garden is accessorized with little rock features and stone lanterns. As a little girl, I loved to bring my dolls out and have them ride boats down the rock “river” that meandered through the rhododendrons. My grandfather faithfully defended her plants from his nemeses, rabbits and crows, with a scowl and a bb gun, much to my chagrin.

Just as my grandmother’s garden reflects her organization and elegance, my great-aunt Storm’s garden reflects her personality: bold and chaotic, unconventional and tough. Storm’s rose bushes droop with heavy blossoms, and her sunflowers crowd out the weaker seedlings, straining toward the light.  Her vegetable patch is prolific enough to keep the entire extended family in cherry-dill and sweet pickles every year.

There are gardeners among my aunts, uncles, and cousins, but my parents were never inclined to spend much time in the dirt. We did mind a vegetable patch one year when I was about six. It was really just a corner of my dad’s friend’s yard, and because it was on the opposite end of town, we didn’t do much except plant some seedlings. I wanted to grow nothing but eggplant – it was my favorite vegetable. I loved the smooth, deep purple skin, the mushy-salty-oily flavor of it fried or roasted. My parents say they indulgently purchased a packet of seeds, knowing that the growing season in the Upper Peninsula was too short and that the nights would be too cold to yield anything. But come August, to everyone’s surprise, there was one stout, gleaming eggplant on the vine, waiting for me. There’s a wonderful picture of me clutching it and beaming, as if it’s a favorite doll or a new kitten.

But I’ve had bad luck with plants since then. I didn’t even bother having any kind of green companions when we lived in a sunless third-floor junior one bedroom in San Francisco. When we moved to Napa, I decided to at least attempt to grow something. I bought fully-grown Gerbera daisies at Trader Joe’s and placed them in our exciting new “outdoor space” (read: crappy apartment patio). I bought a basil plant. I bought potted lavender. I then completely forgot about these poor souls, watering them approximately once every ten days and marveling when they withered and died.

When we moved to a house with an actual yard, I felt that it was probably required that I plant a few things. I love Blue Flag, and I thought they seemed pretty hardy. Wrong. My Blue Flag died within a month. Ditto the marigolds that I planted in soil the consistency of dust. It was a relief when we moved into a condo with a concrete slab instead of a yard.

Now, after five years in Sonoma County, I have finally decided to dig in (literally) and attempt to be serious about a garden. The reasons are many: Petaluma’s storied agricultural history, which worms its way into your consciousness after a time; the thousands of dollars poured into Whole Foods, farmers’ market produce and CSA delivery boxes; my horticulturally talented friends, who make gardening while wearing a baby on your back in the Ergo carrier look both easy and glamorous.

I enlisted the help of one of these friends, Erin,  a woman who has turned her front yard from a wasteland of white rock and gravel into a lush edible landscape. When we have dinner at her home, the veggies are fresh from her personal plants. The lettuce tastes lettuce-ier and the broccoli tastes broccoli-er. She sends emails seeking recipes for beets and leeks because her pantry is overflowing with them. She knows about things like mulch.

One recommendation from Erin: that we get some aged cow manure delivered to our home. “It even comes with a pedigree,” she said. “The milk from these cows is in Cowgirl Creamery cheese!” SOLD, I thought. If their crap will make my veggies taste like Cowgirl Creamery cheese, then sign me up!

So John, a real Petaluma dairy farmer who refuses to cross the freeway to the East side, delivered a truckload of poop to our house. I warned my landlord that there would be feces in his usual parking spot until we could get it shoveled into the garden bed. Ian and I rolled up our sleeves and scooped poop from the truck bed onto a tarp on the street. Penelope thought the whole thing was hilarious, and she kept wanting to “climb that mountain” – I told her it wasn’t a great plan.

Ian – the pickier cook – was in charge of buying starts, and he came home with a few flats of tender green promises of tasty things to come. I love the names of all the tomato varieties, evocative, saucy, as full of personality as adventurous women: SunGold, Early Girl, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra. There were cucumbers, squash, herbs, strawberries for the girls, even an eggplant for me.

I was in charge of planting, and as I pulled on my new, clean gardening gloves, I had a moment of panic: I WAS GOING TO DO THIS WRONG. I was going to end up with a lovely, pungent pile of cow dung and orderly rows of dead, brown stalks.

I called Erin for a pep talk. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This is the best metaphor I’ve come up with: planting a garden is for us like our parents or grandparents learning to do things on the computer. You’ve got to just do it, fool around with it, make peace with it. You’ll make mistakes, but that’s how you learn.”

I thought of my 89 year old Grandmother learning to use her iPad, her wrinkled fingers gliding over the glass, tentatively at first, then confidently navigating the Internet. If she could use Facebook, I could grow a few plants.

I spent the afternoon snuggling my starts into newly dug holes, patting soil around them as if to comfort them and welcome them to their new homes. Good luck, I thought to each of them. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m going to do my best to take care of you and keep you alive. I have really great intentions. I care about you.

And as Penelope and Vivian helped me to water our new garden, I was reminded of another metaphor: perhaps, for the novice gardener, growing things is like being a new mother. You read some books. You ask your friends for advice. You follow your instincts. You make mistakes. But hopefully, with commitment and love and a little luck, things will turn out all right.

 

 

Is this thing on? May 7, 2012

Filed under: Keepin' it Real,Reading and Writing — lumamama @ 9:50 pm

I am a bad blogger.

