My Big Girl

Today Miss Kate is 11 months old. And even though in some ways I ask myself the age-old “where’d the time go?” question, in many ways I see how she and I have changed in that time and gotten more accustomed to these mother and baby roles.

Today for instance, we were at Ikea taking in all the Ektorps, Glinns, Fleeborks, etc., and I was hurrying us through since we were ‘threading the nap needle’ as it were. (We’d ventured out in the small window of time between the morning and post-lunch nap.)

Back home I made myself tomato soup and grilled cheese, and Kate had an assortment of various foods (cheese, tofu, spinach, chicken and stars baby food) that she was alternately eating and casually catapulting over the high chair tray when she thought I wasn’t looking. And there was just some weird air to it that we were like every other mother and kid eating lunch at home in the middle of a sunny day where not much is happening but sometimes no excitement is just fine.

And what’s weird about it was that it wasn’t weird to me at all. Sometimes my realization that I’m a stay-at-home mother comes at mundane times like those, and not when I’m doing something Hallmark like staring lovingly down upon her as she sleeps in her crib. (For the record, Mark and I are not Sleeping Baby Watchers, since we are too fearful we’ll be Sleeping Baby Waker-Uppers.)

So just that. It’s Thursday and God willing the lawn mower guy won’t wake Kate from her nap. When she gets up we’ll go to Chap House to visit Rose, and then we’ll come home and do the dinner-bath-book-to-bed routine.

The baby who everyone was certain was going to be a boy is getting to be a big girl and I still love her like a crazy lady. By this point I’m convinced it’s not just a new baby honeymoon phase kind of love, and that it’s how you end up loving your kid throughout their lives. But I’m holding out for the teen years to really put that concept to the test.

All This and a Pinching

Why don’t your friends who have babies before you tell you about The Pinching Phase?

It’s like the final few weeks to Kate’s due date when I was compelled to go to Target once every 48 hours. (Buy curtains, return curtains, rinse and repeat.) Mark and I just thought this was my own breed of pregnancy madness, but when I called my friend Sue to tell her I’d be late to her house one night–since I was in traffic coming from Target–she said, “Oh yeah, I remember that Target phase.” Well why the hell don’t they write about that in What To Expect When You’re Expecting?!

So, the pinching. A few weeks ago Kate starting in on it with a fervor. And man, she is a good pincher. She just takes the smallest amount of skin (no fat) and gives it a nice hard squeeze. And they come out of the blue, in moments when your guard is down, like dozily nursing her, or holding her while trying to empty the dishwasher.

Mark was undressing her for a bath a couple weeks ago and strarted screaming for me to come check something out. Of course, I envisioned that the devil had spelled out BITCH across her stomach, but no. Mark was flipping out over the fact that she was pinching herself. Making her way up and down her stomach, and coming oddly close to her nipples a couple times.

Why doesn’t this hurt her? Is her desire to perfect her pincer grasp (one of the skills that is all part of the first year child dev journey) so great that she is willing to overlook her pain, and the pain of others, to practice?

When my mother’s group met last, Megan was holding young Ella and saying her goodbyes when all of a sudden she let out a little cry. “Agh! What is UP with the pinching?” she wailed. Ah well, at least Kate is not alone.

Maternal Career Crisis #683

It seems like nearly every Mama I’ve spoken to these days has been wrangling with the whole work and kid issue. Or more likely I am, and I’m projecting.

The How to Be a Mother and Have a Career Struggle™ is nothing new, God knows. And it’s like heartburn. It’s an incredibly common ailment, but once you have it yourself you want to curl up and die. You are the first person ever to have heartburn. It sucks.

All mothers working or not struggle with whether they’re doing one or both jobs well enough, whether their mothering will suffer if they work, or their career will suffer if they don’t work. Or they feel guilty that they aren’t working and don’t want to, or feel bad that they can’t imagine ever not working. And no configuration of work and parenting ever seems to strike the right balance for terribly long. At least, this is the case for many of the women I know.

