HMS Pinafore, Kate, and a Mama’s Fierce Love

In a lifetime that’s been characterized by obsessive parental love, Miss Kate is currently experiencing a particularly high period of maternal adoration. Or, to say it more plainly: My God, can I love this baby any more?

It would almost be sickening except for the fact that it’s just at the apex of intensity without reaching that I’m-so-excited-I-have-a-headache place.

I’ve described my pride and excitement about Kate in high school play terms before. (This probably relates to what I’ve realized as an adult was my freakishly positive and happy high school experience.) At any rate, the play thing is something I use to explain how I feel about the fact that my dad and oldest sister and a ton of other family and friends don’t get to see Kate anywhere near as much as I wish they could. To me it’s like when you’re in the high school play. You’ve been rehearsing for so long, memorizing lines, singing your heart out, putting all your extra energy into it. You get to that place where you surpass the fear that it could be terrible and even arrive at the realization that it will be really quite good. When the performances finally arrive and your family is in the audience watching, you’re so damn proud of yourself and happy and excited to have them there. It’s a total high.

Okay, so stay with me here. Having Kate is like being in this incredible Broadway performance in the lead role and singing and performing in a way that is so exceptional and impressive that it astounds even you. It totally exceeds your expectations. But the thing is, instead of getting that thrill that everyone you care about and want to be proud of you (and sure, even those who you want to impress) will come, the fact is that people can’t make it to every performance. So sometimes you’re there bursting with pride and excitement and a desire to show off, and there’s no outlet for it.

Especially with my mother gone, I get these sudden pangs of wanting her to be able to see how amazing Kate is. To even just look at her her beautiful sweetness once. Those times are this whole feeling at its worst.

So sometimes it’s like Mark and I are just here in our little house in Oakland that just seems like any other little house but if you were to look inside you’d see that there is this wonder child who is being more beautiful and smart and sweet than you could ever imagine a baby to be. Whose little naked butt when she’s standing up holding onto the edge of the bathtub as she watches the water fill it up is so ridiculously cute you need to kiss it (yes, actually kiss her ass!). And all of this is just happening in here night after night with people just naively walking by outside having no idea!

Sometimes I just have to out and tell people, like my sister Marie when we’re on the phone, “My God, you have to see this baby. Like right now.” Of course it’s impossible for her to crawl through the phone line. But I really have thought that if she knew what Kate was doing at that moment and how great it was, she’d get on a cross-country plane immediately.

I guess it’s just in my nature to want to share great stuff. In the middle of an amazing massage I spend half the time thinking of how I have to get Mark to get a massage just like it. And part is just the exuberant braggart in me who wants to shout about Kate from the rooftops. “Amazing baby here! She giggles! She points at random things and says, ‘Ba ba!’ She has soft blonde hair with little wispy curls! She puts her head down on your shoulder to hug you! She says ‘baby’ like a CD that’s skipping and it’s so damn silly and funny and sweet you’d just love it, I know!”

Sometimes when I get swept up I call Ellen to see if she wants to come over last minute for dinner. Of course it’s in the guise of wanting to see her and the kids. And sure I do want to see them. But I also just really want them to see Kate.

Anyway, most of the time the last-minute dinners don’t work out, or we’re just in our day-to-day family routine. So what happens when it’s just us is that Mark and I marvel to each other. Sometimes Mark will just look at me with his eyes wide and say, “That baby.” And I know he means, “My God she is so staggeringly amazing. We are so lucky. How could we ever love anything quite so much?” Word to that, Dada.

And thankfully we do get opportunities to see other people who genuinely share our excitement. The mother’s group mamas totally appreciate all the other mamas’ babies. We thump each other on the backs regularly about the wonder of each other’s small beings. It’s nice.

And of course, when we do get to see grandparents, we get to connect with those who are similarly afflicted with The Crazy Love Glee. In Kentucky Peggy told us how Kate held her arms out for Gary (a.k.a. Papa) to pick her up, and I know he must have just melted. In that church-basement-sharing kind of way, it feels good to be around others who share our disease.

I guess all this is one reason why having Kate makes me want to spend the holidays with extended family more than ever. I’m so excited about The Miller Family Thanksgiving (TM) just because we can all hang out and delight in Kate and Gavin and family and love and luck.

And after two years of Mark unsuccessfully jockeying for the whole “starting our own family traditions at home” thing, this year he wins. We’ll stay in California for Christmas. It’s not that I won’t be happy being with Mark and Kate. Just the opposite really. I’ll be giddy with joy and love and pride and thankfulness. It’s just that sometimes when I feel that way I wish I could have all my family and friends experiencing it right there with me, and cheering me on from the audience.