It has been nearly nine months since I last blogged. I could almost have gestated a whole new person in that time. I

I haven’t, thank God – the two I’ve got have been keeping me busy enough, thank you – along with my job teaching remedial composition, my novel in progress, my weird little short stories, my two psychotic cats, my new vegetable garden, my long-suffering husband, and my general insanity.

But summer is stretching before me like a lazy cat – a summer I intend to spend writing, playing with my girls at the beach, writing, taking hikes and getting back into shape, writing, cooking fresh and local cuisine for my family, writing, organizing my closets, writing, spending time with the people I love, writing, writing, and writing.

The blog is part of that. I have missed it. I hope maybe you have, too. Stay tuned – I’m back – for good, this time.

 

Extremely long-ago and incredibly close. September 9, 2011

Filed under: Reading and Writing — lumamama @ 5:23 pm

On 9/11/2001, I was 22 years old, fresh out of undergrad. I had been living in Iowa City for a few weeks, in a basement apartment that smelled of mildew and cat pee. A frat boy once vomited on my window. I listened to a lot of classic rock on the radio, because that was the only channel I could receive in my dungeon-like bedroom. I didn’t have a TV, because I couldn’t afford it. I ate a lot of strange concoctions – eggs scrambled with tofu, vegetable soup thickened with ramen noodles – and wore a lot of dresses I bought at antique stores. I felt like an adult, for the first time, almost.

To my complete shock, I was a student in the fiction program at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. I had applied to only one program, the pie in the sky, a place I would never get into, as a sort of practice exercise. I was so surprised to be admitted that I cried when I got the phone call – but not for the usual reasons. I cried because I knew that I would have to go. Iowa has an acceptance rate of something like two percent. It’s not something you turn down – it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. At least, this is what I thought at the time.

I ignored my trusted teachers and advisers, who told me that I should wait a few years before getting an MFA. I ignored my parents, who didn’t like the idea of me incurring more debt after graduating from my expensive private college. I tried not to think about the fact that my bad-news ex-boyfriend was in the same program. I rented a U-Haul and drove through fields of corn and soybeans …toward literary stardom, I hoped.

In Iowa City, I took an early-morning  job at the Java House, a coffee shop downtown. This is where I was the morning of September 11th, a Tuesday, the day my weekly writing seminar with Marilynne Robinson met.

I was working the drip bar – we made every cup of coffee by hand, and it was damn good coffee – when the first person with strange news came in around 7:30. “Something weird is going on,” she said. “I heard that a plane or a helicopter or something hit the World Trade Center.” That sounded odd, like a freak accident. About ten minutes later, another customer came in. “Two planes have hit the World Trade Center,” she said. Gradually, slowly, the news came in to the Java House, second and third hand: planes crashing into the Pentagon, in a field in Pennsylvania. This was no freak accident. This was a terrorist attack.

My only thought as I tried to force my shaking hand to pour boiling water over the coffee grounds was this: Ian worked in the tallest building, the most prominent tower in San Francisco. It was a banking building. It was not quite as iconic as the Transamerica pyramid or one of the bridges, but it would be the best place to kill a large amount of people. I had to call him and tell him not to go to work.

I begged my supervisor for an early break, and I ran through the streets of Iowa City, looking for a pay phone. I had forgotten my cell phone that day – it was so new that I didn’t automatically take it with me everywhere. I finally found one, outside the movie theater. By the time I reached him, I was sobbing.

The rest of the day was completely bizarre. I went back to my apartment and listened to my staticky radio, cursing myself for not having a television. I bought a newspaper with images of the burning towers, but I shoved it into my closet without reading it. And then, at 6 PM, it was time for me to go to class.

Marilynne Robinson is a wonderful writer and a lovely person in many ways. She has a calm, steadfast expression and a soft voice. She says a lot of wise and interesting things. She was totally the wrong person to be handling what happened in our class that evening.

“So let’s start with Alex’s story,” she said. I think it was a story about a hockey game. It was so deeply and profoundly beside the point that the 12 of us sat around the table staring at each other in silence. We were a strange mix: a man in his fifties, a student of Islamic studies, a young mother, a former stock broker. A kind and funny woman from Louisiana, a shy and fragile woman whose new kitten left her hands covered with tiny bite marks. A man who wrote about Texas, a man who wrote about fathers and sons. Me, the only first year student.

After several minutes of silence, I spoke up. “Am I the only person who doesn’t think that we can do justice to this story today?” I said. “Am I the only person who doesn’t feel up to discussing a short story right now?”

Since then, I have often wondered if this was the right thing to do, if Marilynne was trying to show us that art was more important than violence, that writing should always be our first priority, that adults didn’t let things like catastrophic attacks come between them and their work. Every time I remember it, I decide again that it was right, that there was no way we could have gone on with class as usual that night. But the ugliness that followed – a debate about whether or not the US had brought this upon itself, a yelling match about what our course of action should be – made a difficult day even more painful.

It’s funny to me that one of the people around that table – the person sitting next to me, in fact – went on to become a prominent pundit, an expert on Islamic terrorism and Middle East politics. Whenever I see him on television or hear him on NPR, I try to remember what he said that day, but I can’t.

I remember one person – the older student – shouting that it was our fault because of our slavish support of Israel. I remember the former stockbroker leaving the room repeatedly to check his phone for messages from people in New York. I remember Marilynne, a small smile on her face, impenetrable as a Sphinx, so sage-like and wise when discussing fiction, speechless that evening.