I am the former workaholic maniac who cried for two days a couple weeks into Kate’s life that I couldn’t do this and we needed to get a nanny. I felt a sudden crushing need to flee back to the stringent, stressful halogen-lit, mother ship agency where, even though I’d complained about it incessantly at times, I was secure and comfortable and competent to perform the tasks given to me. Despite the pressure and the politics I did experience intermittent adrenaline rushes of job satisfaction, mixed with smugness that English majors really can make a lot of money. Being at home with a crying newborn did not provide any of those things.

But the two days I cried over fear of the unknown as a new parent were infinitesimal compared to the crazy, painful, and at times terrifying love that I had for this little human Mark and I made. Any panicked desire to run back into the arms of my old job was followed by a tsunami of anguish over the thought of someone else caring for Kate. It must be what it feels like when you are hypnotized to quit smoking. You still get that habitual urge, but then you’re overcome with sudden, strong negative association to barf, or cluck like a chicken, or whatever thing it was your guarantee-to-quit package bought you.

So Mark and I decided that for whatever amount of time made sense financially and emotionally for us, we’d instate Kate as my new boss.

Aside from the fact that she was sweet and beautiful and smelled like buttered toast and I was overcome with crazy mama-bear love, my new gig was not without its hardships. Being a new mother has an ass-kicking learning curve that kept me on my toes. And I love a good challenge, so I jumped into the new role with gusto.

I set the bar high, and usually met my goals. I showered every day. I kept the house OCD tidy. I stayed on top of the mountains of laundry. I wrote thank you notes, bought groceries at Costco, Safeway and the farmer’s market, lunched with friends, and even baked for my mother’s group. And of course I nursed, and loved, and diapered, and burped and kissed little Miss Kate on a relentless round-the-clock schedule. There is a culture shock to having a baby that no friend, no matter how gifted their powers of communication are, can adequately express to you. There is a lot to do, you feel like you’re operating in a hazy alternate universe where everyone’s voice sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and there are no scheduled coffee breaks. (In fact, coffee, which you need now more than all your exam weeks combined, you fear will keep the baby up so you avoid like the plague.) All this said, I love my new mama life.

Anyone from my past work life who asked me over lunch how it is being at home I’m sure went back to their offices and made gagging motions when describing to others how I’m doing. My new job with Kate has exceeded my expectations in every way, and I’ve felt the urge to shout it from the rooftops. I know it’s obnoxious, but I can’t help myself. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in a life that’s been characterized by unfailing happiness. (I think that makes me meta happy.) Shocking as it is, I’m the poster girl for staying home with your baby. I’m the consummate Happy Homemaker. I even had a dalliance with scrapbooking that I’ve since abandoned, but still. Scrapbooking! Me!

So just when I have a handle on this new life, I’ve recently been experiencing these little urges to get back to doing some kind of work. I mean, it kills me that I even have these thoughts, because I’m still so happy being home with Kate. But they have kept cropping up, and I can’t repress them. It’s made me at times a bit schizophrenic.

A typical scenario: I frantically scour Craig’s List for jobs while Kate is taking a nap. When I go to get her out of her crib when she wakes up, I look down at her smiley cuteness and practically sob and clutch her to me like a deranged wild woman. I feel like Help Wanted ads are my secret lover. I am cheating on Kate with Craig’s List.

But can’t there be some kind of balance? [Insert Motherhood/Career Balance Quandary Rant ™ here.] Can’t I start to contribute to the financial health of the McClusky family, lessen the moneymaking burden on Mark, find satisfaction in using my brain in the way that my parents spent $80K on my college education for, and still be an excellent mother who somehow gets to always be there every time Kate wakes up from a nap? I mean, isn’t there a way to do this without resorting to a phone sex operator career?

Sacha, my dear mother’s group cohort, and one of the few of the 11 of us who didn’t return to work post-baby, just accepted a job and is putting her money on making the mom/career balance work. Her job sounds amazing and enriching and rewarding and fun even, and I wish her the best of luck in making it work. I think it can be done. I want her to make it work for her sake and for Baby Owen’s and for women everywhere. But I also selfishly want her to be around for me so we can take the babies swimming together on weekdays, and plan myriad other when-the-babies-wake-up jaunts, and continue to share notes on our Neo June Cleaver family-focused existences that nearly a year into our children’s lives are no longer quite so novel.