To Hell with Cancer

I really hate to always have something to whine about these days but the preponderance of cancer I’ve been hearing about seems a legitimate reason.

First I find out that my friend Barb has a 40-year-old friend with late stage lung cancer. Never smoked a day in her life. Then Blanca, Kate’s former Thursday babysitter, tells me her father has cancer that they first thought was isolated and treatable and later determined was spread throughout his body. Then Mrs. Demopulos, Amelia’s mom, is diagnosed, which is a crushing blow since my mother already got cancer so it doesn’t seem fair that hers should too. And also because I love Mrs. D like a second mother. Then yesterday my father asks me on the phone in the course of an otherwise mundane “how’s the weather there?” conversation whether I’d heard that my Aunt Mary has colon cancer. (I had not.)

Aunt Mary isn’t really an aunt. She was our neighbor growing up and in many ways is closer to my sisters and I than many of our blood relations. I guess the aunts that you pick versus those that you just get can be that way. I mean, not to say anything remotely negative about my “real” aunts–but Aunt Mary is an amazing special person and force of nature. She’s super positive and friendly and fun and a great cook and has tons of energy and a fabulous head of (natural) strawberry blonde hair and you’d never know in a million years that she’s 87. In fact, she’s got so much vim and vigor that she takes care of her 92-year-old sister.

I still don’t know the complete story of what the doctors have said the deal is with Aunt Mary, and with all this other cancer news and Rose having died and the new job and new nanny and Mark traveling for work a lot stress, I kind of just can’t deal right now. Hopefully maybe there is something they can do about it.

Speaking of Mark, he’s away for one night for a work retreat and I’m forlorn like a schoolgirl. I think I’m still feeling the fall-out of the world’s stressiest week last week and while we all continue to transition into me working again, I would just prefer that he be here to sit in the couch with me and pat my hand saying “there there” as needed. Next week he’s away Monday through Thursday in New York. (Don’t tell any robbers.) I may well languish without him.

Speaking of “there there,” I really want to get Kate to sleep through the night more consistently. It’s never fun to be awakened from a deep sleep to go and nurse her, but when I need to wake up at 6:15 the following morning to go to work, it’s particularly unsavory. So, the other night when Kate had already woken up once, we decided Mark would go in the second time and try to get her back to sleep sans boob.

Kate’s pediatrician told us to do the ole Ferber thing of going in and saying in an unemotional tone, “It’s time to go to sleep,” and rubbing her belly to try to calm her down. Mark has done this a handful of times and more often than not it results in Kate losing her shit upon seeing him. It’s clear her internal dialogue then is, “What are you doing in here? I want the one with the boobies! I want miiiiiilk!” She starts crying hysterically and when he comes back into our room I always say to him, “How’d that go?”, and every time I think that’s a really funny thing to say.

What was so weird/funny/great was the other night Mark went in to do what we refer to as “there there” and when he arranged her blankets nicely over her and cooed, “Time to go to sleep,” she actually did! When he got back into bed we didn’t even say anything to each other because we were both bracing for her to lose it (and of course didn’t want to jinx anything). But despite us waiting for the other shoe to drop, she just settled back down into sleep. It was divine.

Of course, when he tried it last night, she lost her shit, and a few minutes later I caved and went in to nurse her. Ah well. As my grandmother used to say with a sigh of resignation, “What are you going to do?”

Tomorrow’s a Brand New Day, Right?

Oy vey. This week has just got to be better than last week. If not, someone please send me a cookie bouquet or something. Sheesh.

So the job seems like it will be good. Smart and funny folks. And everyone is crazy friendly. At times I’ve felt like I’m back in the groove–asking the right questions, making insightful observations in meetings, and even looking natty in my new work clothes. At other times I’ve sputtered out the totally wrong word (voicemail introducing myself to client saying “See you at the lay-off meeting” instead of the “layout meeting.” D’oh!) And then sometimes I get in that kinda sleepy, slap happy mode of being too familiar and jocular with people who instead of having fun with me seem to be mildly freaked out that I’m their new boss and I suddenly realize I should cinch my personality girdle in a bit tighter.

The nanny. We’ve clashed once already when I called to say I was stuck in traffic and would be 5 minutes late and she told me in a not so friendly manner that she just couldn’t stay. She had things to do and somewhere to be. I mean, I appreciate her life and respect her time but it was the second day with a new commute and I was still trying to figure out how long it would all take.

