Jennifer, 1981-2018

I will miss Jenn and love her for the rest of my life, and I believe that she is at peace now.

From “Borders” by Leslie Norris, adapted with liberties

...Border, boundary, threshold, door—
Orpheus moved either way, the living and the dead
were parted by a thin reflection
he simply walked through. But who can follow?

For all the boundaries I have crossed, flown over, 
knowingly, unknowingly, I have no answers; 
but sit in the afternoon sun, under mountains 
where stale snow clings in shadowy patches, 
remember my friend, how she had sung, 
hope she is still singing.

Some resources that have been helpful for me (particularly the section “I lost someone to suicide”) https://www.lds.org/preventingsuicide

Let it go, let it gooooo

I'm slowly starting to wean Polly, and I realized I'm also getting a bit teary at times, and I'm pretty sure they're connected. I am happy, don't get me wrong. I just feel more emotional about everything than usual.

Nursing Polly has been totally different from nursing all my other kids. It has just worked. (Minus the mastitis 4 times but let's not dwell on that.) It just comes second nature to both of us. And while my other kids all weaned themselves, she doesn't seem like she's really going to, so I feel like I have to take the reins. I'm not really ready, but then again I'm also kind of ready. (Mostly I'm ready not to be in a meeting or something and her putting her hands down my shirt while yelling "Wan nee? Nee? NEE???") Also I'm going on my first trip without her in like... 4 weeks... and I'd rather she and I not be completely traumatized, so I'm trying to do it slowly.

Anyway, so I started giving her milk in a cup during the day, and I just nurse her in the morning and at night. She has taken right to it. The first day I decided to do it, she asked to nurse and I filled up a little cup, sat with her in my lap and she drank the whole thing down. While I sat and cried and felt a little bit empty even with her right there in my arms.

It's what's supposed to happen and it is what I want for her. I want her to grow up and have an independent happy life. I know I still have years and years with her, and the snuggles and love and connection won't go anywhere. But then I glance over at my tall gangly Theo and realize those years and years with Polly are actually (poof) almost gone.

Don't mind me while I tearily read some poetry to myself... It's how I cope. This is one of my favorite poems. UGH, MY BABIES!!! I want you to grow and I also don't want you to grow.

The Weaning
by Carol Lynn Pearson

There is cloth now
Between you
And my breast --
Cloth
And a little pain.

This is the
Beginning.
I take your face
In my hands
and guide your gaze
Away, out there --
To the fruit trees,
To the stars.

My arms,
Though empty,
Fold comfort
To a mother-heart
That yearns for nursing,
Yet knows that weaning
Is the bigger part.

Big brother

I love this poem from The Mother in Me. I posted it a few years ago and just ran across it again.

Big Brother
by Darlene Young

Propped,
bottom wedged firmly in the corner of the couch,
he sits with a blanket-wrapped bundle
posed precariously across his arms.
Mommy has so carefully coached him
he dare not move.
Muscles frozen lest he drop her precious package.

Mommy is home now
and she calls him her big boy
but he is still so small

so small

except his eyes large staring into the camera, caught
deer-like in oncoming headlights--
this tiny, squalling, sucking thing
in his arms, large as the future,

large as his world.

Poetry in motion

I was flipping through an old journal and found this little ditty. I remember I went through a bit of a partly-finished-poem phase in college. (I got inspired...and then...got...tired.) Eliza, age 19:

It doesn't matter what I eat;
I always make a mess.
Jam on my shirt;
Crumbs on my skirt;
Sauce down the front of my dress.

Apparently I did plan to write more because I also had these lines written in the margin:

knocked-over glass
rice flying across table
noodles drip over edges of plates

Good to know that some things stay the same. That's something I find pretty much every time I re-read old journals.

Bittersweet

Just a week or two ago I was remarking to Matt that Lars's cozy afternoon nursing time was my favorite time of day. Which is funny since a few months before that, I was hating everything about nursing. Hello, my name is Eliza and I have Nursing Schizophrenia. Well Lars decided, without consulting me, that he was done--just like that. Well, it wasn't just like that. I guess I should have seen it coming a few days earlier when he got his first haircut, ate an entire meal sitting in a regular chair at the table, and then started walking. What the H, Lars! Don't you remember you're the baby?

I wish he could somehow have told me the last time he nursed, "This is the last time." I guess he did tell me in his way, over those last few weeks. All of my babies weaned themselves before I thought I was ready to let go. So, new chapter, moving on. It's bitter and sweet. He's still my baby though. All my babies are, really.

The Weaning
by Carol Lynn Pearson

There is cloth now
Between you
And my breast -
Cloth
And a little pain.

This is the
Beginning.
I take your face
In my hands
And guide your gaze
Away, out there -
To the fruit trees,
To the stars.