I ended the day on a friend’s couch, several large pizzas in front of us, untouched. He had a TV, and five of us had gathered to watch the news together. We all sat crammed together on his couch, saying nothing. We watched Congress sing “God Bless America.” I did not feel inspired or hopeful. I felt sick.

Something happened that day, for me, something more personal and maybe even a little more frightening to me than the imminent war and the coming anthrax scare and the new, permanent sense of threat. I suddenly felt like writing short stories was the most pointless thing a person could possibly do. I felt that the only thing more ridiculous than writing short stories was being on the other side of the country from the person you love.

I lasted another three months in Iowa, three months of sleeplessness and anxiety. One night over Christmas break, as I tossed and turned in Ian’s bed, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to go back. My anxiety melted and I fell asleep easily. I returned to Iowa in January to pack up my apartment. I haven’t been back since.

It was a good five years before I began to feel like writing was worthwhile again. As I started to put my tentative toes back into the literary life again – a conference here, a submission there – I kept my semester at Iowa a secret. I thought it would be too hard to explain to people, that they would think I was crazy for dropping out. I’m sure some would. I went on to finish my MFA at Bennington, a place that turned out to be much better for me in many ways, and in a strange twist of fate, one of my former classmates was my thesis adviser.

Although I have never regretted my decision to leave Iowa, there are some things that make me sad. I had great friends -  Kim, Brooke, Ian, Pete – who all ended up marrying each other. I left in such a hurry that I felt weird about keeping in touch with them, and I miss them. I left a box of cool stuff in the basement store room of my apartment. I lost five years of solid writing time, and as I’ve watched several people I knew become best-selling authors and genuine semi-famous people, I have often wondered what I could have accomplished if I had been working that whole time.

In the end, I think that my instinct was the right one….at the time. In a time of uncertainty and fear, I needed the security and happiness that Ian brought me. And I needed time to grow, to live….to have something to write about.

Now, ten years later, I feel that writing  – making art of any kind, really – is perhaps the most important thing a person can do in the face of terror and pain, not the most pointless. But I needed to leave Iowa to learn that.

I run into another classmate from time to time here in Petaluma. We write at the same coffee shop. We are always happy to see one another, even though we barely knew one another for such a short period of time, long ago. We were sitting together that day. We hug tightly; we say we’ll get together sometime. We haven’t done it yet, but just knowing that we can seems to be enough.

 

The Lullaby League. August 22, 2011

Filed under: Family,Kid Culture,The Housewifely Arts — lumamama @ 10:47 pm

There are many aspects of motherhood that could fall under the “I didn’t sign up for this” label. Mothers find themselves thrown, untrained, into the careers of janitor, accountant, chauffeur, chef, drill sergeant, math tutor…the list goes on. I guess I sort of expected most of these roles, but there is one job that I did not anticipate: American Idol.

I am sure that the earliest Neanderthals grunted some form of lullaby to their offspring in cold, damp caves thousands of years ago. You can bet that medieval mamas hummed a soothing tune as they bent over their babies’ cradles. Even those repressed Victorians sang something – probably a song about chastity, temperance, and the virtues of thick woolen underwear. Movies and books portray this moment – the mother rocking and singing to her drowsy infant – as a natural parenting instinct akin to breastfeeding or throwing yourself in front of the proverbial bus.

The modern mama, I think, has a harder time of it than those movies and books would have you believe. Singing – outside of a karaoke bar or a shower stall – just doesn’t have a huge role in the lives of most contemporary women. Yes, there are definitely musicians among us, ladies who have the lyrics to a thousand songs burned into their memories. But most of us, I think, are a bit more limited in our repertoire.

I first realized how lacking I was in this department when Penn was a newborn. As I rocked my baby to sleep, I found myself flummoxed. I had a few standards that sprang instantly to mind: “All the Pretty Horses,” with its melancholy tone and simple lyrics was a no-brainer; and there’s the old warhose “Hushabye Baby,” which everyone over the age of two knows by heart. But after I’d sung these two songs and my baby was still wide awake and in need of soothing, I knew that I would need to dig deeper.

I tried singing “Hush Little Baby,” but was stumped after the mockingbird and diamond ring verses. I found myself singing “If that diamond ring don’t shine, Papa’s going to buy you a bottle of wine,” and figured that probably wasn’t in the original. As I rocked furiously in the dimmed room, I racked my brain for songs, coming up with nothing. And then, I found the Greatest Love of All.

I am a child of the 80s and 90s.  There’s a whole genre of songs that I grew up singing, sometimes with a hairbrush-handle microphone, into the mirror, usually while wearing my mom’s blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick. We’ll call this the Power Diva song: Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love” or “I Will Always Love You,” Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends are For,” Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” or “The Rose.” These songs were the staples of middle school talent shows and slumber party sing-alongs; they are dreadful and embarrassing; they are songs that I know deep inside my soul.

As time went by and I became more comfortable with my role as Mama-the-lounge-singer, I began to remember – and give myself permission to sing – more songs of my youth. Another great genre, I’ve found, is the Power Ballad – “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” by Poison, “Home Sweet Home” by Skid Row, and “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns and Roses have been particularly popular with my offspring.