So, in a panic I called four local friends getting voicemails all around and leaving desperate pleas could they please call me if they got this and maybe go to the house and sit with Kate for a few minutes until I screeched into the driveway clutching the steering wheel with sweaty palms and a throbbing headache? No one was home. No one called back. I called the nanny again and really what ensued is too annoying to even go into but suffice it to say I wasn’t left with the warm fuzzies for how she and I will relate under duress.

But thankfully it was a three-day work week since Mark’s cousin Dan was getting hitched in Louisville (pronounced Loo-vul), Kentucky. So Thursday morning with the new-work-and-new-nanny part of the week behind me my alarm clock went off at 4:15AM and I greeted the day by dragging excessive luggage to the car, waking up a sleeping baby and schlepping to the airport in the icy dark morning. Once there I was making a bee-line for the gate since it was boarding time, but looked at my seat number (17A) instead of the gate number (3), so ran the length of the terminal with baby on hip, stroller loaded with large carry-on and carseat strapped to back chanting internally “one foot, the other foot, making progress, I can do it” only to arrive at last at destination, exhale with exhaustion, realize my error and turn around, sweat trickling down my chest, to run back to gate 3 twice as fast since I was really late then. (The argument with the gate attendant about why I couldn’t take the carseat onto the plane for Kate, even though there were free seats, was just gilding the lily.)

In Houston we met Mark. And boy was I crazy happy to see him in that misery loves company or at least loves to complain a lot to someone you really love way. In our second flight he unburdened me of baby, luggage, and most importantly the daunting feeling of doing it all alone (hail to you, single parents!). He really stepped up for much of the weekend too.

And Kentucky was fun at times. The Miller clan is always a hoot to hang out with, and many of Aunt Terry’s Lexington posse we’ve come to know a bit. And Kate had some babies to play with, and grandparents to adore her. Three nights of parties (BBQ, rehearsal dinner, wedding) were all fabulous and social, but really I would have been well-served to sit at home with greasy hair blankly staring at the TV and feeding myself Dove Bars. Since that wasn’t in the cards I did a sort of body cleansing by inbibing excessive amounts of bourbon. Not what I needed to feel rested and geared up for Week Number 2 of New Job, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Time to sleep since I’m already cutting into my much-needed 8 hours. And I know it’s all going to get so much better, if I can just wake up for it.

Things Not To Do

Do not start a new job and leave your daughter for the first time with a new nanny who for all you know could be an axe-murderer in the same week when your husband is away on a business trip and on Thursday you’ll already need to take a day off and be all packed and get yourself and your baby onto a 6AM flight to go to a family wedding.

Do not get your period the morning of your first day of work and have miserable cramps. And don’t forget to take Advil before you leave the house and spend the whole day hoping that you’ll magically find some in your office in the 30 second breaks between your back-to-back getting-to-know-you need-to-make-a-good-first-impression meetings.

Do not wear a pink dress shirt under a black dress on your first day of work, thinking it looks cute until you arrive at the office and realize you look like an overgrown girl in a Catholic school uniform.

Do not take on management of a community event when you are starting a new job and your husband is away on a business trip.

Do not freak out that the nanny that you hired is possibly terrible and that your daughter no longer loves you after one day left with a total stranger who you hope she will come to like someday, but not too much.

Do not get lost on your first drive home from your first day of work and ultimately sit in extra traffic and have to call the nanny and tell her you’ll be late and can she possible stay longer–establishing yourself in her mind as irresponsible (and as having a bad sense of direction).

Do not cry on the phone to your husband after feeding and bathing a crying overtired baby who didn’t take an afternoon nap, making him feel terrible about being away on a business trip.

Do not spend an hour updating a spreadsheet for your community event planning (which you have foisted off on your benevolent friend) when all you want to do is space out and watch TV, then have your computer crash and lose all your work.

Do not underestimate the many emails and calls you got from friends asking how your first day of work was, sending heaps of encouragement, and making you feel somewhat validated that this is indeed a big transition and worthy of stress, exhaustion, and anxiety but given time could turn out to be just fine and maybe even very rewarding.

Do not give into the temptation to ask your husband to come home from his business trip early just because you miss him madly and feel bad that he feels bad that you feel bad. Do go to sleep grateful to have him and looking forward to how happy you will be to see him in the Houston airport on Thursday.