My arms,
Though empty,
Fold comfort
To a mother-heart
That yearns for nursing,
Yet knows that weaning
Is the bigger part.

Friday photo and a poem

Mother To Child

by Carol Lynn Pearson

Look --

Your little fist

Fits mine

Like the pit

In a plum.

One day

And one size,

These two hands will

Clasp companionably.

Help me, child

Forgive me

When I fail you.

I'm your mother,

True,

But in the end

Merely an older equal

Doing her faltering best

For a dear

Small friend.

Crowded Tub

There are too many kids in this tub.

There are too many elbows to scrub.

I just washed a behind

That I'm sure wasn't mine

There are too many kids in this tub.

- "Crowded Tub" by Shel Silverstein

(Would somebody tell that baby to sit down already? He's making me nervous.)

Lazy.

Pinkeye again...it's not really "sick" but it's sick enough that the kids aren't supposed to be with other kids. So Wednesday, which is normally a productive and busy day for all of us, is now a lazy day. I am certainly not sick but having my routine disrupted is making me feel lazy. We are all being really lazy/bored to the point of delirium. I have been sending the kids on random errands for me--can you please go get my phone, can you please go get my water bottle. I have even taught Theo to fill my water bottle up in the sink for me. (Exploitation or just learning to serve others?)

Fortunately they are bored enough, they are happy to oblige. And I can't get this poem out of my head.

LAZY JANE

by Shel Silverstein

Lazy

lazy

lazy

lazy

lazy

lazy

Jane,

she

wants

a

drink

of

water

so

she

waits

and

waits

and

waits

and

waits

and

waits

for

it

to

rain.

Love this li'l poem.

"Biff Bang Bang

Goes the hammer in my heart

Biff Bang Bang

Goes the hammer in my heart

Biff Bang Bang

Goes the hammer in my heart

And the hammer in my heart is

You."

(verse from Nibble Nibble by Margaret Wise Brown. Cute book; not the title I would have chosen for it.)

The time has come

("The time has come," the Walrus said, / "To talk of many things:/ Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--/ Of cabbages--and kings--/ And why the sea is boiling hot--/ And whether pigs have wings.")

Did you know that I memorized "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in fifth grade? We were supposed to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class, and I chose that one, because that's how I rolled. So I got up in front of the class, recited half of it, and promptly forgot the rest. So I stood there for a while going through the whole poem again in my head until I found my place and finished the poem. Meanwhile all the other 10-year-olds were staring at the door, willing recess to come.

That was just a random memory triggered by the phrase "The time has come." The time has come for Spring Cleaning My Blog. After all these years it has become wedged into my days. Sometimes I refer to it as my third child. You see, I decided sometime last year to post every weekday, mainly because I hadn't posted in several days and I hardly took any pictures, so I wanted some motivation.

Because, obviously I have such provocative/insightful/groundbreaking ideas, pictures, goals to bestow upon 140 of my closest friends Every Single Day.

Side note, my favorite insight about mommy blogs comes from my cousin Karl.

"Unless I know you . . . I just see your mommy-blog efforts to extract some keen insight about the human condition from dirty diapers as, well, full of crap. Lest you think that I am a heartless single young man (which I do not deny), if I do know you I will check your blog like a mom sticks her nose down a toddler's bum looking for stink--that is to say frequently, often during sacrament meeting, and with a perverse familiarity."

Anyway, the Surprise of the Year is that daily blogging turned into yet another outlet for my obsessive compulsive personality.

I have never actually been diagnosed with OCD but I am certain that I have it in a very mild form. If you don't know what that's like, I want to tell you--because you know a ridiculous amount of information about me already--that it can be agonizing. Since my declaration that I Post Every Day, if I haven't posted for the next day, I get a gleam in my eye and frantically say to Matt, "I know it's 11 p.m. and you just turned the computer off but I HAVE TO POST FOR TOMORROWWWWW!" I mean, I wrote a blog post like three hours after Ida was born.

That really needs to stop. There is no reason for that kind of lunacy. Heaven knows I don't get that obsessive about finishing the laundry or cooking dinner. (or doing my church calling or working on my nonpaying paying job.)

And so. I hit rock bottom last week. This place was a disaster.

(The Walrus and the Carpenter/ Were walking close at hand;/ They wept like anything to see/ Such quantities of sand:/ "If this were only cleared away,"/ They said, "it would be grand!"

("If seven maids with seven mops/ Swept it for half a year./ Do you suppose," the Walrus said,/ "That they could get it clear?"/ "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,/ And shed a bitter tear.)

