July 19, 2009
Something Amazing
Something amazing happened during these last couple of weeks, as our baby girl began a transformation from rage incarnate into an actual person. What is even more amazing, however, is the way in which her parents have actually begun to figure out how she works, what she needs, how to respond to her, and keep her happy for as long as possible (which is sometimes up to an hour or two). And watching her explore to the world now is absolutely one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve ever had, and I really can’t get enough of it. Baby can get enough of it, however, and at this moment, due to having been horribly overtired to the point of hysteria, Harriet is comfortably asleep in her swing. For now…
And so today is a good time for me to start reading The Scientist in the Crib (as recommended by Steph at Crooked House). I am looking forward to a book about babies that does not purport to be a “guide”, except perhaps one to understanding. And, of course, because man cannot subsist on non-fiction alone, I’m also reading my former classmate Lauren Kirshner‘s novel Where We Have to Go, which fits in well with all the rest if I regard it as a parenting anti-guide.
The best news is that I own a computer again, and so this week’s project is a little life here at Pickle Me This. Though I really can’t be held to anything these days at all.
July 13, 2009
Relearning
Harriet is seven weeks tomorrow, and some semblance of regular life has returned to us. We spent our weekend doing things we would have done without her– Saturday bbq at friends’ house, Sunday brunch and ice cream. All modified somewhat, of course, by her presence (i.e. brunch at mid-afternoon), but definitely doable, and it’s wonderful. It’s as though since she’s been born, I’ve had to relearn how to live in the world, because it’s so different now, but we’re really beginning to figure it out. Which is made very easy by Harriet’s firm understanding of nighttime. She gets up once to eat, but otherwise we keep very civilized hours, and are all the better for it. She’s a good baby, albeit a quite serious and/or grumpy one– we’ve seen a few smiles, but they’ve been all too fleeting. And she only ever laughs when she’s asleep, but really, I’ll take any laughs at all.
July 7, 2009
The Wedding
Harriet is in the midst of her six weeks’ growth spurt, which means that she’s permanently attached to me, who’s attached to the couch or bed most of the time, and so it goes. Luckily temporary. We’re actually doing very well here, enjoying support from lactation consultants in particular! And things are not as dire as my previous post suggested– that was early days, and week by week, life has been exponentially better. This weekend was a particularly large milestone, as we attended my best friend Jennie’s wedding. It was just a modest do, with a 500+ guest list. We’d been a wee bit terrified at the prospect with such a little baby, but baby behaved better than she ever had in her whole life (and since), spending most of the weekend eating, sleeping and being adorable. With her daddy’s support, I was able to pull off most of my bridesmaidly duties, and moreover had an enormous amount of fun. It was great to be away from home, to drive again, to stay in a hotel and feed baby in odd places– makes everything else seem so much more possible. And the wedding was really a spectacular event. As I’m between computers at the mo, I can’t upload my own photos, but I stole this one from my friend Britt’s Facebook– in spite of our outfits, we Bridesmaids did stand out a bit at this Sikh wedding, but really, check out the bride. She was so incredibly beautiful, gracious, and radiant, and she had her new husband absolutely belong together. I’m thrilled for them, and for me who got to be there.
New computer should arrive this week or next, and I expect regularish posting will resume then.
July 2, 2009
Full Disclosure
Baby is happy right now, because I’m rocking her Fisher Price recliner with my left foot. Hence the typing with two hands here, which is enormously liberating. I pray that Harriet does not get bored of rocking soon, and until she does, let me provide you with full disclosure here. Or at least, a modicum of disclosure, as this is not the sort of blog in which I bare my soul. Rather, this is the kind of blog in which I write about my life usually through a bookish/literary perspective, and I’ve been doing a bit of that regarding motherhood. That Laurie Colwin quote remains the truest thing I’ve ever read. I remain amazed that having read thousands of books, watched TV shows and movies throughout my lifetime, I’ve never once seen the actual experience of having a new baby presented (and I’ll be writing more about this later). Which was how I could have come into this so cluelessly, and why the reality was so overwhelming. Overwhelmingly awful. I will say that the first two weeks were the darkest I’ve ever known, and I feel like I’ve crawled out of the deepest crevice in the universe to get to where I am now. It gets better, I knew it would, but that didn’t mean very much at the time. And even now, when “better” on some days is still its very own kind of hell, and nothing is what I thought it would be, and I am working harder than I’ve ever worked in my whole life, and normalcy seems so irretrievably far away– at least I haven’t cried since yesterday. But before that, it had been over a week, and there are moments when I’m so perfectly all right, and proud of how far we’ve come, and delighting in this strange little girl who has come to live with us. I have learned, however, how much I need people, and that I am so lucky to be surrounded by people on all sides. Friends, family, and oh, husbands (and mine has saved me over and over and over again). I remain a very lucky woman, and the good days are being strung together closer and closer all the time. (Baby is done rocking. Good timing.)