Silly Crazy Love

Last Saturday we went to our friend Barb’s 40th birthday party. Barb was my old roommate Maureen’s friend from college. So, essentially the first flat I moved into in SF–the requisite Victorian flat that you move into with people you don’t know because you’re young and idealistic and have just pulled up your East Coast roots to live in sunny California–that flat used to be occupied by three friends who all went to UC Santa Barbara. So Barb was one of the apartment’s occupants before I was.

By the time I’d made it to Vicksburg Street, Barb was off gallivanting in Australia with her then BF, now hubbie. And one of the other three gals, Laurie, was off in Africa doing relief nursing work and meeting the man she’d eventually marry. Which left Maureen to look for two total strangers to shack up with. Those strangers turned out to be Shelley and me.

Anyway, those UCSB gals are a tight crew. Not unlike any group of best girlfriends really, though they have seen each other through particularly thick and thin times. And, God bless ‘em, they always make a great showing at parties. So, unbeknownst to the birthday girl, Maureen flew in from Boston and Laurie from Canada to take part in the festivities.

A considerable amount has changed in our lives since Maureen and I shared a phone. She ended up marrying a fine lad from Rhode Island who I never knew from growing up, but who I met in SF and introduced her to. And now she has four–yes 4–kids with said Rhode Islanduh [sic], and lives in domestic bliss in The Land of the Bad Accent.

So we were talking about being parents and Maureen beat me to the comment that I most often make about the revelation of parenthood, which was “Having kids makes you realize just how much your parents love you.” Word to that, sister.

My father is in the Professional Proud Parents Hall of Fame, and he certainly isn’t totally bereft of things to be proud of, but in many cases he’s just crazed with delusional paternal satisfaction. My old college roommate used to love it about Fred. “Aw Kris,” she’d say, imitating his deep voice. “You brushed your teeth this morning! I’m so damn proud of you!” (And I wonder why I need Mark to praise me when I clean the bathroom…)

But now, having Kate, I totally get it. The girl hits her hand in the bath water to splash and I act as if she’s won the Nobel Peace Prize. I too have foolish over-inflated pride. And don’t even dare to tell me it’s for no good reason.

The thing that Maureen said that totally cracked me up was, “All those times growing up when your parents told you how beautiful you were–they really thought it!” Hilarious.

I actually did ask Mark one night if he thought that maybe Kate wasn’t cute but we were so blind with love that we thought so. Unsurprisingly he said he thought she really was cute. I guess it’s something we’ll never know. (Don’t crazy people never think they’re crazy, which is the first symptom of insanity?) Whatever the case, I think Mark and I are destined to live out our days going with our hunch that Kate is sweet, brilliant, and beautiful. It’s annoying I know, but we try our best to keep it under wraps.

So, last year on this day I was clutching the side of a hot tub (more like a tepid tub) moaning my way through contractions. I was about 11 1/2 hours into active labor (but who’s counting?) and was at a particularly “active” juncture. I remember from the strange planet I was on that I saw Yeshi, my midwife, who was reading something or filling out some forms. And Sarah, my doula, who I also saw as if through a gauzy veil, was mopping my brow and reminding me to breathe. And Mark, of course, was right there with me and earnest and excited and supportive and kept telling me what a great job I was doing and how I was amazing and strong and beautiful.

About a half-hour from now was when, after an internal exam, I was told that I hadn’t progressed really at all. That all those intense contractions crashing in on me less than a minute apart had really gotten me nowhere closer to having that baby in my arms. And so I decided to toss my drug-free birthing plans out the window and get an epidural. If after 12 hours I was in the same place, how long would it take and how hard would it be to actually get somewhere?

Suffice it to say that by this time tomorrow, a year ago, Mark and I had taken up temporary residence in a hospital room with a baby we had no idea how very much we would come to crazy over-the-top love love love and be proud of in ways that no doubt seem foolish to anyone else (but really they just don’t get it).

So Kate, I tell you this on the eve of your first birthday. I know your father and I must seem out of our minds at times, but we really do think you’re beautiful. We really do think you are better than him. We really do think a family vacation would be a fun way for us all to spend some time. Someday you may experience all this yourself, and then you might not think we’re so crazy after all.

Sunday

Got a “not good news” call yesterday from my friend Amelia who I’ve known since we crawled around on blankets in each other’s backyards as our mothers looked fabulous in cat’s eye glasses and clam-diggers. Turns out her mother has cancer. It’s something that was just discovered in the past week, and they don’t yet know what course of action the doctors will recommend. I’m so incredibly sick of hearing about people getting cancer. What the hell is out there that’s poisoning us? And can’t it skip over the people I love?