On the other hand, because I’ve now started to explore some intriguing job options of my own, maybe Sacha and I will just move onto a new and different level of comraderie, emotional support, and friendship. I never imagined that an office would be a strange, foreign realm to me. My next challenge might just be reacquainting myself with that once-familiar place—most likely in a fashion that’s far different from my past work life. In the same way that I needed a team of women to help me process making the leap into motherhood, I imagine I’ll need a similar support group for wrangling with re-entering the workforce while keeping the home fires burning.

If that is what I decide to do, hopefully Kate will understand that my need to set one toe back into the work world doesn’t mean I love her any less, or won’t desperately miss always being the one to get her out of her crib when she wakes up from a nap.

The Sweet Taste of Success

Today there was much rejoicing throughout the land, or at least throughout our kitchen. Just when I was envisioning what effect the fact that she only ate Cheerios would have on Kate’s social life at college, Miss Thing gobbled up every last morsel of food that I put in front of her at dinner.

The Menu:
Tofu Squares Marinated in Soy and Garlic
Scrambled Organic Egg Yolk
Fresh-Cut Pineapple
Spinach and Potato baby food (1 jar)

Note: No Cheerios were required to whet her appetite, stop her from crying, or ensure that she at least consumed some foodstuff prior to going to bed.

I’m not sure what I did differently, but I can assure you I’ll be wearing this brown shirt and khaki shorts and positioning her highchair in the exact same longitude and latitude for future meals.

What was so amazing was Kate just chugged it all down totally casually. Every once and I while I’d look over and try to stifle wild screams of delight, and excited arm flailing and heel-clicking. My self-control was impressive. She ate on, undeterred. It was mysterious and beautiful.

At the end of the meal she looked up at me with a calm and reasonable expression. I’d call it a look of satisfaction. No tears. No hysteria. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, folded it and set it down, while proclaiming the meal, “Simply delightful. Just lovely.”

Tomorrow night, as a special treat, I’ll be draping a tablecloth over her highchair tray and setting a rosebud in a vase on top of it. Nothing’s too good for my little eater.

Not What I’d Intended

Growing up my godparents, Mimi and Uncle Ant, lived next door. They never had children of their own. As Mimi puts it, “The only thing that ever ran around my house was a picket fence.” So, with their physical proximity and the closeness that our families had in that good old-fashioned neighbor way, Mimi and Uncle Ant were like grandparents to me. Wonderful kind Italian Americans who taught me about my heritage (i.e. how to swear in Italian), fed me often and well, and both corrected my ways and boasted about my accomplishments like family.

It should be known that Mimi and Uncle Ant were set in their ways. Dinner at 5:00, basement tools organized to perfection, and never so much as a mote of dust wafting through their living room. Comparatively, the Bruno girls, as my sisters and I were known, were a catastrophic train wreck–always late, wrinkled clothes, arguing with each other in inappropriate places, and invariably cutting the cord on the hedge trimmers we’d borrow from them. Typical family stuff, as my mother would rationalize. Mimi and Uncle Ant were the way they were because they didn’t have kids, she’d say. Kids force you to be flexible. (I can’t help but think that even with a family you’d be able to bounce quarters off the beds in their house.)

Like all good Italians, Mimi and Uncle Ant were into food. Mimi and her sister (and neighbor) Mary could cook a meal that would make a dead man salivate. And in that finicky perfectionist way of his, Uncle Ant could always find fault with it. “Emily!” he’d bellow. “You overcooked the spaghetti! And what’s with the olives? You know I hate olives!” Uncle Ant was a renowned picky eater.

So, whenever I’d mince my way around a pickled beet or a tomato as a kid, my mother would sigh and call me “a little Uncle Ant.” And instead of being put off by the comparison, I loved it. In fact, Uncle Ant (short for Anthony, if you were wondering) and I used the food thing as a platform for some serious intergenerational bonding. “Mushrooms!” we’d cry. “Blech! Who’d ever want to eat those?” Even as my palate matured and there were fewer foods I was averse to, it remained my favorite way of getting Uncle Ant going.

