May 10, 2009
Of mothers, and babies, and books
Today, for the love of Mothers, and babies, and books, my guest post is up at Rona Maynard’s wonderful site. So why not go read “At least the baby’s library is ready” and then have a pleasant Sunday.
May 9, 2009
Thatcher knew the type
“Thatcher knew the type. They broke spines, they dog-eared pages, they scribbled obscene comments in the margins and squashed bugs between the covers, they branded the text with coffee rings, flicked ashes in the binding, wiped freshly excavated ear wax on the end papers, used rusty bobby pins and strips of bacon for bookmarks. Small potatoes, he realized, petty vandalism, but not unconnected to great offences. Thatcher had a panoramic vision when it came to crime, a comprehensive view that took in the roots of evil as well as the fruit. All thanks to the firm, guiding hand of his mother, a long-suffering librarian who filled him in like the empty pages of a notepad, sparing no detail. A child who forgets to return a library book, she had warned, may well grow up to be the kind of person who “forgets” to take a knife out of someone’s back…” –Terry Griggs, “Tag” from Quickening
May 7, 2009
Please bear
This would be a blog entry, but I am too fixated on cloth diaper brands and securing my next serving of ice cream. Plus everything I do these days seems to proceed in a most dilatory fashion. For example, I’ve been writing this for twenty minutes. Please bear with us, and thank you.
May 4, 2009
There has never been a cuter cake
This cake from my baby shower this afternoon was about as delicious as it was adorable. And even home-decorated by one of the wonderful shower attendees, no less. Pretty much typical of the afternoon too– the shower itself was deserving of a cake this good, with amazing food and some of my very favourite company. Family and friends who were patient enough to sit around watching me open presents all afternoon. For such patience, I’m grateful, as well as for the presents themselves, which were so thoughtful, perfect, and as adorable as the cake. This is going to be one very blessed baby, and I’m so lucky already.
May 4, 2009
Sunshine
Today’s sunshine was also quite delicious. We had banana oatmeal pancakes, which have been my favourite Sunday morning treat since we first made them in December. (The recipe is from Chatelaine, and you can find it here.) They’re golden brown and wonderful, and we found using vanilla yogurt in the recipe is good. I will miss them after Baby is born, and we no longer have time to eat. Therefore, I will eat them as often as possible in the time remaining.
Tonight we also were able to sample the results
of our experiment in sorbet making. (Sorbet making, I suspect, is another activity we might see less of when Baby arrives.) The recipe is from Tessa Kiros’ Apples For Jam (which I cannot recommend enough), Mango sorbet from the yellow section, and though she calls for good quality mangoes (for this sorbet can only ever be as good as its mangoes, she says), we got fine results from our Ontario supermarket substandard trucked in from some southern hemisphere variety. It was also really easy, and though it required a day’s preparation, a little whisking every few hours never killed anyone. And homemade mango sorbet really is a sweet delight. (Could have used a bit more sugar, but really, what couldn’t?)
May 1, 2009
So that's what
So that’s what President Obama is reading. (I do so love his formal title. I hate formal titles as a rule, but referring to him by his first name just seems to lack occasion.) The obvious question then is, what about me? I’m now reading Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay, from my stack of novels to get through before Baby is born. It’s only the second book by Hay I’ve read, after Late Nights on Air which I so unsecretly loved. Her fiction is a bit disorienting, characters with such idiosyncratic traits that they’re hard to get one’s head around, the same way people are. The sort of characters you might misuse the word “random” for. I also finished reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons this week, after DGR’s review. And I’m not writing much of anything– I have fourteen submissions ready to send out as soon as I can muster up the energy (Saturday?), and I think I’m done until long post-Baby (which is different from “forever”). All I want to do these days is read, read, read, and thankfully I have plenty of material with which to accommodate that.
April 28, 2009
Less Apparent Miracles
I’ve always been a believer, in that all will be well, and things happen for a reason, and in the everyday miracles apparent all around us. Which is a kind of faith, if not the religious kind, and I’ve never had to to look far for awe and wonder.
But for a while now, I’ve been struggling with a less-apparent miracle. I’ve been unable to believe in things I can’t see, and though in some circles this might qualify me as sane, they’re not the ones I’ve been travelling in lately. Everyone else I know has found it easy to comprehend that for the last thirty-six weeks, a baby has been budding inside me.
A baby: the most extraordinary ordinary occurrence to happen to nearly everybody. Which is why no one else is even fazed, but I can’t believe it’s happened to me.