What’s weird is that our neighbor who is pregnant just lost her father to a heart attack. And here is Amelia, eight weeks until her due date, and dealing with this horrible diagnosis that leaves her stressed out and emotional and checking on airline policies to see when and if she can fly, instead of nesting like a maniac like she should be.

At least there’s no terrible conclusive word on her condition. So I’m summoning all my powers of cancer-ridding thoughts and sending them across the country to beloved Mrs. D. Damn it.

After getting off the phone Mark and I were off to do some errands and I said I really should visit Rose first. She’s been in her final days for about a week now, and even though someone is supposed to call me from the nursing home if her “status changes,” I still wasn’t sure whether she’d be there when we arrived. I was already so sad about Mrs. D, but since geography prevented me from being with her (another adoptive granny to Kate), I’d try my luck at seeing Rose.

When we arrived, Marie, an administrator at the nursing home who loves Rose like a Mama, told us Rose was out in the garden. I had to admit that for a second I thought, “Alive in the garden?” Marie said they were able to move her into a kind of wheelchair bed and roll her out there. She was getting a manicure actually, from her son’s girlfriend. They were all out there–Rose’ twin sons and the girlfriend. Walk to the yard and turn all the way around to the left, she said, and we’d see them. “I’m sure they’d love to have you join them.”

Mark and I looked at each other as we headed for the back door. Huh. We’d been geared up to brace for news that she’d died, so it was odd shifting gears to the fact that she was getting a manicure outside. Odd but good, mind you.

Sure enough there they were. The garden was in bloom and sun was peeking in from the shade of the trees, and there was Rose in a hot pink fleece robe and black and white patterned scarf. He sons stood up when we approached (she raised ‘em right) and I introduced Mark, and we met Stephanie, Martin’s girlfriend, who was sweetly holding Rose’s hand.

Rose was more lucid than she’d been in days. She still dozed off often, but when she did open her eyes she smiled and laughed to see Kate. She even scolded us for not dressing her warmly enough. “That baby needs socks!” she said to Mark. Her sons shook their heads and chuckled. (Those twins tend to move in unison that way.)

We had a lovely visit. The weather was warm and comfortable, our sprits were high, and the garden was so peaceful and intimate that you’d never know looking down at our little party we were sitting outside a nursing home. Rose’s sons joked that according to their mother, none of us would ever be dressed warmly enough. We even took some great pictures.

It seemed, if only for a little while, Rose was back.

I Never Said This

Zeal was over to babysit a few weeks ago. (Yes, when you live in Northern California the friendly neighborhood teenager’s name is Zeal.) Zeal is a good kid and seems pretty responsible, but he’s fairly young still and so when he sits for Kate it’s always when she’s already gone to sleep and we just need someone sitting in the house to sniff the air occasionally for signs of fire.

So he was over and we were going out to dinner with Melissa and Adam, who are also parents. And Zeal’s hanging out chatting with everyone as I run around and do things like move my wallet of the diaper bag into a big girl purse. And Adam says something about Kate and Zeal says, “Yeah, she’s never woken up any of the times I’ve been here to babysit.” And all four of us stop in our tracks and whine, “Zeeeal. You’re not supposed to say that! Now it’s jinxed.”

For some reason you can take a person who is otherwise not superstitious at all, make them a new parent, and before you know it the almighty Power of Jinx is a governing force in their lives. It’s like you’re suddenly slung back into 1st grade step-on-a-crack-break-your-mother’s-back rules. And it all comes from early in your baby’s life, when you’ve gotten burned because you mentioned to someone, “Yeah, Kate doesn’t really spit up a lot.” Or: “It seems we’ve finally said goodbye to the ‘evening fussies.’” Or best yet, “She’s been so great about going down for her naps lately.” Of course, the moment the words are uttered your baby has somehow intuited your smugness and resolves to display their powers to un-do exactly what it was you were so thrilled about. Bookies in Vegas should take money on the odds, because it’s amazing how often it happens.

And as all parents of babies know, especially when it comes to all things sleep related, you don’t f around. Your baby’s sleep, and therefore your sleep, is a commodity more precious than gold, platinum–you name your gem or precious metal.

With all that said, it is with extreme trepidation, and with many an offering to the gods and godesses of all things jinxy, that I share this tale.

The night before last I woke up and rolled over, catching the numbers on the clock along the way. It should be know that if you can see a bright strobe of light emanating from the earth skyward, it’s my alarm clock. The numbers on my clock are so blindingly bright that I could put my pillow over it and I’d still be able to make out the time. At any rate (geez, I’m good at tangents, eh?), the time on the clock was 3:30AM. And Kate had not woken up yet.