When I was pregnant Mark and I would crawl into bed at night and sometimes talk about the things that were important to each of us as parents-to-be. Sometimes it’d be spurred on my some friend’s kid who we’d seen that day. “Our kid will eat all different kinds of food,” I’d say. “Definitely,” Mark would agree. “I don’t want her living off of mac and cheese.”

Making your child a different meal than yours every night not only took extra time, but it showed that the kid ruled the roost. “There will be one dinner in our house, and one only!” I’d proclaim. “This is what’s for dinner, boy-o. Love it or leave it.” Besides, there’s something cool about being able to feed your kid pate in front of other people—like our friends, the gastronomically-advanced Surh kids–and have him eat it without batting an eyelash. We’re foodies, therefore our child will also like food. Right?

Ah well. Ten months in I’ve already caved. In an attempt to get Kate to eat something tonight, here is what I offered her:

1. Multi-grain toast
2. Monterey Jack cheese
3. A scrambled egg yolk (babies her age can’t eat whites for some reason…)
4. A nectarine
5. Summer Vegetable Medley baby food
6. Peas and Brown Rice baby food
7. Sweet Potato and Turkey baby food
8. Oatios (organic Cheerios)
9. Puffs (Gerber cereal that’s probably packed with preservatives, chemicals, and carcinogens)

Of these NINE items, she ate a small ration of Oatios, and of course, some Preservative Puffs. God help me.

I think I’ve been a pretty patient and easy-going mother, but the one thing that has driven me to call Mark in a “when-are-you-getting-home-I-need-back-up-fast” fit, is The Dinner Stand-Off. All I want is for her to eat something. Preferably something with some nutritional value. And not cry and wimper and whine throughout the whole meal. Is that so wrong?

Where most parents probably want this for their kids, I’ve got a strong streak of the Italian “need to feed” thing. When we first introduced solids, Mark asked me when he was feeding her how much food to give her. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just feed her until she cries.” And I wasn’t kidding. I’d just keep spooning in that rice cereal until she had to wail in protest, in lieu of being able to say, “Enough already! Back off with the spoon, lady!”

So she wasn’t always so picky. But now her will has sprung forth fully-formed. I come at her with a piece of fruit and she pushes against the high chair tray and turns her head while clamping her lips shut. I must say, she’s gotten good at screaming with her mouth closed. When she used to let her guard down on the lockjaw, we’d often sneak in a spoonful. No such luck these days.

Tonight I finally gave up. It’s getting to the point where I’m fearful that the neighbors are going to wonder what I’m doing to her every evening when they hear her screams from our open windows. Running on the “she’ll eat when she’s hungry” assumption, I took her out of the high chair red-faced and wailing and minutes later plunked a cheerful babbling baby into the bath tub. Move her from one room to the next and you’d never guess it was the same kid.

What everyone seems to say is that at this age everything comes in phases–both good and bad. So, when your kid is sleeping through the night, don’t get cocky and tell your friends. Next week he’ll start teething and be up every two hours. I’m hopeful that’s the case with Miss Kate and her food issues, though Uncle Ant was 92 when he died last year, and he was a picky eater to the very end.

I’ve Come a Long Way with this Baby–or Have I?

Today I’ve led the kind of day the thought of which sent me in a hysterical crying jag and breathing into a paper bag post-partum.

Three weeks into Kate’s life, while everyone else in my mother’s group was talking about their fears about raising a smart kid, handling breastfeeding challenges, and whether little Miranda would ever sleep through the night, I was wrangling with much different demons. I was crawling the walls with fear that I’d never leave the house, start watching daytime TV, and suddenly determine that scrapbooking was a fun way to spend a weekend with girlfriends.

Well let’s see. Today I got up, kissed my husband goodbye, and shuffled into the kitchen in my PJs to feed Kate. (No food in the house for me, so I decided to wait for lunch to eat.) When I put her down for her morning nap I wrote roughly 10 thank you notes for various Kate-gifts and other hospitalities that we’ve been the recent (and not-so-recent) recipients of. Then I showered and put on one of the 4 pairs of kakhi shorts I seem to rotate through. As a special treat to my self-esteem, I blew dry my hair.