We also have a rotation of oldies, like “Yesterday” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” but they just don’t seem to resonate with my kids the way that “End of the Road” by Boys II Men or “To Be With You” by Mr. Big do. I think that my girls can tell that my heart isn’t fully in it when I sing the classics; these older songs aren’t infused with sincerity and passion when I sing them. My girls can tell the difference between the songs my parents loved and the songs I taped from the radio, the songs that made me cry while I listened to them in the dark, the songs I swayed to at middle school dances.

Now that Penn is a little older, she makes lullaby requests. A current favorite is “Tomorrow,” which is a painful, torturous tune. I have a newfound respect for Aileen Quinn every night as I attempt the octave-and-a-half jump that comes in the chorus – that spunky little orphan had to have some serious pipes. Another song she loves is “Que Sera, Sera,” a song that my mother sang for me, one that makes me feel like a bad feminist whenever I sing it.

There is one lullaby that I am never ashamed, or reluctant, or embarrassed to sing: “Baby Owlet.” It’s a real lullaby, and it has everything that a lullaby should – a slightly mournful sensibility, a baby as protagonist, an easy-to-sing chorus. And, most importantly, my dad used to sing it to me when I was a child. I remember his low, rumbling voice singing me to sleep, and I remember the lyrics to the song in a deep limbic childhood section of my brain.

This, in the end, is what a real lullaby should be: something passed down through generations, a song that soothes across time. When I see Penelope tucking her dolls into their doll bed, and hear her singing “Baby Owlet” to them, I understand that the tone quality or the lyrical accuracy or even the content of the song are not the important things. The important thing is the slow, low humming, the rhythmic rocking, the closeness and the comfort.
Baby Owlet

Baby owlet, purple owlet, singing as dawn shines above
Baby owlet, purple owlet, singing as dawn shines above
Won’t you lend me your swift pinions, Won’t you lend me your swift pinions
Won’t you lend me your swift pinions
That I may fly to my love, That I may fly to my love

[chorus] Tetra kwa kwa kwa, Tetra kwa kwa kwa, Tetra kwa kwa kwa
Baby owlet, poor little owlet, He is tired from crying so

If I were a baby owlet, I would never fly away
If I were a baby owlet, I would never fly away
‘Til my wings were strong and steady, ‘Til my wings were strong and steady
‘Til my wings were strong and steady
Safe within my nest I’d stay, Safe within my nest I’d stay
[chorus]

 

By the Skin of Our Teeth. August 14, 2011

Filed under: Family,Keepin' it Real — lumamama @ 10:55 am

As I sat yesterday in the emergency room, cradling my baby’s bruised face in my hands, I heard a familiar voice. At first, I was happy and relieved. It was the voice of Dr. Adams, the kind young doctor who had treated Penelope just two weeks ago for a goose egg the size of – well, a goose egg, when she tripped and fell into our floor fan. Dr. Adams had been so calm and competent with Penn, and I hoped that she would be treating Vivi. But then, I thought about how this looked: two kids from the same family coming in with head injuries in a two week period. She’d probably call CPS on me.

Dr. Adams was just as sweet and understanding and reassuring as she was during our last ER visit, and of course, she didn’t report me to the authorities. “These things happen,” she said soothingly as I started welling up with tears. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

You can’t tell a mother whose nine month old baby has just fallen off a three foot high changing table that it’s nobody’s fault.

Here’s what happened – I think, anyway; I keep replaying the moment in my memory, and the critical wiggle is just not there in my recollection of events. I was checking Vivi’s diaper – it turned out to be clean. I was rebuttoning her onesie. I had at least one hand on her wriggling body, if not two. Suddenly, she was falling, twisting, thumping to the floor, her neck at a horrible angle.

I know you aren’t supposed to move people with possible spinal injuries, but I scooped my wailing baby into my arms, anyway. Her arms and legs were moving freely; she was crying at full volume; she had not lost consciousness and was not vomiting. All of these were good signs, I knew, but I also knew that a three foot fall for a two foot tall person is an emergency.

By the time we arrived at the ER, Vivi was acting normal – angry, tired, but normal. They kept us there for observation for several hours, and by the end of that time, Vivi was bored stiff and ready to crawl and cruise all through the hospital. She was laughing, smiling, playing with the curtains. I, however, was a wreck.

I have told Ian probably ten times to always keep a hand on Vivi on the changing table. I have commiserated with Cora, her  nanny, about how wiggly she is, how difficult it is to keep her from flipping around. I have worried about this scenario so many times that I cannot believe that I let it happen.

I am thankful that Vivi is fine, that she is so hardy and resilient. But every time I look at her little face, marred with a red bump on her forehead where she struck a toy on the floor, I feel horrendously, horribly guilty and keenly aware of how close my split second of distraction brought us to complete and utter disaster.

I am no stranger to this feeling, this gratitude mixed with the sickening imaginings of alternative endings. Last summer, when Penn was two, my negligence nearly led to a nightmare.

We were in Michigan. My mother and I took Penn to a friend’s home on Lake Superior for a morning of blueberry picking. It was an astoundingly lovely day, cool, but with blue skies and just a few wisps of cloud. We filled bucket upon bucket with tiny, sweet berries, Penn eating them as we went along, just like Blueberries for Sal. I took a picture of her sitting in the bushes, a blue-stained smile peeking out from under her bright blue sunhat.