Generally she’s been waking up once a night, any time between 1-ish and 2-ish, at which point I go nurse her, slap her back in the crib, and she sleeps until 7:00 or so.

Mark happened to also wake up when I’d rolled over, and he too had the time burnt into his retinas by the laser light of my clock. We discussed the significance of the situation.

Me: It’s 3:30 and she hasn’t gotten up yet.

Him: Wow.

Me: Do you think she’s okay?

Him: I don’t know. Yeah…probably.

A few minutes pass in which we both feign non-concern.

Him: Can you hear her breathe on the monitor?

[I turn up the monitor volume and press it to my ear. I just get hissing white noise.]

Me: Hard to tell. Can you hear anything?

Him: [With ear pressed to hissing monitor] Uh, no.

Me: Do you think you should go in and check on her? But if she’s just sleeping and we wake her up, maybe we’d be screwing up the first night she sleeps through the night.

Him: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get in there without waking her. It’s risky.

Me: You know, I’m sure she’s fine. I’m going to go back to sleep.

Him: Yeah, you’re right.

Then I fell back asleep and Mark laid in bed ramrod awake for the next 2 1/2 hours.

Eventually at 5:30 I woke up when I heard Kate squawk. Hooray! She is alive and she slept for a record stretch (from 7PM to 5:30AM)! Double happiness! And no, she wasn’t up for the day (thankfully). I nursed her and she went back to sleep until her usual 7-ish wake-up time.

Then last night (Gods of Jinxitude, please have mercy on me for sharing this), she slept straight through until 6AM.

Let it be known I would NEVER imply that a new pattern is forming. Do that and I’ll be up with her every two hours for the next month. All I’m saying is that it was nice to have her sleep the way she did for the past couple nights.

Now we’ve just got to work on Mark’s sleep.

The Cranky McCluskys

Yesterday, man, were we cranky. I’m not sure who started it but Kate was not herself. Maybe teething, maybe just asserting an uglier part of her personality that thankfully has been dormant for much of her existence. And she didn’t take a morning nap and then I was jangled because it didn’t give me a break and then I was snappish with Mark and/or either he or I or Kate started it all and it unraveled from there. At any rate, there was not a lot of merrymaking at this house yesterday. Nothing too terribly miserable either–just cranky.

At one point we took Kate to a local kiddy park that a kind of crazy person in the ‘hood always talks about, and once we were there and Kate was on the swings for 3.5 minutes Mark and I looked at each other and wondered what else to do. Sometimes you just forget what to do with the baby and the time before her bedtime stretches on infinitely, like when you’re watching the clock at a temp job.

And during this jaunt to the park, in which we spent a sum total of 8 minutes (but were at least grateful for having used up that much of time), Mark said something about the four-day weekend and running out of baby-entertainment ideas. Even though I was right there with him–baffled as to what to do with her, with all of us, next–it was an interesting insight into what it’s like to have a job and not just do the Kate thing day after day.

This is of particular interest because I now have a job. Well, I got a job and I guess that means I “have” it, though it hasn’t manifested itself into something that I go and do yet. Right now it just exists in the abstract, and my attention is focused on telling my friends and family the “I have a job” story, and looking for a nanny.

I met a nanny today who I’d held out irrational hope for as being a perfect Mary Poppins. She was the first person I interviewed and even though she was smart and sweet and seemed to be someone who would be responsible and maybe even fun with Kate, I didn’t feel like she was The One. She didn’t sufficiently flip out over Kate’s beauty, intelligence, and charisma. And the fact that I didn’t love her, and either apparently did Kate, left me feeling like I might get to a place of feeling desperate or scared or having to make a childcare decision that doesn’t rock me to my soul with right-ness. Though really, I know Mark and myself enough to know we would never do that.

Today Kate exhibited more nap-refusal and crankitude that made me start thinking like Mark was yesterday. Soon there will be a day when I know that even if she’s having a rare grumpy day or even just an episode, I’ll have another place to go/thing to do tomorrow, and somehow that will make it easier to endure the fuss. (Of course, even having that thought made me feel guilty…)

It reminded me of the thing that you do when you’re moving out of New York City. (I did this, but I assume anyone who leaves there does it too.) So, when you move out of New York, in the time that you know you are moving but you haven’t yet gone, you let all the totally crappy things about living there seep into your consciousness. Actually, you not only let them seep in, you celebrate them:
No more urine drenched subway tunnels!
No more $17 omelets!
No more having your feet in your shower stall when you’re sitting on the toilet because your bathroom is so damn small!