I spent an Entire Day putting away and throwing away, scrubbing floors and vacuuming, and doing Seven Loads of Laundry. Washed, dried, folded, hung up. There was not a single time throughout the daylight hours that the washer and/or dryer was not running. Then after the kids were in bed, I sat and looked at it all, wishing I could bottle the cleanliness and put it in my pocket. Even though I couldn't, it was so much more satisfying than opening up a Create Post window.

To quote the Movie Full of Quotes for Every Occasion, "My head is starting to get fuzzy..." (perfect conversation ender, don't you think?) Mainly I wanted to thank you for reading this, even though the fact that you do just feeds the insanity. I'm sorry for any TMI moments that may have occurred during your time here. And I just want to warn you...there will be more.

Just not every day.

Goodnight moon, we'll find the mouse, and I love you

I feel that lately I have been having several conversations about Goodnight Moon.

The question is generally, "What's so great about Goodnight Moon?", as in, why is it such a classic? Why do so many billions of people have the silly thing memorized? It's not that great. Etc. I can never put my finger on why it is that I love it so much. I have had it memorized for years and I really don't get tired of reading it to Theo. He never gets tired of it either. He especially loves to whisper "hushhhhhh" and "goodnight noises everywhere." And he's always pointing out things, like "fire!" "window!" "balloon!" "kittens! meow!"

For me, besides the striped curtains, the bold colors, and the coziness of the bunny drifting off to sleep with his (mom?)(grandma?)(nanny?)(quiet old lady?) close by, I think it's the simple cadence that doesn't get old. It's not too sing-songy, but it is rhythmic enough to be interesting. "In the great green room there was a telephone, and a red balloon, and a picture of--the cow jumping over the moon..."

There is also the searching for the mouse, which I think Theo is just old enough to appreciate. And the art on the wall from Runaway Bunny (which Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd published before they did Goodnight Moon). I saw this post the other day about uncovering some more "layers" of Goodnight Moon. So maybe I don't have to feel so sheepish about loving this simple, somewhat prosaic lullaby. Theo's copy is quite battered already and we'll probably buy a few more before I'm done reading it to my kids.

Doggerel

I started writing a bit of doggerel a long time ago, when we first moved to DC. I just came across it in my Gmail Drafts.

We were living in NW DC and commuting on the red line every day. I took Van Ness to Union Station, which is I think only like 2 stops, but I was pregnant with Theo and pretty much hated the stinky crowded mess that is the metro at rush hour. The evening ride is always the stinkier one.

"Evening Commute"

Once I've settled in my seat
A passenger approaches me.

He takes the spot near mine; I think,
"Fine, sit by me, but please don't stink."

(Of course he'll stink; what humans don't?
We stink of smoke, or of cologne,

Of any close-up human stench:
The price one pays to claim a bench.)

The other option—standing free—
Appeals, though, even less to me.

...

Apparently I thought I would finish it. This is the first time I've looked at it in 2 1/2 years. But it really bothers me that it just stops. It needs at least one or two more stanzas. Feel free to contribute in the comments and if I like it I'll send you a prize! Really! Cheesiness encouraged.

Not a poem about March but it is March

Do you get this poem? Because I don't think I do, but I still like it.


"Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself"
by Wallace Stevens

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Democracy

Don't you love benefiting from my obsession with Book World?

Now that Theo is settled in for an early nap, I'm supposed to be cleaning and finishing packing (more info on our trip: next week), but I read this at breakfast and quite enjoyed it, so I'm sharing it with you. Just having celebrated Independence Day, coming up on Pioneer Day, I have been trying to be a little more patriotic and a little less tired of endless debating and news coverage about elections and officials and corruption and constitutional amendments. Ye olde President Clinton said, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America." Maybe a little optimistic but remember, I am being optimistic!

And patriotic!

Hooray for democracy, and freedom, and endless, sometimes almost mindless arguments so that everyone (at least, everyone loud enough) can, in theory, have a voice.

In Otto's Basement
by Louis Simpson

At the meeting of the village board
last night in Otto's basement
when they were discussing a building violation--
Why hasn't the building inspector reported?
The village lawyer is waiting to hear from him.
The inspector has to be told to "get off the pot"--
a picture drifted into my mind
from some Latin American country,
of men tied to posts, about to be shot.
Or perhaps it was Africa, or Afghanistan.

So we endure it. This is what Jefferson
and Lincoln had to endure,
sitting and listening to people
argue . . . the cost of conversion from oil to coal
and the statement by the tree-trimming committee.
If you want to know what freedom cost
look for us here, under the linoleum.
Dig between the end of the table
and the wall of some brown material
grained like wood, with imitation knotholes.

Wrestling

Ever had the feeling of being impatient with a loved one, or maybe even arguing or saying something mean, only to regret it later--maybe days, but probably only minutes or seconds later--when either time or an event or a realization of your love for that person puts the situation in perspective? (My answer: Daily)

Enter: the peacefully sleeping child, sometime around 11 p.m. when the house is completely quiet and dark.