As we were getting ready to leave, my mother called to me that she was going into the house to use the bathroom and put the buckets away. Penn had been toddling along between us. I looked up and saw she wasn’t in the bushes anymore. I assumed she had gone inside with my mother. For about five minutes, I kept picking berries.

Suddenly, I got a cold feeling. I walked over to the house. “Mom?” I called. “Is Penn with you?”

“No,” she said. “Isn’t she with you?”

“She’s out here,” I said. My heart began to beat faster. “She’s here somewhere, I’m sure.” I did a sweep of the yard, calling her name. She wasn’t there. I jogged to the front and began to scream her name. She wasn’t in the front yard. That left the beach.

The beach was about 100 yards away from the house, over a little sandy hill. It was hard to imagine that her short legs had carried her this far, but Penn has always been fast. My heart was thudding in my chest. I could hear the waves.

I sprinted over the hill and scanned the shore. A man – who knows who he was, a neighbor walking his dog, an angel from heaven – was holding my crying child. She was wet up to the knees, shoes and all.

“She was standing in the water,” the man said, as I pulled her to me and hugged her tightly, gasping and sobbing, burying my face in her crazy, curly hair. “She really shouldn’t be out here by herself.”

I was crying too hard to explain what had happened. I held her and rocked for for twenty minutes, and then I drove her to get an ice cream cone. I watched her eat, too sick and upset to have anything myself, berating myself for the near tragedy, imagining horrible outcomes that had been narrowly avoided. I kept thinking that the photo I had taken of her happy, blueberry-smeared face was nearly the last picture ever taken of her.

I suppose the upside of these near misses with tragedy is that I have learned important lessons. I will never, ever look away from my children if we are near water, or crowds, or traffic, or anything remotely dangerous, and I will never assume that someone else is watching them. I will only change Vivi on the floor from now on.

I will try to remind myself that things do happen, that despite our best efforts to protect them, children have mishaps of various kinds. I will try to be thankful that things ended the way they did, and I’ll try to remind myself that kids are actually tougher than we think they are.

But you can’t tell me that it’s nobody’s fault.

 

My Super-Secret Double-Agent Life. August 5, 2011

Filed under: Keepin' it Real,Reading and Writing — lumamama @ 4:45 pm

I post a lot of photos to Facebook. Usually, they fall into one of two categories: 1. Older daughter being cute or 2. Younger daughter being cute. I take a lot of pictures of petting zoo animals, bubbly baths, and playground swinging sessions. I have been known to post photos of my children embracing large cartoon-costumed characters.

Which is why I caused a bit of a stir with some pictures I posted a while back: me, dressed in a tight (too tight) turquoise tube dress. Hair teased up in a Snooki-esque “poof.” Sparkly eye shadow, red nail polish, too much blush. Several friends fist-pumping. A friend posed next to a neon Malibu Rum sign. Action shots of some serious booty dancing.

No, I don’t make a habit of cavorting in dive bars and dance clubs on the weekends, Desperate Housewife gone wild – this was a school friend’s Jersey Shore themed birthday party, a bar crawl through Santa Rosa. This was a rare night out with the twentysomethings, a night marked by Jello shots and a debate about Judith Butler, smushing, and 21st century feminism. And this is my super-secret, double-agent life.

I’m in grad school. I’m not the oldest student in my cohort, and I’m not the only one with kids, but I’m definitely in the minority, age and responsibility wise. Most of the other students are in their early to mid twenties, some straight out of undergrad. And though it’s only been ten years since I graduated from college, they have been a damn eventful ten years.

At the seminar table, we’re all on equal footing, slogging our way through Derrida or Morrison or whoever we happen to be discussing that day. My younger classmates are super smart, thoughtful, talented. It’s those moments between classes, when we’re discussing our weekend plans, our favorite movies from childhood, our domestic situations, that I’m suddenly, brutally reminded of how different our non-school lives are.

My best school-friend – and one of my best friends, period – is Matt. Matt is brilliant, hilarious, sweet, and promising. Matt is also only three years older than Miley Cyrus.

I always forget how young Matt is. A while ago, we were talking about Disney movies. I said something derisive about “High School Musical,” and Matt defended it, referencing key plot points. “Why have you seen ‘High School Musical?’ ” I asked.

“Because I was in high school when it came out,” he said. “Duh.”

Matt occasionally calls me to discuss a reading from class or a theoretical idea or a potential margarita happy hour/ “study session.” I will lunge for my phone, trying to plug my other ear with my finger to drown out  the sounds of Vivi screaming, Penn shouting “I NEED YOU TO WIPE MY BOTTOM!”, Muno and Plex singing “Don’t Bite Your Friends.” Sometimes, Matt will simply laugh at me; other times, the pity is palpable in his voice when he says “I think maybe this isn’t a good time; want to call me back later?”

My school friends know that I’m a mother – I make self-deprecating jokes about it pretty much constantly, especially last year when I was hugely pregnant with Vivian and felt like a walking birth control ad as I waddled around campus. But they know a different me from the mama-me, the one who carries Elmo underwear in her purse and considers “Winnie the Pooh” one of the finest films to be released this year.

“Your Facebook scares the hell out of me sometimes,” Matt said a while ago. “I’m always afraid I’m going to say something snarky and incur the anger of the Mama Mafia.”