Well, you get the point. There is no place like New York. The place you are going won’t have anywhere near the energy or the opportunities or the 4AM Indian food delivery. But you need to rationalize hard about how you are making the right decision.

With my return to work date looming, I’m trying to trick myself into this very headset. So I will be away from Kate for 30 hours a week. Well, I’ll have fewer stinky diapers to change! I won’t be calling Mark at his office when she’s cranky and I just need to vent for a sec because I won’t be there either! I’ll…

God, the fact is, it’s hard to even come up with the reasons why it’ll be good to leave her. So instead of thinking of all the things that suck about NYC, I think I need to focus on the good things that await me in the place I am going to.

And hopefully, I’ll have a much greater appreciation for all manner of stinky diapers, toddler meltdowns, and long days before bedtimes when I get them.

Aunt Flo Returns

In this family we’re huge fans of the Dr. Seuss book Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?. Not for its soul-affirming feel-good message, but for how totally funny and over-the-top weird and frankly kinda trippy it is. The copy we have is one that Mark got from his Grandma and Grandpa Kohl in 1977 before his family moved from Ohio to Franklin, PA. A few months ago I found it in a box of our books, and was amazed that I’d never read it before, and it’s soooo good. I know I’m not the first to have noticed, but Dr. Seuss’ imagination is brilliant! I want to sit next to that guy at a dinner party, though I think he might be dead.

So yesterday we walked to 4th Street in Berkeley with Adam for the sole purpose of requisitioning ourselves some first-rate ice cream at Sketch. (They make better ice cream than they do websites, btw.) Along the way something caused either Mark or I to refer to that book, and if you’re talkin’ books it seems the odds are good that Adam has read whatever it is you’re talking about. And his son Raulie is one year old today (happy birthday, Small Man!) so one would assume he’s done some solid work reading or rereading the kid stuff. But, sadly and shockingly, this Dr. Suess oeuvre has managed to evade even Adam.

If you too haven’t read it, seek out this book immediately. Until then, I’ll share the section Mark was recounting yesterday:

And poor Mr. Bix!
Every morning at six,
poor Mr. Bix has his Borfin to fix!
[The illustration is of an exhausted old bald man getting out of bed and to confront a big wilted-looking Rube Goldbergesque machine]

It doesn’t seem fair. It just doesn’t seem right,
but his Borfin just seems to go shlump every night.
It shlumps in a heap, sadly needing repair.
Bix figures it’s due to the local night air.

It takes him all day to un-shlump it.
And then…
the night air comes back
and it shlumps once again!

So don’t you feel blue. Don’t get down in the dumps.
You’re lucky you don’t have a Borfin that shlumps.

You think that’s good. Wait til you get to the part about the pants-eating plants in the forests of France!

At any rate, my Borfin–or more precisely I–just could not get un-shlumped today. From the moment I blearily slung my legs off the side of the bed like a paraplegic, and gave myself a couple minutes to tap into my usual wellspring of energy and sass before standing (it was oddly un-locate-able), I was clearly off to a bad start. After one look at me, Mark valiantly offered to take my waking-up-with-Kate shift, sweetheart that he is. But no, I persevered. I need to hone my maternal matyrdom eventually, and this morning was as good a time as any. Besides, I can generally shake off most anything in the morning, even without caffeine or drugs.

And for an hour or so, I managed to deal with Kate in a fairly high-functioning mode. But by the time Mark woke up my backache was back in full throttle and I’d suddenly detected a headache worming its way into my cranium. With just ten minutes to go before I had to nurse her before her nap, I crawled back into bed laughing as I called out to Mark that quite suddenly I fell like sheer Hell. Could he wake me up in 10 minutes?

Despite a short shopping trip to buy Mark a new suit (God, he looks cute in pin stripes) in which I experienced a moderate period of un-shlumpedness (Nordstrom can have an amazing Perking Effect, I’ve found), I was not myself, and got to wondering what was going on with me. I napped twice when Kate did but still couldn’t wake up. I’ve been eating sugar non-stop but still have a bottomless craving for it. And I have a small approximation of a zit between my eyes (whenever I say I have a zit, Mark says, “You call THAT a zit?”). It looks like a bindi that nature intended.

No, no, I’m not pregnant. Though it did seem like pregnancy-type symptoms.