I was supposed to believe initially because a blood test told me so. The test results were even evidence enough, for a few hours, but then doubt crept in: how could I be having a baby, and it be Friday afternoon, and I felt ordinary, and my house, and the street, and world were just as usual? Shouldn’t the sky have looked different, the weather portentous, and wasn’t I supposed to be emitting a glow? A baby was impossible.
Which was ridiculous. Because I very much wanted a baby, had planned for a baby. My husband and I knew we were ready, and we’d been thrilled to have our wish come true. But it was so unbelievable, and too simple– to want so much, and then to get? Surely, there had to be a catch.
I felt like a fraud, arranging for a midwife, like I was just playing a part as I purchased a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. We told our close friends and family, who reacted with excitement, but moments when I’d let my excitement match theirs were few and far between.
I wasn’t supposed to be excited anyway. The first trimester, I’d been warned repeatedly, was fraught with risk. My “baby” was the size of an apple seed. I’d heard so many stories of women suffering miscarriages that actually managing to be born seemed like a long-shot. The survival of my baby was as improbable as its existence.
It was very unromantic. I wanted to be pregnant like the women on TV, surreptitiously gathering nursery items, smiling with a secret, the kind of woman to whom labels like “over the moon” are assigned. But I was “out of my mind” instead– conscious of every abdominal twinge, terrified of bleeding, adamant something was wrong if I ever woke up feeling good. And it was only when so convinced its wee life was imperiled that I could believe in the baby at all.
So I looked forward to my first ultrasound. Surely, I thought, the sight of the baby would make it real, though I was also nervous. Everyone I know who’s ever gone in for a scan has been terrified of what the technician might find there. An ulcer, a tumour, a cyst or a monster, or the awful fact of absolutely nothing,.
But absolutely there was something, however blurry and undefined. We saw its pulsing heartbeat, and the squirming sprouts of arms and legs. It even looked like a baby, if you held your head back and squinted. And the baby was real, actual, or at least as believable as anything ever projected on a screen. Which wasn’t so believable, once I’d thought about it. The baby on the screen was just as abstract as the one inside my head.
With the second trimester, however, things got better. Once my apple-seed baby had surpassed apple-size, and every week grew comparable to an even bigger piece of produce. Crossing the twelve week mark gave me permission to relax, and to imagine things might turn out all right. We could tell everybody we knew, and they were so convinced by the news, I felt silly not going along with it.
But still, it wasn’t real. Which I thought would change when my belly started to grow, and when nothing changed, I thought, when it grew a little bigger. Or at the 19 week ultrasound, where our baby was definitely a baby, and we saw its tiny toes, its hand tucked under its chin, and how its whole body bounced up and down when I laughed. But then how could that be inside me, I wondered, looking down at my still and quiet– albeit slightly burgeoning– belly.
It would have to be the kicks, I decided. Though I wasn’t sure– I’d been wrong before, far more than I’d been right. Already in my pregnancy, we’d determined that I had abysmal intuition, and was about as in tune with my body as a passing stranger. But still, the kicks– could anything be more definite?
Of course, they started off as flutters. Butterfly wings, breaths and whispers, so how could I be sure they weren’t just in my mind? What if I wanted to feel them so badly, I’d imagined them? How could anything so wonderful really be true?
But it was. Just like the ultrasound images, bigger and stronger every time. And the gorgeous galloping stampede of its heartbeat, and how our baby had persisted in growing and thriving all the while.
Because the flutters turned into thumps, then kicks, our own little miracle doing the fox-trot on my ribs. With boots on. Even other people could feel it. And soon it became impossible not to believe in the baby anymore, as well as obvious the baby didn’t care if we did. This baby, clearly, had plans of its own. Probably not believing in me either, or even the world, but determined to arrive here regardless.
April 28, 2009
Travel: The Poetry of Motion
I’ve really been enjoying Charlotte Ashley’s literary blog Inklings this past while, and had fun contributing to this month’s virtual book collection, themed Travel: The Poetry of Motion. And then winning first prize for my entry– how exciting. Go to her post to find out what all was assembled.
April 27, 2009
Tea for… Eight?
I hosted an afternoon tea today for my friend Jennie, who is getting married in July. It was the first time I’d ever made tea WITH sandwiches, which turned out not to be true at all as Stuart made all the sandwiches. They were delicious! We had smoked salmon, cucumber cream cheese, and cheddar and chutney. For sweets, we had banana cake, chocolate cupcakes and fresh fruit. And of course, scones with strawberry jam and devonshire cream. Tea options were hot and iced, and the whole thing was delicious. I am pleased, and grateful for a friend who lends the occasion of her wedding as an excuse to fulfill my own tea fixation. It was a very lovely afternoon.