Matt shouldn’t be worried. My mama friends know that I’m in school – they know that I struggle to balance my homelife with my homework, that I spend just as much time reading Faulkner as I do reading Goodnight Moon, even that my study dates turn into drunken bacchanals on a somewhat regular basis. Sure, when I’m in mama-mode, my mama-friends and I spend most of our time talking about how obnoxious Calliou is, how great those little baby food pouches are, how ridiculous it is to try to survive on four hours of sleep. But we all know that we’re more than just moms.

One member of my playgroup used to host “passion parties,” selling sex toys and erotica. One loves Las Vegas more than anyplace else in the world. One was in the Peace Corps, one was a professional dog trainer, one used to lead teenagers on backcountry treks with Outward Bound. We all have varied pasts, factions of friends who know nothing of pacifiers and Pampers, interests and lives that extend well beyond the boundaries of the playground. We’re all double agents, a little bit, inhabiting this mama-role with every fiber of our being – until we need to call on our alternative identities to fit in and succeed at work, at school, on date night, at the Jersey Shore-themed birthday party.

I’ve learned so much about myself from motherhood, and one of my favorite lessons, so far, has been this: I am flexible. I am adaptable. I can hang at Mommy and Me or in the English department office, and doing so doesn’t require me to compromise myself or to pretend to be someone I am not.  Double-agency is not only common among mothers, it is a benefit – it helps to keep us mamas sane, interesting, engaged. It teaches our kids that, while our lives sometimes seem to revolve around them, there are other planets in our solar systems. And that whether she’s talking Freudian literary theory, dressing up in Jersey Shore regalia, pushing a stroller, or pushing paper at work, Mama will always be Mama.

 

Making a run for it. July 27, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — lumamama @ 6:26 pm

I ran a pathetic, slow, gasping two miles today. This is a big accomplishment. It’s been nearly a year since I ran, or exercised at all, really – and as my stress level has skyrocketed and I feel my coping skills dwindling, I am in some serious need of aerobic therapy.

To anyone who knows me from high school, the thought of me running is as incongruous and silly as me riding a Harley. As a kid, I was unparalleled in my un-athleticism – some people are voted Most Likely to Succeed or Best Dressed when they graduate from high school; I was voted Class Klutz. Any game that involved a ball was particularly irksome for me. I tried to tell people that I had astigmatism and bad depth perception, but this only made my pratfalls and fumbles funnier.

To anyone who knows me from college, the thought of me running makes complete sense. I started running my sophomore year, and was soon a regular fixture on the Kokosking Gap Trail, in rain, sleet, or snow, skinny legs kept warm in layers: tights, yoga pants, slicks. I would run and run for miles, the Ohio oaks and maples making a tunnel over my head, the cows in the pastures watching me skeptically as I plodded by. I always ran alone, my Walkman and mixed tape (how quaint) my only companions.

In fact, for a few years, I ran a bit too much. Pictures from that time show jutting collarbones, knobby knees. Hungry eyes. I was running from a bad relationship, a fear of the future. When I ran, I felt in control: I was the one who decided how fast to go, how many miles to log. I was the one who determined when it was time to stop. I craved that feeling, because it was so hard to come by in other areas of my life.

When I realized I’d been overdoing things – pretty much everything, in fact, except food – I took an exercise vacation. I used the extra free time to read, to write, to spend time with my new, improved boyfriend (Ian.) I gained thirty pounds. I looked better.

When I finally went back to the gym, over a year later, I felt like I better understood what running was for – escape, yes, but not flight. I started slowly, adding a minute or two here, a bump on the incline there. I ran often, but I ate huge pasta dinners and molasses cookies to compensate. I felt good.

I first fell in love with Petaluma while running. I was training for a marathon with Team in Training, a fundraising group for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. We did our long runs as a group in locations all over Napa and Sonoma counties, and our 18 miler took off from McNear Park in Petaluma. We ran out I Street into the countryside, up and down rollercoaster hills with no shade to speak of. The route was an out-and-back, a total of nine miles – which meant we had to do it twice.

It was pretty brutal – it was already 85 degrees at 9 AM that day, and even with water stops every few miles, the hills were killing me. When I got to the point where I would have to turn around and start again, I decided I’d rather get lost in a strange town that repeat that particular form of torture.

I ran alone, weaving through the residential streets of Petaluma’s West Side. I admired the Victorian houses, the cute little shops and restaurants. “What a great town,” I thought. I may have missed out on some hill training that could have served me well in my marathon, but I gained a new hometown.

Today, as I stepped back onto the treadmill after so much time away, I was struck by the strong memories of running that were conjured up by the playlist on my iPod – a monstrous 500 song thing I’ve been adding to and using for nearly ten years.

The music is eclectic, everything from Stevie Wonder and Steppenwolf to Jay Z and Lady Gaga, and the recollections are visceral, immediate, vivid. Chemical Brothers was the soundtrack to my marathon training in 2006, beautiful runs ringed by vineyards and mountains, Golden Gate vistas as I came into Mile 15. Coldplay was the day of the 2008 presidential election, as I watched the electoral votes roll in on the gym television; Outkast was the months leading up to my wedding, in a gym I haunted every single day after work; Earth, Wind, and Fire was the last run I did before discovering I was pregnant with Penelope, a beautiful five-miler along Lake Superior in September, a perfect 60 degrees, all sky and water and sand. And there are songs that remind me of those long, lonely runs in college, the pressure I felt to go faster, farther, the urgency I felt. I still like to listen to these songs. They remind of me who I was, and how far I’ve come.