Kate got up, I changed her using one of the new Costco-brand diapers. Intrigue! Will these diapers be as good as the Huggies she’s been using? Did I really save a considerable amount of money on them? (Whatever the outcome, we’re stuck with a 4,000-pack.)

Dressed Kate, mailed notes. Loaded kid into car for journey to Trader Joe’s. Shopped, returned, fed kid lunch. Started to make dinner–a one-dish Mexicana-type meal that includes a jar of Pace salsa and a can of refried beans. It’s a recipe I recently got from a friend with a one-year old, in exchange for my chicken salad recipe.

Read Kate stories, put her down for Nap #2. Finished assembling world’s simplest meal (my God, it’s a casserole) and realized that if people didn’t start having kids at older ages this whole slow-cooking/gourmet phenomemon might never have come into existance. Maybe a lot of other things wouldn’t either. Did Albert Einstein have kids?

Now Kate’s up again. Just now hearing her babble. So, I’ll get her up, change her (while noting the quality/absorbancy of the Kirkland diaper), and we will head out to visit Rose at the nursing home.

This is the day that I feared. I had a couple days of post-partum crying thinking that a day like today would inevitably cause me to internally combust. In those weepy moments I asked myself questions like: Why after 12 years in SF did we decide to move to Oakland? Why was it we wanted a baby? And why can’t I just strap her to my back and go about my usual life as if nothing ever happened? Back then I even remember wanting to admit myself to the nearest workplace for a good old familiar 12-hour work day.

What’s scary is today has been perfectly pleasant. I’m not sure if this is progress or not.

Go Fish

My dad and I did lots of fun stuff when I was little. On account of the divorce, the time we spent together tended to be activity-based. So, we’d take day trips to Faneuil Hall in Boston, hit the mini-golf green and follow it up with an Eskimo King ice cream chaser, and poke around seemingly endlessly in dusty crowded hardware stores and even dustier crowdeder flea markets.

What made these forays memorable was not only the destination, but the car-trip conversations. My father always talked to me like I was an adult. I don’t even remember what exactly we talked about (though there was a lot of counting how many states and/or countries we’d each been to–and clarifying the rule that you can’t count a place if you’ve only changed planes there). But whatever I’d spout off about related to school, or current events, or people, I never felt like my ideas weren’t worthy of serious consideration because I was a kid. Even if he disagreed with something I said, we’d wrangle over opposing viewpoints in a pretty egalitarian deferential way.

I can also remember times when my dad seemed to welcome the opportunity to get down to my level–particularly with my school science projects. Of course I’d love to say that this happened a dozen or so times, since I think it’d make a better story, but I think it was truly only two or three times. I’d have some assignment to do something like make a volcano with a lava eruption. This was a chore to me–a waste of a big chunk of my weekend when I could be watching Creature Double Feature or crank calling Phil Kinder.

My dad, on the other hand, could think of nothing more fun to do. First off, these projects required a trip to a hardware store (sheer bliss for him to actually *need* something there). He’d have his brain in overdrive about how to best tackle the project. And whatever crap idea I’d have, he’d try to respect, but couldn’t contain himself to not offer his two cents. And call it a moral compass of some sort, but I just didn’t feel right going into class with something that my dad had done 90% of. Despite feeling comparatively inadequate, I was compelled to stick to my half-baked plans. But I also didn’t want to rain on the guy’s parade, so I’d eventually just convince him to complete his own version of the project, working alongside me.

Of course, this inevitably ended with me firing up a sagging lump of a volcano that let out a weak fart and a teeny wisp of smoke. In Dad’s corner he’d be pushing down on the TNT box to erupt an immense model of Mauna Loa with faux lava pouring forth over a small village he’d whittled out of balsa wood. Okay, so maybe his wasn’t quite that impressive, but the 40 years he had on me did give him a bit of an advantage.

So, today I got my first taste of how this parenting thing can give you an indulgent opportunity to let your inner child loose. After a lovely night spent near Santa Cruz for my friend Kristen’s 40th b-day, we ventured with the kiddies to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My God, that place ROCKS.