Is there anything sweeter, more likely to make your heart catch in your throat, more likely to pile on the guilt if you have been a less-than-perfect mother earlier in the evening?

If Matt is going to be late getting home and it's been a long day, I may urge Theo to bed a little early. He is actually great at going to bed, but the hours leading up to bedtime can still be the most volatile times for us. Then, it could be a few hours or even just a few minutes after he has been wrestled to bed when I sit on the couch, looking around, and I start to miss him again. I'm pretty sure that feeling will never go away, it will just manifest itself differently as he gets older.

Maybe you'll think this poem is weird, but I really liked it. Try to see beyond the creepiness of the metaphor.

Mary Karr's intro (from "Poet's Choice" in the Book World section of the Post . . . my favorite): "Whether a child recklessly runs into traffic or clings until peeled off, every mother must balance keeping said child safe while urging him or her to self-reliance. The mother in Sarah Harwell's 'Dead' recounts one of the small miseries of parenting: nightly wrestling a wakeful child toward sleep, which--in mythological terms--is within the kingdom of Hades. . . . The mother's relief at the child's departure ultimately prompts self-indictment for ordering the girl into Hell. Without such boundless rivers of guilt, maternal love would be cheap stuff. Hardly worth celebrating."

Dead
by Sarah Harwell

The way my daughter sleeps it's as if she's talking
to the dead. Now she is one. I watch her eyes roll
backwards in her head, her senses fold

one by one, and then her breathing quiets to a beat.
Every night she fights this silent way of being
with all the whining ammunition she has.

She wins a tired story, a smothered song, the small
and willful links to life that carry her away.
Welcome to the Egyptian burial. She's gone to Hades

with her stuffed animals. When she wakes,
the sad circles disappeared, she blinks
before she knows me. I have listened

to one million breaths of her. And every night
my body seizes when she leaves to go
where I am not, and yet every night I urge her, go.

From my mother, part 1

The Unwritten Poem
by Carol Lynn Pearson

Sometimes--
in a sitting down moment
on a day
of stove-heating the sad-irons
and layering newspaper between
quilts to keep us warmer--
I heard my mother say,
"I wish I had time
to write a poem."
And then she would start
the potatoes.

When I was twelve
a thing happened that
broke my heart--
a school thing I've forgotten now.
For hours I cried my humiliation
into a handkerchief.

Next day my mother
brought it in from ironing--
that handkerchief--
and gave it to me special.
"Here," she laid it in my lap.
"You've had it in happy times
and in sad.
There'll be more of both.
Keep it, and it will remind you
the better follows the bad."

She went back to ironing,
and my finger traced
the little flowers of fading blue.

I can remember other poems
she left me, too.

I am happy today.

Barter
by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

This poem is so...me.

"At the Border"
by Carl Dennis

At the border between the past and the future
No sign on a post warns that your passport
Won't let you return to your native land
As a citizen, just as a tourist
Who won't be allowed to fraternize with the locals.

No guard steps out of a booth to explain
You can't bring gifts back, however modest,
Can't even pass a note to a few friends
That suggests what worries of theirs are misguided,
What expectations too ambitious.

Are you sure you're ready to leave,
To cross the bridge that begins
Under a clear sky and ends in a fog?
But look, you've started across already
And it's one-lane wide, with no room for U-turns.

No time even to pause as drivers behind you
Lean on their horns, those who've convinced themselves
Their home awaits them on the other side.

"Masks"

(adapted by Maya Angelou from Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask")

We wear the mask that grins and lies.
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts…
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us while
We wear the mask.

We smile but oh my God
Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise
And we sing Oh Baby doll, now we sing…
The clay is vile beneath our feet
And long the mile
But let the world think otherwise.
We wear the mask.
When I think about myself
I almost laugh myself to death.

My life has been one great big joke!
A dance that's walked a song that's spoke.
I laugh so hard HA! HA! I almos' choke
When I think about myself.
Seventy years in these folks' world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say "HA! HA! HA! Yes ma'am!"
For workin's sake
I'm too proud to bend and
Too poor to break

So…I laugh! Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh…
Until I start to cry when I think about myself
And my folks and the children.

My fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank.
And they gnarled like broken candles,
All waxed and burned profound.
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block
The chains and slavery's coffles
The whip and lash and stock.
My fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

They laugh to conceal their crying,
They shuffle through their dreams
They stepped 'n fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.
I understand their meaning,
It could an' did derive
From living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

("We Wear the Mask" by Paul Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should that world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, oh my God, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world think otherwise,
We wear the mask.)

It's so much better to watch her recite it than to read it in my own head.