June 30, 2009
Update
So, I’m not going to say I’ve mastered nursing, I’ve certainly learned plenty in the past five weeks, and it’s getting better all the time. I will lay claim, however, to having mastered reading while nursing. Which I don’t do all the time for fear of child neglect or that she’ll grow up to think her mother is a hard cover, but I am pleased to say that I’ve got a lot of reading done lately. I read Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost in a hurry, and enjoyed it very much. I’m now absolutely obsessed with Lisa Moore’s February, which I think will win the Giller Prize this year, if anyone’s betting. And this morning I bought The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, who I’ve never read but have heard great things about (including from Jessica Westhead). So the moral is that reading is possible in this new life, as are banana pancakes, park bench afternoons, Midsomer Murders, laughter and ease. I have avoided daytime television thus far, which I’m quite proud of. New pleasures are late evening walks, respect for quiet, baby bathtime, board books and almost-smiles. And that’s starting to make everything else worthwhile.
June 19, 2009
Flowers in the window
It was four years ago today that I married my husband and started out on this rather mad journey that has been us as a family. And now we are three! And however terrifying and awful the past month has been very very often, the moments of absolute delight have been sparkling and they’re really all that I’ll remember of it anyway. Stuart’s love and support has been unwavering, his patience infinite, and I couldn’t imagine what this all would have been like without him. He’s as good a daddy as he is a husband, which is certainly something. Harriet and I are a lucky pair, and we love him very much.
From the song we danced to at our wedding, which I heard for the very first time one sunny morning two days after we first met, when I just knew….:
There is no reason to feel bad,
But there are many seasons to feel glad, sad, mad.
It’s just a bunch of feelings that we have to hold,
But I am here to help you with the load.
Wow, look at you now, flowers in the window
It’s such a lovely day and I’m glad that you feel the same.
‘Cause to stand up, out in the crowd.
You are one in a million and I love you so,
lets watch the flowers grow.
June 15, 2009
The Name Game
We got a cat when I was fourteen, and as I was the oldest and precocious, I decided I would name it. I named it Socks first, I think, after the White House cat (naturally). But then seeing as our cat didn’t have socks, I decided to name it Tim Johnson instead, which was the name of the dog in To Kill A Mockingbird, and I liked the idea of pets with surnames. But that was stupid, so I changed the cat’s name to Daisy, and I can’t remember why. Then we found out that Daisy was a Tom, so I decided she would be called Casey (at the bat?). And then when I decided to change the cat’s name next, my family called it off and Casey the cat stayed, though I never called it that. I always called it Cat, because I’d seen Breakfast at Tiffanys, and wanted to go Golightly.
So this was why I was apprehensive about naming my child. Though I’ve always found names fascinating and entrancing, I’m fickle about them. In many ways, cats and children are different creatures (so I’ve found of late), and you can only change a daughter’s name so many times if you must do it at all. How to pick a name that would stick?
The first name I ever loved was “Julie”, after Mackenzie Phillips’ character on One Day at a Time. Julie was also my best friend in grade one, and I adored her and she beautiful, though she was sensitive about her hairy arms. I went through an “Ellen” phase, after the character on Family Ties, I think. I watched far too much television; I would have died to have been named “Jo”. I fell in love with “Bianca”, not from Shakespeare, but from Shelley Long’s character’s sister in the movie Hello Again. I was particularly impressionable, and agreed that “Cordelia” was the most exquisite name imaginable. I loved the name “Zoe” for a while, and after I read Louise Fitzhugh’s The Long Secret, I thought “Zeeney” was similarly cool, though she’d not been the most appetizing of characters. And these name fixations would go on and on, influenced by all kinds of sitcoms, films and pop stars. I kept ever-changing lists of what my future daughters would be called, though it never occurred to me to think much about a son.