I was practically elbowing kids out of the way to check out the sea otters at their feeding hour. And those huge billowy bright orange jellyfish! They are beautiful and putrid at the same time. Impossible to not be transfixed by. And the gargantuan tank with the sharks and the sea turtles and the big swaying columns of seaweed two stories tall that kinda make you dizzy when you’re standing at the base of them looking up. I could have stayed for days.

Kate was koala-bear-hugged onto me in the Ergo pack, and together we walked around in wide-eyed wonder. Kristen chased her two-year-old through exhibits at what seemed like Mach speed, while Kate and I dreamily lingered over each display. She was mesmerized by it all, including the mass of humanity that was cramming their strollers into any free nook near a tank and taking bad photos with cell phone cameras. Between gawking at fishes, Kate took in the other kids, safety railings, ceiling lights. It was all good.

In that way I have of sometimes getting ahead of myself, I was having so much fun I couldn’t wait for the next time we could go back. Maybe we need to rent that house in Santa Cruz again with the Grippandos and come here one day, I thought. Or maybe Mark’s mom has never been here–or would be willing to come again. The cool thing was that Kate really did seem to dig it, so I wouldn’t even have to make up a fake excuse on her behalf to go back. (Maybe a B&B weekend in Monterey this fall?) This is educational! Kate needs to come here often in order to develop into an intelligent, curious, and well-rounded person!

If today was the first time I got to release my inner kid while taking Kate to do something, I can’t wait for the years ahead. Disneyland! Paddle boats! Petting zoos! Hooray!

But for help with any projects involving balsa wood, I’m sending her straight to Mark.

Smarty Pants

This baby is getting so smart. She’s learning things daily! I mean, I guess that is what they are supposed to do, but it’s pretty surprising to watch anyway.

So far she’s gotten down all the U.S. Presidents and is working on memorizing the Vice Presidents. Next we’re on to the Periodic Table abbreviations. Well, not really. But she does say bye-bye and wave, and claps her hands, and gives these little tongue-smacking clucks that we think are kisses. And she knows when I’m trying to feed her green beans and there’s a can of those little puff cereal thingies sitting on the table to clamp her mouth down and point to the puffs.

What other mundane thing does she do that I can boast about? Oh, when you take the tray off her high chair she starts grabbing at the strap buckle since she knows that comes off next. And when you unbuckle her carseat she holds her arms up to get picked up. And once I think I asked her to hand me something and she kinda did.

I just want to remember some day when she is doing advanced calculus homework that I can’t help her with, that there was a time when these little things she was learning were big accomplishments.

California Re-Entry

Last night Kate and I returned from our nearly 3-week East Coast Tour. We didn’t have baseball-style t-shirts made to commemorate the event, but if we did the backs would read:

Bristol, RI
Harwich Port, MA
Westfield, MA
Chappaqua, NY

What’s great about going away for so long is that you don’t worry about not having time to do all the things you want to do. The down side is that gives you the “we’ve got plenty of time for that” attitude, which ultimately leaves you realizing that you didn’t do as many of the things that you wanted to do because you thought you had so much more time to do them.

For instance, we only got to the beach twice. For shame! (Some of this had to do with poor weather. For all the time I spend longing for East Coast summers, I forget that it rains there a lot, and there are also a lot of overcast days. RI really should consider having a rainy season as we do here. It sucks during it, but it gets it all over with in one fell swoop.) And we didn’t spend anywhere near enough time with friends like Ellen, John, and Story. Kate never had a play date with Danny’s daughter, Jekka. I’d wanted to call my mother’s Polish friend Sophie to introduce her to Kate, and that never happened. And I wanted to maybe visit my mother’s other friend Linda, but no.

I’m sad to report that I also only had Del’s Lemonade once. Tragic. For those of you who have never truly lived–i.e. never had a Del’s–it’s a delicious slushy lemonade that’s native to RI and sold at carts and some actual bricks and mortar Del’s establishments throughout the greatest little smallest state in the union. To be honest, if I’d never had one, and someone served me a Del’s on a cold winter day in South Dakota, I might not think it was The World’s Best Beverage, as I do. But there is something about having one on a hot humid day, combined with the fact that you can only get them at home, and of course the nostalgia/childhood taste memory factor, that make me a rabid Del’s fan. God they are good! We served them at our wedding, in fact–in martini glasses before the ceremony, not the traditional waxed cup.