Today, as I began thumping my feet against the treadmill in my same old awkward gait, slower than it used to be, I felt like I was returning to something comfortable and familiar, even as my breath became ragged and my thighs began to burn. Even at my thinnest and swiftest, I was never track star material, but ever since I started, I have loved to run. Perhaps it is the endorphins….like any other drug, they are addictive. And now that I’ve had a taste after so long, I can’t wait for another hit.

 

 

 

Hi, My Name is Megan, and I’m a Strollerholic. July 25, 2011

Filed under: Keepin' it Real,Kid Culture — lumamama @ 1:46 pm

They say admitting that you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.

When I was registering for baby items the first time around, I did some research on the things that seemed important: the safest car seats, the most user-friendly high chairs, the comfiest swings. The one thing that I didn’t get the big deal about was strollers. I was aware of, and disdainful of, what Ian referred to as “the $1000 stroller” – the Bugaboo, the coolly designed and highly functional European import made famous by Miranda on “Sex and the City.” When Ian and I spotted Bugaboos out and about, we always rolled our eyes at one another – my first car cost less than that thing.

We registered for the standard carseat/stroller “travel system” – it seemed the most economical, and most useful, solution. I felt like I didn’t need to make a statement with my infant conveyance device, I just needed a way to get her from point A to point B.

Things changed.

The stroller that came with the carseat clacked and wobbled over the sidewalks. The sun canopy was pretty pathetic. And the fabric that I had thought was cute looked more and more cheap and tacky to me with each passing day. I found myself staring with envy at other moms’ slick strollers. And slowly, gradually, unstoppably, I succumbed to a pretty severe stroller addiction.

I know I am not alone in this. I have talked with friends who have four, five, six strollers and only two or three children. And many are reluctant to get rid of their excess strollers – there is, it seems, a stroller for every occasion, and what if you need something that folds down to the size of a briefcase? That can recline all the way and weighs less than 20 pounds? That can handle a hike up a mountain? No ONE stroller can do all of that.

A while ago, a woman came and knocked on our door. “Hi,” she said to Ian. “Do you guys run a daycare center? I’m looking for a place to bring my child.” Ian shook his head, confused. “Oh,” she said. “You guys just had so many strollers, I thought this must be a daycare.”

I am the Goldilocks of strollers. I buy one (often used, on Craigslist, which makes me feel a little bit better about spending the money – at least it wasn’t full price!) and love it…at first. But over time, some glaring and unreconcilable flaw makes itself known. The seat seems too hard, or the sun canopy is too skimpy, or the wheels stick. There must be a more perfect stroller out there, I think, and I begin to research again. I sell the old one on Craigslist, and buy a new one, and the cycle begins again.

I have now pared my collection down to only four strollers. Yes, that’s right, just the four essentials. Two per child. But I still have that nagging feeling that the perfect ride is just a stroll through the Craigslist listings away. I chat strangers up about their strollers. I ogle hot wheels from a distance the way some guys lust for classic cars, admiring shock absorbers, flexible seating, designer colors. If I won the lottery or got a huge book advance, you can bet there’d be a shiny new City Select or Britax B Ready in my garage.

Here is a list of all the strollers I have owned. And, sadly, this list isn’t even totally comprehensive.

The Bob Revolution – the best jogging stroller ever, but the seat isn’t very comfy, and I felt I needed something plusher for the baby. That led me to buy…

The Quinny Buzz – stylish like a Bugaboo, but with rugged rubber tires like a Bob to allow for bumpy sidewalks. But it was big and unwieldy, and I needed something more portable, which led me to buy…

The Quinny Zapp – the small-folding, tight-space-maneuvering sibling of the Buzz, which became my favorite stroller for a time. But then I got pregnant again, and I needed a double stroller, which led me to buy…

The Bumbleride Indie Twin – a beautiful machine, easy to steer despite its size, a lovely color, really perfect. In fact, I sort of felt like it was too nice to use, and it languished on my porch. This made me feel guilty.  So, I sold it on Craigslist and bought…

The Joovy Ultralight Caboose – this seemed a great solution for a parent with a baby and a toddler – a Sit and Stand design, with a little platform for Penn where she could stand and hitch a ride. I loved a lot about it, but its rinky-dink wheels tended to get caught on the cracked and bumpy sidewalks of my neighborhood, so I sold and bought…

The Joovy Ergo Caboose – same idea, but with rubber wheels and a little more room in the back seat. There’s a lot I like about this one, but it’s kind of big and heavy and hard to steer with both kids in it. So for traveling, I bought…

The Combi Twin Sport – a classic side-by-side double, lightweight, with an incredibly compact fold. I got this one at a local consignment store for our trip to Disneyland, and it has actually become one of my favorites. But it still isn’t great on the bumpy sidewalks, so, again, imperfect.

Remember when I said that I used to think that the $1000 stroller was ridiculous? Guess how much money I have spent on all of these strollers over the years? $2000. True, some were re-sold on Craigslist for close to their purchase price, but still. I could buy the new Bugaboo Donkey double for $2000….it looks so great, with the convertible seats, the ample shopping basket, the multi-terrain wheels….hmmm….

I’d better go call my sponsor.