Strange that Louise Fitzhugh ultimately did decide my child’s name. Baby was not to be Zeeney after all (which is good) but Harriet, after the book from which The Long Secret was a sequel. And I’d never read Harriet the Spy until last year, actually, after I heard this feature on NPR. But I fell in love with Ms. Welsch, and her name topped my list. I knew immediately that I wanted a little Harriet of my own one day. I couldn’t think of anyone better to be named after– such a feisty, clever, independent, hilarious, and wonderful character. Impossible too, which strikes me now as a somewhat fortunate/unfortunate quality to project upon one’s child. Perhaps I should have thought it through a little bit more, because this baby fits the bill so far. The name itself means “Home Ruler”, which is appropriate, I think. So this is what we’ve got ourselves in for…
But it sticks. It’s belonged to her since the moment we saw her, and I do love that we now know someone with this name– have a Harriet in our family even! It is a ubiquitous name throughout literature, but all too rare in the real world. I think I’ll not stop loving it soon, because it’s Harriet’s name after all.
Though I do wonder whether she’ll thank us for it. If she’ll find Harriet M. Welsch as charming as I did. It is a tremendous power, isn’t it? Naming a person? Even fictionally, the name is such a determinate and the author certainly bestows innumerable qualities by such a fact. Naming a real person requires as much consideration– this is destiny. I find it strange that we were handed so much power. At the hospital they asked us her name, we told them, and it was that simple. I would have expected some kind of seminar, or at the very least a lecture (a stern one) about the seriousness of the decision we were about to make based on a 1960s children’s novel. Is nothing sacred? Apparently not, but we’re three weeks in, and at the very least, I’ve not wanted to change it yet.
June 12, 2009
A Novel Gift
Stuart and I both like the song “Daughter”, but the lyric “everything she owns, I bought her” doesn’t really apply to our situation. It’s more like, “That’s our daughter in the water, everything she owns was a gift from our extraordinarily generous friends and family.” She gets packages in the post near daily, always full of delightful things. We feel so lucky and appreciative of these gifts, and all the thoughts and good wishes we’ve received. Harriet lacks for nothing, no thanks to us really. Our freezer is also similarly stocked.
But one gift does stand out a bit. In addition to adorable summer outfits, Harriet’s Auntie Jennie also gave us a novel. Or, gave me a novel. It was Catherine O’Flynn’s novel What Was Lost, which I’ve wanted to read for ages. And this novel gift really was particularly novel, because nobody ever gives me books. Oh, as I’ve said, people give me lots of things, but I’ve read so many books already and my tastes are quite defined that friends are more inclined to give me other things. So that rarely do I ever receive a book as a surprise, let alone a book I’ve been dying to read anyway. I imagine I’m not the only bookish sort who suffers from this plight. Oh, the tortured problems of the middle class…
June 6, 2009
Clearest, starkest brilliance
“Motherhood is a storm, a seizure: It is like weather. Nights of high wind followed by calm mornings of dense fog or brilliant sunshine that gives way to tropical rain, or blinding snow. Jane Louise and Edie found themselves swept away, cast ashore, washed overboard. It was hard to keep anything straight. The days seemed to congeal like rubber cement, although moments stood out in clearest, starkest brilliance. You might string those together on the charm bracelet of your memory if you could keep your eyes open long enough to remember anything.” –Laurie Colwin, from A Big Storm Knocked It Over
That I’ve read an entire book over the past twelve days means that all is not lost. And indeed, there have been numerous “moments standing out in clearest, starkest brilliance,” though these don’t include the hours we spent in the Sick Kids Emergency when Harriet when just four days old (she was fine, thank goodness, but that experience was like staring straight into hell), her much too-much weight loss that has had both of us struggling to make up for it ever since, that I may have cried as much as she has, and the overwhelming dread at the thought of her Daddy returning to work on Monday. But we’ve enjoyed taking her out for her first walks in her carrier, trying to figure out what she likes (not much, but we suspect being in her carrier is a comfort), getting massages from Daddy, midwife visits where she’s gained an ounce every day, the sun shining through the windows, all the support we’ve had from family, friends and our most excellent neighbours, and that she’s received so good wishes from all over the world. Harriet has also received post every day, though she’s not yet old enough to realize how exciting that is. We’ve also been fortunate that I’ve come through my surgery so well and easily. My crush on the surgeon went into high gear in the days after her birth (which, in spite of the operating room, was as gorgeous as any birth could be, and I don’t feel I’ve missed anything) because he looked like Paul Simon circa 1970s, and because of what a good job he’d done, and what a beautiful baby he’d delivered (though about three nights ago at three o’clock in the morn, I was sorely tempted to go firebomb his house). It’s been a very difficult time for all of us this past while– I’ve never been much inclined to work hard at things I’m not loving, and this isn’t a job I can pass along to anybody else. Though I’m finding, ever-increasingly, those moments standing out in clearest, starkest brilliance when I don’t want to.