Which leads me on this stream of consciousness to extol the supremely perfect wedding present my beloved friend John gave us when we were home–a framed Del’s cup. Not just framed though–it’s under this museum quality glass to preserve it, and it’s on maroon velvet. The frame is a thick dark wood, ornately carved. It’s fucking brilliant, and as much as I love owning it, I love that I’m lucky enough to have a friend cool enough to think of giving this to me as a wedding present.

At any rate, I’m happy to be home with Mark and to have our sweet nuclear family together again. But I feel the need to have some great why-I-love-living-in-California experiences quickly to help ease my re-entry into my usual world here. It’s just so damn charming and familiar and comfortable in RI. And the houses are all so old and cool, and the trees are big and shady and there is Dunkin Donuts at every turn and good spinach pies and Sam’s Pizza and funny childhood friends who I still like in their adult form, and of course my family. So you put all that in one hand, and then in the other hand you have our life here and our friends here and Mark’s rad job and the no crappy winter thing, but the expensive housing… It just seems like both ends of the scales weigh in pretty close sometimes.

But anyway, the long visit did give me a good dose of it all. And for all that I’ve complained that I didn’t get to do, I did do and see a lot. The Forta July Parade rocked our world, per usual. This year we were happy to have the Eberdave clan, now featuring Baby Henry, for their second year. And Dana (our wedding photographer) and her great hubby Joe joined in the fun. Words can’t describe how fantastic the parade is, nor how soul stirring it is to be part of the mayhem at the Connery’s. Kate was a trooper and wasn’t freaked out by the excessive people, noise, etc. And this year we boasted four high school bands that stopped marching, turned towards Casa Connery, and played a command performance for us. Four bands! Until you have a huge marching band with horns, drums, cymbals, and polyester-clad teens blast you with song, you won’t know how immensely thrilling it is. God it’s fun.

Post parade day Mark, Kate and I headed to Cape Cod where my sister Marie’s family has a house. We had one night there solo, in which Mark cooked excellent steak on the grill, and then Marie and cousin Nancy came to join in the fun. The beach there is like the Caribbean–blue and clear. It’s not super warm, but it’s no nut-shrinking Pacific Ocean. Ah summer.

After Mark left (sniff!) to return to CA and work, Kate and I went to Westfield to visit my dear dear Aunt Jenny, Mom’s sister, for a night. She is an act of nature. She’s almost 80, and works taking care of old people, if you can imagine such a thing. (To meet her, you wouldn’t be surprised one bit.) She had 18 relatives over for dinner when we were there. The woman makes a ham that could bring a grown man to tears, and she is scurrying around taking care of grandchildren, ironing her grown son’s shirts, and talking smack about the dozens of women who call her daily to chat. Don’t ever ask this woman to sit down and relax. She says she’ll die if she stops, and she’s happy going, so there’s nothing to do but stand back in amazement. At any rate, it was great catching up with her and having her meet Kate, with whom she was smitten.

Kate and I also spent a night in Chappaqua, NY visiting my friend Lauren who was at her parents for the month, but has been living in Hong Kong for nearly 5 years. So happy we decided to make this detour. Despite a hellish drive home to RI after it, our visit was deeply happy-making. Her children are dreamy and her mom is really interesting to talk to at the kitchen table. They live in this super-cool Frank Lloyd Wright community. If we’d stayed another night I would have had my bags sent for and moved in. Again, Kate made a splash. The neighbor came over one day and said she was told she had to see this baby “who is like a model.” Ha!

And for the record, Kate really was an angel for the whole trip. It is such a treat introducing her to people and sitting back and agreeing with the compliments about her cuteness and smartness and sweetness. I keep feeling like she and I have these bonding experiences and they just keep accumulating. I guess it’s that whole “I love you more to-day than yes-ter-day, bah dat da da daaah” thing.

For all the visits and lunches and dinners and gatherings one of the nicest things about our trip was the little routine we had at my Dad’s house. Kate would wake up early and I get her and go downstairs where my Dad was already awake with the dog and doing the crossword. Kate would greet Grandpa and Katie the Dog with a hearty “bye-bye”, then when Joan woke up we’d all go into the kitchen and Kate would sit in her booster seat and the four of us (or five when you count the dog) would each eat different breakfasts. The adults would take turns trying to convince Kate there was food beyond Cheerios she should eat, and Katie the Dog would happily eat any baby food that fell to the floor.