By the end of the day I went to the bathroom and realized (d’oh!) that I’d gotten my period! After a nearly two-year pregnancy and post-pregnancy hiatus, Aunt Flo was back for a visit. As I dusted off my Costco lifetime supply-sized box of Tampax, I called out my news to Mark. “I’m not crazy! There was something going on with me!”

Heck, I feel like a school girl again. It made me remember the first time I “got it.” My mother had taken me to Brick Market Place in Newport to get a wooden-handled Pappagallo purse. It was Middle School couture at the time. I think that day I got a hot pink one with my monogram on it, and a Kelly green one. Later, I amassed a small legion of covers, most likely with matching headbands. Anyway, that day I had a lower backache which was a totally new and weird thing. It was bothering me, but I thought nothing of it until we got home and I realized why. (No matter how many health filmstrips I’d watched, I still missed all the warning signs.) When I walked downstairs to where my mom was standing at the kitchen sink (I can picture it really clearly, actually), she responded to my news with little surprise or fanfare. It was in keeping with her New England roots, and I frankly wouldn’t have wanted her to react any other way.

Which is funny because I can just picture how I’ll be when Kate gets her period for the first time. I’m sure I’ll be all crying and hugging her, and then when we’re out at the grocery store or something, I’ll feel compelled to put my arm around Kate and announce to the check-out lady that my little girl became a woman today. I know it will annoy and embarrass her to her core, but sometimes you just have a feeling about what you’ll do in a given situation, and you just can’t deny it.

The One that Got Away

If there is one thing I am proud of myself about, it’s having gotten hip when I did to the kind of man who is fit for marryin’. Sure, there were other men in my life who at times I toyed with playing house with, but in my heart of hearts I knew they weren’t right. Some guys are fit for dalliances (even year-long ones), but not for reading the paper with over breakfast when you’re 65. Mark, thank God, is.

In college my friend Ben was my best male girlfriend. He was smart and sweet and even pretty damn cute. We’d while away long boring Gambier, Ohio afternoons in his room in the slightly dorky co-ed “society” he was in. I’d bemoan whatever romantic foible I was entertaining my psyche with at the time, and he’d listen, help me strategize, and then we’d analyze his crushes.

We were no fools though. Hot-blooded collegiates that we were, each of us at times considered the other as a potential girl/boyfriend, or at least a one-time conquest. But never at the same time, thankfully. And neither of us ever said or did anything in the times when we were feeling curious/smitten with the other—probably out of fear that one awkward kiss had the power to ruin a great friendship.

It worked out for us that those “what about him/her?” episodes made up the minority of time we spent together. Mostly, we watched a bad game show where kids did things like crawl between the pieces of bread in a 10-square-foot peanut butter and jelly sandwich in order to win cool prizes (the name of which I can’t believe I’ve forgotten), play drunken air guitar to ACDC, and lounge around chatting idly and snidely about nearly ever other person at our rural 1,400-student college. Ah, Ben.

Of course, the guys who I spent most of my time interested in were compelling to me because they were either A) not interested in me, B) clannish in that I-never-outgrew-boarding-school way, C) insensitive and immature, and D) cute. (At least they had one redeeming quality.) All in all, the social dichotomy between them and Ben served me well. The guys from the football fraternity were fun to swim in the fountain with (there was no fountain–that’s just my metaphor for hijinx). And Ben was fun to philosophize and gossip with in the sober light of day.

At one point in our senior year some smart gal got hip to all that Ben had to offer, and suddenly he became one of those guys who held hands with his serious girlfriend while walking down Middle Path. In what seemed like no time, we grew apart. Understandably, he had a new confidant, and she was probably not too keen about him spending time with me. I learned from the alumni magazine a while back that he married that woman not long after graduating, and at the time at least, they lived not far from where I do now.

Thinking about him tonight, more than I have in over a decade, I can’t help but be nostalgic. But I am happy that his memory doesn’t bring me a feeling of regret, which it might if I were single. It would be easy to label him “the one that got away,” and dozens of other gals from Kenyon probably do. In my teens I just didn’t have the foresight that his wife had to snatch up such a wonderful guy, such a keeper.

Thankfully, on my own timeline, I managed to smarten up and find a keeper of my own. When Mark and I go to his college friends’ weddings I always have a moment of realizing that some of the women we’re with look at Mark as the one that got away. It’s one of the things that makes me squeeze his arm a bit tighter when the bride and groom are exchanging their vows.

Lucky for me, I’m the one that gets to turn down the page of the newspaper at breakfast 30 years from now, and see him there.