 

Dr. Strangebook, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Kindle. July 18, 2011

Filed under: Reading and Writing — lumamama @ 1:43 pm

I was enjoying my heavenly, child-free, once-weekly solitary lunch downtown a while ago, basking in the sun and reading my book. It was a semi-trashy book, something popular, but not so popular that it is sold in grocery stores; something woman-oriented, but without the words “shopping” or “knitting” in the title; something that didn’t require a lot of thought, but passed my stringent first-page scan for truly terrible prose and superfluous adjectives.

An older man approached me, squinting skeptically. “Is that one of those iPad things?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said. “A Kindle. It’s only for reading books.”

“Books are for reading books,” he said, and walked away.

I have to admit, I used to agree with him. I love books. I love them so much that I spent hundreds of dollars shipping ten boxes of books from my childhood home when I moved to California. I have books in almost every room of our house – cookbooks, novels, children’s books, art books, new books with shiny jackets and uncracked spines, books with my name written on the inside cover in purple ink, a fifth-grader’s scrawl. The best gift Ian ever gave me was a huge gift certificate to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco – I felt like a kid who had won the Toys R Us Toy Run Sweepstakes of my childhood, manically moving through the store and filling my arms with whatever I wanted.

When I graduated from Bennington College two years ago, my in-laws sent me a gift from Amazon.com. When the box arrived, with its familiar smile on the side, I figured it was some sort of book. It was, in fact, a Kindle.

At first, I didn’t know what to think. I really appreciated the thought behind the gift – I love to read, of course, and it seemed a fitting present to celebrate my master’s degree in creative writing. But the object itself confused me. It seemed so…cold. It didn’t have a smell. (Any bibliophile will tell you that the smell of a book is one of its most important characteristics. A library book, in particular, has that well-handled, soft-papered, musty-moldy smell.) And to buy a book, there was no browsing in a bookstore – only Amazon browsing.

I downloaded a few classics – anything pre-1927 was free! – but didn’t really touch the Kindle for several months. I had a huge backlog of books I’d been waiting to read, and I wasn’t about to buy duplicate digital copies. The Kindle sat, uncharged, on the nightstand next to my bed.

The thing that changed everything was a long trip. I received a scholarship to the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop last summer, and I’d be away from my two biggest distractions – children and television – for a whole week. Traveling with books has always been a problem for me – there have definitely been some times when my suitcase was overweight, and I had to choose between abandoning books or abandoning shoes at the airport. It was like Sophie’s Choice for me.

I loaded up the Kindle with books that I considered trashy beach-reads, novels I wouldn’t really care about owning and books I would be hesitant to read in public at a writing-related event, lest I be judged for my pedestrian taste. (I’m kind of a literary snob, are you getting that?)

I fell in deep like, if not yet love, during that trip. I could carry six fat novels in my purse and not feel weighed down at all. I could read one-handed, preventing that annoying sprained-hand thing that happens when you’re trying to read a thick book while lying down. I could increase the font size so I could actually see the words from the plastic book-holder on the elliptical machine.

Slowly, gradually, I began to use the Kindle for more of my everyday reading. It was so convenient while waiting for my always-behind-schedule doctor at my OB checkups. It was possible to buy (almost) any book I wanted and have it instantly, at two o’clock in the morning. The books were half the price of new hardcovers. It was so much easier to hold the Kindle than the doorstop that was  Jonathon Franzen’s Freedom that I eventually broke down and shelved the monster book, purchased the Kindle edition, and flew through it in one weekend.

Of course, there are a few downsides, not least of which is the nagging feeling that I’m sacrificing some kind of literary purity by embracing my beloved little hunk of plastic and glass. My father-in-law tucked his Kindle into the seat pocket on an airplane and forgot it there. Lost book, big whoop – lost Kindle, $150 down the drain.  And there is always the possibility that it will malfunction, betray you, eat its own memory the way a wild animal eats its own young.

My Kindle broke, a few weeks before I was due to deliver Vivian. I was at the hospital for a non-stress test. The nurse strapped me into the machine and I settled down for a peaceful half hour of baby heartbeats and hospital cranberry juice, reaching for my Kindle. The screen was nothing but black cracks and squiggles. It had died. This didn’t seem to affect the baby’s vital signs, but let me tell you, it was a good thing I was lying down.

Amazon replaced the Kindle, no questions asked, within two days, but the incident reminded me of the impermanence of digital content, the speed with which these devices become obsolete, the frustration that results when they disobey us.I love my Kindle, but I can never trust it completely.

I buy just as much literature as I used to, but I definitely buy fewer hard-copy books now, it’s true – usually only books by authors I know and love, books I know won’t end up in my Goodwill pile a few years down the road. That’s another thing that has changed for me in recent years-  there was a time that getting rid of a book was unthinkable to me. I held onto every book I had ever purchased, feeling like I needed the book’s physical presence to retain the knowledge it imparted, the feeling it gave me when I read it, the person I was when I bought it.

A few years ago, a life of loving books had filled my apartment to the hilt. There was no room for more books, more experiences, more literary memories. So, I took a deep breath, threw back my shoulders, and mercilessly culled the non-essential volumes. And found, to my surprise and relief, that I had survived with all the same information and all the same characters and all the same allusions still there, roiling in my brain, available to me, part of me.

I will always have books – many books – in my home, and in my life. But the soul of a book isn’t in its spine or its cover or its pages. The soul of a book is in its words, and whether those enter you by way of paper and rubber cement or pixels and plastic, it’s only the words that really matter.

 

 
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