Sometimes with travel it’s about the museums that you went to and the sights that you saw, and sometimes it’s about the little things like finding that great place for breakfast that you go to every morning.

Church Bells in Bristol

We have arrived. (Well, Monday, but our internet service has been down.) The flight, car rental, luggage lugging, etc. were all at times something I could have used another set of hands for, but I took pride in my hard work and Kate was a dream baby. She ended up charming half the passengers on the flight, and by the time we landed had learned to (finally) wave hello back at all her admirers. That baby is sometimes, okay often, too good to be true.

So here we are in Bristol. Funny that I can hear the house painter’s radio right now and there’s a John Mellencamp song on. I do declare I am the queen of Lovers of One’s Home Town. This lil’ New England town couldn’t be any more beautiful. And of course it’s packed with memories, and my nostalgia wells up along with my histamines as I saunter down the tree-canopied streets.

I’d promised Kate a morning walk downtown. Now that I stay with my Dad when I’m home downtown is in easy striking distance, and aside from the harbor, the ancient rippled sidewalks (nostalgia), the red, white, and blue lined streets (a Forta July tradition), and all the beautiful old homes I wish I’d bought when they were affordable, there’s also now a Dunkin’ Donuts downtown. So, we walk.

Lately when I’ve been walking around Oakland I’ve been thinking about what it’d be like if we lived in a small town. But that’s no surprise. I yearn to live in Bristol again every time I come home for the summer. You can set your fancy Swiss watch to it. And when I go home in the bleak winter months, I thank God for California.

Yesterday Kate had plenty of new things to admire on our walk. She was impressed with the myriad American flags out in front of nearly every home. Bristolians aren’t making any political support-our-boys or Bush-family-values commentaries by flying flags in front of their homes. These folks (okay, we) are just truly patriotic. It’s old school, and it charms the bejesus out of me. At any rate, there are some “wicked big” flags that people hang straight down sorta perpendicular to the sidewalks and as wide, so when you walk past them they skim your head and it’s like you’re passing through a gate of some sort. Why see the Cristo exhibit in Central Park when you can pass through the flags in Bristol? Kate loved it. (Good girl! Like what Mama likes!)

Kate and I lunched with Aunt Mary (87) and Mimi (92), and those sisters have it going on! Kate smiled and laughed and played the whole time and they adored her. And we came up with the term Great Godmother to refer to Kate’s relation to Mimi (who is my Godmother).

And if the whole scene–us eating chicken parm (read: pahhhm) at Leo’s sidewalk cafe and taking in a muggy Tuesday afternoon in Bristol–wasn’t enough to send me to heaven and back, noon struck and with it the church bells.

Give me a ding-dong every noon from the church bells and I’m thrilled, but this bell ringer was clearly an over-achiever. The first song–yes the first–was The Star Spangled Banner. Yes, some dude was in a belfry and busted out The Star Spangled Banner on church bells. And it was no Ronco Bell-amatic. This was clearly some guy reading some arcane type of sheet music in order to play this complex song in its entirety. Though everyone else was clearly unaware that you don’t get this kind of show in other towns at noon. I appeared to be the only one losing my mind and glaring at the diners who’d carried on with their conversations.

Next up for our listening pleasure was My Country Tis of Thee. At this point I’m practically letting down milk with joy. And when it got to tricky points in the songs (can you tell by my verbiage here how musically savvy I am?) I swear there must have been another person or two pulling ropes on other bells. At least I envisioned some team doing Quasimoto-style bell pulling.

The guy(s) finished off with a third song which Aunt Mary, Mimi and I couldn’t place. Perhaps it was an original score. Not my taste, but good for him for trying out something new.

So yes, this is just a wee bit of what small-town life has to offer. Just staggering. I’ve got to track down that bell-ringer’s manager and recommend the guy for a raise. Who am I kidding: “track down.” I’m sure my father knows the guy.